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The Whistleblower of Dimona: Israel, Vanunu, and the Bomb. By Yoel Cohen. New York: Holmes and Meier, 2003. ISBN 0-8419-1409-5. Photographs. Notes. Index. Pp. x, 381. 824.95.
Yoel Cohen's The Wliistleblower of Dimona is a fascinating and worthy work on the intriguing story of the unacknowledged Israeli nuclear program, and the Israeli nuclear technician, Mordechai Vanunu, who exposed it in 1986. Cohen effectively and comprehensively integrates numerous threads about the Israeli nuclear program, Israeli intelligence operations, and the disclosure by the Sunday Times of London on 5 October 1986, which provided an unprecedented glimpse inside Israel's highly secretive nuclear program.
The detailed Times exposé, for which Vanunu, an ex-technician at the Israeli nuclear plant of Dimona, provided photographs and technical details, provided firm, but not conclusive, evidence that Israel possessed unclear weapons. While waiting for the Sunday Times to verity his story in late September 1986, Vanunu...