# Seymour M. Hersh - Quotes: 15 - Author page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/seymour-m-hersh ## Books - [The Samson Option](https://www.leafyquotes.com/seymour-m-hersh/the-samson-option.md) — 15 quotes ## Recently added quotes > America's policy toward the Israeli arsenal, as we have seen in this book, was not just one of benign neglect: it was a conscious policy of ignoring reality. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/seymour-m-hersh/the-samson-option/americas-policy-toward.md) > The mission planners, anxious to avoid international protest, had gone to extremes to mask the operation: it was hoped that Iraq and the rest of the world would be unable to fix blame for the bombing on the unmarked \ Israeli Air Force planes. The attack had been carried out, as planned, in two minutes, and the likelihood of any detection was slight. But Menachem Begin, buoyed by the success, stunned his colleagues on June 8 by unilaterally announcing the Israeli coup.... On the next day, as Israel was besieged with protests, the prime minister defended the operation and vowed that Israel was ready to strike again, if necessary, to prevent an enemy from developing the atomic bomb. p. 9 [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/seymour-m-hersh/the-samson-option/the-mission-planners.md) > The Israeli bombing triggered worldwide protest, and a few days later the White House announced the suspension of a scheduled delivery of four more F-i6s, a continuation of the 1975 sale. Two months later, with little fanfare, the administration's real policy emerged: the suspension was lifted and the aircraft were delivered without incident. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/seymour-m-hersh/the-samson-option/the-israeli-bombing.md) > An aide in the White House situation room, which is staffed around the clock, telephoned to report that the Israelis had informed Washington that they had successfully bombed the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak, twelve miles southeast of Baghdad. Allen immediately telephoned Reagan... The President, he was told, had just boarded his helicopter for the trip back to the White House. "Get him off," Allen ordered. It was, after all, the new administration's first Middle East crisis.... "Mr. President, the Israelis just took out a nuclear reactor in Iraq with F-i6s." Israel, aided by long-term, low-interest American credits, had been authorized in 1975 to begin the purchase of seventy-five F-16s "for defensive purposes only." p. 8 [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/seymour-m-hersh/the-samson-option/an-aide-in-the.md) > The next morning, according to Allen, there was a meeting of Reagan's high command at which Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger proposed canceling the F-16 aircraft sale. Others at the meeting, including Vice President George Bush and Chief of Staff James A. Baker III, agreed that some sanctions against Israel were essential. Reagan glanced at Allen at one point and with a gesture made it clear he had no intention of taking any such step: "He rolled his eyes at me," Allen said. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/seymour-m-hersh/the-samson-option/the-next-morning.md) > In September 1988, Israel launched its first satellite into orbit, bringing it a huge step closer to intercontinental missiles and a satellite intelligence capability — no more Jonathan Pollards would be needed to steal America's secrets. Scientists at Z Division concluded that the rocket booster that launched the Israeli satellite produced enough thrust to deliver a small nuclear warhead to a target more than six thousand miles away. Epilogue p. 319 [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/seymour-m-hersh/the-samson-option/in-september-1988.md) > Israel, as the British may have suspected, did have a secret agenda in its constant maneuvering for KH-11 access, but that agenda only became clear to a few top Reagan administration policymakers in the fall of 1981. The unraveling began with a bombing raid in Iraq. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/seymour-m-hersh/the-samson-option/israel-as-the.md) > Israeli physicists are still at the cutting edge in weapons technology and involved, as are their American and Soviet counterparts, in intensive research into nuclear bomb-pumped X-ray lasers, hydrodynamics, and radiation transport — the next generation of weaponry. Epilogue p. 319 [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/seymour-m-hersh/the-samson-option/israeli-physicists-are.md) > There was controversy inside Israel, too, over the bombing, which had been debated at the highest levels of the Israeli government since late 1979. Yitzhak Hofi, the director of Mossad, and Major General Yehoshua Saguy, chief of military intelligence, both opposed the attack, primarily because there was no evidence that Iraq was as yet capable of building a bomb. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/seymour-m-hersh/the-samson-option/there-was-controversy.md) > That afternoon the State Department issued a statement, said to have been cleared by the President and Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig, Jr., formally condemning the bombing, "which cannot but seriously add to the already tense situation in the area." Nonetheless, recalled Allen, "Reagan was delighted . . . very satisfied" by the attack on the reactor at Osirak. "It showed that the Israelis had claws, a sense of strategy, and were able to take care of problems before they developed. Anyway, what did Israel hurt?" Haig similarly was forbearing in private. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/seymour-m-hersh/the-samson-option/that-afternoon-the.md) > None of this has ever been discussed in the open in Israel, or in the Knesset. Meanwhile, Israeli field commanders have accepted nuclear artillery shells and land mines as battlefield necessities: another means to an end. The basic target of Israel's nuclear arsenal has been and will continue to be its Arab neighbors. Should war break out in the Middle East again and should the Syrians and the Egyptians break through again as they did in 1973, or should any Arab nation fire missiles again at Israel, as Iraq did, a nuclear escalation, once unthinkable except as a last resort, would now be a strong probability. Never again. Epilogue p. 319 [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/seymour-m-hersh/the-samson-option/none-of-this.md) > It was a Sunday afternoon in early June 1981, and Richard V. Allen, President Ronald Reagan's national security adviser, was taking it easy, sipping iced tea on the sundeck of his suburban Virginia home and shuffling through a week's worth of unread cables, many of them highly classified. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/seymour-m-hersh/the-samson-option/it-was-a-sunday.md)