Angleton’s [Redacted] Tale of Israeli Nukes
How ancient secrecy serves contemporary purposes
[Editor’s Note: This article is a sequel to Monday’s post, “In the Last of the JFK Files, Israel's Nuclear Secrets Are Safe.”]
When former CIA counterintelligence chief James Angleton arrived to testify to the Senate Select Committee 49 years ago, he was a defeated but defiant man. Fired by CIA director William Colby six months earlier for running an illicit domestic spying operation, Angleton appeared on June 19, 1975 determined to defend himself, his methods and his intelligence accomplishments.
His interrogators wanted to know about a sensational forthcoming article by investigative reporter Tad Szulc alleging that Angleton and the CIA had actively assisted Israel’s successful drive to obtain nuclear weapons from the 1950s to September 1969, when Prime Minister Golda Meir privately told President Richard Nixon that Israel had built an atomic bomb.
Key details of Angleton’s story remain secret a half century late…
