Biden Maintains Veil Over Israeli Nuclear Bomb Program

Declassification of CIA spymaster Angleton’s top secret 1975 testimony keeps lid on Israel’s atomic weapons effort

[This article was first published May 6, 2023 in SpyTalk.]

On April 27, the National Archives released the long-redacted September 1975 congressional testimony of CIA spy chief James Angleton, in which he discussed topics ranging from the agency’s sensitive relations with foreign intelligence services to its tangential connection to the Watergate break-in. However, government censors continue to withhold significant portions of Angleton’s prior testimony in June 1975, which concerns a topic still evidently radioactive  in Washington nearly a half-century later: Israel’s nuclear weapons program.

The contrast in the handling of ancient secrets is revealing. The testimony of Angleton, chief of the agency’ counterintelligence staff from 1954 to 1974, is fully public. But less well known is that Angleton held a second position for most of his career, that of the agency’s manager for relations with Israel. It was a unique arrangement,  which began with Israel’s insights into Soviet espionage and would eventually lead to the agency’s eight decades-long complicity in keeping Jerusalem's  covert nuclear weapons program secret.

The testimony of Angleton, the brainy Yale literary critic turned legendary counterspy, remains studded with redactions to protect the fact that Israel’s secret nuclear program blossomed during his tenure.  Albeit an open secret for decades now, full disclosure of U.S. acceptance of  Israel’s nuclear weapons program would no doubt complicate Washington’s now troubled relationship with Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right coalition government, not to mention the American-led effort to persuade Iran to halt its nuclear drive. Israeli officials would certainly think the disclosure was deliberate. Iranian officials would say “told-you-so.”

Much of the story of Angleton’s handling of “the Israeli account” is already on the public record, thanks to the pioneering work of Seymour Hersh, the research of Israeli scholar Avner Cohen, the investigation of Roger Mattson, a former engineer for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), and the findings of the late John Hadden, former CIA station chief in Tel Aviv who worked for Angleton. 

(I told Hadden’s little-known story in my 2017 biography of Angleton, The Ghost. Hadden’s son first told the story of his father’s whistleblowing about the Israeli nuclear program in his 2016 memoir Conversations With a Masked Man.)

The CIA is loath to surrender any more details on its dealings with Israel, but a censorship lapse in testimony released last December confirmed a key detail of Angleton’s Israel duties, even as many other details are still deemed off-limits to the American people in the interest of “national security.” 

CIA counterintelligence chief James Angleton (Credit: Muck Rock)