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Dec. 14, 2020
There is something fascinating about decades-old, secret government documents. Sometimes the big secrets become unimportant, almost trivial, over time, because the lifespan of state secrets is usually short and time sensitive. But that’s not the case when the government decides that certain subjects have an unlimited lifespan. This is true of the dark history of Israel’s nuclear program.
Almost the only way in which historians can learn about Israel’s nuclear history is from official documents belonging to other countries, and the United States in particular. In recent years the U.S. National Security Archive made available several formerly classified documents regarding the subject of Dimona, at least one of which not only sheds new light on the old secret and its guardians, but also leaves us today with a bit of cynicism and irony.