The Samson Option: Israel, America and the Bomb - Tapa dura

This book tells how Israel became a secret nuclear power, recounting Israel's clandestine nuclear mission: from the building of the Dimona reactor site in the remote Negev desert during the late 1950s, to the establishment by the late 1970s of a nuclear capability that targeted and threatened the USSR. The author tells of Israel's many secret agreements with America over the years, including the KH-11 satellite agreement which aided the bombing of Iraq's Osirak reactor in 1981, and the recruitment of Jonathan Pollard, Israel's first nuclear spy. He also reveals the truth behind Mossad's kidnapping of Mordecai Vanunu - the Israeli technician who broke the story of the Dimona reactor to the "Sunday Times" in 1986, only to be abducted in Rome and taken back to Israel to face trial. The book discloses how Vanunu was betrayed to the Israelis - and by whom. Seymour Hersh is the journalist who broke the prize-winning story of the My Lai massacre in South Vietnam in 1969, and who wrote "The Price of Power", an account of Kissinger's years in the Nixon White House.