Obama Administration Releases Classified Report on Israel's Nuclear Program

  Investor's Business Daily reports that the Defense Department has quietly and deliberately declassified and released a top-secret 1987 report on Israel's nuclear program.  IBD editorializes:

The same administration that refused to divulge what's in its soon-to-be-concluded nuclear "deal" with Iran, last month stealthily released a top-secret 1987 report on Israel's nuclear program — information that might be used by Israel's enemies.

IBD quotes from the reporter who initially broke the story, Michael Karpin in The Jewish Daily Forward online. Karpin writes:

I have some knowledge about the build-up process of Israel’s nuclear capacity and after reading the report in question I must express my astonishment: I have never seen an official American document disclosing such extensive revelation on subjects that until now were regarded by both administrations as unspeakable secrets.

Karpin writes that the report's authors "drew particular attention to the development and progression of Israel’s nuclear infrastructure and research labs."

The report was compiled by the Institute for Defense Analysis (IDA), under a contract with the U.S. Government. The IDA sent its engineers and physicists not only to Israeli installations, but also to military laboratories, factories and private companies of NATO countries. Curiously, and perhaps sinisterly, the Defense Department only declassified the information assembled by the IDA team on Israel, not on the NATO allies.

The timing and selectivity of the report suggest that once again the Obama Administration is retaliating for Israel's opposition to U.S. negotiations with Iran over the Iranian nuclear weapons program. However, this goes beyond the pale--the deliberate release of previously classified information that certainly has the potential to be used against Israel, both diplomatically and militarily, is an outrageous breach of trust.