How Britain helped Israel get the bomb
Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/4743493.stm
Newsnight reporter Michael Crick tells the story of how Britain helped Israel build the bomb - without telling the Americans.
By Michael Crick
BBC Newsnight
Documents uncovered by
Newsnight in the British National Archives show how, in 1958, Britain agreed to
sell Israel 20 tonnes of heavy water, a vital ingredient for the production of
plutonium at Israel's top secret Dimona nuclear reactor in the Negev desert.
Robert McNamara,
President John F Kennedy's defence secretary, has told Newsnight he is
"astonished" at the revelation that Britain kept this secret from
America.
In Wednesday's programme,
Newsnight reveals how British officials decided it would be
"over-zealous" to impose safeguards on the Israelis, and chose not to
insist that Israel use the heavy water only for peaceful purposes.
Earlier the Americans had
refused to supply heavy water to Israel without such safeguards.
Making money
The documents unearthed
by Newsnight also show British officials decided not to tell Washington about
it.
|
They seemed to have no idea of the
implications of what they were doing Lord Gilmour |
"On the whole I
would prefer NOT to mention this to the Americans," concluded Donald Cape
of the Foreign Office. When contacted by Newsnight this week, Mr Cape said he
could remember nothing about the episode.
"I think it is quite
extraordinary," says the former Conservative Defence and Foreign Office
minister Lord Gilmour. "Whether the civil servants who were involved knew
what they were doing, or whether they didn't, I don't know." He thinks
they put Britain's economic interests first.
"One must assume
they must have known... And what's more they seemed to have no idea of the
political or indeed even the technical and foreign-policy implications of what
they were doing. They just seemed to be concerned with making a bit of
money."
Escaping criticism
Until now both France and
Norway have been criticised for helping the Israelis develop the bomb, but
Britain has escaped criticism.
|
It's very surprising to me that we
weren't told Robert McNamara |
Frank Barnaby, who worked
on the British bomb project in the 1950s, and later debriefed the Israeli
whistle-blower Mordechai Vanunu, says he had "no idea" that Britain
was "involved" in supplying Israel with heavy water.
"Heavy water was
crucial for Israel," he says. "Therefore it was a significant part of
their nuclear programme."
More extraordinary, the
archives suggest that the decision to sell heavy water was taken simply by
civil servants, mainly in the Foreign Office and the UK Atomic Energy
Authority.
Newsnight has found no
evidence that ministers in the Macmillan Government were ever consulted about
the sale, or even told about it.
Surplus
The 20 tonnes of heavy
water were part of a consignment which Britain bought from Norway in 1956, but
the UK later decided this was surplus to requirements.
The papers in the
National Archives in London show how officials presented the sale internally as
a straight sale from Norway to Israel. But the minutes reveal that the heavy
water was shipped from a British port in Israeli ships - half in June 1959 and
half a year later.
In 1960 the Daily Express
first exposed the Israelis' work at Dimona and the fact that Israel was
probably making a bomb.
When Israel asked Britain
for a further five tonnes of heavy water in 1961 the Foreign Office decided
against a second transaction.
"I am quite sure we
should not agree to this sale," advised Sir Hugh Stephenson of the Foreign
Office. "The Israeli project is much too live an issue for us to get mixed
up in it again," he wrote.
Mr McNamara, who became
President Kennedy's defence secretary in 1961, has expressed his surprise to
Newsnight that Britain didn't inform the Americans it had sold heavy water to
Israel: "The fact that Israel was trying to develop a nuclear bomb should
not have come as any surprise... But that Britain should have supplied it with
heavy water was indeed a surprise to me.
"It's very
surprising to me that we weren't told because we shared information about the
nuclear bomb very closely with the British."