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1991 nonfiction book by Seymour Hersh From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy is a 1991 book by Seymour Hersh. It details the history of Israel's nuclear weapons program and its effects on Israel-American relations. The "Samson Option" of the book's title refers to the nuclear strategy whereby Israel would launch a massive nuclear retaliatory strike if the state itself was being overrun, just as the Biblical figure Samson is said to have pushed apart the pillars of a Philistine temple, bringing down the roof and killing himself and thousands of Philistines who had gathered to see him humiliated.
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| Author | Seymour Hersh |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Non-fiction |
| Publisher | Random House |
Publication date | 1991 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Print (Hardback) |
| Pages | 362 pp |
| ISBN | 0-394-57006-5 |
| OCLC | 24609770 |
| 355.8/25119/095694 20 | |
| LC Class | UA853.I8 H47 1991 |
According to The New York Times, Hersh relied on Ari Ben-Menashe, a former Israeli government employee who says he worked for Israeli intelligence, for much of his information on the state of the Israeli nuclear program.[1] Hersh did not travel to Israel to conduct interviews for the book, believing that he might have been subject to the Israeli Military Censor. Nevertheless, he did interview Israelis in the United States and Europe during his three years of research.[1]
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Publisher Random House says, on the flaps of the dust jacket, that The Samson Option "reveals many startling events," among them:
The American Library Association book review lists additional "significant revelations" in the book:[2]
The New Scientist book review lists specific examples of U.S. official's suppression of information:
The review also notes the revelation that U.S. President John F. Kennedy attempted to persuade Israel to abandon its nuclear program, and angry notes were exchanged between Kennedy and Israeli Premier David Ben-Gurion in 1963.
Other allegations in The Samson Option include:
Yale professor Gaddis Smith reviewed the book for Foreign Affairs, calling it a "fascinating work of investigative history" that succeeded in sifting "hard fact from the decade's rumors and half-confirmed reports" on the Israeli program.[11] New Scientist's review stated that the book "breaks new ground" by revealing that "US officials helped to suppress the information they gathered on Dimona," i.e., Israel's Negev Nuclear Research Center.[12] The book spent three weeks on Publishers Weekly's bestseller list.
Some Jewish and Israeli publications were much more critical of the book. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee's newsletter "Near East Report" said that the book has "many inaccuracies,"[13] and The Jerusalem Report said that it was "yet another pretentious, self-serving and therefore unreliable effort to stir up a controversy for its own sake and make a fast buck."[14]
Hersh stated in The Samson Option that the foreign editor of the British Daily Mirror, Nicholas Davies, told the Mossad in 1986 the name of the hotel in which Israeli nuclear technician Mordechai Vanunu was hiding.[15] Vanunu was in the process of revealing information on the Israeli nuclear program to The Sunday Times, but was subsequently kidnapped and smuggled to Israel by the Mossad. Hersh further stated that Davies was involved in Israeli arms sales, and that his boss Robert Maxwell also had ties to the Mossad. He received this information from Ben-Menashe and from Janet Fielding, Davies' former wife.[16]
Davies and Maxwell rejected the allegations, calling them "a complete and total lie" and a "ludicrous, a total invention" respectively.[15] On October 23, 1991 they filed a libel suit against the book's British publisher, Faber & Faber Ltd., and two days later they filed another libel suit against Hersh himself.[17] Davies did not pursue the case, and Maxwell died the following month. In August 1994 the Mirror Group settled Maxwell's suit by paying Hersh and Faber & Faber damages, covering their legal costs, and issuing a formal apology to Hersh.[18]
Two British MPs asked for further investigations into the book's revelations. Labour Party MP George Galloway proposed an independent tribunal to investigate the extent of foreign intelligence penetration of Maxwell's Mirror Group.[15] Conservative Party MP Rupert Allason asked for the Department of Trade and Industry to see if potential arms sales to Iran had violated a UN embargo.[15]
In The Samson Option Hersh cites Ben-Menashe and an anonymous Israeli source in stating that US intelligence information stolen by convicted spy Jonathan Pollard had been "sanitized" and given by Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir directly to the Soviet Union. This information was said to include US data and satellite pictures which were used by US forces for nuclear targeting against the USSR. These claims were subsequently denied by the military aide to Shamir, the then Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin, the Soviet official who was said to have received the information, and a Washington official.[19]
Because Hersh named Ben-Menashe as a major source of the book, other allegations by the former Israeli official were granted greater attention.[20] Among other things, Menashe had claimed that Robert Gates, then in Senate hearings to be confirmed as the director of the CIA, had been involved in "illegal arms shipments to Iraq" during the 1980s.[20]
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