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Malcolm Toon was the U.S. |
Malcolm Toon was the U.S. Ambassador to Israel. In 1976, after Carl E. Duckett inadvertently revealed that the Central Intelligence Agency estimated Israel's nuclear arsenal to total at least ten warheads, Toon was summoned by Yigal Allon, then Israeli Foreign Minister, to discuss the disclosure. Toon reported that Allon was "very disturbed" and asked rhetorically why the Central Intelligence Agency had done it. Toon dutifully explained that Duckett's remarks were supposed to have been off-the-record. When Toon asked Allon if Duckett's conclusion was accurate, Allon replied, "It is not true."1
A year later, after Jimmy Carter's election, Toon told a delegation of thirteen visiting American senators that he was sure Israel had the bomb. He complained that it was "indecent for Israel to keep us out of Dimona," but recalled the bureaucratic response was "Don't stir up the waters."1
Footnotes
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Hersh, Seymour M. The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy. Random House, 1991. Chapter 19. ↩︎