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If that tale sounds astounding, much of Hersh's book is otherwise convincing. The reporter who exposed the full stories of the My Lai massacre and Manuel Noriega's drug-running set out to tell how Israel developed the Bomb. If his assertions come as no real surprise, the evidence he brings to bear is impressive. For years, most of the world has suspected that Israel possessed nuclear weapons. Even Israelis coyly refer to the "bomb in the basement." But Hersh concentrates primarily on how the U.S. has determinedly looked the other way. American Presidents could not condone Israel's development of nuclear weapons, but any move to impose sanctions on Israel would provoke the Jewish state's legion of American admirers.
In 1967, says Hersh, Ambassador to Israel Walworth Barbour, eager not to upset Lyndon Johnson, told his subordinates to stop monitoring the progress of the Israeli nuclear reactor at Dimona, where the Bomb was thought to be. Later, during the Nixon Administration, Barbour was given a special intelligence briefing on the Israeli weapons program and announced he did not believe it. One of the briefers told Hersh that Barbour gave this explanation: "If I acknowledge this, then I have to go to the President. And if he admitted it, he'd have to do something about it."
Actually, according to the book, Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger approved of Israel's weapons program, even though they were subjected to what Hersh calls "nuclear blackmail." When Israel feared that it was on the brink of defeat in the 1973 October War, Jerusalem asserted that if Washington did not immediately resupply the weapons the Israeli armed forces had lost it would fire its nukes. Kissinger, who had wanted to delay sending more arms in the hope of setting up a land-for-peace settlement, quickly changed his mind.
In September 1979, when a U.S. satellite observed an intense flash of light over the Indian Ocean, Jimmy Carter would have found it very embarrassing to admit that it was an atomic test, especially an Israeli test. He would have had to "do something strong," said one official, "but there was a large segment of the population that Carter couldn't alienate."
Hersh recounts story after story of deceit and willful gullibility, nearly all as convincing as they are depressing -- with the possible exception of the tale about Shamir's giving U.S. secrets to the Soviets. Jerusalem, Moscow and Washington have already begun denying that one. Shamir's military aide, Brigadier General Azriel Nevo, called it "an outright lie." Yitzhak Rabin, who was defense minister at the time of the Pollard affair, says Israel never received any such information. In Moscow, Primakov dismissed the story as "utter nonsense" and denied that anyone, American or Israeli "has ever passed such information to me."
A Washington official familiar with the Pollard case also says the spy did not provide such data to Israel. The White House declined to comment. On the face of it, the story does sound too mind-boggling to be immediately credible. But Hersh is a careful and seasoned reporter, and in the Middle East there is almost nothing so bizarre as to be beyond belief.