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+---
+tags:
+  - Person
+  - Government Official
+  - USA
+---
+Christian A. Herter served as the Secretary of State under President [[Dwight D. Eisenhower]] from 1959 to 1961. In early December 1960, he was reportedly upset upon being shown a photograph of [[Dimona]] taken from a highway, and called in [[Avraham Harman]], the Israeli ambassador, for an explanation. Herter also conducted his own independent checking, asking an aide to approach the French about their involvement with [[Israel]]'s nuclear program.[^1]
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+Herter was instructed by the White House to give a formal diplomatic protest (demarche) to the French. He approached [[Maurice Couve de Murville]], the French foreign minister, who assured the [[State Department]] that the Israeli reactor was benign and any plutonium generated would be returned to [[France]] for safekeeping, a statement later revealed to be a lie.[^1]
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+On January 6, 1961, Herter gave his farewell briefing as secretary of state to a closed session of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where he discussed the "disturbing" new element in the [[Middle East]] related to [[Dimona]].[^1]
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+### Footnotes
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+[^1]: Hersh, Seymour M. *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy*. Random House, 1991. Chapter 6.