The 1965 numec affair ; uranium weapons grade went missing in penn..

[Bernice Moore]

GAO REPORT ON THE 1965 NUMEC AFFAIR DECLASSIFIED

In 1965, over 200 pounds of weapons-grade highly enriched uranium went missing from the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation (NUMEC) plant in Apollo, Pennsylvania. Circumstantial evidence and popular lore suggested that the material had been clandestinely diverted to Israel for use in its nuclear weapons program, either with or without the acquiescence of the U.S. Government.

A secret 1978 review of the episode (pdf) that was performed for Congress by the General Accounting Office (as it was then known) has recently been declassified and released. But instead of resolving the mystery of the missing uranium, it only highlights it.

The Department of Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission cooperated fully with the GAO, but the CIA and the FBI did not. "GAO was continually denied necessary reports and documentation on the alleged incident by the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.... The lack of access to CIA and FBI documents made it impossible for GAO to corroborate or check all information it obtained," the GAO report said.

"Based on its review of available documents held by DOE and discussions with those involved in and knowledgeable about the NUMEC incident, GAO cannot say whether or not there was a diversion of material from the NUMEC facility.... Agents from the FBI involved in the current investigation told GAO that while there exists circumstantial information which could lead an individual to conclude that a diversion occurred, there is no substantive proof of a diversion."

"All investigations of the alleged incident ended with no definitive answer and GAO found no evidence that the 200 pounds of nuclear material has been located," the GAO said.

The GAO report was obtained by the Institute for Research: Middle East Policy, a group critical of pro-Israel advocacy in the U.S. See "Nuclear Diversion in the U.S.? 13 Years of Contradiction and Confusion," U.S. General Accounting Office report EMD-79-8, December 18, 1978.


NUCLEAR NONPROLIFERATION, SAFEGUARDS, AND ENRICHMENT

"South Africa repeatedly has stated its commitment to nuclear nonproliferation since it ended its nuclear weapons program and signed the Nonproliferation Treaty in July 1991," observes a brief new report from the DNI Open Source Center, which also notes that "South Africa has a history of backing Iran's 'peaceful' nuclear development." See "South Africa's Nuclear Nonproliferation Posture Remains Consistent" (pdf), Open Source Center Report, 9 April 2010.

"The implementation of international safeguards at the Rokkasho Reprocessing Plant (RRP) in Japan has been the largest challenge the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has faced to date," according to a recent report on the development of nuclear safeguards. See "Lessons Learned in International Safeguards -- Implementation of Safeguards at the Rokkasho Reprocessing Plant" (pdf), Oak Ridge National Laboratory, December 2009.

An overview of uranium enrichment programs around the world was prepared last year for the Department of Energy, based exclusively on open source information. See "Profile of World Uranium Enrichment Programs - 2009" (pdf), Oak Ridge National Laboratory, April 2009.


CORRECTION RE: OTA FUNDING REQUEST

In a story yesterday about efforts to revive the congressional Office of Technology Assessment (OTA), I wrote that "For the second year in a row, Rep. Rush Holt has requested that $35 million be allocated to restore OTA." That was not correct.

Rep. Holt actually requested $2.5 million for an initial appropriation in Fiscal Year 2011 to get OTA restarted. "The expectation is that this number would grow to about $35 million as the office ramped up," a spokesman for Rep. Holt said.

A similar request last year for $10 million for OTA was not approved.


_______________________________________________
Secrecy News is written by Steven Aftergood and published by the Federation of American Scientists.

The Secrecy News Blog is at:
http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/

[Peter Lemkin]

...and Karen Silkwood was murdered [made to look like a car accident off a mountain road, by use of GSMO-laced drugs on the steering wheel] for learning [by accident] that Kerr-MdGee had secretly at the behest of the PTB and the CIA [their Proterian Guard] given uranium/plutonium [weapons-grade] to Israel for their bomb program...and a dear personal friend of mine [an M.D.] who discovered that many at Rocky Flats [where they tool the plutonium in Colorado for nukes] were getting cancer and having children with birth defects - died all too young and all too mysteriously....there are many other such stories!......These are the very people
done in' by those unknown to them, but close to those who killed JFK and all of our heroes..... and hope.

[Ed Jewett]

Press Release
Senator Pressures NRC to Clear NUMEC President of Illegal Uranium Diversions to Israel - IRmep
07.06.10, 7:46 AM ET
BusinessWire - The office of Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania attempted to obtain a statement from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission according to documents newly released under the Freedom of Information Act. On August 27, 2009, Arlen Specter wrote to Rebecca Schmidt asking that the NRC "issue a formal public statement confirming that he [constituent Zalman Shapiro] was not involved in any activities related to the diversion of uranium to Israel."
http://www.IRmep.org/08272009specter_numec.pdf
Zalman Shapiro was formerly president of the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation at Apollo, PA. According to a secret GAO report "Nuclear Diversion in the US?" partially declassified on May 6, 2010 NUMEC received over 22 tons of uranium-235, the key material used to fabricate nuclear weapons.
Israel's top economic espionage case officer Rafael Eitan, who handled spy Jonathan Pollard in the 1980s, infiltrated NUMEC under false pretenses in 1968. According to Anthony Cordesman, "there is no conceivable reason for Eitan to have gone [to the Apollo plant] but for the nuclear material." CIA Tel Aviv station chief John Hadden called NUMEC "an Israeli operation from the beginning." NUMEC's venture capital came from David Lowenthal, who had close ties to Israeli intelligence and David Ben-Gurion,who spearheaded Israel's nuclear weapons program.
A March, 2010 audit by two former NRC officials published in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists confirmed not only that 337 kilograms of NUMEC highly enriched uranium are still unaccounted for but that all circumstantial evidence still points to diversion to Israel.
On November 2, 2009 the NRC denied Specter's request. http://www.irmep.org/ML092720878.pdf
Inquiries to the Senator's Pennsylvania office last week confirmed Specter is not seeking release of all remaining classified FBI and CIA files about NUMEC diversions. Full release is long overdue, according to Grant F. Smith, director of the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy. "For decades researchers sought declassification of all relevant CIA and FBI findings about US diversions to Israel's Dimona nuclear weapons plant. It is unfortunate that a sitting US Senator is pressuring NRC for statements it clearly is in no position to make while the full account of America's involuntary participation in Israel's clandestine nuclear weapons program remains bottled up in classified CIA and FBI archives."
The Israel Lobby Archive, http://IRmep.org/ila is a unit of the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy in Washington.
SOURCE: Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy, Inc.
Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy, Inc. Grant F. Smith, 202-342-7325



http://www.forbes.com/feeds/businesswire...42372.html




[Arlen's Magic Pellets?]

[Magda Hassan]

Secrecy pact over Israel's nukes, reached by Nixon and Meir, serves policy of nuclear coercion' to avoid peace deal

by Philip Weiss on May 7, 2012

This morning we learned that the proverbial smoke-filled room of political dealmaking in American politics has now been merged with the smoke-filled room of Israeli politics-- with Netanyahu's plans to have an election just ahead of our own, so the Israel lobby can play one election off against the other.
Well, in that connection, I cannot say enough about a new book by Grant Smith of the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy about the idea of Israel exercising nuclear coercion over policymakers. Smith shows how Israel gamed the American system going back to its apparent diversion in the 1960s of enriched uranium from an American front plant in Pennsylvania owned and operated by Israel lobbyists, guys who'd worked for Zionist organizations and run guns during Israel's war of independence.
At a time when the entire international community is now engaged on the issue of Iranian nuclear enrichment activities lest we have an arms race in the Middle East, it's amazing to read about how casual was American oversight of a plant from which hundreds of pounds of uranium disappeared in the 1960s even as John Kennedy was opposed to Israeli nukes. Meantime, Israeli officials were visiting the plant and company officials were going over to Israel. And all the while the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation, or NUMEC, was contaminating the small town of Apollo, Pennsylvania, because its retrofitted steel mill was ill-suited to nuclear work. Collateral damage.
Divert! is based on government documents that the tireless Smith has obtained through FOIA requests over many years. The book chronicles the progress of Zalman Shapiro, a brilliant chemist, but it is most notable for Smith's argument about the power granted to Israel by the secrecy surrounding Israeli nukes, a "pact" Smith says was effected by Golda Meir and Richard Nixon, who like Lyndon Johnson was more compliant than their predecessor, the late John Kennedy.
Smith argues that that unspoken nuclear coercion-- the behind-closed-doors threat of using nukes, has permitted Israel to avoid serious negotiations for decades. (I've frequently argued that Netanyahu played Obama on the peace process with all the Iran threats.)
We'll do an interview of Grant Smith soon. Meantime, shortly after his book was published, Smith was interviewed by Shelton Walden on WBAI's Walden Pond. Here's a partial transcript (boldface mine):

SHELTON: And your book kind of goes into a little bit of how the Israeli government obtained a nuclear weapon and by subterfuge and frankly you allege by outright theft of U. S. uranium materials. So if you could just explain a little, first of all how, why did you decide to write this particular book and give us a little bit of the overview of it before we go into…...
GRANT: Sure. Well, back in the late fifties there was an enterprising chemist by the name of Zalman Shapiro who was keeping an eye along with another person called David Lowenthalon the Atoms for Peace Program which was going to encourage the development of nuclear industries in the U. S. and abroad. And in 1958-1959 he incorporated a company in Pennsylvania at a steel plant site in a small village called Apollo which they acquired for either free or $500 and immediately turned it into a nuclear fuel processing plant. And so this plant was ostensibly going to receive U. S. government owned U-235which is bomb grade materialand convert it into fuel for the Nautilus nuclear submarine program where Zalman Shapiro had worked and actually done quite a number of brilliant innovations to have nuclear power plants on Navy vessels.
They began receiving large quantities of materials in the early sixties and had a lot of strange things going on at the plant such that even the Admiral Hyman Rickover who was running the Nautilus program sent them letters saying they should not have Israeli chemists working on this, that they should tighten up their security at this plant, and they were basically operating out of an old steel mill. And they had basically just gone in and painted the walls and then began handling very highly enriched nuclear materials for the Navy.
What happened in 1963-1964 is that the Atomic Energy Commission discovered that significant quantities of materials were missing. And they discovered this when NUMEC was unable to kind of "roll over" another contract and it became evident that there was a bit of a Ponzi scheme going on at the plant where they were actually using material from recent contracts to cover losses from earlier contracts. The plant's management and Zalman Shapiro, the president, claimed they were processing losses; that they had lost the materials into the environment and water of Apolloand certainly they lost a lot of toxic materials that way, but not this uranium and they faced down an Atomic Energy Commission investigation over the uranium losses. This put the plant on the map of the FBI and the Central Intelligence Agency and through investigations they discovered that the NUMEC had a joint venture with the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission which was called Isorad.
The Israel Atomic Energy Commission was a front for the Israeli nuclear program and their relationship necessitated the shipment of a lot of sealed containers to Israel. In fact a lot of them left from Pier 34 which is about 15 miles north of where your studio is, Shelton.
But anyway, after a while the FBI began wiretapping Shapiro and trailing him and found that Shapiro was interacting with Avraham Hermoni who was part of an Israeli spy network in the United States called LAKAM. That he had invited in Raphael Eitan to the plant in 1968 which was another year of high losses. Raphael Eitan is the same person that ran Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard against the United States. And they discovered that he was having so much contact with Israeli nuclear weapons program officials that it raised concern that they thought the uranium had been diverted to the Israeli program and that is in fact what the CIA and FBI concluded by the late sixties and early seventies.
The Atomic Energy Commission was embarrassed by all of this and they had the plant acquired by another provider of the AEC [Atlantic Richfield] so that they could get rid of this. Shapiro could no longer really manage the plant and direct its activities toward Israel and so in coordination with the Israelis he was in contact with he left. And although he was a power plant specialist he got a job which would have been giving him access to the most advanced hydrogen bomb technology that the U. S. had in its arsenal. That created another crisis in the White House with the Nixon administration fighting to keep him from getting into that position, threatening to revoke his security clearances, and it just, the whole incident and the documentary record shows pretty much how the president was more afraid of this person and the lobby that supported him than he wasor should have been in my opinion.
So the case has been, it was effectively closed by 1971. He [Shapiro] was thwarted from getting this job. But then Edward Levi, an Attorney General from the Ford administration, decided to reopen the case because there were so many questions raised by the theft. So many members of Congress wanted to know what actually happened. And when they opened the investigation in the late seventies they found reason for investigating U. S. government officials for having covered up this and they also, by the early 1980s, had found eyewitnesses who had witnessed Shapiro and some unknown outsiders stuffing equipment with U-235 for shipment to Israel. They also discovered material which was mainly given by the U. S. government to NUMEC [Shippingport U-235], they also found traces of it in Israel. So they were pretty sure at that time there had been a diversion. But of course there was never any accountability, no indictments, no prosecutions, and everything was shut down by the entrance of the Reagan administration. So that's a synopsis.
On the issue of nuclear proliferation:
John F. Kennedy was working very hard to prevent the Israelis from going nuclear because both the Central Intelligence Agency and national security officials could see that once this small state and this extremely volatile region acquired a nuclear arsenal that it would have what is called a coercive, or less charitably, a nuclear blackmail, option over the United States. Israel would be able to say to the United States, if you don't toe the line and have policies that are favorable to us then we might have to actually unleash this arsenal against one or more enemies in the Middle East. And so this has really tied the United States' hands.
But as is documented in the book, one of the reasons that no American president except for Jimmy Carterafter he was long gone from officeever talks about the Israeli nuclear arsenal, is that its existence relied on a lot of covert and illegal activities that the U. S. government was actively trying to resist. The current policy of course was pacted in 1969 with Golda Meir in which the president [Nixon] would not actually discuss the nuclear arsenal, it would not subject Israel to any pressure to join the international Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and this was, as Henry Kissinger put it, designed to keep the existence of the arsenal from becoming an established international fact.
And so by keeping this topic off the table and by continually shielding this arsenal from scrutiny, the American people never really get a clear picture of the actual dynamics that are driving the region. And exploring the NUMEC cases provides a good viewfinder for seeing how the entire policy was put together and how much it harms this country.
...SHELTON: I did find it interesting that in the book, your book President Kennedy was rather resistant to a lot of the requests that the Israeli government had made regarding this and when he made his unfortunate and untimely demise President Johnson came on the scene and things began to clear up quite quickly for the Israeli government regarding nuclear activities.
GRANT: That's true.... what we see doing the primary research is that at the time Kennedy was assassinated he was fighting three battles against the Israelis. One of them was to get their nuclear facility inspected internationally and he wanted to shut down their nuclear program and the second one was that he was taking on the top Israel lobby group and actively ordered them to register as foreign agents which kind of put all of their public relations out for public view and really put a damper on their activities in the United States. And so the more research that we've done this 1962-1963 period the more questions come out about the circumstances of the Israeli nuclear weapons program and the absolute reversal that took place between '63 and '64 where you had LBJ coming in and his top campaign financier, Abraham Feinberg, was there helping set policy objectives, finance Johnson's campaign and as Avner Cohen put it so eloquently in his book Israel and the Bomb, this was the man who was designated by David Ben-Gurion to be the fundraising coordinator for the Israeli nuclear weapons program in the United States. And that's just how close to the administration the Israelis were.
SHELTON: I have to tell you. Seeing the activities of President Johnson before he took office and after, vis-à-vis Israel and-- I have done shows on the USS Liberty and other activities, you know I think that to me President Johnson really did a disservice to this country and in some cases he looked like a crook.
GRANT: Well he was just very malleable and he didn't want to take on or have any sort of accountability over what the Israelis were doing in the United States. And that is very clear from the documentary record. Although I suspect it's even worse than what we know.
SHELTON: And one person you quote who is a former military person said that... [Israel] spent a great deal of money cultivating career officials throughout the Defense Department and the department[s] of intelligence and it was understood that to raise this issue was a career-killer.
GRANT: Yeah. Yeah. I think that's still the case. This has been described, this incident has been described, as a self-healing problem. Whenever there was any momentum toward getting out more information about it, it just sort of automatically self-seals because there is no upside for anybody. For presidents raising this meant endangering access to the campaign contribution network. For a person like an FBI director or a Justice Department political appointee, they had already seen how almost a hundred investigations of conventional weapon smuggling back in the late forties had been shut down by political maneuvers, so they knew that they couldn't win, that at a certain point there would be political pressures and changes in DOJ employees and other subterfuges so that it would be unprosecutable.
And so this case in my view clearly illustrates just how corrosive and corrupting the lobby-backed demand for this sort of access and unaccountability has been. But the cover-up is clear. Even today there are hundreds and hundreds of pages of CIA documents about the financier behind NUMEC whose name was David Lowenthal that they refuse to release. The FBI has released quite a bit of information about its investigation but what was actually going on in Israel is kind of a black hole at this point and you know there's no upside for the U. S. government to talk about this. Because it will make Americans, if it ever comes out and more people become aware of it, question whether the U. S. government…if it's not even capable of protecting this most precious military material what is it capable of doing. So it just raises too many questions that no party really wants to look at.
SHELTON: Yeah. Absolutely. You mentioned Helen Thomas in the book. You mentioned when she was at the White House she asked our current president, President Obama about the Israeli nuclear program and he punted.
GRANT: Right. But he did do a couple of good things. Early on I think, before somebody clued him in, he talked openly about getting Israel into the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Probably without realizing that if the U. S. ever formally found and made it an "established international fact" that Israel had a nuclear arsenal there's all sorts of legislation such as the Symington and Glenn Amendments which would prohibit any further U. S. aid to Israel and so by kind of moving into that, and he also Victoria Nuland his State Department person, his appointee, talked about a nuclear free Middle East. But this was early on. This was before somebody…reined them back in.
SHELTON:.. one of the people you mentioned who was in part, another person was Ivan Novick. And he was head, he was one of the head lobbyists. And he had some connection also with NUMEC as well.
GRANT: Well yeah and Zalman Shapiro himself was the head of the Pennsylvania chapter and so just by being so hooked into the Zionist Organization of America which had its own battle with the Justice Department which tried to get them also to register as appendages of the Israeli government in the 1940s. Just by being connected with that organization, which is then interconnected with so many other members of the Israel lobby, that's one of the reasons why the Justice Department and the Executive Branch didn't feel like it could actually have any sort of indictments and accountability. These were people who well I like the saying of Lawrence Franklin who was caught up in the AIPAC espionage scandal these people are "beyond good and evil." They really can't be held to any sort of account to violations of the Atomic Energy Act, or any other statutes for that matter.
[Caller] STEVE: I would like to ask him, does he feel there is anything that can be done to undo this situation?...
GRANT: I think a great deal can be done and the first step is more awareness. The fact that nobody knows about this incident and the fact that mainstream corporate media doesn't feel any need to discuss in an accurate fashion the actual nuclear situation in the Middle East, people can affect that by complaining about it, by turning to alternative media, by becoming media and I think people who turn to the Internet and begin going to credible alternative news sites will see information like this come out. I think that is a real positive step. Until people begin understanding more about what is going on they won't be in any position to resist kind of the propaganda, particularly the big drive against Iran right now....
And just let me pick up on one thing [another caller] said. Shimon Peres, current President of Israel. He has been responsible for overseeing many of clandestine operations. And he is also on record as having offered nuclear weapons to Apartheid South Africa. That was uncovered by Sasha Polakow-Suransky from the Council on Foreign Relations in 2010. This is a man who President Barack Obama is going to award a Presidential Medal of Freedom this summer if people don't get together and protest that we should not award something like that to the biggest nuclear proliferator in the Middle East.
SHELTON: Well you know something your book is great, but I have a feeling the American public has been kept like a mushroom about all these issues for so many years. And frankly I think a lot of people either some people don't care or they certainly are scared to so anything about anything. They figure that's business as usual, I think people should protest, but I think that people are going to say Ehhhh. You know what I mean.
GRANT: I think you're right about the mushroom effect. People have been kept in the dark, but I'm also optimistic that people are beginning to get more of their information from credible Internet-based sources and turning away from kind of the propaganda networks that have been feeding them disinformation. And they are doing that even more so now that we're seeing Iraq II being played out over the networks.... So I'm optimistic that some of the dark is beginning to fade.
http://mondoweiss.net/2012/05/secrecy-pa...-deal.html

[Magda Hassan]

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The Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation (NUMEC) and the diversion of US government weapons-grade uranium to Israel

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On September 10, 1968 NUMEC receives a key coordinator of Israel's clandestine nuclear weapons program
(Avraham Hermoni) and three undercover Israeli intelligence operatives. NUMEC tells the Atomic Energy
Commission the Israeli visitors are energy specialists.

Documents

Since the mid-1960s law enforcement and regulatory agencies suspected a small nuclear processing facility in Pennsylvania had illegally diverted U.S. government-owned weapons-grade nuclear material into Israel's clandestine nuclear weapons program. The Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation received start-up capital organized by a mysterious former smuggler with deep and ongoing ties to Israeli intelligence. FBI investigations revealed NUMEC President, Zalman Shapiro also had repeated unexplained interactions with Israeli intelligence and organized a joint venture with the primary front organization of the Israeli nuclear weapons program. According to a 2001 US Department of Energy report, NUMEC still holds the record for the highest losses of bomb-grade material of any plant in the United States.
In April 1976 Attorney General Edward Levi ordered the FBI to reopen an investigation into Dr. Zalman Mordecai Shapiro and the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation (NUMEC). The newly reopened investigation looked beyond violations of the Atomic Energy Act. The FBI's new mandate was to also uncover "any attempt by anyone in the executive branch to prevent or impede an investigation into this alleged diversion, or to withhold any information regarding this alleged diversion from any investigative body." The FBI code-named its investigation "DIVERT." The FBI interrogated high-level officials from U.S. government agencies and NUMEC employee eyewitnesses to nuclear diversion. Inexplicably, on January 23, 1981 the FBI placed the NUMEC investigation into "closed status" until further instructions from the Department of Justice. Field offices were ordered not to destroy files without instructions from FBI headquarters. The NUMEC investigation portfolio, passed from LBJ, to Nixon, Ford was closed at the end of the Carter administration.
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[TD="width: 192"] Articles of Incorporation
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
490 KB, 8 pages[/TD]
[TD] NUMEC is incorporated on December 31, 1956 in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania by Zalman M. Shapiro (Nautilus nuclear submarine program chemist, Zionist Organization of America Pennsylvania chapter president), Leonard Pepkowtiz (Manhattan Project weapons physicist) and Frederick Foerscher. [/TD]
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[TD="width: 192"] Articles of Merger
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
219 KB, 25 pages[/TD]
[TD] Apollo Industries holding company created on March 1, 1958 out of merger of three defunct companies: Apollo Steel Company, American Nut and Bolt Fastener Company and San Toy Mining Company. Apollo Industry directors included Ivan J. Novick (future ZOA president) ,David Lowenthal (refugee smuggler who also fought in Israel), Zalman Shapiro (NUMEC president, ZOA chapter president), and Elliott W. Finkel (former DOJ attorney dismissed over conflicts of interest).[/TD]
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[TD="width: 192"] NUMEC_1966
Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation
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[TD] Company calendar listing NUMEC's services.[/TD]
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[TD="width: 192"] 071967_Atantic_Richfield
Hanford
135 KB, 2 pages[/TD]
[TD] The Atomic Energy Commission gives Atlantic Richfield at $30 million/year contract to manage Hanford facilities if it buys and takes over NUMEC. Pages extracted from cost-plus operating contract.[/TD]
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[TD="width: 192"] 1091168-000-117-2564 Section 1
FBI
2.2 MB, 45 pages[/TD]
[TD] Section 1 - Zalman Shapiro investigated by the FBI for potential Foreign Agents Registration Act after 61 kilograms of U-235 are discovered missing from the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation. FBI establishes surveillance of Shapiro in 1968. Nature of David Lowenthal's relationship and financing of NUMEC discovered. David Lowenthal observed in photos "shaking hands with Ben-Gurion and Moshe Dayan" and "reportedly fought for Israel as a freedom fighter in 1956 and travels to Israel on the average of approximately once per month." NUMEC's founders, security clearances, shipment of 320 grams of plutonium to Israel in 1963, censored files.
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[TD="width: 192"] 1091168-000-117-2564 Section 2
FBI
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[TD] On September 6, 1968, the US attorney general requests investigation "whether the subject is acting as an agent of the Israeli Government." September 6, 1968 NUMEC request for visit of Avraham Hermoni (Israeli nuclear weapons chief), Ephraim Biegun, Avraham Bendor, and Rafael Eitan (founder of LAKAM economic espionage network). The intelligenc operatives enter under the cover of being "thermo electric generator specialists."[/TD]
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[TD="width: 192"] 1091168-000-117-2564 Section 3
FBI
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[TD] Censored content.[/TD]
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[TD="width: 192"] 1091168-000-117-2564 Section 1 (830179)
FBI
3.2 MB, 56 pages[/TD]
[TD] FBI initiates physical and wiretap surveillance of Zalman Shapiro on November 5, 1968. "We are investigating Shapiro to determine extent of his relations with Israeli government. As head of Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation, Apollo, Pennsylvania, which processes uranium-235 for nuclear reactors, Shapiro has access to atomic energy material which could be most helpful to the Israelis...subject has been in contact on two occasions with Dr. Avraham Hermoni, Scientific Counselor, Israeli Embassy, Washington D.C., and Israeli intelligence agent. Source has also disclosed contacts with a senior official of Israeli military intelligence, individuals associated with Israeli Atomic Energy Commission and member of Israeli Internal Security Service...he is considering settling permanently in that country and, if necessary, would fight for Israel..." "Investigation has further disclosed that subject and others involved in instant case, in addition to holding top positions in their respective fields, are very active and highly regarded in various Jewish organizations which exert some influence in this country...." "It is considered opinion of person familiar with this case that an interview with subject and/or others intimately involved in this case would develop very little pertinent information..." "Attorney General under date of 3/28/1969 approved our request for continuation of Electronic Surveillance for a period of three months effective 4/1/1969. Wiretap summaries. Atomic Energy Commission interview of Shapiro on August 14, 1969. Discussion of 1968 Hermoni meeting in Shapiro's home, clandestine Shapiro meeting with Israeli intelligence agent in Pittsburgh airport. "Only when we confronted with the fact that we were aware of the meeting did he admit to such a meeting had taken place and his explanation that the purpose of the meeting had been to discuss payment of a bill and other commercial matters did not appear to be completely candid..."[/TD]
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[TD="width: 192"] Wiretap
FBI
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[TD] May 5, 1969 FBI wiretap of a radioactive spill at NUMEC caused by improper storage.

"9:18 p.m.: CENSORED reported on a spillage at the plant. They have the area roped off and it will take some pick and shovel work to dig up the contaminated areas. CENSORED said they are getting 100,000 counts. CENSORED said, "Oh, God." They are dampening it down to avoid dust and will cover it if it looks like it may rain. CENSORED asked if there is anything on AAI? …
9:20 p.m.: CENSORED said that he heard that American Instrument Company [is] up for sale. He said he heard this from the former sales manager."

A phone call placed just two minutes after the first confirms that:

"it's not only a bad spill but "actually they are operating outside compliance." They had the drums all together. They have about 200 drums and estimate that about six a day will corrode through. The trouble lay with a fluoride which was put in to help the decay, and this was not checked. CENSORED said they are also about $230,000 over on their construction costs for the scrap plant. Z [Zalman Shapiro] said if they could get other people, there would be a lot of firing."

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[TD="width: 192"] 1091168-000-117-2564 Section 4
FBI
6.3 MB, 95 pages[/TD]
[TD] January 20, 1969 FBI report on Shapiro meetings with Hermoni to coordinate a plutonium purchase, Shapiro requests to AEC about availability of plutonium (does not mention Israel as destination). AEC Commission Glenn Seaborg approves sales "Criticality is the only concern in terms of the amount of plutonium 238 that can be used in any particular device." Details of NUMEC trying to obtain US government equipment for free by falsely claiming it is contaminated. Zalman Shapiro discusses settling in Israel. NUMEC discovered to be an agent of the Israeli Ministry of Defense, and have a joint venture with the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission, the cover organization for Israel's nuclear weapons program. Shapiro concerned US will not sell fighter jets to Israel. FBI source speculates that U-235 could have been shipped to Israel within food irradiator units with "no questions asked." NUMEC catalog of irradiators. In February of 1969, FBI reviews NUMEC's classified contracts with the US government. NUMEC attempts to hire AEC or "other government agencies" employees. Secret Service warned on February 18, 1969 that Shapiro "under active investigation as member of other group or organization inimical to the U.S." February 16, 1968 report of Shapiro hosting a meeting in his home "with Avraham Hermoni, Scientific Counselor, Israeli Embassy, and ten other men who have special skills and knowledge in scientific and technical fields on 11/4/1968. This meeting was held to assist Hermoni in gathering necessary data in these areas for Israel." Shapiro discusses obtaining plutonium 238 with Colonel Avraham Eylonie. Shapiro meets with Israeli defense minister at the Israeli embassy on November 26, 1969 before leaving for Israel between November 28 and December 12, 1968. Profiles of NUMEC executives. Summary of 1965 Foreign Agents Registration Act investigation of Shapiro. June 21, 1966 FBI interview of Shapiro. NUMEC employee interviews[/TD]
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[TD="width: 192"] 1091168-000-117-2564 Section 5
FBI
3.1 MB, 39 pages [/TD]
[TD] Zalman Shapiro listed in "Security Index" because he "continues to solicit information of Israeli scientific [censored] personnel." NUMEC selected in 1964 to run "free world's only full-scale production boron isotope facility" in Niagara [Lewiston], NY. Shapiro assisting in a secret converter "British Project." Supermarket advertiser Frank Noll writes "Dr. X" story about Shapiro working in Israeli nuclear weapons program.[/TD]
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[TD="width: 192"] 07191969
Nixon Presidential Library
973 KB, 18 pages[/TD]
[TD] July, 1969 Henry Kissinger strategy document about what stance to take about the Israeli nuclear weapons program. "There is circumstantial evidence that some fissionable material available for Israel's weapons development was illegally obtained from the United States by about 1965." Justification for "ambiguity" stance.[/TD]
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[TD="width: 192"] 1091168-000-117-2564 Section 6
FBI
1 MB, 26 pages [/TD]
[TD] Illegible files. September 3, 1969 FBI director memo to AEC and DOJ about August 1969 AEC interview of Zalman Shapiro. "The basis of the security risk posed by the subject lies in his continuing access to sensitive information and material and it is believed that the effective way to counter this risk would be to preclude Shapiro from such access, specifically by terminating his classified contracts and lifting his security clearances. AEC security statement that Shapiro has "knowingly established an association with individuals reliably reported as suspected of espionage." "It was reported in 1961 that Dr. Abraham Hermoni was a member of the Israeli Intelligence Service; that in 1963 Dr. Hermoni was known to be engaged in the establishment of a technical intelligence network in the United States, and that prior to his assignment as Scientific Counselor of the Israeli Embassy, Washington, D.C. he was intimately connected with Israeli efforts to develop nuclear weapons in his capacity as Technical Director, Armament Development Authority, Ministry of Defense." On November 4, 1970, the FBI notes that Shapiro has taken a job at Kawecki Berylco Industries, and "holds a 'Secret' clearance which was transferred to that facility by the Defense Supply Agency..." Note "Shapiro has been alleged to have furnished information to Israeli Government in the past regarding nuclear developments via Israeli Embassy officials interested in this field for the benefit of Israeli defense efforts. He is carried on the Security Index by Pittsburgh due to his activities. He has recently acquired a new and sensitive position with a nuclear development company in Pennsylvania...classified 'Secret' since it sets forth information from [censored] Army communications similarly classified."[/TD]
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[TD="width: 192"] 09031969
Gerald Ford Presidential Library
332 KB, 6 pages[/TD]
[TD] September 3, 1969 FBI Director memo to CIA Director. "The basis of the security risk posed by the subject lies in his continuing access to sensitive information and material and it is believed the only effective way to counter this risk would be to preclude Shapiro from access, specifically by terminating his classified contracts and lifting his security clearances..."[/TD]
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[TD="width: 192"] 1091168-000-117-2564 Section 7
FBI
5.9 MB, 136 pages[/TD]
[TD] FBI interviews Kanwecki Berylco Industry executive on March 4, 1971 about Zalman Shapiro's attempts to obtain classified information without proper security clearance. Joint Committee on Atomic Energy attempts to obtain FBI files "concerning Shapiro or any of his associates or acquaintances who could be involved in intelligence or diversion of nuclear material activities on behalf of a foreign government." in May of 1976. FBI offers a summary, but states that attorney general would have to approve file release. April 22, 1976 summary of FBI investigations of NUMEC for special nuclear materials loss. On May 14, 1976 US attorney general orders an FBI investigation "be conducted to determine whether or not a diversion of nuclear material had occurred at the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation (NUMEC), Apollo, Pennsylvania, partially owned and operated by the subject, and if this diversion had been to the benefit of the Government of Israel" and "Obstruction of Justice." Attorney General provides list of Atomic Energy Commission executives to interview. Fully and partially censored FBI interview records. 1976 investigation captioned "DIVERT." List of NUMEC executives to interview.[/TD]
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[TD="width: 192"] 12071977
Jimmy Carter Presidential Library
146 KB, 2 pages[/TD]
[TD] December 7, 1977 Memo to Zbigniew Brezinski about Congressional investigation of NUMEC. "Dingell's pursuit of the question of whether the CIA withheld information from other agencies strikes me as potentially dangerous..."[/TD]
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[TD="width: 192"] 1091168-000-117-2564 Section 8
FBI
625 KB, 8 pages [/TD]
[TD] June 27, 1977 FBI interview of Zalman Shapiro. "..Shapiro voiced certain reservations relative to its purpose and was concerned that display of the form implied certain unlawful acts on his part." "Shapiro emphasized that the matter of significant diversion of special nuclear material at NUMEC was out of the question and added that Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) officials had, in fact, assured him personally that NUMEC MUF compared favorably with MUF experienced throughout the rest of the industry."[/TD]
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[TD="width: 192"] 021978
Inquiry into the Testimony of the Executive Director for Operations
Nuclear Regulatory Commission

Page accidently released to NRDC
3.5 MB, 3 pages[/TD]
[TD] Classified summary of CIA Directorate of Operations briefing to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission about NUMEC diversion accidentally released to the Natural Resources Defense Council. "Mr. Duckett raised the question of whether the U.S. had intentiona1ly allowed material to go to Israel. He said that if any such scheme was under consideration, he would have known about it and he never heard so much as a rumor about this. He, therefore, does not believe there is any substance to this allegation. In support of this view, he related that CIA had drafted a National Intelligence Estimate on Israel's nuclear capability in 1968. It it was the conclusion that the Israelis had nuclear weapons. He showed it to Mr. Helms. Helms told him not to publish it and he would take it up with President Johnson. Mr. Helms later related that he had spoken to the president, that the President was concerned, and that he had said, 'Don't tell anyone else, even Dean Rusk and Robert McNamara."[/TD]
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[TD="width: 192"] 06211978
Glenn T. Seaborg Papers
Library of Congress
482 KB, 1 page[/TD]
[TD] Glenn Seaborg office diary. On June 21, 1978 Department of Energy investigators Bill Knauf and Jim Anderson visit former Atomic Energy Commissioner Glenn T. Seaborg. They tell Seaborg that traces of Portsmouth U-235 (the government-owned material primarily delivered to NUMEC for processing into fuel) had been picked up in Israel. On March 3, 1979 Seaborg refuses to be interviewed by FBI investigators.[/TD]
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[TD="width: 192"] Archive[/TD]
[TD] A 1978 General Accounting Office study concludes that the US government never credibly investigated the NUMEC diversion and documents FBI and CIA refusal to cooperate..[/TD]
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[TD="width: 192"] 12121978
Morris K. Udall Papers at the University of Arizona
4.2 MB, 119 pages[/TD]
[TD] Transcript of December 21, 1978 Congressional Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs interview of Zalman Shapiro. "We know now that as far back as 1966, at least one staff member of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy questioned the propriety of then AEC Chairman Seaborg having testified that he thought that " there has not been any material diverted from peaceful to military uses." We know also that in December 1971, William Riley, former director of AEC security, wrote in a memorandum that Dr. Shapiro reported to Riley that he (Dr. Shapiro) had been told by officials of the government of Israel that an unnamed AEC Commissioner had suggested to representatives of a foreign government that Dr. Shapiro had been involved in diversion of materials to the Israelis..."
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[TD="width: 192"] 02281979
Jimmy Carter Presidential Library
145 KB, 3 pages[/TD]
[TD] Confidential letter from Deputy Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti to President Jimmy Carter about how after the GAO report about NUMEC the US would "establish a plan for coordinated interagency action to detect and investigate the theft or diversion of nuclear material in the future."[/TD]
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[TD="width: 192"] 11271979
Jimmy Carter Presidential Library
107 KB, 2 pages[/TD]
[TD] Staffer Jerry Oplinger asks National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brezinski for permission to show Senator John Glenn a top secret memorandum about "missing material from the NUMEC plant in Apollo, PA." Brezinski formally disapproves, telling Oplinger to "Brief him [Senator Glenn] orally." [/TD]
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[TD="width: 192"] 1091168-000-117-2564 Section 10
FBI
3.9 MB, 54 pages [/TD]
[TD] March 28, 1980 interviews with NRC officials reveal a former NUMEC employee eyewitness to diversion. FBI NUMEC truck driver interview. FBI NUMEC shipping clerk interview. March 24, 1980 FBI Ammonator interview. "he then noticed the NUMEC owner, Dr. Zalman Shapiro, pacing around the loading dock while [censored] (shipping and receiving foreman) and [censored] (truck driver for NUMEC) were loading 'stove pipes' into the steel cabinet type equipment that he observed on the truck...the 'stove pipes' are cylindrical storage containers used to store canisters of high enriched materials in the vaults located at the Apollo nuclear facility...the 'stove pipes' contained three or four canisters which were described as highly polished aluminum with standard printed square yellow labels, approximately three inches in diameter by six inches tall, that normally were used to store high enriched uranium products...defined as 95 percent uranium." January 15, 1981 former NUMEC employee interview.[/TD]
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[TD="width: 192"] Archive[/TD]
[TD] Zalman Shapiro seeks exoneration from the NRC assisted by Israel's longest registered foreign agent law firm in Washington DC with assistance from Senator Arlen Spector. The NRC refuses to clear Shapiro or NUMEC over the U-235 losses.[/TD]
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New Book

Divert!: NUMEC, Zalman Shapiro and the diversion of US weapons grade uranium into the Israeli nuclear weapons program

Based on an exhaustive review of formerly classified government documents-as well as previously unexplored corporate filings, office diaries and unguarded interviews-Grant F. Smith has written a riveting story of the 1960s diversion of US weapons-grade nuclear material from an Israeli front company in Pennsylvania into the clandestine Israeli atomic weapons program. The talented but highly conflicted founder of the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation (NUMEC)-Dr. Zalman Mordecai Shapiro alongside his close friend and financial backer David Lowenthal-engaged in a ferocious clandestine drive to funnel the most valuable military material on earth that forever tilted the balance of power between Israel and the world. Divert! chronicles Zalman Shapiro's journey from crafting ingenious innovations for the Nautilus nuclear submarine in the 1950s to his costly pursuit of America's most advanced hydrogen bomb designs in the 1970s. Tasked during secret summits with high-level Israeli intelligence agents, guided by Israel's top nuclear arms designers, and defended by Israel and its US lobby, Shapiro and NUMEC drove the CIA and FBI from furious outrage to despair. Presidents from LBJ to Jimmy Carter secretly grappled with how to respond to Israel's brazen theft of American nuclear material before finally deciding to bury the entire affair in classified files. But NUMEC's toxic secrets have refused to be buried alive. Newly declassified wiretaps have risen from the grave, detailing Shapiro's utter contempt for worker and nuclear safety. David Lowenthal's role as an international refugee smuggler between the US, Europe and Israel-before organizing financing for NUMEC-is placed under new scrutiny. This explosive story emerges even as the US Army Corps of Engineers struggles to quietly clean NUMEC's toxic waste near Apollo, Pennsylvania with $170 million in taxpayer funding. At a time when America is coming under intense pressure to attack on the mere suspicion that Iran is diverting nuclear material, Divert! stands as the ultimate cautionary tale of how US Middle East policy is continually undermined from within by corruption, immunity, deceit and unwarranted secrecy. Paperback and Kindle.

[URL="http://www.irmep.org/ila/numec/"]

http://www.irmep.org/ila/numec/[/URL]

[Ed Jewett]

On July 17 the Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel (ISCAP) agreed to review highly classified documents from the LBJ administration for public release. The top-secret documents purportedly deal with the CIA's initial urgent warnings to President Johnson that Israel was diverting vast quantities of weapons-grade nuclear material from NUMEC, as well as the president and NSC's strategy for dealing with the crisis. While the CIA has denied all previous Freedom of Information Act and Mandatory Declassification Review requests for NUMEC-related documents, the ISCAP has the authority to overrule, as it has done in the majority of release cases. A successful document release could allow Parks and Apollo residents to finally seek hefty court-ordered damages from the true perpetrators (or their estates) who have long been shielded from the consequences of their lucrative crimes at NUMEC--Zalman Shapiro, NUMEC's board members and the Israeli government....

Israel Lobby Archive file: http://www.irmep.org/ILA/numec/courtdocs...mation.pdf

Extensive analysis in Antiwar.com today:
http://original.antiwar.com/smith-grant/...all-apart/

***************************related Business Insider article excerpt*******************************
How Israel Received Weapons-Grade Nuclear Material from a US Company
by Michael Kelley

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-explo...ies-2012-8

...On July 19, 1969, U.S. National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger wrote the following about Israel's nuclear weapons program: "There is circumstantial evidence that some fissionable material available for Israel's weapons development was illegally obtained from the United States by about 1965."

About the same time that NUMEC sustained unaccountable losses of HEU-235, the FBI notes, NUMEC was developing and manufacturing food irradiators for Israel. According to Smith there is no single smoking gun that Shapiro diverted HEU-235 to Israel --but many smoking shell-casings. They include:

-- In 1965 a NUMEC employee walked near the NUMEC loading dock and encountered people he could not identify loading cans about the size of HEU-235 canisters onto a ship that was headed to Israel. The employee detailed the event in 1980 when interviewed by FBI agents. Based on the number of reported canisters, Smith estimates up to 346 lbs of U-235 could have been shipped to Israel in this single incident.

-- In 1968 NUMEC invited and received Israel's elite nuclear weapons development officials and its top spy under the cover of being "thermo electric generator specialists." They included Avraham Hermoni (technical director of Israel's nuclear bomb project), Ephraim Biegun (head of the Israeli technical department of Israel's Secret Service from 1960-70) and Rafael Eitan (long-time Mossad and LAKAM operative who later directed spy Jonathan Pollard's spy program against the U.S.). Smith notes that in 1986 Middle East analyst Anthony Cordesman said there "is no conceivable reason for Eitan to have gone [to NUMEC] but for the nuclear material."

--In June 1978 Department of Energy investigators told former Atomic Energy Commissioner (AEC) Glenn T. Seaborg that traces of Portsmouth U-235 -- the government-owned material primarily delivered to NUMEC for processing into fuel -- had been picked up in Israel. Seaborg, who frequently defended Shapiro during his time as AEC chief, later refused to be interviewed by FBI investigators...

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-explo...z23FSmSS9K

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