David E. Long
State Department Middle East expert who revealed that Israeli nuclear intelligence was treated as a strictly taboo subject within the U.S. bureaucracy.
David E. Long was a State Department Middle East expert. He explained that the Israeli nuclear issue was taboo within the bureaucracy, and that State Department and Pentagon staff officers who wanted to learn more about Israel's nuclear weapons could not, because such intelligence carried the highest classification. Long recalled being informally questioned by diplomats from the Middle East about Israel's nuclear arms, and his response was always that "we don't know anything and here is what the Israelis say." He refused a superior's request to put this response in writing, arguing that delivering a deliberately false impression went beyond subterfuge.1
Sources
- Hersh, Seymour M. The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy. Random House, 1991. Chapter 16. ↩
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