Against All Enemies by Richard A. Clarke

be involved in implementing that provision, because it was widely assumed the investigation would find that the biggest gunrunner to the apartheid regime would be Israel. Being the youngest Deputy Assistant Secretary of State at the time and having responsibility for intelligence analysis, I was given the hot potato and asked to run the investigation. I booked a flight to Tel Aviv.
    Sitting in Ivry’s office in the heart of the Kiriat, the walled-off complex in Tel Aviv that serves as Israel’s Pentagon, I laid out to the Director General of the Israeli Ministry of Defense what I knew and what I suspected about Israeli–South African cooperation. I omitted any reference to rumors of their cooperation on nuclear weapons, but mentioned joint development of long-range ballistic missiles and fighter aircraft. David was clearly uncomfortable, but I began to think that it was not just because some young American was sitting there accusing him and his government.
    â€œI am not saying we are doing these things, these rumors that you mention,” David began. “But we must have a defense industry; we cannot depend on other countries for our defense. A defense industry in a small country like ours has to export to stay alive, to keep costs in check. We do not sell to the Soviets or their allies, never. We have developed our own advanced weapons technologies. We have very smart, very capable engineers. America, however, will not buy our weapons. American defense contractors prevent the Pentagon from buying from us, they spread lies that what we have developed we stole from them. If we stole it from them, how is it they haven’t been able to develop some of these technologies that we have working, unmanned aerial vehicles, air-to-ground guided smart bombs, other things.”
    I had just met General Ivry, but I thought I saw a side to him that was not hinted at in the CIA profile of him as a hard-ass fighter pilot. “General, I have been to South Africa. Have you?”
    He hesitated. “Yes, yes I have.” Then he added a justification that did not admit to the weapons programs. “We have a very large Jewish community there that we have to insure is protected from the anti-Semitism.”
    â€œAnti-Semitism is a terrible, ugly thing, General. I saw a small piece of it growing up. My house was the only non-Jewish family in the neighborhood. I saw what people would do to the temple, I saw the harassment, heard the epithets. But, General, apartheid is the same thing. It’s racism. Don’t you think a government based on apartheid is a sin?”
    Ivry had been looking at his hands. Now he looked up and into my eyes. “Yes. Yes, I do.”
    The next week Ivry asked to appear before the Israeli cabinet. After the meeting the government of Israel announced that it was terminating any and all defense relations with South Africa and banning the import and export of defense items between the two countries, in keeping with the U.N. embargo.
    The U.S.-Israeli Strategic Cooperation had a slow start. The Israeli Defense Forces had been the ultimate loner all of its life, never having operated with another nation’s forces.
    The talks went slowly at first. Perhaps we could do an anti–submarine warfare exercise, I suggested. “Why would we want you to find our submarine?” came the bemused reply.
    Well, perhaps we could do an air-to-air exercise similar to Top Gun. “No, we will beat you and then your pilots will be mad at us.” I suggested that the U.S. be allowed to position military supplies in Israel for our forces to use in a crisis with the Soviets. “Certainly. And we will use them when we have a crisis too.” Eventually, however, we reached agreements.
    My counterpart in the U.S. military was a Navy admiral who, at first, did not seem schooled in diplomacy. When asked at our first social dinner in Tel Aviv whether he had ever been to Israel before, Admiral Jack