MENACS
The Middle East
Next Generation
of Arms Control
Specialists Network

The Avner Cohen Collection features new materials regarding the development of the Israeli nuclear program, including interviews with key policymakers and scientists from Israel, the United States, and France that shed new light on the development of the Israeli nuclear program including:

• A video interview with Azarayahu “Sini” Arnan, which includes a dramatic eyewitness description of a closed-door ministerial consultation in which Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir overruled Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, halting preparations to use nuclear weapons during the 1973 War.
• An interview with Professor Avraham Hermoni who served as technical director at Israel’s Weapons Authority (RAFAEL) during the 1960s and oversaw some aspects of the nuclear project.
• An interview with Edwin (Ed) Kintner, a team member on at least two of the US teams that visited Dimona in the 1960s.
• An interview with Myer Feldman, a senior White House aide during the  Kennedy and Johnson administrations (1961-65), who was tasked with the special responsibility of handling Israel’s most sensitive matters on behalf of the U.S. presidents.
• An interview with Walt Rostow, National Security Advisor to President Johnson.
• Two separate interviews with Dr. Bertrand Goldschmidt and Dr. André Finkelstein, key figures at the French Commissariat a l'Energie Atomique (CEA), on the origins of French-Israeli nuclear relations and the Dimona deal with two.

Source: Wilson Center