Stealing the Atom Bomb: How Denial and Deception Armed Israel

by Roger Mattson

  Ben-Gurion replied that the main purpose of the reactor was to produce cheap energy because Israel suffered from a lack of water and it needed large amounts of electricity to desalinate seawater. He went on to offer “in another three or four years’ time, we will have an experimental plant for separation (of plutonium), which is in any event necessary for every nuclear power plant reactor.”7 He gave broad hints that Israel was reserving the option of building a bomb. Kennedy replied, “It is to our common interest that no country believes that Israel is contributing to the proliferation of atomic weapons.”113 Even though Ben-Gurion lied about using electricity from Dimona (there wasn’t any), it appears that Kennedy was satisfied as long as Israel proceeded with plutonium production in secrecy.

  Ben-Gurion later told his biographer that Kennedy “looked like a boy of 25. . . . I thought he was a leader, a statesman, and I saw that he was a politician.” Forty years later, Shimon Peres told Israeli journalist Michael Karpin that at the time of the Kennedy meeting with Ben-Gurion Israel already had the nuclear option and that the whole struggle that Kennedy maintained was meaningless.114 That claim probably was an invention: Dimona was not producing plutonium by 1961, and Israel had no highly enriched uranium by then, except for the fuel in Nahal Soreq, which was safeguarded by U.S. inspectors.

  In December 1962, Kennedy met with Israeli Foreign Minister Golda Meir in Palm Beach, Florida. Kennedy first articulated the special relationship that America sought with Israel. He also raised “our problems on this atomic reactor. We are opposed to nuclear proliferation.” Meir reassured the president “there would not be any difficulty between us on the Israeli nuclear reactor.”115

  On March 26, 1963, McGeorge Bundy, Kennedy’s National Security Advisor, wrote a National Security Memorandum to the Secretary of State, the chairman of the AEC and the DCI concerning “Middle Eastern Nuclear Capabilities.”116 He said that Kennedy decided to track Israel’s development of nuclear weapons closely.

  The President desires, as a matter of urgency, that we undertake every feasible measure to improve our intelligence on the Israeli nuclear program as well as other Israeli and UAR [United Arab Republic] advanced weapons programs, and to arrive at a firmer evaluation of their import. In this connection he wishes the next informal inspection of the Israeli reactor complex to be undertaken promptly and to be as thorough as possible. . . . The President also wishes the Department of State to develop proposals for forestalling such programs. . . .

  By then, Kennedy and his advisors knew the Israelis were lying about the central purpose of Dimona, but they stopped short of doing anything about it. Instead, Kennedy decided to track developments and stall the Israelis where possible. His concern with Israel’s development of nuclear weapons ended with his assassination in November 1963.

  ***

  The French transferred operations of Dimona to the Israelis in 1963 or 1964, after the reactor had gone critical and operated in the startup phase. Excavation for the co-located reprocessing plant for extracting plutonium from the reactor’s blanket material began in 1963, construction ended in about 1965 and the first production of separated plutonium occurred in 1966.117

  In mid 1964, President Johnson began to negotiate directly with Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol as part of a broad initiative to exert American control in the Middle East. The negotiations lasted four years. In January 1968, Johnson invited Eshkol to his Texas ranch. Records of their discussions reflect that Johnson empathized with Eshkol’s description of the dangers to Israel posed by Egypt and made several unconditional commitments to Israel’s security. Subsequently, the State Department and CIA formulated a deal for military aid to Israel. They tried to make up for the president’s failure to provide conditions on the aid by saying the U.S. would provide tanks, warplanes and missiles in exchange for Israel’s renunciation of nuclear weapons. In the end, Johnson proved to be less determined than Kennedy in his opposition to Israeli nuclear weapons—he approved the tanks, planes and missiles without requiring nuclear concessions and halted almost all American aid to Egypt.118

  President Lyndon Johnson

  Prime Minister Levi Eshkol

  Perhaps Johnson considered it a foregone conclusion that Israel would eventually get the bomb, and he was unwilling to fight the inevitable. Another possibility is that Johnson had to deal with the fact that the Soviets were supplying a small research reactor to the Egyptians.119 That is, the United States could counter the Soviets by not impeding Israel’s nuclear program.

  There were also more personal explanations: Perhaps Johnson’s policies stemmed from his association with the Zionists among his close advisors, including Myer Feldman, Abe Fortas, Abe Feinberg and Arthur and Mathilde Krim. Or his policies may have owed to his religious leanings. Karpin wrote that Johnson was a member of the Disciples of Christ and condoned Israel’s nuclear endeavors out of an appreciation for the covenant between God and Israel. Perhaps he followed his grandfather’s charge to, “Take care of the Jews, God’s chosen people. Consider them your friends and help them any way you can.”120 For whatever reasons, Johnson apparently felt an obligation to bolster Israel’s security and conceived of Israel as a frontier land like his home state of Texas.121

  Whether the reasons were psychological, personal or political, President Johnson approved several conventional arms deals with Israel without requiring proof that Dimona had peaceful purposes or that Israel sign the NPT.

  When John McCone stepped down from his DCI post in early 1965, he told a colleague, “When I cannot get the president to read my reports, then it’s time to go.” Hersh opined that McCone knew what Israel’s refusal to permit full-fledged international inspection of Dimona meant, but Johnson “didn’t understand the implications” of the inspection issue and didn’t want to hear about it. McCone believed, said Hersh, that Johnson had three concerns: “His standing in the polls. Can I sell it to Congress? How can I get out of Viet Nam?”122 Perhaps Hersh and McCone were wrong. Perhaps Johnson knew more about the Israeli nuclear program than he was letting on. Politicians often hold firmly to contradictory views at one time, thereby maintaining their wiggle room. Thus, Johnson may have been genuinely concerned about the NPT but unwilling to press the Israelis to sign it.

  * * *

  4 After leaving government service, Bengelsdorf joined International Energy Associates Limited, a private consultancy in Washington, DC, where he and I worked together from 1984 to 1987.

  5 As described in his obituary in the New York Times on June 4, 1986, Rudolf Sonneborn, a New York industrialist, a longtime leader of the American Zionist movement and one of the most prominent fund-raisers for the young state of Israel in the 1940’s and 1950’s, founded the secretive, nationwide Sonneborn Institute to send supplies to the Haganah. Sonneborn also was a leading figure in the Zionist Organization of America.

  6 Gavin Hadden wrote the official history of the Manhattan Project. He was the father of John L. Hadden, CIA’s station chief in Tel Aviv from 1963 to 1967.

  7 The U.S. and some other countries use uranium-fueled nuclear power plants and do not recycle plutonium from used fuel. According to the World Nuclear Association, five countries now use recycled plutonium in nuclear power plants, namely, UK, France, India, Japan and Russia.

  Chapter 3

  The Apollo Uranium Plant (1957-1965)

  Apollo, Pennsylvania is located in the Kiskiminetas River Valley about 30 miles northeast of Pittsburgh. It was first settled in 1790. By the time of the 2010 census, it occupied a land area of less than one-half square mile and was home to about 1600 people.

  Several companies mined bituminous coal and iron in the region, beginning in about 1850. Later, a steel manufacturing plant went into business between the Kiskiminetas River and Main Street to produce nails and spikes. The plant grew and made larger-scale steel products, such as beams, hoists and roof decks. In the mid 20th century, people knew the plant as the Apollo Steel Plant, which a newly arrived Pennsylvania resident, David
Lowenthal, acquired in about 1955.123

  In 1957, Dr. Zalman Shapiro, a resident of suburban Pittsburgh, collaborated with Lowenthal, who lived next door, and others to form a closely held private corporation called Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation (NUMEC). Shapiro was a metallurgist and a senior manager at the nearby Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory that supported AEC’s Office of Naval Reactors. He was active in various Jewish organizations in Pittsburgh and nationally. He said he formed NUMEC to take advantage of a constellation of interests, namely, a growing market for uranium fuel for nuclear reactors, his specialized metallurgical skills and his proprietary knowledge of how to produce uranium fuel.

  On May 31, 1958, Lowenthal’s Apollo Steel Company, together with the American Nut and Bolt Fastener Company (both incorporated in Pennsylvania), merged with San Toy Mining Company, which was incorporated in Maine. San Toy was the surviving company in the merger, and it changed its name to Apollo Industries, Inc. The president of Apollo Industries was Morton Chatkin, a former business partner of Lowenthal in Ohio; the executive vice-president was Ivan J. Novick; and the secretary and treasurer was Lowenthal. These three men, along with 14 others, including Zalman Shapiro, comprised the board of directors of Apollo Industries.124 Novick later served as national president of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) from 1978 to 1982.8 He also served as a liaison between the administrations of Prime Minister Menachem Begin and President Ronald Reagan.125

  On May 17, 1962, Apollo Industries incorporated a subsidiary known as Raychord Corporation, which henceforth operated the old Apollo Steel Plant under the name Raychord Steel.126

  The steel industry’s decline in the 1950s created unemployment in the region. With an overabundance of semi-skilled workers, the town of Apollo was ready to accept any enterprise that brought new jobs, including Raychord Steel and NUMEC.

  ***

  Lowenthal’s 2006 obituary told of an adventurous life. He was born in Poland in 1921, immigrated to America in 1932, served in the U.S. armed forces in World War II and became a U.S. citizen in July 1945. He was in charge of defense on board the ship Exodus 1947, a converted American merchant ship bought by the Haganah, the underground Jewish military of the day, to ferry Jewish immigrants to Palestine. Otto Preminger immortalized the story of the Exodus in his 1960 movie of the same name. After the Exodus was seized and its passengers returned to Europe, Lowenthal helped to purchase another ship, the Pan York, which was to ferry thousands of Jewish Europeans to Palestine. When the British denied Pan York entrance to Palestine, it docked in Cyprus, where the British arrested and imprisoned Lowenthal. He escaped to Palestine and served in the Haganah during Israel’s 1948 war of independence. He served under Meir Amit, who later headed Military Intelligence in Israel from 1962 to 1963 and then Mossad, the CIA’s counterpart in Israel, from 1963 to 1968.127

  Lowenthal’s obituary included praise from some of his friends. “I remember you as a big Zionist,” Meir Amit wrote near the end of Lowenthal’s life, “always ready to do things in order to help Israel. You have gained many friends in our country; they will never forget you and your positive approach.” Zalman Shapiro said of his partner in NUMEC, “He had lots of innovative ideas and he tried them.” Lowenthal’s obituary said he was a close friend of David Ben-Gurion and Golda Meir.

  Lowenthal and his sister traveled alone to the United States to join their father after the death of their mother in Poland. As a teenager, he suffered from tuberculosis and spent four years in a sanitarium, mostly reading. He later called those years his “informal education” because he never attended college. His business career began with the Mount Vernon Bridge Co. in Ohio. In 1955, along with two others, he bought the dormant Apollo Steel Co. in Apollo and restarted production.

  ***

  About the time he bought Apollo Steel in 1956, Lowenthal visited Israel when it was making decisions about foreign-sourcing its nuclear materials and technology.128 In 1957, Lowenthal and Shapiro formed NUMEC, and within weeks, Shapiro applied for NUMEC’s first nuclear materials license from the AEC to operate a manufacturing plant for uranium fuel in one of the buildings earlier occupied by Apollo Steel. John Hadden, the former CIA Station Chief in Tel Aviv, later noted the unusual coincidence of events; i.e., the AEC issuing its first license to handle highly enriched uranium to a private company recently financed by a group of leading Zionists at a time when Israel was intent upon acquiring nuclear weapons. He thought Israel pursued both plutonium and uranium-based weapons from the start of its quest for the bomb.129

  The FBI watched Lowenthal for a number of years. The Bureau has rebuffed most attempts to obtain its records on Lowenthal. However, Grant Smith learned from the FBI that as late as 1968 and 1969 Lowenthal had ties to “the highest levels of Israeli intelligence” through contacts in the U.S. and on his monthly trips to Israel.130 In 1968, FBI recorded that Lowenthal’s contact was the Defense and Armed Forces Attache, General David Carmon, in the Israeli embassy in Washington, DC. Just before his service in that capacity, Carmon was Israel’s Deputy Director of Military Intelligence. In 1968, Carmon participated in top-secret negotiations with the U.S. Department of Defense for the sale to Israel of Phantom jets (F-4s) and advanced conventional weapons, arguably contingent on Israel’s forswearing nuclear weapons.131

  ***

  Shapiro’s first priority for NUMEC was to construct a manufacturing plant for uranium fuel for nuclear reactors. Local people viewed the new plant as a boon to the economy and did not ask many questions about its mission or its hazards. In exchange for NUMEC stock, Lowenthal’s Apollo Steel Company (later Apollo Industries and then Raychord Corporation) provided a substantial portion (50,000 square feet) of its steel plant in Apollo to house the uranium plant. Apollo Industries also invested money in NUMEC stock.132

  Shapiro credited NUMEC’s three vice-presidents for the company’s successful startup. Dr. Frederick Forscher was a metallurgist and nuclear engineer who worked with Shapiro at Bettis. Forscher was a naturalized American citizen. His parents died in a Nazi concentration camp.133 Oscar S. Gray was a lawyer for the U.S. Department of State before joining NUMEC as its secretary and treasurer and, later, general counsel. At the State Department he was honored for drafting and reviewing several hundred international agreements, including all basic bilateral military assistance agreements made by the United States between June 1951 and March 1957.134 Dr. Leonard P. Pepkowitz was a radiochemist and materials expert who worked in the Manhattan Project, Los Alamos National Laboratory and Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory before coming to NUMEC.135 Like the Bettis Laboratory, the Knolls Laboratory supported AEC’s Office of Naval Reactors. All three of these vice-presidents served on the board of directors of NUMEC.

  In 1965, the other members of NUMEC’s board of directors were Leon Falk, Director of Duquesne Light Company;9 Benjamin Rosen, Pittsburgh attorney; Phillip Powers, former president of Western Pennsylvania Power Company; and Dr. William Fondiller, consulting engineer (metallurgist) and former vice-president and treasurer of Bell Telephone Laboratories.136 The outside directors were self-proclaimed figureheads that later denied having knowledge of or involvement in NUMEC’s operations and clientele.137

  ***

  NUMEC began building its uranium processing plant in the Apollo Steel facility in 1957. The plant produced fuel for nuclear reactors owned by government and commercial entities, both foreign and domestic. Several years later, NUMEC built a second plant in Parks Township, also on the Kiskiminetas River, a few miles from Apollo. The Parks facility produced mixed oxide (plutonium and uranium) fuels and metallic fuels for nuclear reactors. At Parks, NUMEC also fabricated novel devices from uranium and plutonium metals and other radionuclides. NUMEC used a portion of the Parks site for burial of low-level radioactive waste. The waste disposal site contained a number of burial pits and became known as the shallow land disposal site. The capital invested in the two plants (Apollo and Parks) was much less than the cost of the materials they processed, a fact
that contributed to later suggestions that the company was a front for other purposes.

  The steel plant was of simple construction that dated back to the 1850s. It was two stories tall with a sheet metal roof and walls of brick and block. The uranium plant shared two walls with the neighboring steel fabricator. Shapiro said he based his designs of laboratory equipment and effluent controls in the uranium plant on those used in government laboratories at Oak Ridge and Bettis. The uranium processing equipment was of novel design of his conception, for which he was respected as a leader in the field.

  NUMEC’s 1957 application to the AEC for a license to possess uranium described the safety, health and security measures that it would include in the design and operation of the plant to protect the uranium, the workers, the public and the environment. When AEC issued a license for NUMEC to operate the Apollo plant, it referenced the safety analysis report (SAR) that accompanied the license application. Thus, the SAR became part of the license. The application was amended many times to reflect changes in the scope of services offered by NUMEC and the safety and security features required by the AEC.

  The Uranium Plant at Apollo

  After reviewing NUMEC’s license application for the plant at Apollo, the AEC issued a license in July 1957 that allowed the company to conduct operations with natural uranium. Further improvements in the plant in the following months led to AEC’s December 1957 approval of operations with enriched uranium. The Apollo plant accomplished many firsts in the U.S. nuclear industry: It was the first commercial facility licensed to convert uranium hexafluoride to uranium dioxide powder; it achieved the first commercial production of coated particle fuels; and it was the first to develop the dry pressing process for power reactor fuel pellets.