Months before his assassination, Kennedy wrote a strongly worded letter to Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, demanding international inspections of the Dimona reactor. This followed Kennedy’s 1961 directive for American inspections to verify that Israel was not developing nuclear weapons. However, Israel staged fake control rooms and dummy installations to conceal its efforts from American scrutiny.
After Kennedy’s assassination, President LBJ allowed Israel to covertly pursue nuclear weapons by halting investigations into the Dimona reactor. To this day, Israel refuses to acknowledge its nuclear arsenal and will not sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.