The_Info_Web/10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Walworth Barbour.md

category	tags	summary	born	died	location
Intelligence & Government	Person Nuclear Israel	Walworth Barbour was the American ambassador to Israel from 1961 to 1973, serving longer in one post than all but three other American ambassadors.	1908-06-04	1982-07-21	Cambridge, Massachusetts

Walworth Barbour was the American ambassador to Israel from 1961 to 1973, serving longer in one post than all but three other American ambassadors. He was a compelling presence, described as a tall, shy, hugely overweight diplomat with a gluttonous appetite and acute emphysema. He constantly sprayed his throat with a vaporizer, wore yellowing white suits with brown-and-white shoes, and walked with a shambling gait. Barbour spoke no Hebrew and rarely attended educational, cultural, or social events, yet he was beloved by Israel's leadership.¹

Barbour's long assignment was a testament to his understanding of when and when not to accept every Israeli assertion at face value, and his willingness to operate the American embassy as a subsidiary, if necessary, of the Israeli foreign ministry. He often reminded his questioning subordinates that he was a President's man with a personal mandate, not a servant of the State Department.¹

In his first six years as ambassador, Barbour rarely interfered with the job of those working in his embassy, and some of the most accurate reporting on Dimona was forwarded to Washington, D.C.. However, these reports had no impact and disappeared into the bureaucratic maze. After the 1967 Six-Day War, he ordered his staff to stop reporting on nuclear weapons in Israel, over the objection of one key aide. His primary assignment was to insulate President Lyndon B. Johnson and his men from facts that would compel action regarding Israel's nuclear program.¹

On June 5, 1967, Barbour and the presidential special counsel Harry C. McPherson, Jr. met Major General Meir Amit in Tel Aviv; Walt Rostow's covering note to Johnson reported Amit's argument that there had been artillery fire on three Israeli villages and air incursions and that the Israelis had then "punched all the buttons," and added: "At least that's his story."² Hersh writes that Barbour spent much of the war in the Israeli war room, and quotes a cable he sent hours after the attack on the USS Liberty Incident: "Urge strongly that we too avoid publicity."³

On June 27, 1967, Barbour sent telegram 4311 from Tel Aviv, answering a State Department request of June 24 for an estimate of the war's effect on Israeli nuclear and missile policy. He wrote that the embassy had not discussed the subject with Israelis since the crisis began, that Israeli officials had not raised it in his many talks with them, and that there had been no press speculation. He wrote that Israelis "who have technical capability to build bomb, would, it may be argued, be foolish not to produce extra-conventional weapons against enemies whose total conventional military capabilities conceivably could outstrip Israel's within another decade," that if Israel achieved a durable peace "any reason for, and indeed any rationale for, going nuclear would be undermined," and that he did not believe there was "any compelling reason at present time for change in" the government's policy of abstinence from nuclear weapons and missile production.⁴

Barbour's closest associates were senior officials of the Israeli government, including Golda Meir and Major General Aharon Yariv. He shared the taboo of not discussing nuclear weapons with outsiders. However, it was Barbour's men who reported before the June 1967 war that Israel had completed its basic weapons design and was capable of manufacturing warheads for deployment on missiles.¹

In 1970, Barbour made a rare public appearance, sharing a podium with Prime Minister Golda Meir at the opening of an American school in Tel Aviv. After his retirement in 1973, he became a board member of the American branch of Bank Leumi, the Israeli state bank, a move that confounded and distressed many of his former colleagues in the Foreign Service who saw it as a conflict of interest.¹

Upon the inauguration of President Richard Nixon in January 1969, Barbour became even less interested in Dimona, effectively exorcising the issue. He famously told a senior American intelligence officer who briefed him on Israel's nuclear weapons program, "Gentlemen, I don't believe a word of it," explaining that if he acknowledged it, he would have to go to the President, and the President did not want bad news.¹

Barbour's support for Israel was profound and heartfelt. He remained on the board of Bank Leumi until his death, seemingly unconcerned with his peers' opinions.¹

Footnotes

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

2. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964-1968, vol. XIX, Document 158, editors' note on telegram 3937 from Tel Aviv, June 5, 1967. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v19/d158 ↩︎

3. Hersh, Seymour M. The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy. Random House, 1991. Chapter 12, pp. 167-168, quoting a declassified cable in the LBJ Library. Sole source for the cable text. ↩︎

4. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964-1968, vol. XIX, Document 326, Telegram 4311 from the Embassy in Israel (Barbour) to the Department of State, June 27, 1967. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v19/d326 ↩︎