William N. Dale

William N. Dale served as the deputy chief of mission at the American embassy in Tel Aviv, Israel, arriving in 1964. He was given wide latitude in the day-to-day management of the embassy and encouraged his staff to investigate Dimona. Dale, along with the embassy's scientific attaché Robert T. Webber, drafted a highly classified dispatch to Washington, D.C. summarizing their intelligence that Israel was getting ready to put warheads into missiles. This report, which Dale considered the embassy's most definitive on Dimona, received no response from Washington.¹

Dale objected to the policy change after the 1967 Six-Day War, when Walworth Barbour ordered the embassy's military attachés to stop reporting on Dimona and to no longer undercut the Israelis by conducting operations with their British or Canadian counterparts. This disagreement soured their relationship, and Dale remained convinced that his stance on Dimona set back his career.¹

In the fall of 1967, Henry A. Kissinger, then a Harvard University professor and consultant on Vietnam to the Johnson administration, visited Tel Aviv. He sent an urgent, top-secret message to the White House through Dale, warning about Dimona and concluding that Israel was making nuclear warheads. Dale also recalled Kissinger's warning: "I'll have your ass if this gets out."¹

After leaving Israel, Dale attempted to raise questions about Dimona with senior government officials in Washington, D.C. and later with the State Department's Policy Planning Council, but his efforts were met with resistance and warnings not to discuss the issue publicly. His final paper on nonproliferation did not mention Dimona.¹