Researcher William Burr said the memo on Israel's nuclear program sheds light on a little known area of US intelligence.
"For a long time, the US kept secret its assessment of the status of the Israeli nuclear program," said Burr, senior analyst at the National Security Archives at George Washington University. The paper shows "Israel could develop nuclear weapons fairly quickly, something that isn't widely known."
In the memo, Sisco urged Secretary of State William Rogers to try to curb Israel's ambitions before it was too late.
"If this process continues, and it becomes generally assumed that Israel has the bomb, it will have far-reaching and even dangerous implications for the US," Sisko wrote.
Among those dangers: "Israel's possession of nuclear weapons would do nothing to deter Arab guerrilla warfare or reduce Arab irrationality; on the contrary it would add a dangerous new element to Arab-Israeli hostility with added risk of confrontation between the US and USSR."
More on the documents released on Wednesday here.
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