Uranium Smuggling: USA to Israel
John F. Kennedy (JFK) was viewed as an enemy of Israel by the Israeli government for several reasons. JFK’s fierce and steadfast opposition to Israel’s covert nuclear weapons program was one of the leading causes. The correspondence between JFK and Ben Gurion on the matter was classified until the middle of the 1990s when some of it was made public. Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben Gurion, served until he resigned in the summer of 1963 for reasons that are still unknown. You might remember that JFK was killed in November 1963. The complete JFK-Ben Gurion correspondence seems to have been declassified in 2015.
John F. Kennedy (JFK) was viewed as an enemy of Israel by the Israeli government for several reasons. JFK’s fierce and steadfast opposition to Israel’s covert nuclear weapons program was one of the main reasons. The correspondence between JFK and Ben Gurion on the matter was classified until the middle of the 1990s when some of it was made public. Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben Gurion, served until he resigned in the summer of 1963 for reasons that are still unknown. You might remember that JFK was killed in November 1963.
Seymour Hersh asserted that in 1962, the Dimona reactor had already reached a critical state without anybody else’s knowledge. Kennedy was so concerned about the situation that he virtually threatened to stop providing aid to Israel if it did not come clean about what was happening. It was in Israel’s best interest to ensure that JFK was killed because he threatened the country’s nuclear program.
At the time, JFK was not aware that Israel had been stealing weapon-grade uranium from a US facility but had he lived; he would have found out, with drastic consequences for those who did it. One can imagine the worldwide results for Israel having been found stealing weapons-grade uranium from the US. There was more than sufficient motivation for the assassination of Kennedy, and it appears, as argued by Michael Collins Piper, that Ben Gurion ordered Mossad to assassinate JFK and then resigned so that when the assassination took place, he would not be in power. JFK’s last letter to Ben Gurion on the nuclear issue was delivered on May 19, 1963, and Ben Gurion resigned on June 16, 1963.
Presidential Library and Museum of John F. Kennedy
The wealthiest Jewish families, including the Rothschilds, supported Israel’s nuclear program. The ignorant and narrow-minded Pakistani government has encouraged them to extract gold from the Baluchistan mines. The English Rothschild branch’s Baron Edmund Leopold de Rothschild (1916–2009) made significant financial donations to Israel’s nuclear weapons program. Israel decided to take enriched weapon-grade uranium from the United States because it could not enrich uranium then. Stealing the Bomb: How Denial and Deception Armed Israel is the book’s name. Mattson previously had a position in the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). He was responsible for the NRC’s inquiry into the disappearance of highly enriched uranium from the US company NUMEC.
It is significant to remember that Ben Gurion had advocated for the creation of biological and nuclear weapons to defend the state of Israel not long after Israel’s founding. “We are living in an age of scientific revolutions, an era that discloses the atoms, its miraculous composition, and the tremendous power hidden in it,” he wrote in 1948. Scientists in other countries may replicate the achievements of Jews Einstein, Oppenheimer, and Teller to benefit the United States.
Einstein discussed the potential for creating an atomic bomb and the possibility that Germany might be working on one in a letter to President Roosevelt. After Einstein’s letter, the Manhattan Project, which was started to build the atomic bomb, was led by Oppenheimer. Teller worked on the Manhattan Project and later earned the title “father of the hydrogen bomb.” Therefore, it is evident that Ben Gurion had the creation of nuclear weapons in mind from the beginning.
THE CONTEXT OF NUMEC
NUMEC [Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation] was founded in 1957 in Apollo, Pennsylvania.
David Lowenthal, a hero of the Jewish occupation of Palestine in 1948 and a trusted advisor to Ben Gurion, secured the finance for NUMEC. Lowenthal belonged to the Haganah, Menachem Begin’s extremist Jewish group. After World War II, Lowenthal travelled aboard the Exodus, which transported Jewish “refugees” to Palestine. Scientist Zalman Shapiro, who lived next door to Lowenthal in Pittsburgh, was acquainted with Ernest David Bergman, the head of the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission (was this a coincidence?). Shapiro had experience with the US Navy’s nuclear program. Therefore, he was well-versed in producing fuel elements for nuclear reactors. Shapiro contributed to the creation of the US Navy’s first nuclear submarine.
Shapiro was employed by the US government’s Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory when NUMEC was being established. Shapiro left his position with the government to become the helm of NUMEC. Thus, we have a very intriguing triangle consisting of Ernest David Bergman, the head of the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission and a former associate of Shapiro, Lowenthal, a close friend of Ben Gurion who knew how to produce both nuclear reactor fuel and weapon-grade uranium, and Shapiro. The AEC permitted NUMEC to enrich uranium in December 1957.
The Apollo facility “achieved many firsts in the US nuclear industry,” in Mattson’s words. It achieved the first commercial production of coated particle fuels, was the first to create the dry pressing technique for power reactor fuel pellets, and was the first commercial plant licensed to convert uranium hexafluoride to uranium dioxide powder. Shapiro had contacts with the Navy. Thus, NUMEC started producing highly enriched uranium for the US Navy in 1960. According to Mattson, the CIA later concluded that “Shapiro was a consultant to the Israeli AE program in 1960 or earlier.” Shapiro and other significant NUMEC employees had ties to the Zionist Organization of America.
In a speech Mattson gave on March 18, 2016, he noted: “By 1964, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory people were learning that there was missing uranium—what they call ‘inventory differences’ or material unaccounted for’—at the NUMEC facility in Apollo, Pennsylvania.” Glen T. Seaborg received the 1951 Nobel Prize for discovering plutonium and was the Director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the world’s first uranium enrichment facility.
“They used the best people they could find, the best people from Oak Ridge, the best people from the commission, the best people from NUMEC,” claimed Mattson. “They found 178 kilograms of missing highly enriched uranium.” They discovered that 94 kilograms of those 178 could not in any manner be accounted for. NUMEC was penalized $2.2 million at the time (more than $15 million today). The only US plant of this type lacking uranium was NUMEC.
Mattson provides estimation tables in his book and writes, “These estimates show that more than half of the 178 kilograms were missing by late 1965 and had gone missing before the end of 1963.” Some of the missing highly enriched uranium from NUMEC had already arrived in Domina by 1962 if one considers the assertion made by Seymour Hersh, who is Jewish and has access to the Israeli establishment. It makes sense why Ben Gurion resisted JFK’s request for US inspections at Dimona with such adamance.
In addition to being crucial, the Dimona reactor had stolen highly enriched uranium (HEU) from the US. In addition, Mattson calculated that a total of 345 kilograms (or nearly 700 lbs) of weapon-grade uranium vanished from NUMEC between 1959 and 1977.
A witness claimed to have seen personnel placing containers the size of those used for highly enriched uranium into boxes while strolling through the NUMEC’s loading dock area in 1965 or 1966 when the FBI began their investigations many years later (in 1980). He claimed that the crates’ shipping documents indicated Israel was their final destination.
A second witness claimed to have seen a flatbed truck backing up into the loading dock area. “Stove pipes” were loaded into a truck cabinet by the driver. The witness thought it was strange because employees assigned to that task performed the loading throughout the day. On the other hand, the shipment was being prepared in the evening. He defined “stove pipes” as cylindrical storage spaces utilized by the plant to store enriched uranium. Typically, there were three or four HEU packets per stove pipe.
According to the FBI report, the witness also noted that it was pretty unusual to see Dr. Shapiro in the manufacturing area of the Apollo nuclear facility, odd to see Dr. Shapiro at night, and highly unique to see Dr. Shapiro at night; and very unusual to see Dr. Shapiro so nervous as to pace around.
He described Dr. Shapiro as being calm, collected, and never angry. According to the report, “He advised he had delayed coming forward because he had a large family to support, and the day after the incident, the plant personnel manager of NUMEC threatened to fire him if “he did not keep his mouth shut” about what he had witnessed on the loading dock the night before.” Several more workers attested to having seen materials being put aboard trucks with Israel as their final destination.
As a result, it is apparent that high-enriched uranium was stolen from NUMEC and smuggled to Israel with Zalman Shapiro’s knowledge and cooperation.
CIA’s belief
The CIA believed Israel had the bomb in 1966, 1967, and 1968. But first, they wanted to certify Dimona’s production of plutonium. John Hadden, the CIA station commander in Tel Aviv, was tasked with collecting plants in the Dimona area. So Hadden would drive his kids to the region, and as the kids ate their peanut butter sandwiches, he would collect flora and place it gently in the trunk of the car. Nuclear power stations are monitored because minuscule amounts of radiation escape the atmosphere. A radioactive study of plant samples from the Dimona area revealed signs of highly enriched uranium and plutonium.
Dimona could not have had highly enriched uranium if Israel could not enrich uranium. Furthermore, the highly enriched uranium was obtained from a factory that had served the US Navy, as the Navy required uranium that was 97.7% enriched. The uranium in the Dimona samples was also 97.7% enriched. Please remember that NUMEC was manufacturing highly enriched uranium for the US Navy.
Israel had a close ally in James Jesus Angleton, the head of the CIA’s counterintelligence branch. “The communication blunders blamed by the intelligence community for America’s late recognition of Israel’s fledgling nuclear weapons program may not have been accidental,” Mattson writes in his book.
To avoid antagonizing his Mossad contacts, James Angleton may have purposefully concealed intelligence from the CIA concerning the start-up of Israel’s nuclear program. His main goal was to use Israel to learn more about the Soviet Union, not to keep Israel from gaining nuclear weapons.” He was unconcerned about John F. Kennedy’s worries regarding non-proliferation.
When the CIA confirmed the existence of highly enriched uranium and plutonium in flora samples around Dimona, it was evident that Israel possessed nuclear capacity. Richard Helms, Director of the CIA, informed President Johnson of the situation. James DiEugenio, who wrote an article on Mattson’s book, describes what happened. “The CIA’s chief science and technology officer prepared the NIE and gave it to Helms.”
After meeting with Johnson, the CIA Director informed Duckett of the President’s unusual reaction. LBJ seemed unconcerned, and he did not order an investigation of what happened. Furthermore, he did not instruct Helms to notify the Defense and State Departments so that intelligence probes or sanctions might be initiated. Johnson, on the other hand, did the exact opposite. He instructed Helms to keep the news private and especially instructed the Director not to inform the Secretaries of State or Defense. Helms followed his Commander in Chief’s orders but opted to speak with the FBI about how this development had transpired sooner than intended.”
The actual explanation for President Johnson’s behaviour can only be understood if one realizes that his mother, maternal grandmother, and mother’s maternal grandmother were all Jewish. Johnson was a Jew according to Jewish law.
His father belonged to the Christadelphian cult, which holds that Jews are God’s chosen people. So, while Shapiro assisted Israel in stealing highly enriched uranium, James Jesus Angleton protected Israel, and the crypto-Jewish President Johnson allowed Israel to do anything it wanted.
“Why do the FBI and CIA still hide the truth about NUMEC when so much of the truth is already known?” Mattson wonders. What is there left to conceal? Because so much time has passed, those who guard the secrets have no personal investment in the history they cover. Many people involved in the affair, its investigation, and its cover-up have perished… “Who is the United States government protecting?” The FBI hampered two parallel Congressional investigations into the problem when it refused to produce papers requested by Congressmen Udal and Dingell, working with the Departments of Justice and Energy.
“The CIA’s complicity in the cover-up of NUMEC investigations is clear by its continued refusal to declassify key documents that are nearly 50 years old,” Mattson continues.
The CIA’s employment of the labour and integrity of US residents to carry out its missions and secure its secrets is less visible.” The CIA withheld intelligence from Edwin Kintner, who was deployed with a colleague to investigate if Israel was building nuclear capabilities via Dimona. “The President of the United States gets an agreement that such a study will be made, and the CIA on its own decides not to give what it knows to the people sent over there,” Kintner said in an interview. Doesn’t that sound odd?” He is referring to President John F. Kennedy.
According to Jewish American researcher Avner Cohen, “Kintner and his team were duped twice: once by the Israelis and again by US intelligence agencies that did not share everything they knew with the visiting team.” In retrospect, the proper function of the visiting technical teams may have been more political than technical, unbeknownst to the inspectors… Their duty was not to verify what Israelis were saying, but to be the specialized fig leaf for the political façade that Israel was not crossing the nuclear threshold.” “[I]t is safe to say that our government not only withholds essential facts from its citizens, but it also uses its citizens as unwitting foils in perpetuating its policies,” Mattson concludes.
Dr. AQ Khan, a controversial being
Unlike Israel, Pakistan did not have to take highly enriched uranium from anyone, thanks to the late Dr. A.Q. Khan. We owe A.Q. Khan, who was mistreated under US government coercion, our undying gratitude for this alone. This is the same US government that refused to confront Israel after it stole 345 kg of weapon-grade uranium, posing a nuclear threat to the entire globe, including the US. This provides fuel for contemplation for any thinking Pakistani.
Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, often called A.Q. Khan, is a Pakistani nuclear scientist who played a prominent role in Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program. He is widely recognized for his involvement in developing Pakistan’s nuclear capabilities, including the country’s first successful nuclear tests in 1998.
However, it’s important to note that Dr. A.Q. Khan was not involved in any alleged theft of weapons-grade uranium from the United States to Israel. The question you asked combines unrelated elements. A.Q. Khan was associated with Pakistan’s nuclear program, while credible evidence does not substantiate the claim of Israel stealing uranium from the USA.
Dr. Khan is a controversial figure due to his role in proliferation activities, where he was found to have been involved in sharing nuclear technology and know-how with other countries, including North Korea, Libya, and Iran. His actions led to international concerns about nuclear weapons proliferation and sanctions against him and Pakistan.
Again, it’s crucial to rely on credible sources and verified information when discussing nuclear proliferation or other sensitive topics.
