“By the end of the meeting it was a pretty somber group,” Duckett would later recall for the benefit of NRC investigators. Anders, he said, announced that, “in light of the sensitive nature of the information, he was going to the White House” with the NUMEC story. After he did, President Ford promptly ordered the FBI to begin a new investigation of NUMEC’s activities during the mid 1960s.
Fialka’s summary was based on his previous articles, including his stories in 1978 derived from the inadvertently released third page of NRC’s January 1978 interview of Carl Duckett. Fialka said in January 2009 that he never met Duckett.579
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On January 18, 1978, Carl Duckett wrote to Congressman Udall saying that suspicions of a diversion from Apollo were developed as part of a broader CIA probe into the availability of bomb-grade materials to a number of unspecified countries. Duckett also confirmed that CIA’s suspicions resulted in the 1968 letter Richard Helms sent to Ramsey Clark requesting an investigation of NUMEC.580
On January 25, Henry Myers met with Duckett to followup on his letter to Udall and later that same day summarized their discussion.581
Duckett believes that the totality of circumstantial evidence supports the conclusion that there is a significant likelihood that Apollo uranium went to Israel. The Duckett argument is as follows:
1.There is no benign explanation for the large quantity of missing uranium.
2.There existed channels from Apollo to Israel through which uranium could have been shipped undetected.
3.In the mid-1960s, there was reasonably solid evidence that the Israelis had nuclear weapons or expected to obtain them.
4.Shapiro’s connections with the Israelis were close and there was reason to believe he was involved in a group, which supplied all sorts of classified weapons information to the Israelis. If Shapiro [were] involved in providing weapons information to the Israelis, it would not have been a big step to providing them with uranium.
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Three days after Myers met with Duckett, Fialka divulged the source of his report that CIA discovered HEU at Dimona in 1968.582
According to government sources, a retired Air Force General, Alfred Starbird, recently told investigators that a CIA official told him that the CIA had obtained a sample of highly enriched uranium from Israel and that it bore the chemical “signature” of material that had originated at the U.S. uranium enrichment plant at Portsmouth, Ohio. In a sworn statement to investigators of the Department of Energy’s Office of Inspector General, Starbird reportedly identified Theodore Shackley, deputy director of CIA for intelligence collection tasking, as the source of the information. If the information is true, this would amount to scientific proof of the first known diversion of the nation’s most heavily guarded nuclear material by persons acting as foreign agents.
An April 27, 1979 memorandum from the Deputy Inspector General of DOE to the Under Secretary of Energy [John Deutch] confirms that there was a meeting between Starbird and Shackley. In that memo, the Deputy Inspector General described an investigation that his office initiated 16 months earlier concerning the testimony of DOE officials at the August 8, 1977 Congressional hearing on NUMEC.583 The investigation was to determine whether “inaccurate information may have been intentionally furnished to the House Subcommittee on Energy and Power [the Dingell committee].”
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The DOE inspector general’s office interviewed the three ERDA employees that testified to the Dingell committee, namely Robert Fri and Generals Starbird and Giller. The interviews were conducted under oath. All three men had occupied senior management positions in ERDA in 1977, but all had resigned from ERDA/DOE by the time of their interviews by the IG’s office in 1978.
James H. Anderson and William M. Knauf (the same IG investigators that had spoken to Seaborg on this issue) began the interviews on May 4, 1978, with General Giller. They interviewed him at an office in the Pentagon where he was working as a consultant. Eight days later, he swore under oath that their summary of the interview was true and correct.584 General Giller began the interview by telling of his involvement in drafting a 1974 National Intelligence Estimate that included a description of Israel’s nuclear capabilities. The estimate he described was Special National Intelligence Estimate, SNIE 4-1-74, “Prospects for Further Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.”585 In that estimate, CIA said, “We believe that Israel has already produced nuclear weapons. . . . Our judgment is based on Israeli acquisition of uranium, partly by clandestine means; the ambiguous nature of Israeli efforts in the field of uranium enrichment; and Israel’s large investment in a costly missile system designed to accommodate nuclear warheads.” Giller emphasized his dissent with that CIA assessment of the Israeli situation in 1974. Giller did not say whether he told the new NRC when it formed in January 1975 of his concerns with the CIA assessment.
Major General Edward B. Giller
U.S. Air Force
1941-1972
Deputy to CIA Director of Research
1960-1964
AEC Director of Military Applications
1967-1977
Giller said he based his “dissent” with the CIA position on his knowledge and understanding of the facts at that time. He was aware of a high-level discussion on the issue held privately by former AEC Chairman Dixie Lee Ray and CIA Director William Colby. The investigators’ report continued,
General Giller advised . . . that sometime after NRC was formed, he received a phone call from the office of Mr. Marcus Rowden, NRC Commissioner, most likely around the early part of 1976. . . . Rowden wanted to alert the White House of the perceived significance of the old allegations of SNM diversion from NUMEC to Israel. He recalled that Rowden was concerned that some of the younger members of the NRC wanted to “spill the beans,” and he wanted to develop some kind of paper that would put the safeguards issue, and the NUMEC issue, in the proper perspective for President Ford. He explained that Mr. Rowden had institutional knowledge of the NUMEC situation through his employment as the Assistant General Counsel for Administration and Litigation for the AEC during the time frame of the alleged diversion.
General Giller commented that, as a result of this conversation, a meeting was held with staff of the National Security Council (NSC) in approximately March 1976, and present were President Ford’s NSC Advisor, Brent Scowcroft, Mr. Dave Elliott of the NSC, as well as Robert Fri, Marcus Rowden and a representative of the CIA. According to General Giller, at the meeting the substance of a paper [to be] prepared by ERDA, CIA and NRC was agreed to as the basis for the FBI to take a “new look” at the NUMEC situation.
General Giller recalled that Mr. Robert Tharpe, Deputy Director, Division of Safeguards and Security (DSS), ERDA, and Mr. Ralph Page, Deputy Director, Division of Safeguards, NRC, received a briefing from the CIA in April 1976, which was to be used as the basis for a report to the NSC staff on the current status of nuclear safeguards and on the NUMEC problem. . . . He recalled reading the summary prepared by Tharpe/Page upon their return from the CIA, (three lines redacted). . . .
General Giller stated that, subsequent to the Tharpe/Page visit to CIA, he and General Alfred Starbird, Assistant Administrator for National Security, received separate, detailed briefings from the CIA in April 1976, which did not cause him to alter his opinion that a diversion had not occurred. General Giller said that his conclusion was that a proof of diversion could not be made. He stated that he did not and cannot see sufficient evidence that there was a diversion, even though he also recognizes the lack of evidence to disprove the allegation. He recalled that either Mr. Sayre Stevens, [then Deputy Director] of the CIA [for Intelligence], or the CIA Deputy Director for Science and Technology [Duckett] in the April 1976 time frame conducted the briefing. . . .
General Giller advised that his only other interagency involvement in addressing the NUMEC issue took place in July 1977 when he, General Starbird, and Robert Fri, Acting ERDA Administrator, received a briefing in Dr. Fri’s office, by Ted Shackl
ey of the CIA, in which [Shackley] provided ERDA with a recast of, essentially, the same information ERDA considered in preparing for the [Inventory Difference] Report [ERDA-77-68], and the scheduled Congressional hearings on safeguards. He commented that he, Fri and Starbird each read a CIA talking paper on NUMEC. He characterized the paper as a basic recompilation of the already-known background information and evidence relating to the issue (15 lines redacted). . . .
General Giller re-emphasized his belief that, even after careful analysis, the possibility of poor information coming from HUMINT sources still remains. . . .
General Giller explained that the U.S. Government had made authorized shipments of high-enriched SNM to Israel in the past, which were intended for the Israeli reactor program. This material has been and is under IAEA safeguards. (Ten lines redacted.)
General Giller added that, at the conclusion of the CIA briefing, he was offered a document, which summarized, chronologically, intelligence presentations given to AEC/ERDA officials relating to this issue. He vaguely recalled another document, which he believes was nothing new, but a simple compilation of old data relating to the alleged diversion.
Several of Giller’s points deserve response. First, it is important to recognize that his goal in the interview was to justify his testimony to Dingell in August 1977 that there was no evidence of a diversion from Apollo. Clearly, there was evidence, and he knew of it in advance of his testimony. Thus, to avoid prosecution for lying to Congress, he had to find a way to say it really was not evidence because it was not convincing to him for reasons he enumerated.
Second, Giller offered a reason why HEU might be found in Israel, i.e., the HEU that fueled the Nahal Soreq reactor. Thus, notwithstanding the redactions, Ted Shackley, not Carl Duckett or Enno Knoche, probably was the first to tell Giller in 1977 of the HEU with a Portsmouth signature that CIA found near Dimona. If Shackley did so in his briefing of Fri, Starbird and Giller, it is redacted in the declassified version of the Giller interview. However, there is no reason to suspect that Shackley told Giller something different than the IG representatives told Seaborg. It is noteworthy that Giller’s argument for how HEU might have gotten to Israel was flawed on at least two counts: Nahal Soreq used metallic fuel and there has been no indication that it experienced fuel failures. Thus, none of the fuel should be in the environment, either at Nahal Soreq or 100 km away at Dimona. Furthermore, the Nahal Soreq fuel was of lower enrichment (93 percent) than highly enriched naval fuel (97.7 percent) produced only at Portsmouth and processed by NUMEC. If the Shackley briefing was indeed the first that the AEC and ERDA people heard about the Portsmouth HEU found near Dimona, then CIA waited 10 years to tell them.
Third, when under oath, Giller admitted reading at least two secret documents authored by CIA about NUMEC, documents whose existence he denied when questioned by NRC investigators and the press. The documents he described appear to have been the sort of Talking Papers that Shackley used in briefing a wide range of government officials on CIA’s evidence of a diversion. It is possible that Giller was using the so-called Glomar response (named after the Glomar Explorer for which Duckett was honored, as described below). That is, when disclosure of the existence of a document would in itself disclose classified information it is permissible, under the Freedom of Information Act, to neither confirm nor deny the existence of the document. Since he flat denied the existence of such documents before his sworn testimony, giving him benefit of the doubt on the Glomar response would have been generous.
Overall, Giller was quick to condemn CIA’s conclusions about NUMEC, and his arguments for doing so were contrived and flawed. He apparently was determined to create doubts about the Portsmouth signature of the HEU sample collected near Dimona because he, like Seaborg, sought to protect the nuclear weapons establishment from the embarrassment of a diversion from Apollo.
Some of his arguments were valid. For example, scientists today say that it is nearly impossible to simply look at isotope ratios in a sample of HEU and tell where it was enriched.586 CIA’s science and technology directorate would have known of this limitation in 1968, yet the analysts in that directorate were convinced that the HEU found near Dimona came from Portsmouth. There must have been a simple explanation for how CIA knew about Portsmouth with such certainty. Finding traces of 97.7 percent HEU from the U.S. naval reactors program in the environment near Dimona provides that simple explanation.
Not all of the HEU that was missing from Apollo was naval fuel material. The rest came from various other contracts, such as the Astronuclear contract, which involved materials that were enriched to about 93 percent. Thus, some of the HEU found at Dimona probably could not be associated conclusively with Portsmouth because it was not 97.7 percent enriched.
Peter Stockton, head of Congressman Dingell’s investigation of NUMEC, confirmed this conclusion. “I have always known that the uranium found near Dimona was 98 percent enriched. I thought everyone knew that.”587
In retrospect, it appears that Giller made things up in his interview with the DOE investigators to create doubt about CIA’s evidence of a diversion and thus protect himself from a charge of lying to Congress. His normal approach to people with whom he disagreed can be described by one word—confrontational. He also was unwavering in defense of the nuclear weapons program. Anyone who questioned the party line brought out all the verbal firepower at his command. He was a know-it-all, often demeaning others with whom he disagreed. It appears from the similar contents of their interviews with the IG investigators that he and his ERDA colleagues simply made up counter arguments to CIA’s position. These arguments spread throughout the NUMEC cognoscenti in the late 1970s and became gospel without anyone ever looking at the technical facts. And then there is the additional complication that DOE did not declassify the unique enrichment level of naval fuel produced at Portsmouth until 2006.588 That is, those investigating the NUMEC affair did not know in the 1960s and the 1970s how easy and reliable it was to identify the enrichment level of minute quantities of uranium discovered in the environment and then tie that uranium to the Portsmouth enrichment facility.
Typical of Giller’s approach to the NUMEC affair was an interview he gave to John Fialka of the Washington Star in early August 1977, shortly after his testimony before Dingell’s committee and not long after Shackley evidently told him about the Portsmouth HEU found near Dimona and other HUMINT connecting NUMEC to HEU in Israel.
What I have said is there is no conclusive evidence that any materials have been diverted from U.S. facilities, and I don’t think there is anyone in the intelligence community that is prepared to challenge that. . . . Some individuals at CIA may have reached a different conclusion, but they have only looked at one piece of the puzzle. . . . I have reason to believe I know everything.589
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Giller did not tell the IG investigators of his potential conflict of interest with respect to the conclusions advanced by Shackley, Duckett and others at CIA. He failed to disclose that he went to work for the CIA in 1960 on assignment from the Air Force at the request of “my friend [Herbert] Pete Scoville.”590, 38 In 1962, he became Scoville’s deputy when Scoville became CIA’s deputy director for research. When Scoville left CIA in 1963 to join the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, Giller stayed with CIA for another year as deputy to Dr. Albert Wheelon, who headed CIA’s newly named directorate of science and technology. Carl Duckett succeeded Wheelon in 1965. Thus, when Giller speciously countered the arguments of CIA, he was disputing his successors at CIA. His failure to disclose this past association to the investigators while he was discrediting the people who then occupied his old office raises the possibility that he had an ulterior motive, perhaps one as simple as professional jealousy. Whatever it was, he should have disclosed the association.
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On May 19, 1978, two weeks after their interview of Giller, DOE’s IG investigators Anderson and Knauf interviewed Robert Fri, the former acting administrator of ERDA.591 Fri to
ld them, “the 1965 NUMEC special nuclear material inventory difference issue came to his attention on three occasions” while he was with ERDA. He said the first occasion was in the spring or early summer of 1976 when James Connor, an aide to President Ford, asked for NUMEC files. The second occasion was when he observed a briefing that Marcus Rowden provided to the NSC staff on the pending release of the Strategic Nuclear Material Inventory Difference Report, and the third was when he personally reviewed the NUMEC documents before approving the 1977 release of that report.
Fri said the Rowden briefing occurred in Zbigniew Brzezinski’s office at a meeting in which Enno Knoche described CIA’s conclusions regarding NUMEC. Fri listed NSC staff members attending the meeting as Dave Elliott and Jessica Tuchman. Fri said that Rowden told the NSC staffers “what the White House and Mr. Brzezinski should be aware of regarding the NUMEC issue” in light of the pending release of the Strategic Nuclear Material Inventory Difference [ID] Report. Fri did not recount what Rowden said about NUMEC; instead, he described what Knoche, the deputy director of central intelligence, told the group. DOE redacted his description of Knoche’s information when it released the summary of his interview by IG staff.
Fri told the IG staff that “he heard from three CIA officials on three separate occasions” about NUMEC.
Fri said his second CIA briefing was given by Mr. Ted Shackley, who came over during the drafting of the ERDA ID report [ERDA-7768]. He recalled that Mr. Shackley brought along some type of chronology, “the kind of document one would bring to make a point.” He said he did not feel that the CIA was holding back on anything, but that all the data they had was circumstantial. [25 lines redacted].
Stealing the Atom Bomb: How Denial and Deception Armed Israel Page 31