Stealing the Atom Bomb: How Denial and Deception Armed Israel

by Roger Mattson

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  A June 13, 1968 report from FBI’s Pittsburgh office noted the current makeup of the NUMEC Board of Directors.279 The directors included all of those from 1965, namely, Falk, Fondiller, Forscher, Gray, Pepkowitz, Powers, Rosen and Shapiro, plus one newly identified director Charles N. Berents, vice president in charge of investment, J. H. Hillman and Sons, Pittsburgh. Thus, for at least a year after ARCO bought NUMEC in 1967, Shapiro continued as NUMEC’s president, and the company’s board of directors remained essentially unchanged.

  Later in June, FBI’s Washington Field Office provided Hoover with AEC’s April 1966 report of interviews with former and present employees of NUMEC, some financial information and a list of transfers of SNM made by NUMEC to various foreign entities.280 The FBI agent that prepared the transmittal memo told Hoover that the AEC had “an unusual interest in the reason for the Bureau’s current interest” in NUMEC. He went on to say, “the matter of that alleged diversion is not a primary target at this stage of instant investigation.” This last statement is at odds with the facts of the matter, i.e., CIA requested the new FBI investigation because it found traces of HEU near Dimona and surmised that the uranium had been diverted from Apollo. If the Washington Office of FBI did not know that the possibility of such a diversion was driving its investigation, then compartmentalization of intelligence information may have prevented FBI agents in the field from knowing CIA’s intelligence information about Dimona, another casualty of the conflicting interests of FBI and CIA.

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  The NSA provided further evidence in 1968 that Israel had developed nuclear weapons. Its electronic eavesdropping revealed that the Israeli Air Force had practiced bombing runs typical of those used for delivery of nuclear weapons, i.e., bombing runs designed to get the planes away fast before their pilots were exposed to lethal radiation. The Israelis conducted the practice runs in aircraft purchased from the United States in one of several arms deals that President Johnson approved. That deal was made in 1966 and involved forty-eight A-4E Skyhawk tactical fighters. Despite protests from the State Department, the Skyhawks were equipped with the capability to deliver atom bombs.281

  Late in 1968, in the waning days of the Johnson administration, Israel and the U.S. concluded some long-enduring negotiations over conventional arms. Secretary of State Clark Clifford, who succeeded Robert McNamara in March, and Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs Paul Warnke vehemently urged that the conventional arms should only be conveyed if Israel agreed to sign the NPT. As the lead U.S. negotiator, Warnke stunned Israeli Ambassador Yitzhak Rabin by the frankness of his demands for the quid pro quo. In his memoirs, Rabin recalled,282

  Warnke . . . took off his silken gloves and the claws that he bared transfixed me to my chair, and made my blood boil. As a condition for the supply of the Phantoms, the United States was demanding that Israel sign a shocking document, the likes of which no sovereign nation had ever been asked to sign.

  In the end, Rabin outmaneuvered Warnke and Clifford by enlisting Abe Feinberg and Arthur Goldberg to speak with Johnson on Israel’s behalf. In the end, Johnson sided with the Israelis. In a telephone call in late 1968, he told Clifford, “Sell them anything they want.” When Clifford replied that he did not want to live in a world where Israel had nuclear weapons, Johnson replied “Don’t bother me with this anymore” and hung up. Thus, from 1965 to 1968 Johnson consistently delivered the same message to McCone, Helms and Clifford: He did not want to discuss the matter of Israel’s acquisition of nuclear weapons. Instead, he was ready to welcome Israel to the nuclear club. As nonproliferation author George Perkovich put it, “Defense Secretary Clark Clifford and Secretary of State Dean Rusk did not know that Israel already had the bomb and that Feinberg and Goldberg already had the president.”283

  Warnke opined years later “Both Kennedy and Johnson waxed eloquent about the dangers of an increase in the nuclear club, but key officials appear to have been either indifferent or ready to accept an Israeli bomb.”284

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  In June 1968, after years of negotiations, the United Nations General Assembly endorsed the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons, commonly called the NPT or Nonproliferation Treaty. On July 1, the United States, Great Britain, the Soviet Union and 59 other countries signed the treaty. China and France did not sign but implied they would do so after they acquired their own nuclear weapons.

  Under the NPT, which became effective on March 5, 1970, the IAEA, a subsidiary agency of the United Nations, provides a safeguards system to ensure that non-weapons states that are party to the treaty use fissionable materials and associated technology only for peaceful purposes and not in the construction of weapons. In addition, all parties to the treaty, both those with nuclear weapons and those without, agreed to pursue negotiations in good faith to cease the nuclear arms race and pursue nuclear disarmament. By 2008, 187 nations were party to the NPT. In 2002, Cuba was one of the last to sign, and in 2003, North Korea reneged on its earlier signature.285 Israel has never signed the NPT. In early December 2012, the General Assembly of the United Nations, by a wide majority over the dissenting votes of the U.S. and Israel, called upon Israel to sign the NPT, which it has steadfastly refused to do for more than 40 years.

  Article I of the Nonproliferation Treaty requires “Each nuclear-weapon State Party to the treaty [to undertake] not to transfer to any recipient whatsoever nuclear weapons or other explosive devices . . . and in any way to assist, encourage, or induce any non-nuclear-weapon State to manufacture or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons. . . .” The U.S. government has not addressed how it has complied with this obligation in light of the NUMEC affair and other instances of the transfer of nuclear weapons technology, material and equipment from private parties in the United States to Israel and other countries.

  The United Nations amended the NPT in 1977 by adding an Additional Protocol that gives IAEA broader monitoring powers then the original treaty. A number of countries have agreed to the Additional Protocol, i.e., the original five members of the nuclear club and some nonvolatile states. Notably, Algeria, Egypt, Iran, India, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Syria have not signed the Additional Protocol.286

  When President Johnson decided to forego insistence on Israel signing the NPT in the arms deal he approved in 1968, it was with a full understanding that he was creating a precedent for other nations doing the same. He thereby undercut the treaty that others in his government had worked for more than a decade to establish. Johnson was specifically warned against this course of action earlier in his presidency when CIA issued a 1966 National Intelligence Estimate entitled “The Likelihood of Further Nuclear Proliferation.”287 The document warned the president of the hazards of establishing lenient proliferation precedents by pointing out that the reasons for proliferation are partly psychological and partly technical. A psychological reason is that nations hate to be left behind by others they view as equal or inferior. A technical reason is that some nations consider it necessary to enter the nuclear weapons field in order to keep abreast of scientific developments. The 1966 CIA Estimate noted that gaps and limitations in the safeguards systems could allow nuclear material and equipment to be transferred to nations seeking to join the nuclear club. An example cited by the Agency to illustrate that fact is redacted in the version of the document released to the public. Israel would have been a sterling example. Despite CIA’s warnings of the hazards of showing leniency to proliferating nations, President Johnson acquiesced to the Israeli weapons program and some questioned whether he abetted it.

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  Henry Myers speculated that President Johnson may have had motives to keep the Israeli atom bomb quiet other than protecting Israel, i.e., Johnson could not afford a scandal at the time. “That’s the last thing LBJ needed,” Myers said. “Here he was having hell [with Vietnam], so I can see why he told Helms to keep quiet.”288

  President Johnson was troubled not only by the cond
uct of the war abroad but also by the antiwar movement at home. He ordered Helms to undertake domestic surveillance of antiwar demonstrators to try to prove that they were financed and controlled by Moscow. Such surveillance was a clear violation of CIA’s charter.289 Johnson encapsulated his obsession with Viet Nam when he described a recurring dream.290 If he faltered or failed in the war effort,

  There would be Robert Kennedy out in front leading the fight against me, telling everyone that I had betrayed John Kennedy’s commitment to South Viet Nam. That I was a coward. An unmanly man. A man without spine. Oh, I could see it coming, all right. Every night when I fell asleep, I would see myself tied to the ground in the middle of a long open space. In the distance, I could hear the voices of thousands of people. They were shouting and running toward me. Coward! Traitor! Weakling!

  It was not just Vietnam that troubled President Johnson in 1968. His Great Society initiatives were coming under budget pressure due to the war. In addition, a B-52 bomber crashed in Greenland, disgorging four undetonated nuclear weapons; the North Koreans seized the U.S. intelligence ship Pueblo in international waters; the nuclear-powered submarine Scorpion sank under mysterious circumstances in the eastern Atlantic; the Soviets invaded Czechoslovakia to crush the Prague Spring; and Saddam Hussein became vice chairman of the revolutionary council in Iraq. At home, the country reeled with the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy. Besieged, would Johnson have run the risk of secretly condoning or aiding the Israeli nuclear weapons program just so he could avoid bad press?

  Avner Cohen had a different view on the matter. “Johnson was not deceived by Israel nor was he Israel’s accomplice. The U.S.-Israeli nuclear relationship was more subtle and nuanced than that. The subtlety and nuance allowed for the creation of a veneer behind which Israel and the United States did what they felt they had to do.”291

  On March 24, 1968, the president told United Nations Ambassador Goldberg on the phone that he grew more sympathetic to Israel’s plight as his own political fortunes declined. “They haven’t got many friends in the world,” the president said, and “they’re in about the same shape I am. And the closer I got—I face adversity, the closer I get to them. . . . Because I got a bunch of Arabs after me—about a hundred million of ‘em. . . . So I can understand them a little bit.”292

  On March 31, 1968, Johnson announced that he would not run for re-election.

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  14 A classified copy of this April 2,1968 letter was found in the papers of James Connor at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library. The CIA refused repeatedly to allow the Library to declassify the letter until March 2014 when the Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel released the one-and-a-half-page document with about 12 lines redacted.

  Part Three: The Genie, the Bottle and the Brain Drain

  Chapter 8

  Visitation (1968)

  In 1968, FBI’s interest in Shapiro and NUMEC expanded from the diversion of U-235 to the possibility that there was an ongoing transfer of sensitive nuclear technology to Israel by Shapiro and his associates. A visit to Apollo by leading agents of Israeli intelligence services contributed to this growing concern.

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  Movies and pulp fiction have touted the excellence of Israeli intelligence services for decades. Every spy junkie knows that Israel is superior to all other nations in its accomplishments in espionage and clandestine action. The coincidence between truth and myth is not accidental—David Ben-Gurion designed it that way. Israel’s founders realized when they declared independence in 1948 that their survival in the midst of opposing Arab and Persian nations depended on excellent foreign intelligence. Early Israeli governments picked the leaders and provided the resources to institutionalize the diverse intelligence apparatus that helped win independence.

  A testament to their success emerged in 1979 when Islamic militants overran the American embassy in Tehran and discovered a secret CIA study dated March of that year describing the superiority of Israeli intelligence activities. The study concluded, “Israel’s intelligence and security services are among the best in the world. Their expert personnel and sophisticated techniques have made them highly effective, and they have demonstrated outstanding ability to organize, screen, and evaluate information obtained from recruited agents, Jewish communities, and other sources throughout the world.”293

  The Israeli intelligence community comprises several organizations, the three most important of which are Aman, Mossad and Shin Bet. In simple terms, Aman is responsible for military intelligence, i.e., learning of war preparations and capabilities of Israel’s enemies; Mossad is responsible for foreign espionage; and Shin Bet is responsible for counter terrorism and internal security. Thus, Aman is analogous to the various arms of military intelligence in America; Mossad is analogous to CIA; and Shin Bet’s scope resembles a combination of FBI and Secret Service. Aman reports to Israel’s minister of defense, while Mossad and Shin Bet report to the prime minister. Unlike the division of responsibility between CIA (foreign) and FBI (domestic), Israel’s three main security agencies utilize a shared operations unit that operates inside and outside the country. The operations unit was established in 1957, was accountable to all three intelligence organizations and in the 1960s was led by a man named Rafi Eitan and his deputy, Avraham Shalom (previously known as Avraham Bendor).294 Eitan and Bendor were involved in both the NUMEC affair and the case of the convicted American spy, Jonathan Pollard, among others.

  A fourth Israeli intelligence unit was established in 1957 by then Defense Minister Shimon Peres, acting behind the back of the overall Israeli intelligence guru Isser Harel. The secret agency was called the Science Liaison Bureau. It reported directly to the defense minister. The Bureau became known in the intelligence community by its Hebrew acronym, LAKAM. Its first director, who lasted in the job for 20 years, was a former Shin Bet operative named Binyamin Blumberg. The first assignments of LAKAM were to maintain security inside the Ministry of Defense, in particular the Dimona nuclear facility.295 Israeli intelligence officials have said that LAKAM’s original reason for being was to collect scientific intelligence behind friendly lines in the West.296

  When France scaled back its support of Dimona in the mid 1960s, LAKAM began purchasing parts and materials for plutonium production at Dimona from other sources. LAKAM was also responsible for hiding the true mission of Dimona when America sent scientists to inspect the site. LAKAM simply arranged for the U.S. experts to see many other things, leaving scant time for their tours of Dimona. When another contingent of U.S. experts visited the site in January 1964, LAKAM built “a Potemkin Village, a parallel control room full of dials and buttons, computer controlled to simulate the operation of a small-scale nuclear research facility.” LAKAM also bricked off the entrances to other parts of the facility thus concealing its true size and scope. The non-Hebrew speaking American experts were duped, telling U.S. and Egyptian authorities after their visits that the facility had no weapons function.297

  LAKAM also sent its personnel abroad as science attaches in large Israeli embassies in Europe and the United States. They collected scientific publications in their postings and befriended native scientists who might assist Israel. LAKAM also recruited the assistance of Israeli scientists who traveled abroad, asking them to collect information useful to the nuclear weapons program, even if they had to steal it.298

  FBI learned of LAKAM’s activities in the United States in 1968 and undertook a secret project with the code name “Scope” to track movements of Israeli scientific delegations and embassy personnel in the United States. At first, FBI did not disclose the Scope project to CIA, thus adding to the long line of interagency feints and deceits. The project included FBI wiretaps on the Israeli embassy that produced incriminating information leading to expulsion of some Israelis from the country. When CIA learned of the expulsions, it pushed back on Scope and on FBI’s attempt to curtail Israeli intelligence activities. After all, the Israeli intelligence agen
cies were CIA’s partners in spying on the Soviets. Hoover speculated that Helms was playing a double game and might be a partner in Israeli scientific espionage, including the very case that Helms had asked FBI to investigate, the appearance of U.S.-enriched uranium near Dimona.299 Riebling said there was a Scope assessment of Shapiro’s involvement with Rafi Eitan when the latter was head of LAKAM.300 If so, FBI has released no documentation on that assessment.

  Riebling also told of another Scope case involving Yuval Ne’eman, who was trailed by FBI and found to be working for LAKAM. When ordered to register as a foreign agent for the Israeli government or risk deportation, he appealed through Mossad’s station chief in Washington, who contacted James Angleton at CIA, who contacted William Sullivan at FBI. The Bureau backed down and Ne’eman was allowed to continue his activities in America. The Ne’eman incident must have sent a message to Israeli intelligence operatives with friends and contacts in the American scientific community: The United States tolerated the sharing of sensitive military technology with Israel.

  Ne’eman was the physicist who invited Edward Teller to Israel in 1966 and 1967 when Teller first learned of Dimona and its nuclear weapons mission. Born in Tel Aviv in 1925, Ne’eman was known in Israeli nuclear circles as “The Brain.” He is credited with designing Israel’s first atom bomb. He was a visiting professor at the California Institute of Technology when FBI detected his espionage activity. Flush with U.S. rocket technology, he returned to Israel where he founded and twice led Israel’s Science and Technology Ministry. He founded and chaired Israel’s Space Agency. He was elected to the Knesset and served as Israel’s Energy Minister. Thus, CIA apparently fostered one of the great ironies of the Cold War. It enabled Ne’eman’s transfer of rocket technology from ex-Nazi scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory to a nuclear weapons delivery system for Israel.301