To: Sojourner Smith who wrote (9492 ) 4/7/2003 10:09:51 PM From: Spytrdr Read Replies (2) | Respond to hopefully, yes.After decades of living among hostile neighbors, Israel has yet to be attacked by an enemy using nuclear, chemical or biological weapons. One reason may be the horrific plan some claim Israel drew up to prevent such an attack. The plan was called the Samson Option. An astute investigative journalist and student of history chalked a dramatic potential solution to the volatile equation on the blackboard - a decade ago.a nuclear escalation, once unthinkable except as a last resort, would now be a strong possibility .""The Samson Option." newsmax.com The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy amazon.com Ever since the early 1950s, Israel has had one military eye firmly fixed on atomic weapons as a means of salvation, using them primarily as a military threat for both offensive and defensive purposes. Hersh, a Pulitzer Prize winner, expounds on the steady but quiet growth of an Israeli nuclear industry that proved so successful that Israel was able to coerce several U.S. administrations into doing its bidding. He also explores in depth Israeli access to U.S. intelligence satellite technologies that resulted from inattention by Washington leaders as well as from the four years of insider spying by Jonathan Jay Pollard. He reveals that the Soviet Union has been targeted by Israeli nuclear warheads since the mid-1980s. Unlike several other recent exposes of Israeli intelligence apparatus (Ian Black and Benny Morris's Israel's Secret Wars, LJ 8/91, and Andrew and Leslie Cockburn's Dangerous Liaison, LJ 6/15/91), Hersh follows the threads of a specific intelligence focus while highlighting U.S. policies that ultimately ignore the very real presence of the Israeli nuclear arsenal. This incredibly well-written book should be in every collection.
