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---
tags:
- Person
- Diplomat
- USA
---
William N. Dale served as the deputy chief of mission at the American embassy in [[Tel Aviv]], [[Israel]], arriving in 1964. He was given wide latitude in the day-to-day management of the embassy and encouraged his staff to investigate [[Dimona]]. Dale, along with the embassy's scientific attaché [[Robert T. Webber]], drafted a highly classified dispatch to [[Washington D.C.]] summarizing their intelligence that [[Israel]] was getting ready to put warheads into missiles. This report, which Dale considered the embassy's most definitive on [[Dimona]], received no response from Washington.[^1]
Dale objected to the policy change after the 1967 [[Six-Day War]], when [[Walworth Barbour]] ordered the embassy's military attachés to stop reporting on [[Dimona]] and to no longer undercut the Israelis by conducting operations with their British or Canadian counterparts. This disagreement soured their relationship, and Dale remained convinced that his stance on [[Dimona]] set back his career.[^1]
In the fall of 1967, [[Henry A. Kissinger]], then a [[Harvard University]] professor and consultant on [[Vietnam]] to the [[Lyndon B. Johnson|Johnson]] administration, visited [[Tel Aviv]]. He sent an urgent, top-secret message to the White House through Dale, warning about [[Dimona]] and concluding that [[Israel]] was making nuclear warheads. Dale also recalled Kissinger's warning: "I'll have your ass if this gets out."[^1]
After leaving [[Israel]], Dale attempted to raise questions about [[Dimona]] with senior government officials in [[Washington D.C.]] and later with the [[State Department]]'s Policy Planning Council, but his efforts were met with resistance and warnings not to discuss the issue publicly. His final paper on nonproliferation did not mention [[Dimona]].[^1]
### Footnotes
[^1]: Hersh, Seymour M. *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy*. Random House, 1991. Chapter 12.