Declassified Documents: US Knew of “Israel’s” Nuke Weapons Production Since the 1960s

The recently released Joint Atomic Energy Intelligence Committee [JAEIC] report from December 1960, published by the so-called “National Security” Archive, is the first known US intelligence report to explicitly state that “Israel’s” Dimona site would include a plutonium reprocessing plant with weapons-related capabilities.

For years after the report, US intelligence treated the reprocessing issue as unresolved until the late 1960s, when the entity approached nuclear weapons capability. During this time, the United States and “Israel” secretly agreed to accommodate the entity’s status as an undeclared nuclear power.

Additional US intelligence analysis revealed that by February 1967, several "Israeli" sources informed the US embassy that the "Israeli" entity “either has or is about to complete” a reprocessing plant at Dimona. They also stated that the reactor had been operating at full capacity, leaving the "Israeli" entity “6-8 weeks” away from producing a nuclear bomb.

The State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research [INR] found these claims “plausible” and recommended that an inspection team in April 1967 investigate further. This marked the first known acknowledgment of the possibility that the “Israeli” entity had systematically misled the UnitedaStates regarding Dimona.

The newly released report is part of a broader collection of declassified documents on US policy toward the “Israeli” entity’s nuclear weapons program.

The apartheid entity, which officially maintains a policy of deliberate ambiguity about its nuclear arsenal, is estimated to possess between 200 and 400 nuclear warheads. It remains the only entity in West Asia with non-conventional arms, refusing to allow inspections of its military nuclear facilities or to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty [NPT], a stance supported consistently by Washington.