Final_Judgment

[404] Final Judgment 501
long-time aide] Walt Elder. 'He wanted permission to fly U-2s over the test
site and was turned down.' The CIA director wasn't daunted; he next
floated 'the idea of what if we got in and took out the Chinese capability.'
One thought was to use unmarked bombers to strike at the Chinese, thus
avoiding identification." 993
However, as we have seen, President Johnson rejected the plan—and
the advice from both the Soviets and McCone. As a consequence of
Johnson's decision not to act, on October 18, 1964, less than a year after
JFK's assassination, China exploded its first nuclear bomb.
It is more than of passing interest to note that CIA Director McCone
who was, according to Hersh, "committed to the concept of nuclear nonproliferation,"
994 and urging the attack on the Chinese nuclear facilities, was
also one of the primary forces encouraging JFK to oppose Israel's nuclear
proliferation. As we saw in Chapter 5, it was out of McCone's office at the
CIA that the Kennedy administration conducted its secret surveillance of
Israel's nuclear bomb production program. Kennedy clearly trusted
longtime Kennedy family friend McCone—but not the CIA as an
institution—to handle this delicate, top-secret intelligence operation.
JFK was probably aware that, as we noted in Chapter 8, Israel's loyalist
at the CIA, James Angleton, had been providing Israel with secret nuclear
information in the late 1950s well before JFK himself came into office.
What is even more of interest, however, is that JFK' s ally McCone had been
fighting Israel's nuclear bomb program even before he accepted the post of
CIA director in the Kennedy administration after JFK fired CIA Director
Allen Dulles in 1961 following the Bay of Pigs disaster.
During the previous Eisenhower administration, McCone had served on
the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) and in 1960, when Eisenhower's
term was coming to a close and McCone turned in his resignation from the
AEC, it was McCone who first leaked the story to reporter John Finney that
Israel was building a nuclear reactor to produce plutonium. 995
The highly controversial revelation was published on the front page of
the New York Times on December 19, 1960. 996 According to Finney,
"McCone was mad, sputtering mad," 997 at Israel, saying "They lied to us." 998
According to McCone's long-time aide Walt Elder, "He figured, 'I'm
through [at the AEC] and this is my duty—to let the public know about
this." 999 Another issue, according to Elder, was what Hersh described as
"McCone's frustration at the constant Israeli lying" 1000 about their nuclear
development program.
But McCone, evidently, was more than just frustrated. According to
Elder: "There was an impetus to do them in." 1001 Strong words indeed: "an
impetus to do them in." One can only imagine the response of the hardnosed
Israelis and their allies in Washington to learn of McCone's
opposition. And when McCone later went on to serve as JFK's CIA
Director and was placed in charge of monitoring Israel' s nuclear