Roswell L. Gilpatric was an American government official who served as Deputy Secretary of Defense under President [[John F. Kennedy]]. He headed a special panel on nonproliferation convened by President [[Lyndon B. Johnson]] after [[China]]'s first nuclear test in 1964. The panel's report, returned on January 21, 1965, amounted to an indictment of past and present policy, warning that the world was "fast approaching a point of no return" in controlling the spread of nuclear weapons. It urged the President to substantially increase efforts and advocated for nuclear-free zones in [[Latin America]], [[Africa]], and the [[Middle East]], including [[Israel]] and [[Egypt]].[^1] The report also suggested reconsidering a controversial American plan to create a multilateral force (MLF) that would give [[NATO]] members, including West Germans, a joint finger on the nuclear trigger. The report was deemed "as explosive as a nuclear weapon" by [[Dean Rusk]], then Secretary of State, and was kept highly classified. Despite its significance, the report went nowhere, and nonproliferation continued to be treated as a topic fit only for arms controllers.[^1] ### Footnotes [^1]: Hersh, Seymour M. *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy*. Random House, 1991. Chapter 11.