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Stealing the Atom Bomb: How Denial and Deception Armed Israel

Page 27

by Roger Mattson


  Brzezinski opined, “While a diversion might have occurred, there is no evidence—despite an intensive search for some—to prove that one did. For every piece of evidence that implies one conclusion, there is another piece that argues the opposite. One is pretty much left with making a personal judgment—based on instinct—as to whether the diversion did or did not occur.” Apparently, Brzezinski did not grasp the contradiction in his saying there was no evidence of theft and then saying there was essentially equal evidence on each side of the case.

  The next sentence of the memorandum revealed the level of trust in high circles when it came to NUMEC. Brzezinski said, “So far as we know however, (and we have made serious efforts to discover it) there is nothing to indicate CIA participation in the alleged theft.” Since there is no record of a separate NSC investigation of the alleged theft and CIA’s possible involvement, and since the FBI’s records contain no indication that the Bureau looked into that possibility, one is left to wonder what Brzezinski meant. Taken at face value, his words meant that the Carter Administration’s reaction to the CIA’s efforts to draw attention to Israel’s theft of bomb material was to wonder whether the CIA participated in the theft. More likely, when Brzezinski said, “we made serious efforts to discover it,” he was referring to the Justice Department’s investigation (conducted as part of President Ford’s call for the third FBI investigation of NUMEC), which was still underway and included consideration of a possible coverup by government officials.

  The last part of Brzezinski’s memorandum to Carter indicates the administration’s intentions regarding the NUMEC affair. Brzezinski said, “We face tough sledding in the next few weeks (particularly in view of Cy’s [Secretary of State Cyrus Vance’s] Mid-East trip) in trying to keep attention focused on ERDA’s technical arguments and, if necessary, on the FBI investigations, and away from the CIA’s information.”

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  Three days later, on August 5, Ted Shackley and (name redacted) provided briefings for Senator John Glenn (D-OH) and Representative C. G. Mike McCormack (D-WA). In both cases Shackley relied on an outline that was prepared by CIA staff. Leonard Weiss of Senator Glenn’s staff attended the Glenn briefing.525 The cover memoranda did not get into the details of Shackley’s two briefings. There were lengthy question and answer exchanges with Glenn and fewer exchanges with McCormack. Some of the exchanges were redacted completely when CIA released the memoranda. In the unredacted portions of both memoranda, it is clear that Glenn and McCormack were both interested in the involvement of the presidents that had knowledge of the case, i.e., Johnson, Nixon, Ford and Carter. Shackley and his colleague told John Glenn they had not seen any single document “which would lead to a flat conclusion that a diversion had occurred. . . .” Glenn asked if there were “bad connections between FBI and CIA on NUMEC.” Shackley stressed that the two agencies took different approaches to the basic question. “CIA was trying to obtain information which would clarify an intelligence estimate. On the other hand the FBI was looking for material that could be used in a criminal case.” Glenn also asked, “What did Jim Angleton have to do with the NUMEC matter?” Much of Shackley’s short answer is redacted, but it has some interesting implications. “Mr. Angleton was the Chief of the CI [Counter Intelligence] Staff (two lines redacted). As a result (name redacted) had worked for Mr. Angleton. In view of this situation Mr. Angleton had obviously been aware of and interested in (name redacted) activities.” The point was made that such activities “obviously focused on NUMEC (two lines redacted).”

  After his assignment as CIA Station Chief in Tel Aviv, John Hadden transferred to CIA headquarters where he reported to James Angleton. Perhaps the name redacted in this document is that of John Hadden, but since he died before the document was redacted and released by CIA in September 2015, it is not clear why his name should have been redacted. In response to another question, Shackley denied there was any U.S. involvement in the diversion. Glenn asked a question about the substance of the “cocktail conversation,” probably referring to something that Shackley mentioned in his briefing, perhaps Duckett’s 1976 leak about the number of Israeli nuclear weapons. Shackley responded to the senator that CIA did not know and “had no way of correlating this event to anything that was in our files.” Glenn asked if others in NUMEC were involved, and Shackley’s ten-line answer was entirely redacted by CIA. Shackley referred several of the senator’s questions to FBI, ERDA and National Security Advisor Brzezinski. Shackley closed his memorandum by noting his impression that Senator Glenn intended to hold a Senate Hearing into the NUMEC diversion.

  Shackley’s summary of the McCormack briefing was much shorter. McCormack asked what he stressed was a hypothetical question, “If President Johnson had directed that a diversion of nuclear materials occur, would the CIA have known it?” Shackley responded, “This is a question that should be put to those who were direct participants in the events of the time. In short, this would be the type of question that Mr. Helms or Mr. Duckett could best comment on.” Shackley gave a similar answer to another question by McCormack, “Suppose CIA Director Helms and FBI Director Hoover had stumbled on information suggesting a possible diversion authorized at the highest level of the U.S. Government? What then?” CIA redacted about one-third of the four-page memorandum on the McCormack briefing.

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  On August 8, 1977, Congressman Dingell held a hearing that addressed the inventory difference report (ERDA-77-68) in general and the NUMEC in particular. General Gossick again represented the NRC. Generals Starbird and Giller represented the newly formed Department of Energy (DOE).31 All three generals testified under oath that there was no evidence of a diversion at Apollo. Gossick went even further in response to a question from Michael Ward, Subcommittee Counsel. Gossick said the “no evidence” conclusion was reached by the commissioners “in full knowledge of the briefing they had received from the CIA and ERDA.” Thus, he contradicted what the Conran task force had been told by Eagle and Strauss. Furthermore, CIA had briefed Ward just days before, so he might have known more than the witnesses about the possibility of a diversion.

  The day after the hearing, David Burnham reported in the New York Times that Michael Ward of the Dingell committee staff said intelligence officials had “strong suspicions that a diversion occurred. . . . [Ward] was not free to identify who had talked to the subcommittee staff, but an informed source said it had been the Central Intelligence Agency.” Burnham reported that several months earlier a former top-level intelligence official said that he had once seen a report that Israel had stolen nuclear materials.526

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  On August 23, Ted Shackley and two other CIA staffers (names redacted) briefed Congressman Udall and his committee staffer Henry Myers on the NUMEC case.527 The briefing apparently followed the same outline as the August 5 briefings of Senator Glenn and Congressman McCormack. The CIA redacted more than two pages of the six-page summary of the briefing. There were interesting similarities and some differences in Udall and Myers’ questions compared to earlier briefings. When asked whether FBI had interviewed Shapiro, Shackley said the “Agency has no knowledge of any direct debriefing of Mr. Shapiro by the FBI.” Asked if President Johnson, “who was known to be a friend of Israel, could have encouraged the flow of nuclear materials to the Israelis,” Shackley responded “There is no information in the CIA files which are currently available to us which would indicate that President Johnson had ever undertaken any action which would have resulted in a diversion of nuclear materials to Israel.” CIA redacted the next few lines in the memorandum concerning a “vignette” involving something Helms told Duckett. Perhaps this was the story Duckett told the NRC of Johnson telling Helms not to tell anyone about the Israeli bomb. The CIA also redacted nearly two pages of the answer to the question of how one would go about diverting material from NUMEC to Israel. In another answer, Shackley “stressed that CIA had never obtained any hard intelligence (half line redacted) which clearly linked NUMEC to the subse
quent production of uranium-based nuclear weapons by Israel.” Perhaps that redaction concerns the HEU that Hadden found in the environment near Dimona, which Shackley described to the ERDA officials on July 29 and perhaps others that he briefed that summer. Udall closed the meeting by noting that he would be meeting with the FBI that same day. No record of that meeting has been found.

  ***

  On September 19, FBI Director Kelley transmitted a report of the Bureau’s investigation to the special agent in charge of the Washington Field Office. The director concluded, “our intensive investigation into alleged diversion of Special Nuclear Material from NUMEC in the mid 1960s (redacted) a subsequent coverup of that diversion by certain U.S. governmental agencies has thus far failed to develop any positive information that would lend credence to these allegations. That is, of course, not to say that such a diversion did not, in fact, occur.” The transmittal letter, instead of stopping the investigation, listed some other individuals (names redacted) to be interviewed.528 Try as it might, the FBI could not kill it—with help from the White House and the Congress, the NUMEC investigation had a life of its own.

  ***

  In November 1977, the Department of Energy released 20 volumes of documents relating to its investigations of NUMEC, pursuant to a FOIA request. An internal FBI memo noted at the time, “the press and Congress wish to show that the Johnson Administration had caused the FBI to slow down their investigation in order to cover up the activities of NUMEC.” The FBI belied the allegation by soldiering on with the interviews requested by the Department of Justice.529 My 2009 request to access the 20 volumes of documents released by DOE in 1977 led DOE staff to say the documents could not be found.

  ***

  Stimulated by Conran’s letters, the work of the Conran task force, and the Congressional hearings, the New York Times, Washington Post and Washington Star published a number of articles in late 1977 about NUMEC. Those articles provided the first public airing of explanations offered by AEC for the missing uranium and of Shapiro’s close ties to Israeli intelligence and defense officials. The stories also were the first time that the public heard about the doubts harbored by Hoover. The reporters that wrote about NUMEC relied on sanitized documents that were becoming public for the first time and statements by both named and unnamed sources that saw the original documents.

  NUMEC-related correspondence between NRC and Congress also heated up in late 1977 on several issues, including the question of whether General Gossick lied when he testified at the Dingell and Udall hearings when he said there was “no evidence” of a diversion. For example, on November 15, Congressmen Paul E. Tsongas (D-MA) and Udall sent a letter to NRC saying they agreed with the Conran task force that if a diversion had occurred at Apollo, “It would send us back to the drawing boards.”530 That is, a diversion of the kind that was alleged, even though it may have occurred a decade before NRC was created, would be germane to the ongoing work of NRC to assure adequate safeguards. It would, for example, speak to the possible role and level of authority of an insider that might aid such a theft.

  The Congressmen went on to say that National Security Council staff, CIA and FBI had briefed them after Gossick testified to their subcommittee. “In light of all this, we believe it to have been a serious misrepresentation of the facts to suggest, as did Mr. Gossick in his testimony on July 29, that there is no evidence of a diversion.” They also noted that former Chairman Anders was, “sufficiently apprehensive as a result of the briefing by the CIA and ERDA that he alerted the White House, after which President Ford initiated the investigation that still seems to be in progress. We also believe it noteworthy that Mr. Chapman, the former Director of the Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards, stated in a public radio interview that he did not consider the matter closed.” Barbara Newman of National Public Radio conducted the August 15, 1977 Chapman interview wherein he told her there was “not enough evidence to bring about a prosecution [of Shapiro] . . . [and that] if material had been taken, there must have been high level involvement in whatever happened.”531

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  By the time NRC received the letter from Tsongas and Udall, Dr. Joseph Hendrie had replaced Marcus Rowden as Chairman of the Commission. Hendrie responded to the Congressmen on December 10, telling them, in essence, that Gossick had been in the dark about CIA and ERDA briefings, had read some recent technical reports before testifying that were approved by NRC and ERDA and that contained “no evidence” statements, and had not meant to cause all this confusion. Hendrie also pointed out that people within NRC had legitimate differences among them on the meaning of the term “no evidence.” He concluded by saying that “no conclusive evidence” was a better way of describing the situation and, “for regulatory purposes, we must assume the circumstances were such that a diversion could have occurred, and must construct our safeguards requirements accordingly.”

  Hendrie attached a letter from Gossick saying it had been his intention to tell Congress what the commission believed about the Apollo matter, but he had missed the mark. Gossick went on to parse his prior testimony to show how one could read it to be consistent with the commission’s interpretation of the situation and said the Congressmen’s accusation of his having misrepresented the facts was “deeply and personally agonizing.”532

  The Gossick letter irritated Commissioner Gilinsky who wrote to Congressman Dingell to say Gossick’s “blanket denial on behalf of the Commission itself that any evidence existed to indicate any significant amount of strategic special nuclear material had ever been stolen or diverted . . . did not represent my view. . . . My view is now, as it was then, that no such categorical statement is possible.”533 A few days later, the Washington Post ran a story about the fight the Udall and Dingell committees were having with NRC over whether they were being told the truth about NUMEC. The Post reported that FBI, CIA and NSC had briefed the Udall committee. Although Udall and his aides would not comment on what they had been told, “Sources have said the briefings included ‘circumstantial evidence’ that Israel had built an atomic bomb out of highly enriched uranium about the same time that more than 200 pounds of the same material went missing from the Apollo plant operated by NUMEC.”534

  Key staff of the Congressional oversight committees pressed FBI, CIA and NRC for more details. With prodding by Myers, the CIA told the NRC on December 22 that it no longer objected to declassification and release of reference 102 of the report by the Conran task force. ERDA soon followed suit, and on December 27, NRC released the document without redaction and placed it in the NRC public document room. It was the first public admission by the U.S. government that CIA and ERDA had briefed the NRC in February 1976 about NUMEC. The document said it was not possible to make unqualified statements about the evidence of a diversion.535

  Soon thereafter, on January 9, 1978, Dingell wrote to Hendrie to say that he was not satisfied with the answer that had been provided by Hendrie and Gossick to Tsongas and Udall. He noted that reference 102 “acknowledges the existence of intelligence information relating to the possible illicit diversion of material from NUMEC.” Dingell also referred to the separate letter from Gilinsky on December 12 saying he had advised Gossick before his testimony of the substance of the Executive Branch’s briefing on NUMEC. Dingell went on to express his frustration with repeated instances of NRC’s ignorance of and disinterest in information relating to matters within its jurisdiction. He looked forward to receiving evidence that would justify his future reliance on information provided by the commission.536

  ***

  While the Gossick brouhaha continued to demand the attention of NRC and Congress, the CIA continued to inform Congress about its conclusions regarding NUMEC. In December 1977, DCI Stansfield Turner wrote to Senator Daniel Inouye (D-HI), Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, responding to Inouye’s queries regarding reports about NUMEC in the press.537 Turner said “The Agency was not involved in the investigations of the alleged diversion, but our
summary of related events may provide you with background that may be useful.” He went on to recount information that CIA redacted in its 2015 release of the letter. The redacted information related to NUMEC’s inability “to account for a significant amount of enriched U-235,” which, when combined with CIA’s intelligence gatherings, led to the DCI’s request in April 1968 that the FBI conduct an investigation of Shapiro. These statements confirm that the intelligence CIA gathered in Israel concerned HEU and led to the 1968 letter from Helms to Clark. Turner also recounted the various high government officials that CIA had informed of its findings. He closed with the thought, “The NUMEC case has raised unusual press attention which has touched upon sensitive intelligence sources and methods.” Indeed, CIA was still claiming in 2015 that its sources and methods justified extensive redactions in this document and others that were 40 years old. If those sources and methods proved that U-235 was not diverted from Apollo, then surely CIA could have released them by now.

  ***

  On January 10, 1978, FBI Director Kelley wrote to Udall saying that the Justice Department and FBI legal counsel briefed Myers of the Udall staff and others on the Bureau’s investigation of NUMEC. A Newsweek article that week laid out the NUMEC matter in more detail than had been previously available, drawing either on the briefings provided to Congressional staff or on a leak from the FBI itself.538

  Then in 1968, the CIA got into the [NUMEC] case after receiving reports that Israel had somehow obtained a supply of enriched uranium. The agency had suspected since 1960 that the Israelis were working on an atomic bomb, but it doubted their capacity to produce necessary nuclear fuel at an experimental plant purchased from the French in 1957 and set up secretly near Dimona in the Negev. Using sophisticated technology, the agency confirmed traces of enriched uranium in waste from Dimona. And suddenly Zalman Shapiro’s foreign connections—which often had made him a valuable source to the CIA itself—brought him under suspicion. . . . CIA director Richard Helms took the matter to President Lyndon Johnson. No official records of their meeting are available and Helms won’t discuss it. But former CIA technical expert Carl Duckett later told government officials that Helms discussed the case with him and left the distinct impression that LBJ had ordered the agency to drop it. . . . Ramsey Clark, who was Attorney General, recalls authorizing electronic surveillance of Shapiro over several weeks. And an FBI agent remembers uncovering of some “pretty astounding things . . . as to how this fellow Shapiro dealt with the Israeli intelligence service. . . . The FBI learned of a meeting at Shapiro’s home in Pittsburgh at which a suspected Israeli intelligence official asked members of the American scientific community to obtain specific information for Israel. . . . My recollection is it was pretty well tied down without ever being proved. . . . We were told by the Department there was no need to pursue it because there would be no prosecution. . . . Hoover was somewhat offended at the fact that we were called off the case.” . . . Some have suggested that Israel might have gotten an early supply of weapons-grade fuel from the French, who provided the Dimona plant. And others wonder if the whole story of Israel’s early nuclear capability was actually disinformation fabricated by a sympathetic CIA to worry Arab leaders.

 

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