On 21 November 1963, two days before John F Kennedy was shot in Dallas, one of his closest advisers sat through a tense lunch with an Israeli minister and quietly wrote down what Washington dared not say in public. That memorandum, drafted by National Security Council advisor Robert Komer ("Blowtorch Bob"), reads today like a warning note from a different era, a moment when a US president still tried to keep some distance from a small client state that demanded everything and offered secrecy in return.

Komer describes an Israel already furious that the United States would not simply sabotage a United Nations debate on Palestinian refugees to its liking. The Israeli side accuses American diplomats of "lying" and "active lobbying" against an Israeli resolution, as though Washington's task at the UN were not to balance conflicting claims in a decolonising region but to function as Israel's parliamentary whip. In response, Komer sketches a picture that has become brutally familiar in 2026. He sees a government whose "consistent policy" is to push the United States into an openly pro-Israeli position, regardless of the consequences with Arab societies, regardless of the opportunity it hands to rival powers, regardless of the long-term cost in blood and legitimacy. All of these phrases and characterisations such as "lying," "active lobbying," the description of Israel's "consistent policy" since 1948 and US concern over its impact on Arab relations and Soviet influence, are drawn directly from and faithfully summarised in Komer's November 21, 1963 memo. (full memo).[2001-2009.state]

In the memo, the United States is already Israel's "guarantor, banker, and strongest friend," expected to subsidise the state, shield it diplomatically, and fight its wars if necessary. Yet even at this early stage, Washington is kept in the dark about the most dangerous files.

Komer writes with unconcealed frustration about Dimona (Israel's nuclear site) and about Israeli missile purchases from France. The Americans are footing the bill and will one day be asked to intervene militarily, but they are denied basic clarity on whether their protégé is quietly assembling a nuclear delivery system in defiance of non-proliferation principles that Washington claims to uphold everywhere else.

All of this is grounded in the memo's passages where Komer calls the US Israel's "guarantor, banker, and strongest friend," complains that Israel is "consistently coy" about defence plans, explicitly cites the way Israel handled the Dimona reactor as creating "real suspicion" of a nuclear weapons intent, and notes Rabin's refusal to say whether Israel is acquiring missiles from France. The broader context of the Kennedy–Dimona 1961-1962 clashes can be found in Avner Cohen and William Burr's report available on the Wilson Center Website – "Kennedy, Dimona and the Nuclear Proliferation Problem".