vault backup: 2026-09-21 19:17:08

10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/John McCone.md

@@ -6,16 +6,19 @@ tags:
   - ColdWar
   - StandardOil
   - LatinAmerica
-alias: John A. McCone
+  - Nuclear
+  - Israel
 summary: "Industrialist and former director of Standard Oil of California who served as CIA Director from 1961 to 1965, clashed with President Kennedy over the test-ban treaty and covert-operations control, shaped Johnson's Latin America team around Rockefeller allies, and later, as an ITT director, financed the effort to block Salvador Allende."
 born: 1902-01-04
 died: 1991-02-14
 location: San Francisco, California
 created: 2026-06-12
-updated: 2026-06-12
+updated: 2026-09-21
+alias:
+  - John A. McCone
 ---
 
-John A. McCone (1902-1991) was an American industrialist who served as Director of the [[CIA]] from 1961 to 1965, appointed by President [[John F. Kennedy]] after the [[Bay of Pigs invasion]] and retained into the [[Lyndon Johnson|Johnson]] administration. A former director of [[Standard Oil|Standard Oil of California]] and a wealthy engineering contractor, he brought a corporate and oil-industry orientation to the Agency that repeatedly set him at odds with Kennedy and aligned him with the [[Nelson Rockefeller|Rockefeller]] network's interests in [[Latin America]].[^1]
+John A. McCone (1902-1991) was an American industrialist who served as Director of the [[CIA]] from 1961 to 1965, appointed by President [[John F. Kennedy]] after the [[Bay of Pigs invasion]] and retained into the [[Lyndon B. Johnson|Johnson]] administration. A former director of [[Standard Oil|Standard Oil of California]] and a wealthy engineering contractor, he brought a corporate and oil-industry orientation to the Agency that repeatedly set him at odds with Kennedy and aligned him with the [[Nelson Rockefeller|Rockefeller]] network's interests in [[Latin America]].[^1]
 
 ### Conflicts with Kennedy
 
@@ -31,9 +34,18 @@ Under Johnson, McCone helped reorient US policy toward the hemisphere around fig
 
 After leaving the CIA in 1965, McCone joined the board of the [[International Telephone and Telegraph|International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation]] (ITT). In 1970, working to prevent the election of [[Salvador Allende]] in Chile, McCone offered the CIA $2 million to finance an effort to stop him, connecting the corporate and intelligence campaigns against the Chilean left that the [[Rockefeller Brothers Fund]]'s earlier rural-education programs in Chile had been designed to undercut.[^4]
 
+### Atomic Energy Commission
+
+John A. McCone was a wealthy Republican businessman from [[California]] who served as chairman of the [[Atomic Energy Commission]] (AEC) and later as Director of the [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]]. In December 1960, he leaked information to *New York Times* reporter [[John W. Finney]] about [[Israel]]'s secret nuclear reactor at [[Dimona]], expressing anger that Israel and [[France]] had "lied to us" about its purpose.[^5]
+
+McCone's leak was his parting shot as AEC commissioner, as he announced his resignation shortly after. He was committed to nuclear nonproliferation and was aware that the [[Dwight D. Eisenhower|Eisenhower]] administration was nearing its end, making it an opportune time to act. He was also frustrated by the constant Israeli lying about Dimona.[^5]
+
+McCone was regularly briefed on the Israeli nuclear program after replacing [[Lewis L. Strauss]] as AEC commissioner in July 1958. As AEC chairman, he was a member of the U.S. Intelligence Advisory Committee, the top-level group at the time. He was labeled by some as anti-Semitic due to his actions, but there was no known basis for such allegations; he was simply dead set against any nuclear proliferation and offended by the Israeli and French deception.[^5]
+
 ### Footnotes
 
 [^1]: Central Intelligence Agency, "John A. McCone," Directors of Central Intelligence. https://www.cia.gov/legacy/headquarters/directors-of-central-intelligence/; Gerard Colby and Charlotte Dennett, *Thy Will Be Done: The Conquest of the Amazon*. HarperCollins, 1995. Ch. 27.
 [^2]: Colby and Dennett, Ch. 27.
 [^3]: Colby and Dennett, Ch. 27; Ch. 28.
 [^4]: Colby and Dennett, Ch. 41.
+[^5]: Hersh, Seymour M. *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy*. Random House, 1991. Chapter 6, 7.