#Nuclear
128 entries tagged Nuclear.
People (101)
- Abraham Feinberg Abraham Feinberg was a wealthy New York businessman and ardent advocate of statehood for Israel.
- Abraham Sourassi Abraham Sourassi was a senior Israeli engineer at Dimona, responsible for building the reprocessing plant.
- Aharon Katchalsky Aharon Katchalsky, later known as Aharon Katzir, was a specialist in the electrolytic properties of chain molecules and a pioneer researcher in the related field of muscle-powered robotics.
- Alexander M. Haig, Jr. Secretary of State under President Reagan who was present at high-command meetings following Israel's 1981 bombing of the Iraqi Osirak nuclear reactor.
- Algie A. Wells Director of international affairs for the AEC in 1958 who believed U.S. officials could have learned about Israel's Dimona reactor earlier.
- Amos Deshalit Amos Deshalit was a prominent Israeli physicist who headed the physics division at the Weizmann Institute of Science.
- Andrew J. Goodpaster U.S. Army General who served as military aide to Presidents Eisenhower and Nixon and was involved in diplomatic exchanges regarding Israel's Dimona nuclear facility.
- Arthur C. Lundahl Lundahl played a crucial role in the U-2 Spy Plane program, becoming the American government's most listened-to briefing officer.
- Arthur Krock Arthur Krock was a prominent Washington columnist for the New York Times.
- Aviem Sella Colonel Aviem Sella was an Israeli Air Force officer and a nuclear targeting expert who was implicated in the Jonathan Pollard espionage case, where he worked with Pollard to obtain intelligence from the U.S.
- Avraham Harman Avraham Harman was the Israeli ambassador to the United States.
- Bertrand Goldschmidt Bertrand Goldschmidt was a French nuclear chemist who served during World War II with American nuclear researchers, becoming an expert in the chemistry of plutonium and plutonium extraction.
- Binyamin Blumberg Binyamin Blumberg was a former military intelligence officer handpicked by Shimon Peres to direct the Office of Special Tasks, a new intelligence agency created to provide security for Israel's burgeoning nuclear operation at Dimona.
- Bourke B. Hickenlooper Conservative Republican Senator who accused Israel of lying about its secret nuclear reactor at Dimona during a closed 1961 Senate session.
- Bruce Williams Bruce Williams was a U.S.
- Carl Kaysen Carl Kaysen is a distinguished political economist who served as deputy assistant to the President for national security affairs.
- Caspar Weinberger Caspar Weinberger served as the Secretary of Defense under President Ronald Reagan.
- Chapman Pincher Chapman Pincher was a British journalist known for his close ties to the British intelligence and nuclear communities.
- Charles N. Van Doren Deputy general counsel of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency who believed Israel was the Achilles heel of U.S. nonproliferation policy.
- Christian A. Herter Secretary of State under Eisenhower who confronted Israel and France over the Dimona nuclear reactor after being shown photographic evidence.
- Christian Pineau Christian Pineau was a French politician who served as Foreign Minister.
- Daniel Ellsberg Daniel Ellsberg was an American activist and former military analyst who famously leaked the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times in 1971.
- David Ben-Gurion David Ben-Gurion, often referred to as the 'Old Man,' was a central figure in the establishment of Israel and served as its first Prime Minister and Defense Minister from 1948 to 1963, with one brief interlude.
- 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 Lowenthal David Lowenthal was one of the initial stockholders in the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation (NUMEC).
- Donald M. Kerr, Jr. Acting director of defense programs at the Department of Energy who directed the Nuclear Intelligence Panel study of the 1979 Vela satellite flash, concluding it was a nuclear bomb.
- Edward Teller Edward Teller was a Hungarian-American theoretical physicist who is widely known as the 'father of the hydrogen bomb.' He and other American nuclear weapons designers understood well before the end of World War II that a far more powerful nuclear device, with fission as merely a first step, was theo
- Eugene M. Braderman Deputy assistant secretary of state for commercial affairs who was pressured by Israelis to help the U.S. accept Israel's nuclear weapons.
- Eugene Wigner Eugene Wigner was a Hungarian-American theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate.
- Floyd L. Culler, Jr. Culler's team spent days at Dimona, climbing through various excavations, but found nothing suspicious, despite the elaborate Israeli deception, which included a false control room and practice sessions for Israeli technicians.
- Frank Barnaby Frank Barnaby was a nuclear physicist and former employee of Britain's nuclear weapons installation at Aldermaston.
- Frank Press Frank Press was the presidential science adviser during the Carter administration.
- Gary Francis Powers Gary Francis Powers was an American pilot whose U-2 Spy Plane was shot down over the Soviet Union on May 1, 1960, leading to a major international incident.
- George A. Cowan American nuclear weapons designer at Los Alamos for over twenty years who acknowledged close associations with Israeli physicists from the Weizmann Institute.
- George Ball George Ball served as the Under Secretary of State during the Kennedy administration.
- Gerald Bull In 1981, Bull approached Israel Military Industries in Israel hoping to sell his project, but they were more interested in missile technology.
- Glenn R. Cella Cella was dismayed that a study of the military balance in the region, ordered by the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), made no mention of Israeli nuclear capability.
- Golda Meir In 1956, Golda Meir replaced Moshe Sharett as Foreign Minister, bringing her distinctive approach to Israel's international relations.
- Hans Bethe Hans Bethe was a German-American theoretical physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1967.
- Harold M. Agnew American physicist and Los Alamos director (1970-1979) who served on the Nuclear Intelligence Panel and criticized suppression of the VELA Satellite findings.
- Harry H. Schwartz Aide to Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul Warnke who witnessed Warnke directly confronting Israeli Ambassador Rabin about Israel's nuclear weapons program.
- Hedrick Smith Hedrick Smith was a Washington correspondent for the New York Times.
- Henry A. Kissinger Henry A. Kissinger served as National Security Advisor (1969-1975) and Secretary of State (1973-1977) under Nixon and Ford, and endorsed Israel's covert nuclear weapons program at Dimona while privately advocating that Japan and Israel were better served by having the bomb than submitting to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
- I. I. Rabi American physicist and Nobel laureate who visited Israel's Dimona reactor in 1961 and reported no evidence of a weapons facility.
- Ian Smart Ian Smart was a young British diplomat who served as third secretary of the British embassy in Tel Aviv in the late 1950s.
- J. Edgar Hoover J. Edgar Hoover (1895-1972) served as FBI Director for 48 years, creating COINTELPRO in 1956 and maintaining secret files on political figures that sustained his institutional survival across eight presidential administrations.
- J. Robert Oppenheimer Oppenheimer's personal papers indicate he visited Israel in May 1958 to participate in ceremonies marking the opening of the Institute of Nuclear Science in Rehovot.
- Jack P. Ruina His panel's assignment was carefully weighted towards investigating the possibility that the VELA sighting had been a false alarm.
- James A. Baker III Chief of Staff under President Reagan who agreed sanctions against Israel were essential after the 1981 bombing of Iraq's Osirak reactor.
- James E. Lovett Senior AEC scientist hired by NUMEC who discovered that missing uranium was embedded in concrete floors and ventilation systems.
- James R. Schlesinger Secretary of Defense under Nixon and Ford who observed Kissinger's strategy during the 1973 Yom Kippur War of wanting Israel to succeed but bleed.
- Jens C. Hauge Norwegian official who conducted Norway's only inspection of heavy water sold to Israel, accepting Bergmann's claims uncritically.
- 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.
- Jody Powell Jody Powell was President Jimmy Carter's press secretary.
- John A. McCone McCone's leak was his parting shot as AEC commissioner, as he announced his resignation shortly after.
- John F. Kennedy Kennedy's presidency was marked by a struggle with Israel over its nuclear ambitions, particularly concerning the Dimona reactor.
- John Foster Dulles John Foster Dulles served as the Secretary of State under President Dwight D.
- John L. Hadden Hadden sent Colonel Carmelo V.
- John von Neumann John von Neumann was a Hungarian-American mathematician and physicist who made significant contributions to quantum physics, functional analysis, set theory, economics, computer science, and nuclear physics.
- John Vorster John Vorster was the Prime Minister of South Africa.
- John W. Finney Finney's article, published on December 19, 1960, on the front page of the Times, informed the American public about what Arthur C.
- Joseph O. Zurhellen, Jr. Deputy chief of mission at the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv who dismissed concerns about Dimona as Israeli disinformation.
- Levi Eshkol Levi Eshkol was an Israeli politician who served as Prime Minister of Israel from 1963 to 1969.
- Lewis L. Strauss Strauss chose not to talk about the Israeli nuclear program because, as a Jew with deep feelings about the Holocaust, he privately approved of it.
- Louis H. Roddis, Jr. Nuclear Intelligence Panel member who concluded the 1979 Vela satellite event was a South African-Israeli nuclear test and accused the White House of suppressing the finding.
- Malcolm Toon Malcolm Toon was the U.S.
- Maurice Bourges-Maunoury Maurice Bourges-Maunoury was a French politician who served as Prime Minister of France in 1957.
- Max Ben Max Ben was a Princeton-trained pharmacologist who was helping the Israelis set up a pharmacology institute under United Nations auspices.
- Menachem Begin Menachem Begin was the 6th Prime Minister of Israel, serving from 1977 to 1983.
- Mordecai Hod Mordecai Hod was the chief of staff of the Israeli Air Force.
- Mordecai Vanunu Vanunu began working as a technician at Dimona in August 1977 and spent much of the next eight years assigned to various tasks inside the reprocessing plant, formally known as Machon 2 and informally as the Tunnel.
- Morton H. Halperin Close aide to Kissinger on the NSC staff who recalled Kissinger's belief that Israel and Japan would be better off with nuclear weapons.
- Myer Feldman Myer Feldman, also known as Mike Feldman, served as President John F.
- Myron B. Kratzer Director of international affairs for the Atomic Energy Commission during the period Israel's nuclear program was exposed in 1960.
- Niels Bohr Niels Bohr was a Danish physicist who made foundational contributions to understanding atomic structure and quantum theory, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922.
- Orwin C. Talbott Lieutenant General told point-blank by Israeli Chief of Staff David Elazar about Israel's nuclear threat during the 1973 Yom Kippur War.
- Oscar Guerrero Freelance Colombian journalist who met Mordecai Vanunu in Sydney and received top-secret photographs of Israel's nuclear facility.
- Paul C. Warnke Assistant Secretary of Defense who pressured Israel to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and directly confronted Israel about its nuclear weapons program.
- Philip J. Farley Special assistant to John Foster Dulles for arms control who quietly investigated the French connection to Israel's nuclear program.
- Pierre Gallois Pierre Gallois was a retired French general and the intellectual spokesman for the French nuclear program.
- Pierre Mendes-France Pierre Mendès-France was a French politician who served as Prime Minister of France from 1954 to 1955.
- Pinhas Sapir Pinhas Sapir was an Israeli politician who, along with Levi Eshkol, dominated the Israeli budget process for more than fifteen years.
- Raymond Fox Raymond Fox was an American nuclear physicist who emigrated to Israel in 1957 from California, where he had access to weapons design information at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
- Richard V. Allen Allen personally relayed the message to Ariel Sharon in the fall of 1981 that the United States would no longer permit Israel to get KH-11 imagery of the Soviet Union or any other country outside the hundred-mile limit, re-enforcing the initial 1979 restrictions.
- Robert S. McNamara Secretary of Defense under Kennedy and Johnson who was pressured by pro-Israel fundraiser Abraham Feinberg not to interfere with Israel's nuclear activities.
- Robert T. Webber Physicist and scientific attache at the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv who gathered intelligence on Israel's Dimona nuclear facility alongside CIA station chief John Hadden.
- Seymour Hersh Hersh conducted extensive research for The Samson Option, interviewing many senior American officials, most of whom spoke for the first time about their knowledge of Israel's nuclear arsenal.
- Shalheveth Freier Shalheveth Freier was an Israeli nuclear physicist with impeccable credentials.
- Shimon Peres Peres's rise to influence began in late 1953, when David Ben-Gurion appointed the then thirty-year-old Shimon Peres as director general of the ministry of defense.
- Shimon Yiftach Shimon Yiftach was the director of scientific programs for the Israeli defense ministry.
- Stuart Symington Stuart Symington was a Democratic Senator from Missouri.
- Walworth Barbour Walworth Barbour was the American ambassador to Israel from 1961 to 1973, serving longer in one post than all but three other American ambassadors.
- William N. Dale 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.
- William R. Crawford Crawford recalled that Ben-Gurion's reply was long, evasive, and did not agree to the IAEA inspection of Dimona.
- Yehoshua Saguy Yehoshua Saguy was the chief of military intelligence in Israel.
- Yigael Yadin Yigael Yadin served as the Deputy Prime Minister of Israel.
- Yigal Allon Yigal Allon was a 1948 war hero and a close adviser to Prime Minister Levi Eshkol.
- Yitzhak Hofi Yitzhak Hofi was the director of Mossad, Israel's primary foreign intelligence service.
- Yitzhak Rabin As army chief of operations, Yitzhak Rabin was among the old-fashioned military men, including Yigal Allon and Ariel Sharon, who believed that Israel's essential advantage over the Arabs was the quality and training of its military personnel.
- Yuval Neeman Yuval Neeman was an Israeli physicist and defense ministry intelligence officer.
- Zalman Mordecai Shapiro Zalman Mordecai Shapiro was an American Jew and owner of the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation (NUMEC), a privately owned nuclear enriching plant in Apollo, Pennsylvania.
Organizations (8)
- Atomic Energy Commission An Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) is a governmental body responsible for the oversight and regulation of nuclear energy and related activities within a country.
- Burns & Roe, Inc. Burns & Roe, Inc. was an international engineering and construction firm owned by the Roe family whose Pacific director George K. Pender appears in connections to nuclear facility construction and intelligence-adjacent contracting.
- International Atomic Energy Agency International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is an international organization that seeks to promote the peaceful use of nuclear energy and to inhibit its use for any military purpose, including nuclear weapons.
- Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) is a U.S. federal research facility in Livermore, California, serving alongside Los Alamos as one of the two primary institutions responsible for American nuclear weapons research and development.
- Nuclear Intelligence Panel The Nuclear Intelligence Panel (NIP) was a highly classified U.S. government nuclear intelligence group whose members, including Harold M. Agnew, concluded that the 1979 VELA satellite flash was a nuclear detonation and were dismayed by White House interference in their investigation.
- Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation (NUMEC) was a privately owned nuclear enriching plant in Apollo, Pennsylvania, owned by Zalman Mordecai Shapiro.
- Sandia National Laboratories Sandia National Laboratories is a U.S. national laboratory that conducts research and development in nuclear weapons and other areas.
- Westinghouse Electric Corporation Westinghouse Electric Corporation was involved in a major project with Burns & Roe, Inc., for the engineering design and construction of the United States of America Fast Breeder Nuclear Reactor Plant.
Programs (2)
- Atoms for Peace Atoms for Peace was Eisenhower's 1953 initiative to promote civilian nuclear energy by sharing technology and materials internationally, which inadvertently accelerated nuclear proliferation including Israel's Dimona program.
- Manhattan Project The Manhattan Project was the top-secret U.S.-British-Canadian research program (1942-1946) that developed the first nuclear weapons under J. Robert Oppenheimer at Los Alamos and other facilities, culminating in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Events (4)
- Cuban Missile Crisis The Cuban Missile Crisis (October 16-28, 1962) was a thirteen-day nuclear confrontation resolved when the Soviet Union agreed to remove missiles from Cuba in exchange for an American non-invasion pledge and a secret commitment to remove Jupiter missiles from Turkey.
- Geneva Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy 1955 international scientific conference in Geneva with 1,500 delegates from 70 nations, marking the first major open exchange of nuclear knowledge.
- Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) is an international treaty whose objective is to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and weapons technology, to promote cooperation in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy, and to further the goal of...
- Nuclear Test Ban Treaty The Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (1963) was signed in Moscow by the United States, the Soviet Union, and the United Kingdom, prohibiting nuclear weapons tests in the atmosphere, in outer space, and underwater.
Concepts (6)
- Critical Mass Critical mass is the minimum amount of fissile material required for a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction, first calculated for uranium by French physicist Francis Perrin in 1939 and central to both nuclear weapons design and proliferation intelligence.
- Heavy Water Heavy water (deuterium oxide, D2O) is a form of water that contains a higher than normal concentration of the isotope deuterium, rather than the common hydrogen-1 isotope.
- MUF MUF ('material unaccounted for') is the nuclear industry term for the discrepancy between expected and measured quantities of nuclear material in a facility, whose large-scale irregular occurrence at the NUMEC plant is central evidence in allegations that Israel diverted enriched uranium for its nuclear weapons program.
- Nuclear Fission Nuclear fission is a nuclear reaction in which the nucleus of an atom splits into two or more smaller, lighter nuclei, often producing gamma photons, and releasing a very large amount of energy.
- Nuclear Proliferation Nuclear proliferation refers to the spread of nuclear weapons, fissionable material, and weapons-applicable nuclear technology and information to nations not recognized as 'nuclear weapon states' by the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
- Samson Option The Samson Option is a concept deeply ingrained in Israel's national security doctrine, referring to the idea that Israel possesses a nuclear arsenal that it would use as a last resort to prevent its destruction, even if it means causing massive...
Places (7)
- Beersheba Beersheba (Be'er Sheva) is the largest city in southern Israel and the administrative capital of the Negev Desert region; it appears in this vault primarily as the regional center nearest to the Negev Nuclear Research Center at Dimona and as a hub for the Israeli military and intelligence infrastructure concentrated in the southern Negev.
- China China is an East Asian country and major Cold War power whose nuclear weapons program, Lop Nor test site, Chinese state parapsychology research, and PROMIS software transfers are the primary contexts in which it appears in this vault.
- Dimona The Dimona facility, officially known as the Negev Nuclear Research Center, stands as a deeply clandestine and pivotal complex within Israel's national security apparatus, nestled in the arid Negev Desert south of Jerusalem.
- India India appears in this vault primarily in connection with CIA covert operations during the Cold War, arms sales through brokers connected to vault subjects (including Mirage jet sales brokered by Asaf Ali), BCCI's significant Indian operations, and India's nuclear weapons program which intersected with Pakistani proliferator A.Q. Khan's network.
- Los Alamos Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico is the birthplace of the atomic bomb (Manhattan Project) and remains one of the primary U.S. nuclear weapons design facilities; it appears in this vault through nuclear intelligence subjects, espionage cases, and figures who worked at the lab and appear in Cold War intelligence contexts.
- Negev Desert The Negev Desert is the arid southern region of Israel comprising approximately 60 percent of the country's land area; it appears in this vault primarily as the location of the Negev Nuclear Research Center near Dimona, where Israel developed its undeclared nuclear weapons program beginning in the late 1950s with French technical assistance, and which was exposed publicly by Mordechai Vanunu in 1986.
- South Africa South Africa is a country at the southern tip of Africa whose apartheid-era government developed nuclear weapons with covert Israeli assistance and maintained extensive illicit arms trading networks that intersect with Iran-Contra and Cold War covert operations subjects in this vault.