Stealing the Atom Bomb: How Denial and Deception Armed Israel

by Roger Mattson

  Carl Builder, the NRC director of safeguards who came from Rand Corporation, philosophized, “because you cannot prove a negative . . . we cannot prove to you that nothing has ever been taken . . . one could say there is evidence that material could have been stolen, but [I] would have challenged this statement.”

  Benjamin Huberman, the former director of NRC’s Office of Policy Evaluation, theorized “Either of two statements would be accurate: (1) We have no evidence that a theft or diversion has actually taken place; or (2) We have circumstantial evidence that a theft or diversion might have taken place.”

  Former NRC General Counsel Peter Strauss said he, “got the impression that the CIA had a fairly strong belief that the inventory discrepancy represented material taken to Israel. . . . If the CIA’s information was accurate, there was a strong circumstantial case—missing material, motive and opportunity. . . . [I] would not personally say there was ‘no evidence,’ and believe each of those who heard the briefing should pause before making such a statement. . . . If one meant hard conclusive evidence, admissible in a judicial trial, then one could say there was none. . . . In a more colloquial sense, and in terms of its regulatory responsibilities, the NRC could, however, characterize the briefing as giving evidence.”

  John Davis, the deputy director of NRC’s Office of Inspection and Enforcement, said, “if asked . . . he would respond that he knew of no facts which clearly established that any significant quantities of material had been diverted out of the plant.”

  Bryan Eagle, the former executive assistant to Chairman Rowden, stuck with “no evidence of a diversion.”

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  In 1978, when asked by NRC’s Executive Director for Operations Lee Gossick “Do you have evidence of diversion?” CIA Associate Deputy Director for Operations Theodore Shackley responded, “We would say that there is no hard evidence, but a series of events and facts led to our intelligence conclusion that a diversion was a likely possibility.”712

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  The Comptroller General, head of the General Accounting Office of the United States, at the request of Congressman John Dingell, looked into the extent and content of intelligence and nuclear safeguards information regarding a possible diversion from NUMEC.713 Because the FBI and the CIA denied GAO access to documentation, the investigation “had to rely, for the most part, on oral evidence obtained in interviews with knowledgeable individuals and staff.” The GAO assessed whether the investigations of the incident by the federal government were adequate and concluded they were “uncoordinated, limited in scope and timeliness and, in GAO’s opinion, less than adequate.” With these limitations, the GAO concluded: “Based on the totality of GAO’s inquiry, we believe that the allegations have not been fully or adequately answered. . . . GAO believes the important thing is to use the lessons learned from the NUMEC experience to make certain that the Nation develops an adequate detection and follow-up system to deter future nuclear thefts or diversions.”

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  In 1977, TV journalist Mike Wallace interviewed Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin on the CBS News program 60 Minutes. Wallace asked Begin if he could shed any light on rumors that in the early 1960s Israel had stolen bomb-grade uranium from the United States. Begin replied, “From time to time, I read in the press the most fantastic stories—how everywhere Israel snatches away uranium from America and Europe. It belongs to the James Bond stories—” Wallace interrupted, “Not so?” Begin answered, “I don’t pay attention to them.” The casual listener might have thought Begin denied the allegation. However, careful readers of this account will note that Begin implied that NUMEC was no more credible than the Plumbat affair (“snatches away uranium from America and Europe”). Since no one today doubts that Plumbat occurred, essentially as described herein, Begin’s words, instead of ducking, might have confirmed the allegations about NUMEC.

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  In June 1979, Congressman Morris Udall answered in his own inimitable way the question of whether a diversion occurred. Udall was a lawyer by training and well versed in the evidence available at the time because of his committee’s investigation of the NUMEC allegations. Udall told BBC reporter Tom Bower,714

  It seems generally conceded in the intelligence community . . . that the Israelis have the bomb and have had it for a number of years. It appears they achieved this capability at about the same time that some of the uranium was missing in the United States. So there is a temptation to draw conclusions from this, but there always seemed to be a feeling among the investigators of “I hope I don’t find something and maybe this will all go away.” And it was not pursued, in the days when the trail was a little more warm, with the kind of vigor that I would like to have seen. . . . If someone had me write in an envelope whether a diversion occurred or did not occur and that I would be put to death if I answered wrong, I suspect I would have to put in the envelope that I believe there was a diversion.

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  In 1991, based mainly on the mistaken impression created by Shapiro and Seaborg that the missing uranium at Apollo was found during its decommissioning, Seymour Hersh exonerated Shapiro of the allegation that he participated in a diversion. Hersh’s book about the Israeli bomb also noted the connection between Rafi Eitan, the head of LAKAM, and Jonathan Pollard.715 However, despite more than a dozen references to LAKAM and Eitan in his book, Hersh did not mention the well documented fact that the same Israeli spy agency and the same superspy (Eitan) involved with the Pollard affair also were involved with NUMEC.716 In any event, Hersh concluded,

  Zalman Shapiro did not divert uranium from his processing plant to Israel, but there is little solace for the nuclear industry in that fact; the missing uranium was not stolen at all—it ended up in the air and water of the city of Apollo as well as in the ducts, tubes and floors of the NUMEC plant. There is little solace, too, for the American intelligence community in Shapiro’s noninvolvement with nuclear diversion, for it failed to learn of Shapiro’s close ties to Ernst David Bergmann and Binyamin Blumberg and the sensitive—and legitimate—mission he did conduct for his beloved Israel.

  Hersh did not explain what “sensitive and legitimate mission” Shapiro “did conduct for his beloved Israel.” If it was not diversion of uranium, was it espionage? Furthermore, Hersh erred in saying the “American intelligence community . . . failed to learn of Shapiro’s close ties to Ernst David Bergmann and Binyamin Blumberg.” Contrary to this assertion, it is possible to say with certainty that the American intelligence community (which included both AEC and FBI) knew of the connection between Shapiro and Bergmann since both men served on the board of ISORAD, the joint venture between NUMEC and the Israeli AEC. Their association in ISORAD is what led AEC to request the first FBI investigation of Shapiro, i.e., to determine if he should have registered as an agent of a foreign government. But arguing over who knew what about Shapiro’s involvement with Bergmann and Blumberg is beside the point. The point is that Shapiro admitted his association with and admiration of both men, two of the most knowledgeable people in the world of the association between the Israeli nuclear weapons program and the Israeli intelligence apparatus.

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  In 2001, in his third and final memoir, Seaborg relied mainly on Seymour Hersh’s mistaken conclusion that the uranium found at Apollo during decommissioning made up for the amount that was unaccounted for in the 1960s. Seaborg went on to say, “Interestingly, the CIA seized on this missing-uranium fantasy to decide, for erroneous reasons, that Israel possessed nuclear weapons.” From historic records, it is now known that Israel did have nuclear weapons in the late 1960s, and the missing uranium was a reality, not a fantasy.

  While chairman of the AEC and after he left government service, Seaborg covered up the NUMEC affair, downplayed its importance and ameliorated its consequences to Shapiro. On February 14, 1966, the Seaborg-led AEC decided on a policy of secrecy and denial that would taint America’s nuclear enterprise for years. The facts pointed to a conclusion that the 93.8 kilograms
of U-235 in the form of HEU probably went to Israel. The only thing that countered those facts was Shapiro’s denial that it happened. Seaborg schemed with his fellow commissioners to keep news from reaching the press about AEC’s discovery of the HEU that could not be accounted for at Apollo. He joined the other commissioners in managing the information that they presented to the Joint Committee. Later, when J. Edgar Hoover concluded that Shapiro’s activities and affiliations were counter to the national interest, Seaborg resisted Hoover’s recommendation to remove Shapiro’s Q clearance and cancel his classified contracts. Still later, when Shapiro requested an even higher clearance, Seaborg personally sought out senior leaders in government, including cabinet members and the DCI, to find a way to deal with the request without holding a public hearing as the attorney general was insisting.

  While these matters were pending and immediately before an interview of Shapiro by AEC’s security chief, Seaborg met privately with Shapiro, off the record. When Seaborg could not find a way to deal with the clearance upgrade in private, he marshaled a search that landed a new job for Shapiro, one that did not require an AEC clearance.

  Seaborg authored three memoirs after retiring from the government. In each one, he addressed the NUMEC allegations and defended Shapiro, saying there were benign explanations for the missing HEU. In one of the memoirs, he dismissed the importance of resolving the NUMEC matter by asking what good it would do for the United States to admit that a diversion had occurred. He erroneously concluded in another memoir that it was impossible to divert HEU at Apollo because of security that existed at the time. He cited an NRC study to support his position even though that study reached the opposite conclusion.

  Earl Hightower, AEC’s assistant director for safeguards and security in the mid 1960s, told the FBI in the late 1970s that Seaborg’s close friendship with Shapiro led to AEC largely ignoring NUMEC’s violations of AEC’s rules.717 Hightower’s recollection of the close relationship between the two men jibes with Seaborg’s sending Shapiro an inscribed copy of his memoir and Shapiro’s reply offering “many, many thanks and warmest best wishes” for Seaborg’s “treatment of l’affair NUMEC.”718

  Benjamin Loeb co-authored two of the three memoirs in which Seaborg addressed NUMEC. In the marginalia of a draft of one of those memoirs,719 Seaborg scribbled a question to Loeb, “Am I trying too hard on these pages to argue NUMEC’s case?” Ever the innocent, Seaborg had a way of undercutting his own purposes. Ever the faithful servant, Loeb neither replied nor changed the draft.720

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  In August 2009, Shapiro revived the question of whether a diversion had occurred. With the assistance of his pro bono attorneys at Arnold and Porter, Shapiro gained the ear of U.S. Senator Arlen Specter (D-PA) who wrote to the NRC asking it to reexamine the case in light of the amount of uranium recovered during decommissioning of the Apollo plant. In Specter’s words, “Dr. Shapiro is requesting that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission issue a formal public statement confirming that he was not involved in any activities related to the diversion of uranium to Israel.”721

  On November 2, NRC’s Executive Director for Operations William Borchardt responded to Senator Specter. “Accordingly after a thorough review of its records, NRC found no documents that provided specific evidence that the diversion of materials occurred. However, consistent with previous Commission statements, NRC does not have information that would allow it to unequivocally conclude that nuclear material was not diverted from the site, nor that all previously unaccounted for material was accounted for during the decommissioning of the site.”722

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  In 2010, Victor Gilinsky and I wrote an article for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.723 We reviewed the NUMEC information that had by then become available and concluded,

  The circumstantial evidence supports the conclusion that the HEU ended up in Israel. It seems to us self-evident that if the federal government knows something about how NUMEC and/or Shapiro helped Israel get the Bomb, the public has a right to know the details. A good starting point would be to declassify key CIA and FBI documents pertaining to the NUMEC case. Perhaps the most worrisome aspect of the NUMEC affair is that the government itself did not seem to want to find out what happened because it feared the answer. In his last book, Adventures in the Atomic Age, Seaborg defended this head-in-the-sand approach by questioning “what sense” it made to pursue the case. For our part, getting at the truth makes sense enough.

  Columnist William Sweet, writing on “What’s History and What’s Not” in Foreign Policy Blogs Network, said he believed that 2010 article proved the case for Israeli theft “beyond any reasonable doubt.”724

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  In 2004, Gilinsky criticized Avner Cohen for failing in his book to address the NUMEC affair, the Plumbat affair and the Vela satellite detection of the 1979 Israeli/South African nuclear weapons test. In particular, with reference to NUMEC, Gilinsky noted the CIA briefing of the NRC commissioners in 1976.725 Cohen responded later that by the time he wrote his book (1992-1998) he had “very little tangible evidence on NUMEC and Plumbat, so I decided that as a careful historian I should not go into those highly speculative areas.”726

  In 2010, Cohen published a second book about Israel and the bomb.727 Unlike his earlier writings, this book acknowledged the Plumbat affair and the suspicion by senior U.S. government officials that Israel’s first nuclear weapons were fueled by uranium from NUMEC.

  The intelligence reports that led senior officials to these conclusions are still classified, but we know of the many telltale signs showing that Israel was on the brink of a nuclear-weapons capability. Among the known evidence was its purchase of huge quantities of uranium, such as the 1968 “Plumbat affair,” involving the diversion to Israel of a large quantity of yellowcake (i.e., uranium oxide). Also telling was information about nuclear-related aerial exercises, the development of the MD-620 missile, and the sites that the Israelis had prepared for them. Top officials like Helms and Laird were convinced of the significance of intelligence about the alleged diversion of highly enriched uranium (HEU) to Israel from the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Company (NUMEC) of Pennsylvania. Nevertheless, the intelligence was still tentative, partial, and less than conclusive.

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  Reed and Stillman were similarly “less than conclusive” about NUMEC.728

  Bomb building and plutonium production require uranium. The Israelis hoped to produce enough from phosphate deposits in the Negev, but in the late 1950s the French agreed to provide the uranium needed for the reactor under construction. As time went by, the Israelis began to import yellowcake ore from Argentina and South Africa, but some feel that a windfall of enriched uranium, more than two hundred pounds, came from an Israeli sympathizer in [Pennsylvania]. In 1965, Zalman Shapiro’s NUMEC Corporation, a reprocessor of reactor components, seems to have misplaced 206 pounds of enriched uranium. Mr. Shapiro had many business and personal connections with Israel; key CIA officers were convinced the missing material was the basis for Israel’s initial 1967 A-bomb assemblies. These charges against Mr. Shapiro were never proven; the disappearances were claimed to be standard industrial losses.

  Reed and Stillman went on to describe the “better documented disappearance” in 1968 of the Plumbat uranium, which “gave Israel enough uranium to make it through the 1960s.” However, after reading the aforementioned “Revisiting NUMEC” published in 2010 in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist, Thomas Reed said, “I wish we had that in hand when we wrote Nuclear Express; we probably would have taken a harder line.”729

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  Peter Stockton, leader of Congressman Dingell’s investigation of the diversion, was most succinct. “Shapiro did it.”730 He was almost as succinct with journalist Scott Johnson in 2015. “I tend to think it happened, in fact I’m damn sure it happened.”731

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  Investigative journalist Gordon Thomas, whose writings explore Israeli intelligence operations, provided another version of the
NUMEC story. He said Rafi Eitan picked out NUMEC’s Apollo facility because of its poor material accounting and security and then stole highly enriched uranium without Shapiro’s knowledge. Despite some shortcomings in Thomas’ rendering of events, others have shared his opinion that the uranium found at Dimona might have come from Apollo without Shapiro’s direct assistance.732

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  Gilinsky and I wrote a second article for The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in April 2014. It was occasioned by the release a month earlier by the Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel (ISCAP) of partially declassified government documents that shed additional light on the NUMEC affair. Based on our review of the newly declassified documents, we concluded the following.

  While we still don’t know exactly what the CIA told high government officials, we do know from the released memoranda that top officials thought the CIA’s case was a strong one. Also, as described in our earlier article, one of us was present at the CIA’s February 1976 briefing of a small group at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). At that session Carl Duckett, then-CIA deputy director for science and technology, told the NRC group the CIA believed the missing highly enriched uranium ended up in Israel.

  The newly released documents also expose government efforts, notably during the Carter administration, to keep the NUMEC story under wraps, an ironic twist in view of Jimmy Carter’s identification with opposition to nuclear proliferation. . . .

  It’s fair to ask, in view of the other losses in the U.S. nuclear weapons complex, why the CIA and others singled out NUMEC for grave suspicion as the source for Israeli bomb-grade uranium. In brief, the reasons are these: NUMEC’s unexplained losses were a significantly larger proportion of its throughput of highly enriched uranium than was the case for other firms that dealt with nuclear materials. Sloppy accounting and lax security made the plant easy to rob without detection. NUMEC had commercial relationships with Israel’s defense and nuclear establishments and regularly made sizeable nuclear shipments to Israel, which at that time were not checked by the AEC. NUMEC’s owners and executives had extremely close ties to Israel, including to high Israeli intelligence and nuclear officials. Israel had strong motives to obtain the highly enriched uranium before it was producing enough plutonium for weapons. High-level Israeli intelligence operatives visited the NUMEC plant. Israeli intelligence organizations were used to running logistically complicated, risky operations to support nuclear weapons development, and it would have been very much out of character for them to pass up an opportunity like this. On top of all this, records show the CIA believed its 1968 environmental sample taken in Israel evidenced an enrichment level unique to Portsmouth.