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Nuclear Ambiguity
Libro usado en buenas condiciones, por su antiguedad podria contener señales normales de uso
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Published January 1, 1992
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August 31, 2017
Israel's nuclear weapons capacity had been an open secret since the 1960s, so when Mordechai Vanunu, a low-level technician at the Dimona research reactor site, fetched up at the London "Sunday Times" in 1986 with more than 50 photographs proving its existence, the only real surprises were the fact that he'd managed to take the pictures in the first place, and the number of viable warheads they implied had been produced.
Unsurprisingly, the Israeli authorities were somewhat put out by this turn of events. As this book rather tediously explores, some commentators concluded that they had actually gained from it by having their military strength confirmed to enemies without actually having to say anything themselves, and some went further by assuming Vanunu to be an Israeli secret agent charged with that very task. However, they clearly wanted to get their renegade former employee back. He had, after all, engaged in espionage by taking the photos and trying to sell, and, having signed the equivalent of an Official Secrets Act, he was also liable to a charge of treason. Their problem was that he was in a friendly foreign country with no extradition treaty.
Vanunu was an unstable man. Although he had been positively vetted for his job at Dimona, astonishingly the internal security service Shin Bet had no mechanisms for monitoring his continuing reliability, and the physical security checks at Dimona itself were ridiculously lax. Thus, when he began associating with PLO sympathisers, and applied to join the Israeli Communist Party, this did not appear on anyone's radar. He was able to smuggle a camera into his workplace hidden among his lunchtime sandwiches, and to obtain sole access to highly secret parts of the plant, despite his junior status, with no further security checks. Nuclear secrets aside, the sheer embarrassment of such ineptitude was probably enough in itself to make his government want to retrieve and imprison him. After he was laid off from his job he moved to Australia where, looking for something to believe in, he fell among evangelical Christians. It was to some of them that he spoke of his access to classified information, and it was a casual handyman at the church - a fantasist and would-be international journalist called Oscar Guerrero - who persuaded him to go to London where he, Guerrero, would act as his agent in selling the story and photos for a good price.
So far, so farcical. The "Sunday Times" agreed to consider the material and, as a serious newspaper, spent a good deal of time verifying the credibility of Vanunu's claims. In the meantime, however, the Israeli external security service, Mossad, had sent agents to recover the renegade. One of these, a young woman, enticed Vanunu against the advice of his newspaper 'minders' to spend a few days away with her, on a promise of sex. She took him to Italy, where he was seized, drugged, and put on a boat to Israel. Having been held incognito for several days, he was eventually brought to court and, although prevented from speaking to waiting reporters, managed to communicate the bare details of his abduction through a message scrawled on the palm of his hand held up to a car window. He was tried, found guilty, and sentenced to 18 years' imprisonment.
All this is now history, and the essentials of the case are as summarised in the three paragraphs above. Vanunu has served his sentence and is now at liberty, albeit circumscribed by conditions designed to prevent further breaches of security. However, this book was published only six years after the events it describes, and as such concerns itself with details, speculation, and digressions that have, frankly, been shown to be irrelevant. Even a major issue at the time, the legitimacy of 'rendering' a suspect against their will from one country to another, has been overshadowed by subsequent circumstances.
Even at the time of publication, this account might well have appeared unnecessarily padded, with lengthy and barely-comprehensible attention given to such sideshows as the alleged relationship of Mirror Newspapers proprietor Robert Maxwell to the Mossad (the "Sunday Mirror" having also been offered Guerrero's 'scoop' and turned it down). That said, almost by accident there is enduring interest in the bizarre conclusion of a Roman examining magistrate that Vanunu was himself a Mossad spy, which demonstrates in its reasoning not only that Ockham's Razor is not readily available to the Italian judiciary, but also that in the clandestine world of espionage and secret intelligence, the truth remains far odder than fiction.
Unsurprisingly, the Israeli authorities were somewhat put out by this turn of events. As this book rather tediously explores, some commentators concluded that they had actually gained from it by having their military strength confirmed to enemies without actually having to say anything themselves, and some went further by assuming Vanunu to be an Israeli secret agent charged with that very task. However, they clearly wanted to get their renegade former employee back. He had, after all, engaged in espionage by taking the photos and trying to sell, and, having signed the equivalent of an Official Secrets Act, he was also liable to a charge of treason. Their problem was that he was in a friendly foreign country with no extradition treaty.
Vanunu was an unstable man. Although he had been positively vetted for his job at Dimona, astonishingly the internal security service Shin Bet had no mechanisms for monitoring his continuing reliability, and the physical security checks at Dimona itself were ridiculously lax. Thus, when he began associating with PLO sympathisers, and applied to join the Israeli Communist Party, this did not appear on anyone's radar. He was able to smuggle a camera into his workplace hidden among his lunchtime sandwiches, and to obtain sole access to highly secret parts of the plant, despite his junior status, with no further security checks. Nuclear secrets aside, the sheer embarrassment of such ineptitude was probably enough in itself to make his government want to retrieve and imprison him. After he was laid off from his job he moved to Australia where, looking for something to believe in, he fell among evangelical Christians. It was to some of them that he spoke of his access to classified information, and it was a casual handyman at the church - a fantasist and would-be international journalist called Oscar Guerrero - who persuaded him to go to London where he, Guerrero, would act as his agent in selling the story and photos for a good price.
So far, so farcical. The "Sunday Times" agreed to consider the material and, as a serious newspaper, spent a good deal of time verifying the credibility of Vanunu's claims. In the meantime, however, the Israeli external security service, Mossad, had sent agents to recover the renegade. One of these, a young woman, enticed Vanunu against the advice of his newspaper 'minders' to spend a few days away with her, on a promise of sex. She took him to Italy, where he was seized, drugged, and put on a boat to Israel. Having been held incognito for several days, he was eventually brought to court and, although prevented from speaking to waiting reporters, managed to communicate the bare details of his abduction through a message scrawled on the palm of his hand held up to a car window. He was tried, found guilty, and sentenced to 18 years' imprisonment.
All this is now history, and the essentials of the case are as summarised in the three paragraphs above. Vanunu has served his sentence and is now at liberty, albeit circumscribed by conditions designed to prevent further breaches of security. However, this book was published only six years after the events it describes, and as such concerns itself with details, speculation, and digressions that have, frankly, been shown to be irrelevant. Even a major issue at the time, the legitimacy of 'rendering' a suspect against their will from one country to another, has been overshadowed by subsequent circumstances.
Even at the time of publication, this account might well have appeared unnecessarily padded, with lengthy and barely-comprehensible attention given to such sideshows as the alleged relationship of Mirror Newspapers proprietor Robert Maxwell to the Mossad (the "Sunday Mirror" having also been offered Guerrero's 'scoop' and turned it down). That said, almost by accident there is enduring interest in the bizarre conclusion of a Roman examining magistrate that Vanunu was himself a Mossad spy, which demonstrates in its reasoning not only that Ockham's Razor is not readily available to the Italian judiciary, but also that in the clandestine world of espionage and secret intelligence, the truth remains far odder than fiction.
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