4.2 KiB
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Brzezinski dismissed suggestions from Prime Minister Begin that the U.S. | 1928-03-28 | 2017-05-26 | Warsaw, Poland |
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Zbigniew Brzezinski was the United States National Security Adviser during the Jimmy Carter administration, playing a key role in foreign policy decisions during a period of significant Middle Eastern upheaval.
Iran Policy
Brzezinski dismissed suggestions from Menachem Begin that the U.S. should support Mehdi Bazargan government in Iran against the growing Iraq threat. Instead, Brzezinski and the Carter administration believed Iran should be allowed to disintegrate until a U.S.-supported leader emerged.1
VELA Satellite Nuclear Incident
On September 22, 1979, a VELA Satellite recorded two distinctive bright flashes of light from a region of about 3,000 miles in diameter that included the southern Atlantic, the Indian Ocean, the southern tip of Africa and part of Antarctica. The signal was a double flash of the kind associated with a nuclear explosion; a presidential science panel later judged it probably not nuclear.2 This event, suspected to be a joint Israeli-South African nuclear test, was reported to Brzezinski and President Jimmy Carter. Seymour Hersh wrote that Gerald G. Oplinger, Brzezinski's aide for global issues, recalled that Brzezinski was present at an urgent meeting in the White House situation room where the Central Intelligence Agency and Defense Intelligence Agency stated that the odds were at least ninety percent that it had been a nuclear explosion, and that Brzezinski had little to say during this meeting.3 The summary of conclusions of the mini-Special Coordination Committee meeting held in the Situation Room on September 22, 1979 lists Henry Owen (chairman), William E. Odom, Jerry Schecter and Gerald Funk for the National Security Council. Owen "summed up the evidence as follows: Strong positive evidence. No negative evidence." The summary records that the meeting began with an intelligence briefing.4
In September 1977 Brzezinski wrote to the secretary of state that, in response to Ambassador Samuel Lewis' cable from Tel Aviv, the president "stated that it is obvious that past cooperation is excluded, and that we shouldn't push it any more for now." Gerard C. Smith replied on September 17, 1977 that the response was confined to the present and that "we could find it difficult to explain why we had accepted so reserved a response."5
Footnotes
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Ben-Menashe, Ari. Profits of War: Inside the Secret U.S.-Israeli Arms Network. Sheridan Square Press, 1992 (TrineDay reprint, 2015). ↩︎
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Richelson, Jeffrey T., ed., "The Vela Incident: Nuclear Test or Meteoroid?" National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 190, May 5, 2006, narrative. https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB190/index.htm ; Foreign Relations of the United States, 1977-1980, vol. XVI, Southern Africa, Document 362, September 23, 1979 ("south Atlantic, southern Indian Ocean, southern Africa, or Antarctica"). https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1977-80v16/d362 ↩︎
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Hersh, Seymour M. The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy. Random House, 1991. Chapter 20. ↩︎
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Foreign Relations of the United States, 1977-1980, vol. XVI, Southern Africa, Document 361. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1977-80v16/d361 ↩︎
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Brzezinski, Zbigniew, memorandum to the Secretary of State, "Possible Israeli-South African Nuclear Connection," September 13, 1977, Secret, and Smith, Gerard C., memorandum to Brzezinski, September 17, 1977. Documents 2 and 3 in Burr, William, and Avner Cohen, National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 570, December 6, 2016. https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/nuclear-vault/2016-12-06/vela-incident-south-atlantic-mystery-flash-september-1979-raised-questions-about-nuclear-test ↩︎