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---
created: 2025-08-05
updated: 2026-10-07
title: Korean War
aliases:
- Korean Conflict
tags:
- Event
- Conflict
- Cold War
- ColdWar
- Brainwashing
- BiologicalWarfare
- CIA
- POW
- Bluebird
- Unit731
category: "Major Conflict"
summary: "1950-1953 conflict between North and South Korea that involved U.S. intelligence programs and connections to later covert operations in Southeast Asia."
summary: "The 1950 to 1953 war in Korea, setting for the brainwashing controversy, bacteriological warfare charges, the 1950 CIA interrogation teams in Japan, and CIA covert operations in Korea and Burma."
start: 1950
end: 1953
location: "Korean Peninsula"
relations:
- type: participant_in
with: "[[Douglas MacArthur]]"
reverse: true
role: "commander of the United Nations Command, recalled April 11, 1951"
start: 1950
end: 1951-04-11
fn: 1
- type: participant_in
with: "[[Charles Willoughby]]"
reverse: true
role: "G-2 of the Far East Command, relieved April 11, 1951"
start: 1950
end: 1951-04-11
fn: 1
- type: participant_in
with: "[[Edward Hunter]]"
reverse: true
role: "originated the term brainwashing; traveled to Korea"
start: 1950-09-24
fn: 2
- type: participant_in
with: "[[Harold Wolff]]"
reverse: true
role: "testified on Communist interrogation and indoctrination"
start: 1956-06
fn: 6
- type: participant_in
with: "[[Lawrence Hinkle]]"
reverse: true
role: "testified on Communist interrogation and indoctrination"
start: 1956-06
fn: 6
- type: participant_in
with: "[[Claude Batchelor]]"
reverse: true
role: "according to testimony, led the 21 Americans and one Briton who did not return in Big Switch"
start: 1953-08-05
fn: 6
- type: participant_in
with: "[[Hans Tofte]]"
reverse: true
role: "described in 1966 press coverage as a leader of CIA operations in Korea and Japan during the war"
start: 1950
fn: 18
- type: participant_in
with: "[[Morse Allen]]"
reverse: true
role: "Office of Security head of BLUEBIRD from the end of 1950, according to Marks"
start: 1950
fn: 4
---
The Korean War was a conflict that began in 1950, involving North Korea (supported by China and the Soviet Union) and South Korea (supported by the United Nations, primarily the United States). During this period, the [[United States]] was preoccupied with the war, as well as economic and social conditions in Europe, and the political battle with the [[Soviet Union]].[^1]
The Korean War was fought from June 25, 1950, until an armistice was signed on July 27, 1953, between [[North Korea]], supported by [[China]] and the [[Soviet Union]], and South Korea, defended by [[United Nations]] forces under an American commander. The conflict is the setting for the first American brainwashing controversy, the bacteriological warfare charges of 1952, the 1950 interrogation teams of the [[Central Intelligence Agency]] project BLUEBIRD, and the covert operations of the [[Office of Policy Coordination]] and [[Office of Special Operations]].[^1]
[[Israel]] publicly supported the American position in the Korean War. [[David Ben-Gurion]] even secretly offered to send Israeli troops to fight alongside the [[United Nations]] forces in South Korea, but President [[Harry S. Truman]] declined the offer, reportedly fearing it would lead to a security arrangement with [[Israel]]. Israel's stance on the Korean War, however, angered [[Moscow]] and led to a rupture in diplomatic relations between the two nations.[^1]
### Captivity and the word brainwashing
The word "brainwashing" entered print through [[Edward Hunter]], whose article in the [[Miami News]] on September 24, 1950, carried the headline "'Brain-Washing' Tactics Force Chinese into Ranks of Communist Party."[^2] Hunter told the [[House Committee on Un-American Activities]] in a consultation on March 13, 1958, that during the Second World War he went into the [[Office of Strategic Services]] "as a propaganda specialist," serving in the China-Burma-India theater, and that after the war he returned to Asia as roving correspondent for the Cox newspapers. He said the Korean War "began after my discovery of brainwashing," that he wrote his book *Brain-Washing in Red China* before going to Korea, and that in Korea he "heard of American captured personnel broadcasting denunciations of their own country and confessing to a nonexistent germ warfare in a manner and in a language that fit exactly into the brainwashing pattern that I had found in China and the rest of Asia."[^3]
[[John D. Marks]] wrote in 1979 that Hunter was "a CIA propaganda operator who worked under cover as a journalist." Marks interviewed Hunter shortly before Hunter's death in June 1978.[^4]
The [[Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations]] of the [[United States Senate]] Committee on Government Operations took up the subject in June 1956, with Hunter among the witnesses.[^5] Its opening statement put the Korean War figures on the record: "some 7,190 Americans were captured by the Communists," approximately one-third of whom "died while in Communist hands," and of the 4,428 who "survived and were repatriated, over 95 percent were subjected to a well-planned and well-organized campaign to destroy their belief in God, their loyalty to the [[United States]] and their faith in the democratic way of life."[^6]
Testifying the same month, [[Harold Wolff]], professor of medicine at [[Cornell University Medical College]], said of the term that it "originated by Mr. Ed Hunter who interviewed Chinese refugees in [[Hong Kong]], has caught the public fancy and has gained wide acceptance." He added that "many of the public speculations about brainwashing are not supported by the available evidence," but that "the Communists do make an orderly attempt to obtain information from their prisoners." Wolff appeared with [[Lawrence Hinkle]], assistant professor of medicine at Cornell.[^6]
### Big Switch and the prisoners who did not return
The subcommittee heard Captain [[Bert Cumby]] of the [[United States Army]], who had fourteen years of service and described the two exchanges of 1953 as "two intelligence operations in the Far East." The first, [[Operation Little Switch|Little Switch]], exchanged sick and wounded prisoners and was "conceived in the spring of 1953." The second, [[Operation Big Switch|Big Switch]], was the general exchange that followed the armistice; Cumby said it began "on the fifth of August 1953." Cumby testified that he was chief of an interrogation team on Big Switch.[^6]
Cumby named [[Claude Batchelor]] as the leader the Chinese appointed for "the 21 Americans and 1 British" who did not return, and said Batchelor "brought the group into the neutral zone in North Korea." According to Cumby, Batchelor told him that "if the Soviet Union had wanted to stop the war they could have stopped it, but he said why stop it? There is a purpose behind it."[^6]
### The Defense Advisory Committee, 1955
The Defense Advisory Committee on Prisoners of War recommendation of July 7, 1955, recorded that "In the Korean War, no planned penetration of prisoners of war camps was achieved by the U.S. Armed Forces, and organized evasion-escape operations failed to materialize," that the CIA "possesses limited capability for supporting the organized recovery of prisoners," and that "There is question as to whether present Central Intelligence Agency responsibilities are compatible with its capabilities."[^7]
On August 18, 1955, Secretary of Defense [[Charles E. Wilson]] wrote to [[Allen Dulles]] that "During the war in Korea no planned penetration of prisoner of war camps was achieved by the United States Armed Forces and organized evasion-escape operations failed to materialize." The letter said that the [[Defense Advisory Committee on Prisoners of War]] had suggested that further action was required, and that "The Central Intelligence Agency has specific responsibilities for certain operations in support of the recovery of prisoners of war, while others are the responsibility of the Military Departments." It requested an early conference.[^7]
An undated [[Department of Defense|Defense Department]] action memorandum in the CIA's file, which refers to Wilson's letter to the Director of Central Intelligence as dated 15 August 1955, records the resulting meetings among the Defense office, the [[Joint Chiefs of Staff]], and the CIA on "plans for the penetration of prisoner of war camps" and on the recovery of prisoners. The memorandum also records a negotiating position for [[Geneva]] on the accounting of prisoners captured by the [[United Nations Command]].[^7]
### BLUEBIRD and the 1950 interrogation teams
Marks wrote that CIA Director [[Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter]] approved BLUEBIRD on April 20, 1950, and that "three months after" that approval the first team traveled to Japan "to try out behavioral techniques on human subjects, probably suspected double agents." According to Marks, the three men arrived in [[Tokyo]] in July 1950, about a month after the start of the war; the [[Office of Security]] ordered them to conceal their purpose from the American military authorities in Japan, using the cover that they were performing "intensive polygraph" work. Marks wrote that they tried the depressant sodium amytal with the stimulant benzedrine on each of four subjects, the last two of whom also received picrotoxin, and tried to induce amnesia. He wrote that "the CIA documents available on the trip give only the sketchiest outline of what happened," and that around October 1950 the BLUEBIRD team "used 'advanced' techniques on 25 subjects, apparently North Korean prisoners of war." By the end of 1950, Marks wrote, [[Morse Allen]] of the Office of Security had become head of the program.[^4]
A CIA memorandum of the Inspection and Security Staff, dated June 1950 on the scan, states that the staff was prepared to send a BLUEBIRD team between July 2 and August 1, 1950, that the basic team had just been completed by the addition of a doctor-psychiatrist, and that the circulation of papers on the project should be kept to an eyes-only basis.[^8] A BLUEBIRD team memorandum to the Chief of the Inspection and Security Staff, dated November 27 on the scan, reports that the technique of drug application under cover of the polygraph "was very successful," names oral and intravenous sodium amytal as the drugs of choice, with Coramine or picrotoxin as stimulants, and recommends that the combination be continued.[^9] A memorandum of March 12, 1951, supplementing a report of February 23, 1951, lists the technical problems of the "B Team in the field" and states that the polygraph instrument "was used only as a cover."[^10] None of the three scans names the country in which the team worked.
The CIA memorandum on a special conference held at headquarters on August 8, 1951, records that its writer attended "under the misunderstanding that the conference was to have been a report on certain polygraph operations in Korea," and that the Agency could not "commit themselves policy wise." The conference concerned a project in Japan and Korea in which the Army had used a polygraph. The memorandum states that the psychiatrists and psychologists on the Korean project did not agree with the polygraph operator on the polygraph's effectiveness.[^11]
The 1977 Senate hearings on MKULTRA recorded the Select Committee's summary that BLUEBIRD was approved by the Director in 1950, and that "As a result of interrogations conducted overseas during the project, another goal was added, the evaluation of offensive uses of unconventional interrogation techniques, including hypnosis and drugs." The summary described overseas ARTICHOKE interrogations using sodium pentothal and hypnosis after physical and psychiatric examinations of the subjects. It stated of the Navy's [[Project CHATTER]], which began in the fall of 1947, that it "expanded substantially during the Korean War," with overseas experiments conducted as part of the project.[^12] In the same hearing, Senator [[Richard Schweiker]] told [[John Gittinger]] of the CIA that "During the Korean war there was a lot of serious discussion about brainwashing techniques being used by the North Koreans." Gittinger answered that "by 1962 and 1963, the general idea that we were able to come up with is that brainwashing was largely a process of isolating a human being, keeping him out of contact, putting him under long stress in relationship to interviewing and interrogation."[^12]
In August 1977 an Agency review of the Office of Security archives found eighteen cartons of material on [[Project Bluebird and Project Artichoke|Project ARTICHOKE]] that had not been produced to the [[Rockefeller Commission]] or to the congressional investigations of 1975 and 1976. The cartons held about fourteen linear feet of ARTICHOKE and BLUEBIRD records. The review reported that it found no information that would "contradict or change the scope" of what had been furnished to the investigating bodies. It dated the project's start to early 1950 and its change of name from BLUEBIRD to ARTICHOKE to August 1951.[^13]
[[Frank Olson]], a civilian biochemist employed by the Army at [[Fort Detrick]] "in a cooperative effort with the CIA," was dosed with [[LSD]] on November 19, 1953, at a meeting of Fort Detrick and CIA personnel, according to a White House memorandum of July 11, 1975, addressed to [[Donald Rumsfeld]]. The memorandum places the drug program within "a much larger CIA program to study possible means for controlling human behavior," and records that "Great concern over Soviet and North Korean techniques in 'brainwashing' continued to be manifested into the early 1950's."[^14]
### Intelligence command in Korea
The CIA's chronology of its Korean operations records that in early July 1950 Office of Special Operations personnel "assume emergency role as military intelligence officers," and that on July 7, 1950, the United Nations created the United Nations Command under a United States commander. In September 1950, OSO dropped intelligence teams along the northern border of North Korea, and the Office of Policy Coordination opened a station at [[Tongnae]]. OPC placed stay-behind agents above the 38th parallel on October 28, 1950, began an escape and evasion program in November, and opened a guerrilla training camp in December. On April 10, 1951, a plan to combine OSO and OPC units in Korea into one CIA mission began; the units merged on July 2, 1951, into the Agency's first combined Clandestine Services field mission, the Joint Advisory Commission, Korea (JACK). Later entries record the establishment by the United States military of Covert, Clandestine and Related Activities in Korea (CCRAK), the transfer of JACK headquarters to [[Seoul]] with bases in Pusan, Inchon and Seoul, and the closing of the Tongnae base.[^1]
The same chronology records a G-2 estimate by [[Charles Willoughby]], [[Douglas MacArthur]]'s chief of intelligence, on October 14, 1950, that the Chinese Communists were "bluffing in their threats to enter the war." On April 11, 1951, MacArthur was recalled, and Willoughby was relieved as G-2 of the Far East Command.[^1] In the 1951 Senate hearings on the Far East, [[George C. Marshall]] recalled "a consideration with General Smith of the CIA referring to some difficulty in relation to General Willoughby, General MacArthur's G-2."[^15]
On April 25, 1951, [[Hans Tofte]] wrote to [[Walter Bedell Smith]], then Director of Central Intelligence. Tofte said that a colleague he had met in [[San Francisco]] was "fed up w[ith] the Far East in general," an attitude that "coincides with that of many other old china-hands," and questioned that colleague's eligibility for "the number one" job in the area. The colleague's name is redacted.[^16] [[Joseph C. Goulden]], the author of *Korea: The Untold Story of the War*, described Tofte in a review of [[Ernest Volkmann]]'s *Warriors of the Night* as "the CIA guerrilla commander."[^17] In August 1966, press coverage of the CIA's suspension of Tofte, a native of [[Denmark]], with pay, after classified documents were found in his [[Georgetown]] home, described him as having been "a leader in CIA operations in Korea and Japan during the" war. [[Radio TV Reports]] carried the story, in which Tofte said that about $19,000 in jewelry had disappeared from the house after the agency removed the documents.[^18]
### Operation Paper and the Kuomintang in Burma
[[Peter Dale Scott]] wrote in 2010 that in November 1950, with Chinese troops entering Korea, President [[Harry S. Truman]] approved a program code-named Operation Paper to prepare remnant [[Kuomintang]] forces in [[Burma]], the so-called 93rd Division under General [[Li Mi]], for a countervailing invasion of Yunnan. Scott wrote that the decision was made by a small group inside the Office of Policy Coordination, notably [[Desmond FitzGerald]] and [[Richard Stilwell]], with former OSS chief [[William J. Donovan]]; that [[Alfred Cox]], the OPC station chief in Hong Kong, directed the supply operation through the CIA proprietaries [[Sea Supply Inc.]] and [[Civil Air Transport]]; and that the OPC records that initiated Operation Paper "are still closed to public view." Scott also wrote that the troops were already involved in drug trafficking.[^19]
A State Department memorandum of November 18, 1952, from Assistant Secretary [[John M. Allison]] to Under Secretary [[David K. E. Bruce]], recorded that the Kuomintang troops had been in the Burmese province of Kengtung since early 1949, that a portion "was engaged in a highly unsuccessful operation into Yunnan in 1951," and that "Vishinsky accused the United States of aiding the KMT troops in Burma" in the United Nations General Assembly in Paris in 1951. It noted talk in the Burmese press "concerning alleged support of the KMT activities by U.S. citizens, unofficial and otherwise."[^20] A second memorandum, of January 9, 1953, stated that the troops "were presumably regarded at one time as of potential value either as the nucleus of a guerrilla force which could move into and operate in China," and that "The initial reactions of the CIA and of the Ambassadors at Rangoon and Bangkok and the Chargé at Taipei have been obtained," all concurring in the desirability of helping bring about the troops' departure from Burma to Formosa.[^21]
### Bacteriological warfare charges, 1952
The Central Intelligence Agency's Office of National Estimates issued terms of reference on March 21, 1952, for a special estimate titled "Significance of the Communist Psychological Warfare Campaign Alleging Use of Biological Warfare by the US in Korea."[^22] On January 18, 1952, a B-26 bomber was shot down over An-Ju in Korea. By May 5, 1952, statements from its navigator, Lieutenant K. L. Enoch, and its pilot, Lieutenant John Quinn, admitting participation in bacteriological warfare had been "issued to the world through Peking," according to the [[International Scientific Commission]], which was formed to investigate the charges after [[Kuo Mo-jo]], president of the Chinese People's Committee for World Peace, appealed to the [[World Peace Council]].[^23]
The Commission's members were [[Andrea Andreen]] of [[Sweden]], [[Jean Malterre]] of [[France]], [[Joseph Needham]] of the [[United Kingdom]], [[Oliviero Olivo]] of [[Italy]], [[Samuel B. Pessoa]] of [[Brazil]], and [[Nicolai Zhukov-Verezhnikov]] of the Soviet Union. They signed the conclusion at [[Beijing|Peking]] on August 31, 1952. The conclusion stated that "The peoples of Korea and China have indeed been the objective of bacteriological weapons. These have been employed by units of the U.S.A. armed forces," and that some of the methods "seem to be developments of those applied by the Japanese army during the [[World War II|second world war]]." The Commission wrote that it reached these conclusions "reluctantly." The same report states that the Commission "was unable to reach a firm conclusion" on an encephalitis epidemic at [[Shenyang]] and [[Anshan]].[^23]
In 1998 the Japanese newspaper [[Sankei Shimbun]] published Soviet documents copied by hand in the [[Presidential Archive of the Russian Federation]]. The editors of the [[Cold War International History Project]] Bulletin wrote that the documents "have not been authenticated by access to the archival originals (or even photocopies thereof)," and that both commentators believed them genuine on textual analysis.[^24] [[Kathryn Weathersby]] read the documents as showing that the Presidium of the [[Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union]] ordered the Soviet delegation at the United Nations not "to show interest in discussing this question or even more in 'fanning the flames' of this question," and that "the entire leadership" decided to cease the campaign, "apparently because of the risk of embarrassment to the Soviet Union should the claims be revealed as fabrications." Weathersby wrote that "In short, the sources are credible."[^24] [[Milton Leitenberg]] published a companion analysis in the same Bulletin.[^24]
The [[National Archives]] holds a 1952 film, *Bacteriological Warfare in Korea*, in records of the [[National Security Council]] and the CIA. It is catalogued as  accusing the U.S. of having engaged in bacteriological warfare against Korea and China in 1952."[^25]
### Fort Detrick, Unit 731 and the immunity arrangement
A report to the Secretary of War by [[George W. Merck]], Special Consultant on Biological Warfare, titled "Origins and Development of a Biological Warfare Program," dates the Army's planning to July 1941, when the Surgeon General of the Army proposed a committee on the subject.[^26]
"The Report of 'G,'" a translation prepared for the [[Chemical Corps]] Research and Development Command at Fort Detrick, set out data on glanders experiments performed on human subjects by [[Unit 731]] of the Japanese army.[^27]
The National Archives' 2006 volume *Researching Japanese War Crimes Records*, prepared for the Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records [[Interagency Working Group]], records that U.S. intelligence authorities located Unit 731's commander, Lieutenant General [[Shiro Ishii]], in January 1946 and interrogated him and other Unit 731 members many times over the next year. It states that Lieutenant Colonel [[Murray Sanders]] completed the first postwar study on November 1, 1945, with no mention of human experimentation, and that Lieutenant Colonel [[Arvo Thompson]] of Fort Detrick, ordered to follow up at the end of December 1945, interviewed Ishii from January to March 1946. In the volume's account, Ishii hinted during the interviews that he would provide more information if granted immunity from war crimes prosecution; the State Department sought to limit the commitment, but "for the most part" U.S. military and intelligence officials "were receptive to a deal with Ishii in which the general would avoid prosecution in return for information about his work." After the Soviet Union began gathering evidence in early 1947, the volume records, the [[State-War-Navy Coordinating Committee]], the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the War Department Civil Affairs Division, the State Department and Douglas MacArthur's headquarters "all attempted, to one degree or another, to shield Ishii and his colleagues from prosecution," and SWNCC allowed Soviet interrogation of Japanese specialists only with an American official present.[^28]
In the autumn of 1947 two Fort Detrick scientists, [[Edwin Hill]] and [[Joseph Victor]], interviewed Ishii and other Japanese scientists "with the full support of" Willoughby, the same volume records. Their "Summary Report of B.W. Investigations" of December 12, 1947, stated that "no question of immunity guarantee from war crimes prosecution was ever raised during these interviews," while voicing concern that the Japanese were withholding information. The report stated that the evidence "represents data which have been obtained by Japanese scientists at the expenditure of many millions of dollars and years of work," that "Such information could not be obtained in our own laboratories because of scruples attached to human experimentation," that the data "were secured with a total outlay of 250,000 [yen] to date, a mere pittance by comparison with the actual cost of the studies," and that "It is hoped that individuals who voluntarily contributed this information will be spared embarrassment because of it and that every effort will be taken to prevent this information from falling into other hands."[^28] The volume's authors wrote that Ishii "escaped postwar prosecution in exchange, apparently, for supplying the U.S. government with details of his gruesome human experiments," and that Professor [[Sheldon H. Harris]] believed the quid pro quo was approved by Willoughby and MacArthur in Tokyo and by their superiors in Washington. They wrote that several key documents outlining the U.S. acquisition of Unit 731 research data "have not yet been located."[^28]
The Interagency Working Group's 2007 final report to Congress stated that "in return for information on biological warfare, the United States was lenient with important Japanese war criminals," and recorded that the [[Simon Wiesenthal Center]] lobbied the Attorney General and the Pentagon for the release of documents on "amnesties granted to supervisors of Japan's biological and chemical warfare program in exchange for the data obtained from experiments conducted on humans in the infamous Unit 731." The report also records Harris's allegation, in a letter placed in the Senate record, that documentation at Dugway Proving Ground and Fort Detrick had been moved or destroyed; the Army told the Working Group that its searches "uncovered no evidence in support of the charge."[^29]
### Israel and the war
According to [[Seymour Hersh]], the United States was "preoccupied with the war, as well as economic and social conditions in Europe, and the political battle with the Soviet Union," and [[Israel]] publicly supported the American position in the Korean War. [[David Ben-Gurion]] secretly offered to send Israeli troops to fight alongside United Nations forces in South Korea, Hersh wrote, but Truman declined the offer, reportedly fearing it would lead to a security arrangement with Israel. Hersh also wrote that Israel's stance on the war angered [[Moscow]] and led to a rupture in diplomatic relations between the two nations.[^30]
### Footnotes
[^1]: Hersh, Seymour M. *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy*. Random House, 1991. Chapter 2.
[^1]: CIA, "CIA in Korea 1946-1965, Volume III," July 1973, CIA Reading Room document C06146213, approved for release January 31, 2022 (chronology entries for June 25, 1950, July 1950, September 1950, October 14 and 28, 1950, November and December 1950, April 10 and 11, 1951, and July 2, 1951; later entries on JACK and CCRAK). https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-06146213
[^2]: Edward Hunter, "'Brain Washing' Tactics Force Chinese into Ranks of Communist Party," *Miami News*, September 24, 1950, p. 2A. https://archive.org/details/hunter-edward-brain-washing-tactics-force-chinese-into-ranks-of-communist-party-
[^3]: U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Un-American Activities, *Communist Psychological Warfare (Brainwashing): Consultation with Edward Hunter, Author and Foreign Correspondent*, 85th Congress, 2nd session, March 13, 1958 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1958), pp. 5-6 and 14-15. https://archive.org/details/communistpsychol1958unit
[^4]: John D. Marks, *The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control* (Times Books, 1979), chapter 1 ("Cold War on the Mind," pp. 22-24) and chapter 8 (Hunter) with the chapter notes. Sole source for the passages so cited, including the Tokyo location, the October 1950 subjects, and the identification of the subjects as North Korean prisoners.
[^5]: U.S. Senate, *Communist Interrogation, Indoctrination and Exploitation of American Military and Civilian Prisoners*, hearings before the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Committee on Government Operations, 84th Congress, 2nd session, June 19, 20, 26, and 27, 1956 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1956), contents list (testimony of Edward Hunter, pp. 66 and 77).
[^6]: Hearings cited in note 5, opening statement and testimony of Captain Bert Cumby, Dr. Harold G. Wolff and Dr. Lawrence E. Hinkle, Jr. Cumby's account is sole source for the Batchelor passages. https://archive.org/details/communist_interrogation_indoctrination_and_exploitation_of_the_american_military
[^7]: Defense Advisory Committee on Prisoners of War, "Committee Recommendations for Action," July 7, 1955; Charles E. Wilson, Secretary of Defense, to Allen Dulles, Director of Central Intelligence, letter dated August 18, 1955; and an undated Defense Department action memorandum on the recommendations of the Committee, CIA CREST document CIA-RDP85B00236R000400070013-0. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp85b00236r000400070013-0
[^8]: CIA, Inspection and Security Staff memorandum, "Priority Requirement for Bluebird Team," June 1950, CIA CREST document 00148262. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-00148262
[^9]: CIA, Bluebird Team to Chief, Inspection and Security Staff, "Conclusions Concerning the Medical Phase of the Operations," November 27 (1950 per the scan), CIA CREST document 00149590. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-00149590
[^10]: CIA, "Bluebird Activity, Technical Aspects," March 12, 1951, CIA CREST document 00149615. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-00149615
[^11]: CIA, memorandum on the "Special Conference 8 August 1951," CIA CREST document 00144831. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-00144831
[^12]: U.S. Senate, Select Committee on Intelligence and Subcommittee on Health and Scientific Research of the Committee on Human Resources, *Project MKULTRA, the CIA's Program of Research in Behavioral Modification*, joint hearing, 95th Congress, 1st session, August 3, 1977 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1977), the Select Committee's summary of the programs investigated (Project CHATTER; Project BLUEBIRD/ARTICHOKE) and the question and answer between Senator Schweiker and Dr. Gittinger. https://archive.org/details/jointhearing_project-mkultra_1977
[^13]: CIA, "Description of Newly Discovered Project ARTICHOKE/BLUEBIRD Materials," 1977, CIA CREST document CIA-RDP81-00261R000300050005-3. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp81-00261r000300050005-3
[^14]: White House memorandum to Donald Rumsfeld, July 11, 1975, concerning the death of Frank Olson (olson_documents.pdf). https://archive.org/details/FrankOlson-CIA-LSD
[^15]: U.S. Senate, *Military Situation in the Far East*, hearings before the United States Senate Committee on Armed Services, 1951, testimony of George C. Marshall. https://archive.org/details/militarysituatio01unit
[^16]: Hans V. Tofte to Lieutenant General Walter Bedell Smith, letter dated April 25, 1951, CIA CREST document CIA-RDP80R01731R003100200043-3. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp80r01731r003100200043-3
[^17]: Book review of Ernest Volkmann, *Warriors of the Night* (Morrow), sanitized copy, CIA CREST document CIA-RDP90-00965R000302170017-4. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp90-00965r000302170017-4
[^18]: Press clipping dated August 3, 1966, "CIA Official Under Probe Reports $19,000 Theft," CIA CREST document CIA-RDP75-00001R000100230005-7; Radio TV Reports, Inc., broadcast transcripts of August 3, 1966 ([[WTOP-TV]], "Tofte Interviewed," and [[WRC Radio]], "Quote Hans Tofte"), CIA CREST documents CIA-RDP75-00001R000400390060-6 and CIA-RDP75-00001R000400390066-0. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp75-00001r000100230005-7
[^19]: Peter Dale Scott, "Operation Paper: The United States and Drugs in Thailand and Burma," *The Asia-Pacific Journal* 8, issue 44, no. 2 (November 1, 2010), chapter 3 of *American War Machine*. Scott's account is sole source for the passages so cited. https://archive.org/details/operation-paper-the-united-states-and-drugs-in-thailand-and-burma
[^20]: Memorandum by the Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs (Allison) to the Under Secretary of State (Bruce), "KMT Troops in Burma Problem," November 18, 1952, *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952-1954, East Asia and the Pacific, Volume XII, Part 2*, document 28. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1952-54v12p2/d28
[^21]: Memorandum by Allison to Bruce, "KMT Troops in Burma," January 9, 1953, *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952-1954, East Asia and the Pacific, Volume XII, Part 2*, document 30. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1952-54v12p2/d30
[^22]: CIA, Office of National Estimates, "Terms of Reference; SIE-4: Significance of the Communist Psychological Warfare Campaign Alleging Use of Biological Warfare by the US in Korea," March 21, 1952, CIA CREST document CIA-RDP79S01011A000600050031-5. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp79s01011a000600050031-5
[^23]: Report of the International Scientific Commission for the Investigation of the Facts Concerning Bacterial Warfare in Korea and China, Peking, August 31, 1952, conclusion and appendices. https://archive.org/details/isc-full-report-pub-copy
[^24]: Kathryn Weathersby, "Deceiving the Deceivers: Moscow, Beijing, Pyongyang, and the Allegations of Bacteriological Weapons Use in Korea," and Milton Leitenberg, "New Russian Evidence on the Korean War Biological Warfare Allegations: Background and Analysis," with the editors' note, Cold War International History Project Bulletin, no. 11 (Winter 1998). https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/cwihp-bulletin-11
[^25]: National Archives catalogue entry for *Bacteriological Warfare in Korea* (1952), NARA ARC 646593, as described in the archive.org copy. https://archive.org/details/gov.archives.arc.646593
[^26]: George W. Merck, Special Consultant on Biological Warfare, "Origins and Development of a Biological Warfare Program," report to the Secretary of War, National Archives copy. https://archive.org/details/activities-of-the-united-states-in-the-field-of-biological-warfare
[^27]: "The Report of 'G'," translation of Unit 731 glanders experiments on human subjects, prepared for the Chemical Corps Research and Development Command, Fort Detrick, as described in the archive.org catalogue. https://archive.org/details/fort_detrick-report_of_g
[^28]: Edward Drea, Greg Bradsher, Robert Hanyok, James Lide, Michael Petersen and Daqing Yang, *Researching Japanese War Crimes Records: Introductory Essays* (Washington: National Archives and Records Administration for the Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group, 2006), pp. 96-99 and notes 63-67 (citing NA RG 165, entry 468, "SANACC 351/3," and "Summary Report of B.W. Investigations," December 12, 1947, NA RG 175). The Hill and Victor figure is printed in the volume with an illegible currency symbol, read here as yen. https://www.archives.gov/files/iwg/japanese-war-crimes/introductory-essays.pdf
[^29]: Interagency Working Group, *Final Report to Congress*, Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act and Japanese Imperial Government Disclosure Act, April 2007, chapters on Japanese war crimes records and the Army's records. https://www.archives.gov/files/iwg/reports/final-report-2007.pdf
[^30]: Seymour M. Hersh, *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy* (Random House, 1991), chapter 2. Sole source for the passages so cited.

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@ -4,28 +4,263 @@ aliases:
- Osirak bombing
- Operation Opera
- Operation Babylon
- Osirak
- Osiraq
- Osirak raid
- Raid on Osirak
- Israeli strike on Osirak
- Tammuz reactor
created: 2026-05-17
updated: 2026-05-17
updated: 2026-10-07
tags:
- Event
- Military
- Israel
- Iraq
- France
- Iran
- Nuclear
- Mossad
- NuclearProliferation
- KH11
category: "Major Conflict"
summary: "1981 Israeli air strike on the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak near Baghdad, carried out with U.S.-supplied F-16s and condemned internationally."
summary: "The June 7, 1981 Israeli strike on Iraq's French-supplied Osirak reactor drew Security Council Resolution 487 and a U.S. suspension of F-16 deliveries to Israel."
start: 1981-06-07
location: "Osirak, Iraq"
relations:
- type: participant_in
with: "[[Menachem Begin]]"
reverse: true
start: 1981-06-07
role: "ordered and announced the raid"
fn: 19
- type: participant_in
with: "[[Ilan Ramon]]"
reverse: true
start: 1981-06-07
role: "F-16 pilot, last aircraft in the formation"
fn: 20
- type: participant_in
with: "[[Amos Yadlin]]"
reverse: true
start: 1981-06-07
role: "F-16 pilot in the raid"
fn: 21
- type: participant_in
with: "[[Yiftach Spektor]]"
reverse: true
start: 1981-06-07
role: "F-16 pilot in the raid"
fn: 20
- type: participant_in
with: "[[Aviem Sella]]"
reverse: true
start: 1981-06-07
role: "air force colonel involved in the raid"
fn: 22
- type: participant_in
with: "[[Raphael Eitan]]"
reverse: true
start: 1981-06-07
role: "chief of staff, wrote the order for the strike"
fn: 20
- type: participant_in
with: "[[David Ivry]]"
reverse: true
start: 1981-06-07
role: "commander of the air force, addressee of the order"
fn: 20
---
Osirak bombing refers to the Israeli air strike on the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak, twelve miles southeast of Baghdad, on June 7, 1981. The raid was carried out by Israeli F-16s, which had been authorized for purchase by [[Israel]] in 1975 for "defensive purposes only."[^1]
The Osirak bombing (Operation Opera) was the Israeli air strike of June 7, 1981 on the Osirak research reactor at the [[Tuwaitha]] nuclear research center near [[Baghdad]], [[Iraq]], a reactor supplied by [[France]]. A [[State Department]] letter to the Speaker of the [[United States Congress|House of Representatives]] states that the [[Israeli Air Force]] units that took part were reportedly equipped with defense articles furnished by the [[United States]] under the Foreign Military Sales program, including [[F-15 Eagle|F-15]] and [[F-16 Fighting Falcon|F-16]] aircraft.[^1] [[Seymour Hersh]] wrote that [[Israel]] had been authorized in 1975 to begin buying seventy-five F-16s "for defensive purposes only," and placed the reactor "twelve miles southeast of Baghdad."[^2]
Upon learning of the bombing, U.S. President [[Ronald Reagan]] privately expressed delight, remarking, "Well. Boys will be boys." Despite this, the [[State Department]] formally condemned the bombing, and some of Reagan's high command, including [[Caspar Weinberger]] and [[George H.W. Bush]], proposed sanctions against Israel. However, the suspension of F-16 deliveries was lifted two months later.[^1]
### The French reactor
Within Israel, the bombing was controversial. [[Yitzhak Hofi]], the director of [[Mossad]], and Major General [[Yehoshua Saguy]], chief of military intelligence, both opposed the attack, primarily because there was no evidence that [[Iraq]] was yet capable of building a bomb. [[Yigael Yadin]], the deputy prime minister, also dissented. Saguy argued that the adverse reaction in [[Washington, D.C.]] would be a more serious national security threat to Israel than the Iraqi reactor. Prime Minister [[Menachem Begin]], however, was buoyed by the success and unilaterally announced the Israeli coup, defending the operation by stating that another Holocaust would have occurred if the reactor had not been destroyed.[^1]
In 1974 Iraq opened contacts with France on a nuclear cooperation agreement. A State Department cable of June 11, 1981 transmits an Israeli Foreign Ministry briefing paper issued on June 9, which states that Iraq first asked for a 500 megawatt gas-graphite reactor, a type developed in France in the 1950s, primarily for producing hundreds of kilograms of plutonium for military use. France declined, on the ground that production of that reactor type had been discontinued years earlier. Iraq then bought an Osiris-type research reactor, which the Iraqis named Osirak, and a one megawatt training reactor of the ISIS type. Both were in the final stages of completion at Tuwaitha.[^3]
Begin also made a controversial statement at a British diplomatic reception, claiming that the Israeli planes had destroyed a secret underground facility at Osirak intended for the assembly of Iraqi nuclear bombs. Israeli officials knew this description was not of a facility in Iraq, but rather of a secret underground facility in Israel at [[Dimona]]. They attempted to downplay his remarks by stating he had misspoken and that the facility was only four meters deep.[^1]
The same paper states that Iraq insisted France supply fuel enriched to 93 percent, and that France undertook to provide about 82 kilograms of weapon-grade uranium for operating the reactors, which it says came from France's military arsenal, the force de frappe.[^3] The Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman, identified in the cable only as Lavi, said on June 11 that for five years Israel had tried to persuade France not to provide Iraq with a nuclear weapons capability.[^4]
Following the bombing, [[Ariel Sharon]] concluded that the [[United States]] was not a reliable strategic ally. He then turned to a clandestine Israeli intelligence agency under his defense ministry, which began intercepting intelligence on the [[Middle East]] and [[Soviet Union]] from sensitive American agencies.[^1]
A [[Central Intelligence Agency]] intelligence assessment of June 1983 lists the French consortium CERBAG as general contractor for the 17 Tammuz project. It states that CERBAG was controlled by [[Technicatome]], the Societe Generale pour les Techniques Nouvelles, Comsip Entreprise, the [[Constructions Navales et Industrielles de la Mediterranee|Constructions Navales et Industrielles de la Mediterranee]] (CNIM) and Bouygues Offshore. The same assessment designates the Osirak reactor as Tammuz-1 and the 800-kilowatt ISIS reactor as Tammuz-2 and states that each reactor was to be fueled with about 12 kilograms of 93-percent-enriched uranium.[^5] Hersh wrote, citing French and Israeli officials he interviewed, that many of the French companies that had built [[Dimona]] in the early 1960s were working under contract for Iraq, with the approval of the French [[Commissariat a l'energie atomique|Atomic Energy Commission]], at the time of the Osirak bombing.[^6]
### Footnotes
### Sabotage at Seyne-sur-Mer, 1979
[^1]: Hersh, Seymour M. *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy*. Random House, 1991. Chapter 1.
In mid-1979 France was reported not to have abandoned its commitment to supply Iraq with two experimental reactors "to replace those mysteriously blown up in April at [[La Seyne-sur-Mer|Seyne-sur-Mer]] shortly before they were to be shipped to Iraq."[^7]
The Israeli nuclear engineer [[Micky Ron]], a former Dimona scientist, described the operation in his Hebrew memoir "The Quiet Sabra." According to his account, in 1979 Israel launched an operation at La Seyne-sur-Mer, west of [[Toulon]], against warehouses of a company that made parts for nuclear ships and reactors, setting off a series of explosions to destroy tank cores bound for Iraq that were to be loaded on a ship days later. The explosions, in his account, heavily damaged but did not completely destroy the tank, and that an hour after the explosion an anonymous caller told French newspapers that an unknown organization of environmental activists had claimed responsibility. It adds that French intelligence suspected the caller was from the [[Mossad]] psychological warfare and disinformation division.[^8] The CIA assessment of 1983 lists CNIM among the companies controlling CERBAG.[^5]
The Paris weekly [[L'Express]] reported on October 18, 1980 that Israeli commandos "had already sabotaged the core of the La Seyne reactor near Toulon."[^9]
### The killing of Yahia El-Meshad, 1980
[[Yahya El Mashad|Yahia El-Meshad]], an Egyptian-born nuclear scientist who worked in the Iraqi program, was found dead in a room at the Hotel Meridien in [[Paris]] in June 1980. [[ABC News]] reported in 2010 that French police found him on June 14, 1980, bludgeoned to death, that the body of a prostitute believed to have witnessed the killing was found later, that no one was arrested, and that press accounts said the French suspected Israeli intelligence.[^10] The journalist [[Ronen Bergman]] wrote in [[Newsweek]] in December 2010 that Mossad agents came across El Mashad by chance in the hotel, had orders to kill him on sight, and, lacking their weapons, broke into his room and beat him to death, and that a prostitute who told police she heard what sounded like an argument outside the room died in a hit-and-run shortly after her preliminary statement.[^11] In [[The Christian Science Monitor]] of October 10, 1991, [[Victor Ostrovsky]], a former Mossad officer who wrote a book about the agency, was reported as claiming that Israel's intelligence service killed Vahia al-Mashad, who headed Iraq's nuclear project, during a June 1980 trip to Paris to complete a deal for Iraq; the article states that an Israeli Embassy official in Washington did not respond to requests for comment and that Mashad's widow went to Baghdad, where the Iraqi government supported her family because he "had died in the line of duty."[^12]
Senator [[Alan Cranston]] told the [[Senate Foreign Relations Committee]] on June 18, 1981 that he had learned from non-[[International Atomic Energy Agency|IAEA]] sources that El-Meshad, "the Egyptian-born scientist who was a principal in the Iraqi program until he was murdered in Paris last year," had unsuccessfully advocated Egyptian production of nuclear weapons through the same course the Iraqis were apparently pursuing. Cranston listed that course as the purchase of a very large high-flux materials test reactor, irradiation of fuel elements and a uranium blanket in the reactor core to produce plutonium, and development of a small-scale reprocessing capability to separate the plutonium from unsafeguarded uranium.[^13]
### The Iranian strike of September 30, 1980
[[Tom Cooper]] and [[Farzad Bishop]] wrote in [[Air Enthusiast]] (March/April 2004) that the Iranian operation against Tuwaitha, which they name Operation Scorch Sword, followed Iraq's invasion of [[Iran]] on September 22, 1980, the start of the [[Iran-Iraq War]]. They wrote that on September 27, 1980 the Israeli military intelligence chief [[Yehoshua Saguy]] publicly expressed surprise that Iran had not yet attempted to bomb the Iraqi reactor under construction, and that the [[Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force|Iranian air force]] planned the strike on an Israeli suggestion that it target the nuclear research laboratories, the reactor control building and the training facilities rather than the reactor itself. According to their account, four [[F-4 Phantom II|F-4E Phantoms]] of the 33rd Tactical Fighter Squadron took off from [[Hamedan]] on September 30, refueled from a [[Boeing 707]] tanker escorted by [[F-14 Tomcat|F-14A Tomcats]], and split into two pairs, one of which struck a power plant south of Baghdad while the other released twelve Mk.82 bombs on the Tuwaitha site in six seconds without drawing fire. They wrote that Western reports regarded the strike as a miss or as causing minor damage, that Iraq and France called it a failure, that repairs were reported finished by the end of November 1980, and that Iraq and France suspected the aircraft had come from Israel. They also wrote that French intelligence services later reported the attack was carried out by "two unidentified Israeli Phantoms," that Israel denied this, and that an Iranian RF-4E reconnaissance flight over Tuwaitha on November 30, 1980 "became so important for the Israelis."[^14]
The CIA National Intelligence Daily of October 1, 1980 states that a redacted source "has confirmed press reports that two Iranian F-4 fighters damaged the Iraqi nuclear research center in Baghdad," and, in a redacted clause, that "only secondary buildings were hit"; it adds that neither country's military capability had been seriously damaged by the other's air attacks.[^15]
On October 18, 1980 L'Express reported that the outer concrete dome of the Osirak building showed only limited visible damage, that the 75 French technicians present "when the bombing took place" had been "enjoined to remain silent," and that the project would fall at least a year behind schedule. The article attributed the attack to two Israeli Phantom aircraft that, it said, took the shortest route and flew over southern [[Syria]]. It quoted an unnamed "top French intelligence source" who called the flyers "magnificent pilots," and it reported that Israeli denials on the day after the raid had called the reports "antisemitic slanders."[^9] The same article reported that technicians from the French Atomic Energy Commission had serious misgivings as the date for the reactor's service approached, because the reactor could rapidly give Iraq a nuclear military capability.[^9]
[[Jack Anderson]], writing with [[Ron McRae]] in a [[Washington Post]] column of June 16, 1981, wrote that he had reported on September 30, 1980 that the [[Defense Intelligence Agency]] had warned President [[Jimmy Carter]] that the Israelis were planning to "take out" the Iraqi nuclear plant, and that an unsuccessful air strike against Osirak occurred on the day his column appeared. Because it came in the first days of the Iraqi-Iranian war, he wrote, it was widely supposed to be an Iranian venture. He wrote that the plane involved was an F-4 Phantom, "a jet the United States has supplied to both Iran and Israel," and that some intelligence people suspected an Israeli action although Israel did not claim the attack.[^16] Anderson quoted a Defense Intelligence Agency estimate from about eight months before the raid: "Prudently, we must assume that Israel is considering some sort of action to forestall Iraqi acquisition of a nuclear capability."[^16]
At the State Department briefing of June 8, 1981, a reporter asked about "the alleged Iranian attack on this same facility" early in the Iran-Iraq War, and whether there had been charges at the time that it might have been an Israeli attack. The spokesman said he was "not confirming or denying or commenting on any possible attack last September." Asked whether the Department's first knowledge that the attack had occurred came from Israel, he answered yes.[^17] A cable reproducing Iraqi statements says that the Iranians had at the time hit the reactor slightly, and reports remarks by [[Saddam Hussein]] that the Iranian attack was useless because the reactor was being installed solely against Israel.[^18]
### Planning the raid
Hersh wrote that the bombing had been debated at the highest levels of the Israeli government since late 1979. He wrote that Mossad director [[Yitzhak Hofi]] and military intelligence chief Saguy opposed the attack, "primarily because there was no evidence that Iraq was as yet capable of building a bomb," and that they were joined in futile dissent by Deputy Prime Minister [[Yigael Yadin]]. He wrote that at a late-1980 planning session Saguy argued that the adverse reaction in [[Washington, D.C.]] would be a more serious threat to Israel than the Iraqi reactor, and that Saguy was not told of the mission until June 4, three days before it was scheduled.[^19] The Cooper and Bishop account of September 1980 quoted above attributes to Saguy a public remark of September 27, 1980 about the Iranian air force and the reactor.[^14]
In June 2021 the [[Israel Defense Forces]] Archive, as part of a digitization project, published documents on the strike, among them a partially redacted post-operational report that includes the army chief's written order for the strike, a 1980 government decision to plan the operation and deliberations over the date. The release included a note from army chief [[Raphael Eitan|Rafael Eitan]] to air force commander [[David Ivry]] about delaying the strike by a week because of a summit between [[Menachem Begin]] and [[Anwar Sadat]].[^20]
### The raid
Hersh wrote that the mission planners, anxious to avoid international protest, had gone to extremes to mask the operation, that the Israeli planes were unmarked, and that the attack was carried out in two minutes.[^19] The Times of Israel reported, on the basis of the IDF Archive release, that [[Ilan Ramon]], later Israel's first astronaut, flew an F-16A in the last plane of the formation, and that a 2001 video recorded at a 20-year reunion of the mission's participants, hosted by the pilot [[Yiftach Spektor]], shows Ramon saying that his mother was a [[Holocaust]] survivor who was at [[Auschwitz]] and that he expected he might not return. The same report quotes the retired colonel [[Ze'ev Raz]], interviewed in 2016, describing Ramon's stress as the last pilot in the formation and stating that he had not previously dropped a bomb on a live mission.[^20] [[Amos Yadlin]], who flew in the mission, was described by [[Mosaic Magazine]] in February 2023 as Ramon's friend and former flight instructor who flew alongside him in the mission, and as having given an interview about Ramon to [[Menachem Butler]].[^21] Hersh wrote that Air Force Colonel [[Aviem Sella]], who was later the handler of the spy [[Jonathan Pollard]], had been involved in the 1981 bombing and was one of the Israeli Air Force's leading nuclear bombing and targeting experts.[^22]
### The attack and its announcement
Hersh wrote that Begin "stunned his colleagues" by announcing the raid himself on June 8, and on June 9 said that "if the nuclear reactor had not been destroyed, another Holocaust would have happened in the history of the Jewish people."[^19] A June 21 cable reports that Begin, responding to U.S. criticism, invoked "his familiar Holocaust analogy" and compared the threat of radioactive fallout to the gas used against Jewish children.[^23]
Two days after the raid, at a British diplomatic reception, Begin said the planes had also destroyed a secret facility at Osirak where Iraqi bombs were to be assembled. Hersh wrote that Begin placed the facility forty meters below the reactor, that he said the Iraqi government had hidden it from the IAEA, and that Israeli government spokesmen said the next day that Begin had misspoken and that the depth was four meters. Hersh wrote that the appalled Israeli officials knew the description fitted a facility at Dimona, that Israeli officials told him Begin had visited the underground facility at Dimona and had been given a detailed memorandum about it in the days before the raid, and that one Israeli said of Begin: "He confused one with the other."[^24] At the State Department briefing of June 12, the spokesman noted that there had been at least one correction from Israel on the depth of the facility.[^25] In a footnote Hersh wrote that American experts concluded Israel had bombed only one of two major targets at the site, destroying the reactor but leaving the nearby reprocessing plant untouched.[^26]
At the June 12 session of the IAEA Board of Governors, [[India]] asked the agency's director general, [[Sigvard Eklund]], to comment on Begin's statement. Eklund answered that the task of safeguards is to verify that no safeguarded nuclear material is diverted, that the agency is not to search facilities that contain no safeguarded material, and that the agency had not detected such a laboratory.[^27]
Hersh wrote that about two weeks after the raid, Hofi gave an unprecedented newspaper interview, cited only by title under Israeli censorship, complaining about politicians who compromised secret intelligence.[^24] He wrote that Israeli officials said Iraq had begun moving Soviet-supplied [[Scud]] missiles closer to the Iraq-Jordan border after the raid, and that Israel had ordered the Dimona reactor and reprocessing plant to cease operations well before the bombing, keeping them out of service through the end of the year.[^28]
Hersh wrote that after the bombing [[Ariel Sharon]] concluded that the United States was not a reliable strategic ally, and turned to a clandestine Israeli intelligence agency under his defense ministry, which began intercepting intelligence on the [[Middle East]] and [[Soviet Union]] from sensitive American agencies.[^29] Hersh later wrote that Sharon, after the September 1981 meetings in Washington, installed [[Rafael Eitan|Rafael (Rafi) Eitan]], a long-time clandestine operative he called a Sharon crony, as head of [[LAKAM]], the Office of Special Tasks, while Eitan kept his post as Begin's special assistant for counterterrorism.[^30]
### Washington's response
Hersh wrote that when [[Richard V. Allen]], the national security adviser, informed [[Ronald Reagan]] of the raid by telephone as the President boarded a helicopter at [[Camp David]], Reagan said: "Well. Boys will be boys." He wrote that at a meeting the next morning [[Caspar Weinberger]] proposed canceling the F-16 sale, that Vice President [[George H.W. Bush]] and Chief of Staff [[James A. Baker III]] agreed some sanctions against Israel were essential, and that Reagan, by Allen's account, made clear with a gesture that he had no intention of taking such a step. He wrote that the State Department that afternoon issued a statement formally condemning the bombing, and that Allen recalled Reagan as "delighted" by the attack.[^2][^31]
The Department's public line on June 12 was to wait for the Security Council debate. The spokesman said the Department had "no foreknowledge of Israeli plans for a raid," and that it had noted the [[Arab League]] resolution.[^25]
A [[Tel Aviv]] cable of June 21 summarizes a [[Ha'aretz]] commentary that described an apparent clash between Weinberger and [[Alexander M. Haig, Jr.]] over influence on Reagan's Middle East decisions. The commentary noted Weinberger's former business interests in [[Saudi Arabia]] and his place in what it called the "California group" around the President. The cable's subject line reports that Begin blasted Weinberger but downplayed the tension.[^32]
### The United Nations and the IAEA
The [[United Nations Security Council]] began its debate on June 12. On June 19, 1981 it adopted [[Security Council Resolution 487]], which the U.S. mission reported as adopted unanimously. The text strongly condemns the attack as "in clear violation of the United Nations Charter and the norms of international conduct," calls on Israel to refrain from such acts, and considers the attack "a serious threat to the entire IAEA safeguards regime which is the foundation of the [[Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty|NPT]]." It recognizes Iraq's sovereign right to develop nuclear technology for peaceful purposes, calls on Israel to place its nuclear facilities under IAEA safeguards, holds that Iraq is entitled to appropriate redress, and asks the Secretary-General to keep the Council informed.[^33]
The U.S. statement by Ambassador [[Jeane Kirkpatrick]] said the United States did "not regard this as a perfect resolution." It noted that the United States had "voted against the resolution in the International Atomic Energy Agency" to which the Security Council text refers, and said that the U.S. judgment that Israeli actions violated the Charter was "based solely on the conviction that Israel failed to exhaust peaceful means for the resolution of this dispute."[^33]
The IAEA Board of Governors adopted a resolution on June 12 on the "military attack on the Iraq nuclear research centre and its implications for the Agency."[^33] A U.S. summary of the June Board session records that the United States could not support one operative paragraph, because receipt of IAEA assistance "is a right of all IAEA members," and that the draft recommended that the General Conference suspend the exercise by Israel of its privileges.[^34] The French governor on the Board reported that one French citizen had been killed in the attack and that about ten Iraqis had been wounded.[^35]
Cranston's June 18 statement describes the inspection record. He said he had received four internal documents from American sources within the IAEA, which contained an estimate that Iraq could have produced enough plutonium each year in the Osirak reactor for up to three bombs, and a study conducted for the agency earlier in 1981 concluding that an Osiris-type reactor could produce as much as 24 kilograms of plutonium per year. The most recent inspection in Iraq before the raid, in January 1981, was reportedly conducted with the lights in the facility turned off, was limited to a visual inspection of the fuel, and was carried out by flashlight. Several fuel elements could not be verified because they were locked in a vault and the key could not be located at the time. Cranston also said that since 1976 only Soviet and Hungarian inspectors had visited Iraq, that Iraq had informally exercised a right to object to American inspectors, and that an American inspector at the IAEA in the section responsible for Iraq, [[Roger Richter]], had resigned the previous Tuesday and would testify before the committee.[^13]
### F-16 deliveries
On June 10, 1981 the Washington Post reported that the [[Pentagon]] said Reagan must decide by Friday whether to proceed with the scheduled delivery of four more F-16s to Israel. Haig said that no decisions had been made about the F-16s awaiting shipment, and that a report by the administration on whether Israel had violated U.S. law by using American-supplied aircraft against the Iraqi installation should be ready in 24 to 48 hours.[^36]
The Secretary of State's letter to Speaker [[Thomas P. O'Neill]] states that a substantial violation of the 1952 Mutual Defense Assistance Agreement "may have occurred." The agreement, as the letter quotes it, provides that the equipment "will be used solely to maintain its internal security, its legitimate self-defense, or to permit it to participate in the defense of the area," and that Israel "will not undertake any act of aggression." The letter reports that the President had "directed the suspension for the time being of the immediate shipment of four F-16 aircraft."[^1]
Israel's Foreign Ministry spokesman expressed regret over the suspension and said Israel had acted in self-defense against Iraq, which "declares itself to be in a state of war against Israel since 1948."[^4] A State Department briefing transcript in the same release records that Israel had ordered 75 F-16s, of which 53 had been delivered.[^37] Hersh wrote that the White House announced the suspension of the scheduled delivery of four more F-16s, and that two months later, with little fanfare, the suspension was lifted and the aircraft were delivered without incident.[^31]
Soviet television commentary of June 14, as summarized in a State Department cable, said that the raid demonstrated that Begin could act with "impunity."[^38]
### Satellite and intelligence claims
A [[Beirut]] cable of June 11, 1981 reports that [[Yasir Arafat]] claimed the Israeli raid had been carried out "with full assistance from American satellites and radar," and that it took place with official American approval.[^39]
Hersh wrote that a few British intelligence officials immediately suspected that Israel had used high-resolution [[KH-11]] photography to target Osirak and complained to their American counterparts, that high-resolution satellite photographs of the destroyed reactor were on the desks of Washington decision-makers within hours of the mission, and that "the British were right, as a subsequent highly secret investigation showed: Israel had gotten much valuable intelligence from the KH-11." He wrote that [[William J. Casey]], the director of central intelligence, had early in his tenure ordered that Israeli liaison officers be given a private office near CIA headquarters, and that after Osirak he authorized a small ad hoc committee to review the imagery-sharing agreement. According to Hersh, the review found that in little more than two years the Israelis had expanded a limited agreement to the point where they could extract virtually any photograph they wished, including extensive KH-11 coverage of western [[Russia]] and [[Moscow]]; he quoted one military man as saying "The Israelis did everything except task the bird." Hersh wrote that Casey, who had made a first secret trip to Israel as CIA director a few months earlier, had not been told in advance of the attack.[^40] He wrote that it was agreed after the review that photographs would continue to flow to Israel with the 1979 restrictions reinforced, that Allen relayed this to Sharon in the fall of 1981, and that the review group accepted Israel's explanation that it had obtained the imagery of the Soviet Union solely to monitor supply links between Russia and its allies in Syria and Iraq.[^41][^29]
A [[National Photographic Interpretation Center]] memorandum of June 27, 1981 reports increased defensive measures around the [[Baghdad Nuclear Research Center]], including 23 barrage balloons around the periphery of the center and the movement of more than half of its antiaircraft defenses, ten antiaircraft guns and two ZSU-23/4 self-propelled guns, to new positions atop earthen barricades on the eastern side. It also reports that three small holes had been made in the roof of the underground building north of the Osirak reactor building and that an unidentified piece of equipment may have been drilling a fourth.[^42]
Anderson's June 16, 1981 column reported that the Pentagon estimated Iraq had enough raw material for as many as four bombs and could have one ready for testing within six months. Anderson wrote that American intelligence analysts feared the raid might have accelerated the nuclear arms race, and that the Soviet-built reactor, which was not hit, could be used to assemble Iraqi bombs.[^16]
Anderson's June 18, 1981 column quoted a Defense Intelligence Agency report written several months before the raid: "Iraq has certainly developed a nuclear capability, unmatched by its allies, with a potential for threatening Israel which has not existed before."[^43]
### Mossad and the uranium reports
On June 23, 1981 a Tel Aviv cable reported that Israeli media had carried reports that [[Brazil]] had warned Israel relations were under review over reports, allegedly spread by Mossad, that Brazil had supplied eight tons of uranium to Iraq. The cable records that the Israeli newspaper [[Yedioth Ahronoth]] stated it had been made clear to the Brazilian Foreign Ministry that the reports were "a figment of the imagination and totally groundless," and it notes that the Israeli journalist [[Uri Dan]] had written on June 16 that Iraq had procured hundreds of tons of uranium from [[Portugal]], [[Nigeria]], Brazil and elsewhere in addition to French deliveries.[^44]
On June 25, 1981 a Tel Aviv cable reported that the head of Mossad, who is never publicly identified by name in Israel, had initiated a newspaper interview the previous week with the Ha'aretz military correspondent [[Ze'ev Schiff]]. The cable describes the interview as an "apparently almost desperate attempt to stem the flood of intelligence and related data being announced and published on the Iraqi reactor raid." In it the Mossad head said that damage had already been caused in the intelligence sphere, that sources had been endangered, and that there were risks to their willingness to cooperate "with us." The cable reports that the day after the interview appeared, Begin reportedly reprimanded the head of Mossad, and that a source said Begin had merely called the Mossad director's attention to the unusual nature of the interview.[^45] Hersh wrote that the interview was Hofi's.[^24]
[^1]: U.S. Department of State, Secretary of State to Speaker Thomas P. O'Neill, letter on the Israeli attack and the Arms Export Control Act, 1981. FOIA case F-1982-00753, document C09000101. https://archive.org/details/F-1982-00753
[^2]: Hersh, Seymour M. *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy*. Random House, 1991, p. 8 (chapter 1, "A Secret Agreement"). Sole source for the passages so cited.
[^3]: U.S. Department of State, Tel Aviv embassy cable 9271, June 11, 1981, "MFA Briefing Paper on Israeli 'Raid' on Iraqi Nuclear Reactor," text of the Foreign Ministry briefing paper of June 9. FOIA case F-1982-00753, document C09000187. https://archive.org/details/F-1982-00753
[^4]: U.S. Department of State, Tel Aviv embassy cable 9282, June 11, 1981, "Israel 'Regrets' U.S. Decision to Suspend Delivery of F-16s." FOIA case F-1982-00753, document C09000119. https://archive.org/details/F-1982-00753
[^5]: Central Intelligence Agency, Directorate of Intelligence, *The Iraqi Nuclear Program: Progress Despite Setbacks*, intelligence assessment SW 83-10040CX, June 1983 (information as of May 1, 1983). CIA Reading Room document 0000875771. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-0000875771
[^6]: Hersh, *The Samson Option*, p. 64, note. Sole source for the passage so cited.
[^7]: Joint Publications Research Service, Near East/North Africa Report, JPRS L/8560, July 6, 1979 (FOUO 28/79), reprinting a 1979 article copyright IC Magazines Ltd. CIA CREST document cia-rdp82-00850r000100070005-8. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp82-00850r000100070005-8
[^8]: "Seeking to thwart Iraq's nuclear programme, Israel bombed French warehouse, book claims," Middle East Monitor, June 14, 2021, summarizing a Ha'aretz article based on Michael (Micky) Ron, *The Quiet Sabra* (Hebrew memoir). Sole source for the passages so cited; the Mossad attribution is Ron's. https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20210614-seeking-to-thwart-iraqs-nuclear-programme-israel-bombed-french-warehouse-book-claims/
[^9]: L'Express (Paris), October 18, 1980, p. 125, "Damage to Osirak Dome Reported," reprinted in Joint Publications Research Service, Worldwide Report: Nuclear Development and Proliferation, JPRS L/9433, December 9, 1980, pp. 33-34. CIA CREST document cia-rdp82-00850r000300060014-7. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp82-00850r000300060014-7
[^10]: Mark Schone, "Israel's Greatest Hits: Before Dubai, a History of Targeted Killing," ABC News, February 2010. https://abcnews.com/Blotter/israels-greatest-hits-dubai-history-targeted-killing-now/story?id=9856671
[^11]: Ronen Bergman, "Killing the Killers," Newsweek, December 13, 2010. Sole source for the passages so cited. https://www.newsweek.com/killing-killers-69081
[^12]: Carol Berger, "Iraqi Files Seized By UN Inspectors Seen As Possible 'Hit Lists'," The Christian Science Monitor, October 10, 1991. Sole source for the Ostrovsky claim. https://csmonitor.com/1991/1010/10032.html
[^13]: Statement of Senator Alan Cranston before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, June 18, 1981, as transmitted in State Department cable STATE 160720 to the Vienna embassy. FOIA case F-1982-00753, document C09000073. https://archive.org/details/F-1982-00753
[^14]: Cooper, Tom, and Farzad Bishop. "Target: Saddam's Reactor: Israeli and Iranian Operations Against Iraqi Plans to Develop Nuclear Weapons." *Air Enthusiast* 110 (March/April 2004). Sole source for the passages so cited.
[^15]: Central Intelligence Agency, National Intelligence Daily, October 1, 1980 (CO NID 80-231JX), Situation Report, Iraq-Iran, pp. 1-2; released August 2005. https://unredacted.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/iran-iraq1.pdf
[^16]: Jack Anderson with Ron McRae, "Raid by Israel May Fuel A-Arms Race," Washington Post, June 16, 1981. CIA CREST document cia-rdp90-00965r000100160090-8. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp90-00965r000100160090-8
[^17]: U.S. Department of State, press briefing transcript of June 8, 1981, transmitted as cable STATE 149439. FOIA case F-1982-00753, document C09000012. https://archive.org/details/F-1982-00753
[^18]: State Department cable reproducing Iraqi statements on the reactor. FOIA case F-1982-00753, document C09000088. https://archive.org/details/F-1982-00753
[^19]: Hersh, *The Samson Option*, pp. 9-10. Sole source for the passages so cited.
[^20]: "40 years after Iraq reactor raid, IDF reveals Ilan Ramon's fears, intel sketches," The Times of Israel, June 22, 2021, reporting an IDF Archive and Defense Ministry release. https://www.timesofisrael.com/40-years-after-iraq-reactor-raid-idf-reveals-ilan-ramons-fears-intel-sketches/
[^21]: "Remembering Ilan Ramon, Astronaut and Hero," Mosaic Magazine, February 2, 2023 (introduction to an interview of Amos Yadlin by Menachem Butler). https://ideas.tikvah.org/mosaic/picks/remembering-ilan-ramon-astronaut-and-hero
[^22]: Hersh, *The Samson Option*, p. 286. Sole source for the passage so cited.
[^23]: State Department cable of June 21, 1981 reporting Begin's remarks on U.S. criticism of the raid. FOIA case F-1982-00753, document C09000026. https://archive.org/details/F-1982-00753
[^24]: Hersh, *The Samson Option*, pp. 10-11. Sole source for the passages so cited.
[^25]: U.S. Department of State, press briefing transcript of June 12, 1981, "Department Press Briefing June 12, 1981." FOIA case F-1982-00753, document C09000098. https://archive.org/details/F-1982-00753
[^26]: Hersh, *The Samson Option*, p. 10, note. Sole source for the passage so cited.
[^27]: U.S. Mission to Vienna cable 6873, June 12, 1981, "Israeli Attack on Iraqi Nuclear Reactor: Further Statement by IAEA Director General," with the text of Sigvard Eklund's statement. FOIA case F-1982-00753, document C09000058. https://archive.org/details/F-1982-00753
[^28]: Hersh, *The Samson Option*, p. 12. Sole source for the passages so cited.
[^29]: Hersh, *The Samson Option*, p. 16. Sole source for the passages so cited.
[^30]: Hersh, *The Samson Option*, pp. 287-288. Sole source for the passage so cited.
[^31]: Hersh, *The Samson Option*, p. 9. Sole source for the passages so cited.
[^32]: Tel Aviv embassy cable of June 21, 1981, "Begin Blasts Weinberger but Downplays Tension," summarizing a Ha'aretz commentary. FOIA case F-1982-00753, document C09000126. https://archive.org/details/F-1982-00753
[^33]: U.S. Mission to the United Nations cable 2074, June 19, 1981, transmitting the text of Security Council Resolution 487 and the U.S. statement by Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick. FOIA case F-1982-00753, document C09000076. https://archive.org/details/F-1982-00753
[^34]: U.S. Mission to Vienna cable on the June 1981 IAEA Board session, "IAEA June Board: Israeli Attack on Iraqi Nuclear Research Center." FOIA case F-1982-00753, document C09000051. https://archive.org/details/F-1982-00753
[^35]: U.S. Mission to Vienna cable 6711, June 1981, "IAEA Board of Governors: Israeli Attack." FOIA case F-1982-00753, document C09000008. https://archive.org/details/F-1982-00753
[^36]: State Department cable STATE 151497, June 10, 1981, "Morning News Summary of Wednesday, June 10, 1981," quoting George C. Wilson and John P. Goshko, Washington Post. FOIA case F-1982-00753, document C09000025. https://archive.org/details/F-1982-00753
[^37]: State Department press briefing transcript (question on the status of F-16 transfers). FOIA case F-1982-00753, document C09000090. https://archive.org/details/F-1982-00753
[^38]: State Department cable 156211, June 15, 1981, "Soviet Media on Israel's Attack," reporting the Moscow embassy's summary of Soviet coverage. FOIA case F-1982-00753, document C09000066. https://archive.org/details/F-1982-00753
[^39]: Beirut embassy cable, June 11, 1981, "Israeli Raid on Iraq: Claims of U.S. Involvement." FOIA case F-1982-00753, document C09000042. https://archive.org/details/F-1982-00753
[^40]: Hersh, *The Samson Option*, pp. 12-14 and p. 13, note. Sole source for the passages so cited.
[^41]: Hersh, *The Samson Option*, p. 15. Sole source for the passages so cited.
[^42]: National Photographic Interpretation Center, "Increased Defensive Measures, Baghdad Nuclear Research Center, Iraq," attachment to memorandum Z-30587/81, June 27, 1981. CIA CREST document cia-rdp81t00618r000100820001-8. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp81t00618r000100820001-8
[^43]: Jack Anderson, "Pentagon Pipeline," Washington Post, June 18, 1981, quoting a Defense Intelligence Agency report. CIA CREST document cia-rdp90-00965r000100160089-0. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp90-00965r000100160089-0
[^44]: Tel Aviv embassy cable 9921, June 23, 1981, "Israel Denies 'Mossad' Has Spread Allegations That Brazil Supplied Uranium to Iraq." FOIA case F-1982-00753, document C09000143. https://archive.org/details/F-1982-00753
[^45]: Tel Aviv embassy cable 10019, June 25, 1981, "Mossad Concerned About GOI Intelligence Leaks." FOIA case F-1982-00753, document C09000149. https://archive.org/details/F-1982-00753

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@ -1,20 +1,162 @@
---
aliases:
- Yom Kippur War
- 1973 Yom Kippur War
- 1973 Arab-Israeli War
- Arab-Israeli War of 1973
- October War
- Ramadan War
- Yom Kippur
category: "Major Conflict"
tags:
- Event
- Conflict
- Middle East
category: "Major Conflict"
summary: "1973 Arab-Israeli War that began with coordinated Egyptian and Syrian attacks, leading to a nuclear alert and reshaping regional power dynamics."
- MiddleEast
- IntelligenceFailure
- NuclearAlert
- Airlift
- OilEmbargo
summary: "The 1973 war in which coordinated Egyptian and Syrian attacks produced an intelligence failure, an Israeli nuclear alert, an American airlift, an oil embargo and a United States DEFCON III alert."
start: 1973-10-06
end: 1973-10-25
location: ["Sinai Peninsula", "Golan Heights"]
updated: 2026-10-07
relations:
- type: participant_in
with: "[[Israel]]"
reverse: true
start: 1973-10-06
end: 1973-10-25
role: "belligerent; recipient of the American airlift"
fn: 2
- type: participant_in
with: "[[Egypt]]"
reverse: true
start: 1973-10-06
end: 1973-10-25
role: "belligerent; attacked across the Suez Canal on October 6"
fn: 2
- type: participant_in
with: "[[Syria]]"
reverse: true
start: 1973-10-06
end: 1973-10-25
role: "belligerent; attacked the Golan Heights on October 6"
fn: 2
- type: participant_in
with: "[[Soviet Union]]"
reverse: true
start: 1973-10-24
end: 1973-10-25
role: "sender of the Brezhnev letter of October 24, 1973 that preceded the American DEFCON III alert"
fn: 14
- type: participant_in
with: "[[Henry A. Kissinger]]"
reverse: true
start: 1973-10-16
end: 1973-10-25
role: "Secretary of State; participant in the Washington Special Actions Group meetings"
fn: 25
- type: participant_in
with: "[[Richard Nixon]]"
reverse: true
start: 1973-10-06
end: 1973-10-25
role: "President; authorized the airlift on October 12, 1973"
fn: 15
- type: investigated
with: "[[Agranat Commission]]"
reverse: true
start: 1974-04-01
role: "commission of inquiry into the surprise at the outset of the war; interim report April 1, 1974"
fn: 2
---
The Yom Kippur War, also known as the 1973 Arab–Israeli War, began on Saturday, October 6, 1973, when [[Egypt]] attacked across the [[Sinai]] and [[Syria]] invaded the [[Golan Heights]]. The initial days of the war were a stunning rout for [[Israel]], with significant losses in tanks and aircraft. Egyptian forces breached the Bar-Lev defense line in the [[Sinai]], and Syrian forces advanced to the edge of [[Galilee]].[^1]
The Yom Kippur War, also called the October War, the 1973 Arab-Israeli War and the Ramadan War, began on Saturday, October 6, 1973, when [[Egypt]] attacked across the [[Suez Canal]] into the [[Sinai Peninsula]] and [[Syria]] attacked the [[Golan Heights]], both striking [[Israel]] on the Jewish holy day. [[Seymour Hersh]] wrote that the first days were "a stunning rout" for Israel, with 500 tanks and 49 aircraft (14 of them F-4 Phantoms) lost in the first three days, that Egyptian forces equipped with missiles and electronic defenses "blasted through the Bar-Lev defense line" along the canal, and that Syrian forces rolled through the Israeli defenses on the Golan and "moved to the edge of Galilee."[^1] The [[Agranat Commission]] recorded that the Egyptians crossed the canal despite the line of Israeli outposts, and that the Syrians attacked with 1,400 tanks against 177 Israeli tanks and advanced almost to the edge of the heights overlooking the [[Sea of Galilee]].[^2]
In response to the desperate situation, [[Israel]] called its first nuclear alert and began arming its nuclear arsenal. This alert was used to pressure [[Washington, D.C.]] into a major policy change, specifically demanding an emergency airlift of replacement arms and ammunition. The Israeli leadership, including [[Golda Meir]] and [[Moshe Dayan]], resolved to implement three critical decisions: rally collapsing forces for a counterattack, arm and target its nuclear arsenal for the [[Samson Option]] in case of total collapse, and inform [[Washington, D.C.]] of its nuclear action to demand resupply.[^1]
### The warning
The initial target list for the nuclear weapons included Egyptian and Syrian military headquarters near [[Cairo]] and [[Damascus]]. While no weapons were targeted on the [[Soviet Union]], it was understood that the Soviets would quickly learn of the nuclear arming. The arming of nuclear weapons also served the purpose of forcing the [[United States]] to begin a massive resupply of the Israeli military, as the Israeli cabinet was enraged by what they perceived as an American strategy of delaying resupply to facilitate land-for-peace bargaining.[^1]
On October 5, 1973, [[Zvi Zamir]], the head of the [[Mossad]], sent a five-page Hebrew cable to the military secretary of Prime Minister [[Golda Meir]]. The Israel State Archives released it on September 17, 2018. Its first line read, "The Egyptian army and the Syrian army are poised to launch an attack on Israel on Saturday 6.10.73 at dusk." The cable gave the source's assessment as a "99 percent chance" that the attack would be launched on October 6, and suggested that "it may be possible to prevent the outbreak of war by publishing information about it on the radio and in newspapers."[^3] The source was [[Ashraf Marwan]], a son-in-law of [[Gamal Abdel Nasser]] and an aide to [[Anwar Sadat]].[^3][^2]
A telegram from London reached the Mossad on the night of October 4 and 5, 1973. [[Alfred Eini]], an aide to Zamir, testified to the Agranat Commission that he understood it "to be a warning that there would be a war," and that he telephoned Zamir that night.[^4] At the meeting of the Prime Minister's advisers that opened at 8:05 a.m. on October 6, the Chief of Staff, [[David Elazar]], said that he had read the telegram sent by Marwan to Zamir and that it was "an authentic message, though it is a very short notice for us." Defense Minister [[Moshe Dayan]] opposed a preemptive strike and proposed a smaller call-up of reserves than the 200,000 that Elazar asked for; Golda Meir decided for the larger mobilization.[^2]
The Agranat Commission, which the Israeli government established on November 21, 1973, held 156 sessions and heard 90 witnesses. Its interim report, presented on April 1, 1974, dealt mainly with the circumstances that produced the surprise and examined the functionality of the prime minister, the defense minister and the heads of the military. A second report followed on July 10, 1974, and a final report of a more general character came after it.[^2]
The [[Central Intelligence Agency]] conducted its own review. A preliminary post-mortem dated December 20, 1973, titled "The Performance of the Intelligence Community before the Arab-Israeli War of October 1973," concluded that "there was an intelligence failure in the weeks preceding the outbreak of war in the Middle East on 6 October."[^5] The same report stated that the information gathered by the collection elements "was sufficient to prompt such a warning" and was "not conclusive but was plentiful, ominous, and often accurate."[^5] Shortly before the war, the Director of Central Intelligence, [[William Colby]], had initiated a reorganization of the Agency's estimative process.[^5]
### Opening days and the nuclear question
In his 1991 book on the [[Samson Option]], Hersh wrote that Dayan had told the censored press at his daily briefing on Monday, October 8 that "the situation is desperate. Everything is lost. We must withdraw," and had said that "this is the end of the Third Temple."[^1] Hersh wrote that Dayan's pessimism led to an all-night meeting that day in Golda Meir's office in [[Tel Aviv]], attended by Dayan, Meir, Elazar, deputy prime minister [[Yigal Allon]], Meir's military aide [[Yisrael Leor]] and the minister without portfolio [[Israel Galili]]. Hersh wrote that the leadership resolved to rally its collapsing forces, to arm and target its nuclear arsenal in case of total collapse, and to inform [[Washington, D.C.|Washington]] of the step and demand an emergency airlift.[^6] He wrote that the launchers at [[Hirbat Zachariah]] would be made operational, along with eight specially marked F-4 aircraft on twenty-four-hour alert at [[Tel Nof]], and that the initial target list included the Egyptian and Syrian military headquarters near [[Cairo]] and [[Damascus]].[^6] Hersh wrote that no weapons were targeted on the [[Soviet Union]] but that "there was little doubt that the Soviets would quickly learn what was going on," because Israeli intelligence was intercepting encoded signals from presumed Soviet operatives inside the country that morning.[^7] He added that Elazar's published diary recorded the night of October 8 only as "Crucial meeting," that a source said some senior officials of the nuclear establishment, though not [[Shalheveth Freier]], accused the senior officials of panicking, and that a separate preliminary briefing by technical experts from [[Dimona]], led by Freier, described the weapons and targets available for immediate assembly.[^7]
Hersh quoted [[Mohammed Heikal]], the editor of [[Al-Ahram]], as saying that the Soviet Union told the Egyptian leadership early in the war that the "Israelis had three warheads assembled and ready," through a Soviet intelligence officer who passed the message to the Egyptian chief of staff, [[Mohammed Abdel Ghany el-Gamasy]].[^7] Hersh wrote, citing former Israeli government officials, that arming the weapons had a second purpose, to force the [[United States]] into an immediate resupply of the Israeli military, and that "there was widespread rage inside the Israeli cabinet at the Nixon White House," aimed especially at [[Henry A. Kissinger]], "over what was correctly perceived in Israel as an American strategy of delaying the resupply" so that the Arabs would win some territory and open the way to land-for-peace bargaining. He quoted Kissinger telling Defense Secretary [[James R. Schlesinger]] that his goal was to "let Israel come out ahead, but bleed."[^7]
Hersh described a series of urgent telephone calls from the Israeli ambassador to Washington, [[Simcha Dinitz]], beginning at 1:45 a.m. on Tuesday, October 9, and a meeting at 8:20 a.m. in the White House Map Room, at which, in Kissinger's memoir, Dinitz asked to speak with him alone and said that Meir "was prepared to come to the United States personally for an hour to plead with President Nixon for urgent arms aid." Kissinger wrote that he rejected the proposal "out of hand" and that it "could reflect only either hysteria or blackmail," and that by the evening of October 9 Israel "had been assured that its war losses would be made up." Hersh wrote that "a more complete account of the Dinitz message would undoubtedly show that it was closer to blackmail." He wrote that, according to a former Israeli intelligence official, the Israeli signals intelligence unit [[Unit 8200]] intercepted on the morning of October 9 a Soviet warning to Washington about the Israeli nuclear arming.[^8]
Hersh cited the recollection of [[Hermann F. Eilts]], the American ambassador to Egypt, that Kissinger spoke to him in November 1973 about Israeli panic on the fourth day of the war with "never a word about nuclear arming," and that in late 1976 Kissinger "threw in that there was concern that the Israelis might go nuclear." Schlesinger told Hersh that "Kissinger just turned around totally" on resupply and that "from where we sat, there was an assumption that Israel had a few nukes"; Colby told him, "We were afraid Israel might go for broke." Hersh wrote that Heikal reported that Anwar Sadat had relayed a remark by an "American," whom Hersh took to be Kissinger, that the airlift was decided to avoid a nuclear escalation, and that "sometime in this period" the American intelligence community got its first look, via the KH-11, at the completed missile launchers at Hirbat Zachariah.[^9]
The Israel State Archives released protocols of Meir's consultations with her advisers in 2010. In the protocol of the session of October 9, 1973 at 7:30 a.m., Golda Meir raises a "crazy thought" of flying to Washington in secrecy for 24 hours to put the severity of the situation to Nixon directly, and asks that Dinitz bring the idea to Kissinger; Dayan answers, "It is. But it needs to be done." In the same session Elazar asks for permission to target inside Damascus.[^2]
A 2013 [[CNA]] study by [[Elbridge Colby]], [[Avner Cohen]], William McCants, Bradley Morris and William Rosenau. It concluded that Israel "likely did take some steps associated with the readying of its nuclear weapons and/or nuclear weapons delivery forces" in the early stages of the war, that these steps were "defensive or precautionary in nature," and that the United States very likely observed the activity.[^10] The study judged that Dayan likely proposed a "demonstration" use of nuclear forces on or about October 7, that Meir and the other participants rebuffed the proposal, and that no action followed from it.[^10] The study assessed Hersh's account of a coordinated "blackmail" attempt as "without foundation" and found that the account has "evident inaccuracies."[^10] It located the "blackmail" that Kissinger described in his memoirs in a proposal by Dinitz that Meir visit Washington during the war.[^10]
A 2002 [[United Press International]] report by [[Richard Sale]] repeated several of Hersh's claims and attributed them to unidentified "knowledgeable" American government sources. It added that the alert lasted three full days and that the Jericho missiles were deployed inside caves at air bases with "huge blast doors."[^11] [[Alistair Horne]] wrote in his Kissinger biography that Kissinger "always hotly denied, and several times to the author, that Israel had ever mentioned this possibility [the use, in extremis, of Israel's nuclear weapon]" to the United States.[^12]
A [[Defense Intelligence Agency]] paper on Israeli security, "Long-Range Outlook for Israeli Security," was attached to an October 24 memorandum from Vice Admiral V.P. de Poix, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, to [[Thomas H. Moorer]]. One option it listed was "a public declaration of Israeli determination to employ nuclear weapons." The paper described an Israeli nuclear threat against "such targets as Arab forces, cities, ports, holy places, and the Aswan High Dam," and stated that the Arabs "might be willing to attack, despite the deterrent threat."[^13]
### The airlift
On October 12, 1973, President [[Richard Nixon]] authorized the emergency airlift known as [[Operation Nickel Grass]]. [[Military Airlift Command]] aircraft were ready to depart less than nine hours after the decision. The fleet consisted of 268 C-141s and 77 C-5As, and [[Paul K. Carlton]] knew that it could sustain a flow of three C-141s every two hours and four C-5s every four hours.[^15] With a single exception, the United States' allies denied landing and overflight rights, and [[Portugal]] allowed flights through [[Lajes Field]].[^15]
Military Airlift Command aircraft carried 22,325 tons over 32 days, between October 14 and November 14, 1973,, and the airlift slowed after the third cease-fire resolution was implemented on October 24.[^16] The Israeli national airline, [[El Al]], flew eight of its own airliners carrying 5,500 tons.[^15] The Washington Special Actions Group minutes of October 19 record that the airlift was being stepped up to "5 C5As and 18 C141s a day."[^17]
### The oil embargo
On October 17, 1973, the eleven members of the [[Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries]] announced an immediate cut of 5 percent in oil production, with monthly cuts of 5 percent to follow until Israel withdrew to the 1967 frontiers. On the same day the six Persian Gulf members of [[OPEC]] raised the price of oil by 70 percent, from $3.01 to $5.12 a barrel. The Kuwaiti minister of oil and finance told the American ambassador that the cumulative effect of the cuts was intended to produce a "complete embargo on oil to the United States."[^18]
A CIA paper of October 19 judged that the effect on the United States "would be relatively small" and that the brunt of the cutback would fall on [[Europe]] and [[Japan]].[^18] On October 23, Prince [[Fahd]] of [[Saudi Arabia]] informed Kissinger that the kingdom would maintain a total embargo on oil exports to the United States until Israel withdrew to its pre-June 1967 borders. At the Secretary of State's staff meeting that day, Kissinger said, "We will break it."[^18] Kissinger later wrote that "the true impact of the embargo was psychological."[^18]
The financial side of the price rise appears in the State Department and CIA papers of the period. A telegram from the embassy at [[Jeddah]] of September 4, 1973, reported that Saudi petrodollars "continue to grow" and that more than 50 percent of current Saudi income was being re-positioned into European or other currencies.[^19] A CIA Office of Economic Research paper of March 5, 1974, stated that OPEC members were "considering many and implementing some schemes to recycle a portion of their burgeoning revenues to the Third World."[^20] A March 29, 1974 paper by an ad hoc group of the [[International Energy Review Group]] addressed "the LDC payments problems related to higher oil prices."[^21]
Kissinger's "shuttle diplomacy" between Israel and the Arab states followed the fighting.[^22] On October 16, at a Washington Special Actions Group meeting, Kissinger said, "I expect that plane is carrying Kosygin to Cairo," a reference to [[Alexei N. Kosygin]], the Soviet premier.[^23]
### The October 24 alert
On October 24, 1973, [[Leonid Brezhnev]] sent Nixon a letter threatening unilateral Soviet action in the Middle East. The letter prompted the American DEFCON III alert.[^14] Kissinger described it in his memoirs as "one of the most serious challenges to an American President by a Soviet leader."[^24]
The Washington Special Actions Group principals met in the night of October 24 and 25 and decided to set DEFCON III. Admiral Moorer's record of the meeting lists the actions taken: the carrier [[USS John F. Kennedy]] was moved from west of [[Gibraltar]] into the Mediterranean, the Roosevelt was moved from the vicinity of [[Sicily]], the [[82nd Airborne Division]] was alerted, and 75 B-52s were recalled from [[Guam]].[^25] Kissinger recalled that the group decided DEFCON III would not be noted quickly enough by Soviet decisionmakers, so at 12:20 a.m. the 82nd Airborne was alerted for possible movement and at 12:25 a.m. the carriers were ordered to the Mediterranean.[^26] The alert was leaked at about 3 a.m. on October 25.[^25] At 1:03 a.m. Kissinger told the British ambassador, [[Cromer]], "Well, don't say the Americans have gone crazy."[^25]
The participants in the rump session were Kissinger, Schlesinger, Moorer, [[Alexander Haig]], [[Brent Scowcroft]] and Colby. Nixon remained upstairs in the White House, and Kissinger conferred with him by telephone before the decision.[^5] The CIA's 2013 history of the episode states that "many questioned, then and later, whether the decision for DEFCON III was based on legitimate alarms or whether it was an overreaction," and that "there has also been speculation that the decision may have been politically motivated" by the needs of a [[Watergate]]-beleaguered White House.[^5] It records the view of [[Ray Cline]] that Kissinger "knew what he wanted to do all along" and that the meeting was "a kind of shell game, a superficial exercise."[^5] Cline's October 26 memorandum to Kissinger, quoted in a footnote to the minutes, stated that "the technical intelligence evidence available in INR did not support such a Soviet intention."[^25]
A CIA document dated October 30, 1973, titled "Soviet Nuclear Weapons in Egypt?," reported Scud-associated equipment at two locations in Egypt and stated that the confirmation "adds seriousness to the evidence that Moscow introduced nuclear weapons into the Middle East."[^5] A December 20, 1973 CIA assessment, "The Impact of the 24 October US Alert on the Soviet Leadership," judged that Brezhnev and his colleagues "appear to have reacted with greater concern and annoyance to President Nixon's statements of 26 October than they did to the alert itself."[^5]
### Aftermath
Marwan died in June 2007 after falling from the balcony of his apartment in [[London]]. A coroner's inquest was held to determine whether he died by suicide, accident or foul play.[^27] Coroner [[William Dolman]] handed down an open verdict on July 14, 2010, and said there was no evidence to support a verdict of either suicide or unlawful killing.[^27] Dolman described claims about the death as belonging to "the murky and secretive world of espionage."[^27] Marwan's widow, [[Mona Nasser]], told the inquest that her husband had never spoken of suicide but had expressed fears that he might be killed.[^27] Historians and intelligence agents have accused Marwan of being an Israeli spy who passed on vital information before the 1973 war, or of being a double agent loyal to Egypt.[^27]
### Footnotes
[^1]: Hersh, Seymour M. *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy*. Random House, 1991. Chapter 17.
[^1]: Seymour M. Hersh, The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy (New York: Random House, 1991), pages 222 to 223 (military losses, Bar-Lev line, the Golan, "the end of the Third Temple," Dayan's October 8 briefing). Sole source for the figures so cited.
[^2]: Agranat Commission, "1973 Agranat Commission: Yom Kippur War," translated by Roni Eshel (Center for Israel Education, December 2010), https://israeled.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/1973-Agranat-Comm-Report-1973-War.pdf. Summary of the Egyptian and Syrian fronts (1,400 Syrian tanks against 177 Israeli tanks); session and witness counts and the interim report of April 1, 1974; the protocol of the meeting of October 6, 1973 at 8:05 a.m. in which the Chief of Staff speaks of the Marwan telegram; the protocol of October 9, 1973 (7:30 a.m.) released by the Israel State Archives.
[^3]: Judah Ari Gross, "'Odds of war lower than low': Papers highlight intel failures in Yom Kippur War," The Times of Israel, September 17, 2018, https://www.timesofisrael.com/odds-of-war-lower-than-low-papers-highlight-intel-failures-in-yom-kippur-war/, on the cable of Zvi Zamir dated October 5, 1973 released by the Israel State Archives.
[^4]: Alfred Eini testimony to the Agranat Commission, as reported by ynetnews (Reuters), September 25, 2012, https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4285092,00.html
[^5]: Central Intelligence Agency, Historical Collections Division, "President Nixon and the Role of Intelligence in the 1973 Arab-Israeli War" (2013), https://cia.gov/static/President-Nixon-and-the-Role-of-Intelligence-in-the-1973-Arab-Israeli-War.pdf. The December 20, 1973 post-mortem, the Cline and Colby passages, the CIA document of October 30, 1973 and the December 20, 1973 assessment appear in the booklet's text and collection list.
[^6]: Hersh, The Samson Option, pages 224 to 226 (chapter 17, "Nuclear Blackmail": the meeting of October 8, attendees, the three decisions, Hirbat Zachariah, Tel Nof, target list). Sole source for the passages so cited.
[^7]: Hersh, The Samson Option, pages 226 to 228 (Soviet interception, Elazar's diary, the objections, the Freier briefing, the Heikal account of the Soviet warning to Cairo, the Israeli cabinet's anger, Kissinger's "let Israel come out ahead, but bleed"). Sole source for the passages so cited.
[^8]: Hersh, The Samson Option, pages 228 to 229 (the Dinitz calls and Map Room meeting, quoting Kissinger, Years of Upheaval; the account of a former Israeli intelligence official on Detachment 8200 and the October 9 Soviet warning). Sole source for the intelligence official's account.
[^9]: Hersh, The Samson Option, pages 229 to 231 (Eilts, Schlesinger and Colby recollections; Heikal on Sadat and Kissinger; the KH-11 imagery of Hirbat Zachariah). Sole source for the passages so cited.
[^10]: Elbridge Colby, Avner Cohen, William McCants, Bradley Morris and William Rosenau, "The Israeli 'Nuclear Alert' of 1973: Deterrence and Signaling in Crisis," CNA, DRM-2013-U-004480-Final (April 2013), https://www.cna.org/reports/2013/DRM-2013-U-004480-Final.pdf
[^11]: Richard Sale, "Yom Kippur: Israel's 1973 Nuclear Alert," UPI, September 16, 2002, as cited in Colby et al., note 10. Sole source for the passages so cited.
[^12]: Alistair Horne, biography of Henry Kissinger, as quoted in Colby et al., note 10. Sole source for the passage so cited.
[^13]: Defense Intelligence Agency, "Long-Range Outlook for Israeli Security," enclosure to the October 24, 1973 memorandum from Vice Admiral V.P. de Poix to Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969-1976, Volume XXV, Arab-Israeli Crisis and War, 1973, Document 265, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v25
[^14]: National Security Archive, "The October War and U.S. Policy," Electronic Briefing Book No. 98 (2003), https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB98/index.htm, including document 71, Brezhnev's letter of October 24, 1973.
[^15]: "Nickel Grass," Air & Space Forces Magazine, https://www.airandspaceforces.com/article/1298nickel/
[^16]: "Yom Kippur War: Nickel Grass," Jewish Virtual Library, https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/nickelgrass.html
[^17]: Minutes of Washington Special Actions Group Meeting, October 19, 1973, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969-1976, Volume XXV, Document 208, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v25
[^18]: Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969-1976, Volume XXV, Document 200, editorial note, pages 586 to 587, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v25
[^19]: Embassy in Saudi Arabia, telegram 3796 to the Department of State, Jidda, September 4, 1973, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969-1976, Volume XXXVI, Energy Crisis, 1969-1974, Document 200, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v36
[^20]: Central Intelligence Agency, Office of Economic Research paper, March 5, 1974, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969-1976, Volume XXXVI, Document 333, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v36
[^21]: Ad Hoc Group, International Energy Review Group Working Group, "The LDC Payments Problems Related to Higher Oil Prices," March 29, 1974, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969-1976, Volume XXXVI, Document 346, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v36
[^22]: Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969-1976, Volume XXV, Preface, identifying Volume XXVI, Arab-Israeli Dispute, 1974-1976, for the "shuttle diplomacy," https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v25
[^23]: Minutes of Washington Special Actions Group Meeting, October 16, 1973, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969-1976, Volume XXV, Document 191, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v25
[^24]: Henry A. Kissinger, Years of Upheaval (1982), pages 583 to 584, as quoted in Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969-1976, Volume XXV, Document 268, note 3, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v25
[^25]: Memorandum for the Record, CJCS Memo M-88-73, NSC/JCS meeting of October 24 and 25, 1973, from the records of Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969-1976, Volume XXV, Document 269, including notes 11 and 13, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v25
[^26]: Henry A. Kissinger, Years of Upheaval (1982), pages 588 to 589, as quoted in Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969-1976, Volume XXV, Document 269, note 10, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v25
[^27]: "Inquest: Egyptian spy suspect's death unexplained," report of the British coroner's ruling of July 14, 2010, reprinted at The Herald (heraldnet.com), https://www.heraldnet.com/?p=177620, and ynetnews, https://www.ynetnews.com/article/3919938