The spokesman of the State Department Dean Fischer made the statement on
behalf of the White House and the State Department on June 8, 1981 in a
public announcement at Washington, D.C. in reaction to the public
announcement made by Israel at 15:30 local time on 8 June 1981. Reagan was
informed three hours after the attack on an informal level. (Source: Jack
Anderson in Washington Post on 23 June 1981) The first link in indirect
speech to this I found on page 154 in the book "Two Minutes Over Baghdad" by
Amos Perlmutter, Michael I Handel and Uri Bar-Joseph, 2nd expanded edition,
London 1982, 2003. Following from that I found a couple of newspaper
articles from June 9, 1981 and later on quoting part of the announcement
directly and other indirectly. Some were referring only to "special weapons"
, or even to "weapon systems". The focus was in all on the US aircraft used
in the raid (F-16, F-15). But that sources are all on paper, no URLs.



The announcement is not in the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library at
http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/ and not on the official websites of the White
House or State Department. Both are - surprisingly - starting with the day
G. W. Bush took office, the time before has been transferred to other
websites that don't offer full search into the archives.



It is good possible that there were errors in the statement as the Pentagon
first thought that the Israelis had used PGMs instead of 'dumb' iron bombs.