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Jerome B. Wiesner

President Kennedy's science adviser who was deliberately excluded from intelligence about Israel's Dimona nuclear reactor at David Ben-Gurion's request.

Lifespan 1915–1994 Location Detroit, Michigan Tags PersonNuclearIsrael

Jerome B. Wiesner was President John F. Kennedy's science adviser. He was Jewish, but was totally cut out of the intelligence about Dimona, and assumed that David Ben-Gurion had requested that he not deal with that issue in the White House. Wiesner played a major role on disarmament issues for the Kennedy administration and had served as a board member of the Weizmann Institute of Science. He frequently ran into Ben-Gurion on visits to Israel, who would always ask him two questions: "Can computers think? And should we build a nuclear weapon?" Wiesner consistently answered "no" to the latter, which he believed marked him as a liberal in Ben-Gurion's eyes and limited his access.1

  1. Hersh, Seymour M. The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy. Random House, 1991. Chapter 8.

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