In a story headlined "CIA: We said back in 1974 that Israel had nuclear weapons," the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported on a 1974 Special National Intelligence Assesment, "Prospects for further proliferation of nuclear weapons," declassified in the week of Pres. Bush's trip to the Middle East, and barely one month after the public mention of a National Intelligence Estimate on Iran's nuclear programs.
Before getting to the contents of the SNIE below, it is important to understand the significance of this document. A National Intelligence Estimate, or a Special NIE, represents the collective views not merely of the CIA, but of the entire intelligence community. It is the executive branch's "party line" on the intelligence question being discussed, and it often (but not always, as we all now know) is the product of considerable discussion and debate.
The Haaretz story mentions that "the CIA was asked Thursday via e-mail about the strange coincidence of the document's release a mere month after the publication of its ... NIE on Iran's nuclear weapons program. It did not respond by deadline."
The document represents an official U.S. judgment that Israel possesses nuclear weapons, and the public release of the document is the first time, to my knowledge, that the government has ever openly acknowledged this.
The central conclusion in 1974 was that "Israel already has produced nuclear weapons." According to Haaretz, "This analysis was based on 'Israeli acquisition of large quantities of uranium,' in part covertly; on Israel's ambiguous efforts to enrich uranium; and on the huge investment in the 'Jericho' surface-to-surface missile 'designed to accommodate nuclear warheads.' Short of a grave threat to the nation's existence, Israel was not expected to confirm its suspected capability 'by nuclear testing or by threats of use.'"
After Bush's unvarnished negative remarks on Israeli West Bank settlements and this release about Israeli nukes, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that U.S. declaratory policy has shifted in ways intended to pressure the Israelis to be more accommodating on both proliferation matters and in negotiations about a Palestinian state and its attributes.
The Haaretz article also contains an interesting discussion of what can only be described as a disinformation campaign by the State Department in 1975. That year Representative Allan Steelman queried the Department about whether Israel had nuclear weapons. In responding to him, State Dept. officials sought to downgrade the significance of the SNIE, portraying it merely as an internal CIA "project." This obscures the fact that the Estimate's conclusions were endorsed by the entire intelligence community, and that the Director of Central Intelligence was head of the inter-agency committee that approved this document.
So misleading Congress is not exactly new. And in this case, they clearly got away with it for over 30 years.