Christian A. Herter
Secretary of State under Eisenhower who confronted Israel and France over the Dimona nuclear reactor after being shown photographic evidence.
Christian A. Herter served as the Secretary of State under President Dwight D. Eisenhower from 1959 to 1961. In early December 1960, he was reportedly upset upon being shown a photograph of Dimona taken from a highway, and called in Avraham Harman, the Israeli ambassador, for an explanation. Herter also conducted his own independent checking, asking an aide to approach the French about their involvement with Israel's nuclear program.1
Herter was instructed by the White House to give a formal diplomatic protest (demarche) to the French. He approached Maurice Couve de Murville, the French foreign minister, who assured the State Department that the Israeli reactor was benign and any plutonium generated would be returned to France for safekeeping, a statement later revealed to be a lie.1
On January 6, 1961, Herter gave his farewell briefing as secretary of state to a closed session of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where he discussed the "disturbing" new element in the Middle East related to Dimona.1
Sources
- Hersh, Seymour M. The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy. Random House, 1991. Chapter 6. ↩
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