---
category: "Intelligence & Government"
tags:
  - Person
  - Nuclear
  - Israel
summary: "Deputy assistant secretary of state for commercial affairs who was pressured by Israelis to help the U.S. accept Israel's nuclear weapons."
---

Eugene M. Braderman was a deputy assistant secretary of state for commercial affairs. In early 1967, he approached [[William N. Dale]], then deputy chief of mission at the American embassy in [[Tel Aviv]], looking "ashen." Braderman reported that one of the Israelis at a party had told him that his primary duty, as an American Jew, was to help the [[United States]] government accept Israeli nuclear weapons. Braderman, agitated, stated, "I'm an American first, not a Jew first," and told Dale to do whatever was right with the information. Dale, however, understood that Braderman's story had nowhere to go and did nothing with it.[^1]

### Footnotes

[^1]: Hersh, Seymour M. *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy*. Random House, 1991. Chapter 12.