Soon
after the Jewish state was founded in 1948 he (Chaim Weizmann) had sent
six of the country's most promising young scientists to study nuclear physics
in the United States, Britain, Switzerland and the Netherlands. The knowledge
they gained had been of deep interest to her then ally France, who was
nurturing her own nuclear ambitions, and Israel had been able to make a
deal: in return for their knowledge, Israeli scientists were allowed to
study the French nuclear programme. And, until relations between the two
countries went into decline, Israelis were allowed to observe French atomic
bomb tests. (The deal, which was concluded in total secrecy, also allowed
Israel to build Dimona. It was modelled on France's EL-3 reactor at Brest
in Brittany and much of the equipment was supplied by France and shipped
to Israel under the guise of textile machinery.
To
provide the necessry cover, the French Commissatiat à l'Energie
Atomique - CEA - set up a bogus subsidiary company with officies in the
Paris suburb of Courbevoie. France also
supplied part of Dimona's initial small stock of uranium.)
(...)
By
1973, Dimona had produced a small arsenal. The Cia put the number of bombs
at three, each in the twenty kiloton range.
(...)
Current
evidence [1978] suggests that the estimate of six may have been nearer
the mark. In 1978 a CIA document was made public under the terms of the
US Freedom of Information Act which said that prior to Operation Plumbat,
Israel had obtained 206 pounds of highly enriched uranium from a privately
owned nuclear fuel fabrication plant in Apollo, Pennsylvania. That enriched
uranium could, at least in theory, have been used by Israel to produce
the fissile core of a nuclear weapon. The CIA report was dated May 1974
and stamped 'Secret, No Foreign Disclosure.' However, no firm evidence
has emerged to support the allegation. And in February 1978 the
US Nuclear Regulatory Commission released a 550-page report in which it
claimed that the CIA's theory amounted to no more than 'circumstantial
evidence and much colour.'
The
Plumbat Affair, Davemport, Eddy, Gillman, André Deutsch Ltd,
1978