Netanyahu implicated in nuclear smuggling from U.S. — big story in Israel

MondoWeiss
Philip Weiss

The Israeli press is picking up Grant Smith's revelation from FBI documents that Benjamin Netanyahu was part of an Israeli smuggling ring that spirited nuclear triggers out of the U.S. in the 80s and 90s.
Arutz Sheva, the nationalist Israeli press:

Declassified FBI documents from a 1985-2002 investigation implicate Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in an initiative to illegally purchase United States nuclear technology for Israel’s nuclear program.

Netanyahu was allegedly helped by Arnon Milchan, a Hollywood producer with ties to Israeli prime ministers and U.S. presidents.

The original story was broken by Grant Smith at antiwar.com, "Netanyahu worked inside nuclear smuggling ring":

On June 27, 2012, the FBI partially declassified and released seven additional pages [.pdf] from a 1985–2002 investigation into how a network of front companies connected to the Israeli Ministry of Defense illegally smuggled nuclear triggers out of the U.S.* The newly released FBI files detail how Richard Kelly Smyth — who was convicted of running a U.S. front company — met with Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel during the smuggling operation. At that time, Netanyahu worked at the Israeli node of the smuggling network, Heli Trading Company. Netanyahu, who currently serves as Israel’s prime minister, recently issued a gag order that the smuggling network’s unindicted ringleader refrain from discussing “Project Pinto.”

The Hebrew paper Ma'ariv, in translation:

According to FBI documents released by the United States, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was involved in smuggling in the 70s from the U.S. components of Israeli nuclear program, and assisted by the businessman Arnon Milchan, who according to previous publications was a former Mossad agent.

The documents, declassified in part by the FBI after partial classification removed, describe the findings of the investigation has been performed between the years 1985 to 2002 on about how a network of front companies a U.S. security firm illegally smuggled equipment used for weapons seeds out of the U.S..

Declassified FBI and CIA docs confirm Israel stole US uranium to build nukes in 1950s

SOTT

An aerial view of Israel's Dimona plutonium
and uranium processing facility

Newly-disclosed documents have revealed that the Israeli regime stole nuclear material from a US stockpile of enriched uranium to build Tel Aviv's first atomic weapons.

The Institute for Research on Middle Eastern Policy examined hundreds of newly-declassified documents from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and other agencies.

The study revealed that Israel used its intelligence operatives in the US as well as American Jews to infiltrate a US uranium stockpile between the 1950s and the 1960s and stole hundreds of kilograms of weapon-grade nuclear materials to manufacture its first atomic bombs.

After decades of Washington-imposed information blackout over the issue, the US Department of Energy finally confirmed in 2001 that 269 kilograms of uranium were stolen from the Numec nuclear facility in Apollo, Pennsylvania .

In the 50s, the US had contracted the supervision of the Numec to Zalman Shapiro, an American Jew suspected to have ties with Tel Aviv.

Over a period of 11 years, following Shapiro's appointment, 269 kilograms of enriched uranium were stolen from the plant under the course of an operation conducted by four Mossad intelligence agents, Rafael Eitan, Avraham Ben-Dor, Ephraim Biegun and Avraham Hermoni.

The Israeli spy agency, Mossad, is known for engaging in intelligence and assassination operations in many different countries.

Meanwhile, US Congress members and the Energy Department officials have refused to revoke Numec's contract or consider it as a security risk, despite warnings of potential sabotage activities and evidence of infiltration at the nuclear site.

Since 1958, when Israel began building its Dimona plutonium- and uranium-processing facility in the Negev desert, it is widely believed to have secretly manufactured numerous nuclear warheads, earning the reputation of being the sole possessor of such weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East.

Former US President Jimmy Carter has attested to the existence of the arsenal, which, he says, includes between 200 to 300 nuclear warheads.

Amid the harshly-toned and increasing Western allegations against Iran's peaceful nuclear program, analysts have questioned the West's continued refusal to consider Israel's aggressive military agenda to be a threat against the regional security.

Israel should be stopped or all will be lost: Mark Glenn

PressTV

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (L) with Defense Minister Ehud Barak.

 An American author says Israel is a threat not only to the innocent people of the Middle East but the entire world and “if this evil is not stopped, all will be lost.”

“Christianity has been corrupted by Zionist interests and is now being used as a tool in infecting the rest of the world,” Mark Glenn, from the Crescent and Cross Solidarity Movement, wrote in a letter addressed to the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Glenn said the Zionists are trying to pit the Christians and Muslims against each other, in what has become the “clash of civilizations,” through corrupt media, corrupt culture, immorality, war, economic exploitation, and a whole host of other diseases.

“Their goal is obvious - to see these two peoples destroy each other so that like some vulture she can pick the carcasses clean for herself,” Glenn said.

He further asked for an extensive interview with the Iranian president on issues ranging from the Israeli plots for the Middle East and how it is trying to bring its “evil desires” about, such as war and terrorism etc., to the conspiracies that the US and Israel have committed against Iran since 1953 to the commonalties between Islam and Christianity.

Israel is widely known to be the sole possessor of nuclear weapons in the Middle East. Tel Aviv began building its first plutonium and uranium processing facility, Dimona, in the Negev desert in 1958.

Former US President Jimmy Carter said Israel has a nuclear arsenal that includes between 200 and 300 warheads. Decades of recurrent reporting and aerial footage have also established the possession of atomic arms by Israel.

Under its official policy of nuclear ambiguity, Tel Aviv neither confirms nor denies the possession of nukes and refuses to join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) or allow inspections of its nuclear facilities.

“I am convinced that if the Christian world were made aware of the fact that their enemies are NOT the Muslims but rather the Zionists who have all but destroyed their religion and culture, that we will be able to eventually get a rope around the neck of this animal where it could be thrown back into the cage where it belongs,” Glenn concluded. 

Israel stole uranium from U.S., report will show

DailyStar
Kristin Dailey

WASHINGTON: A U.S.-based research institute will soon publish what it says is “indisputable” evidence that Israel stole weapons-grade uranium for its still-undeclared atomic weapons program from a nuclear reprocessing plant in western Pennsylvania.

The Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy (IRmep) will release this month a 300-page report detailing the initial findings of a multi-year research project investigating the disappearance of highly enriched uranium from the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation (Numec) in Apollo, Pennsylvania in the 1950s and 1960s.

Grant Smith, the director of IRmep, told The Daily Star that the report would include a broad range of newly declassified and un-redacted government documents from various agencies – including the Department of Energy, Atomic Energy Commission, FBI and CIA – that prove that nuclear material was diverted from Numec to Israel.

“The story at this point is that there is no one smoking gun; there are many smoking pistols lying all over the place that we’ve painstakingly collected,” Smith told The Daily Star.

When contacted by The Daily Star, Zalman Shapiro, the founder and former president of the Numec, strongly denied that any diversion of materials to Israel had ever taken place at the plant.

“The story is fabricated. Absolutely fabricated,” said Shapiro, who is now 91 years old.

Smith said that among the evidence to be included in the report is a DOE document confirming that uranium samples picked up by the CIA outside Israel’s nuclear installation in Dimona bore the same isotopic signature as material produced by the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in the U.S. state of Ohio. The Portsmouth plant was a supplier for Numec.

Victor Gillinsky, who was a commissioner for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission from 1975 to 1984, said that evidence of a link between samples found at Dimona and nuclear material produced at Portsmouth, if reliable, would be “very significant.”


“The [Portsmouth] plant was producing very highly enriched uranium, more highly enriched than the usual stuff produced anywhere in the U.S. or other countries because they were turning it out for Navy fuel. So if you found material of that high enrichment, I believe Portsmouth was the only place in the world that would be making it,” Gillinsky told The Daily Star.

Get down from the roof, you crazies

Haaretz
Yoel Marcus

When Netanyahu is trying to recruit a majority in his forum of eight senior ministers for an attack on nuclear installations in Iran, this is not just a scandal but also a macabre fantasy.

Even Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman - who once proposed bombing the Aswan Dam and is now proposing going to war in the Gaza Strip to wipe out Hamas once and for all - said this week on the current events radio show "It's All Talk" that we are talking too much about the Iranian issue. He even quoted a line from a famous Western: "If you want to shoot, shoot, don't talk." Lieberman, the most extreme of the extremists, who has not revealed whether he is in favor of an attack on Iran, is aware of the madness in our threats to attack it.

It's hard to believe that not too long ago the censors prohibited any publication connected to the nuclear issue. At best, they demanded the invocation of the phrase "according to foreign sources." As though whoever is plotting something against us in this area doesn't know about himself what we know about him. When the censors permit what was prohibited until not long ago, maybe it's no coincidence: It is aimed either at preparing the public that the worst and scariest thing of all is liable to happen, or at putting pressure on the United States to act against Iran, or at finding excuses for why we are dawdling in making concessions to the Palestinian Authority. With regard to Iran, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak are adopting Machiavelli's advice: Choose yourself an enemy and nourish your loathing of him.

The difference between the situation now and the situation in the First Lebanon War, which was supposed to have taken 48 hours and lasted for 18 years, is that Prime Minister Menachem Begin (whose understanding in matters of defense boiled down to a question to soldiers at the front: "Did you have machine guns?" ) relied blindly on Defense Minister Ariel Sharon and Chief of Staff Rafael Eitan - the same two men who broke him after a long road of mental and physical suffering.

Now the Bibi and Barak duo is threatening to lead the next war if there is one, heaven forbid, contrary to the recommendations of the top military and security people. The impression is that Barak and Netanyahu are not managing to make the necessary concessions for a diplomatic agreement with the Palestinians and have decided to scare the nation and the world with the Iranian nuclear threat and the need to extirpate it.

The atomic arsenal that, according to foreign sources, Israel possesses has been called the Judgment Day weapon - that is to say it is intended for use in a situation of extreme danger to Israel's existence. The possibility of using it was once raised by Prime Minister Golda Meir at the start of the Yom Kippur War, when Defense Minister Moshe Dayan said we were on the verge of the destruction of the Third Temple. This possibility has never been put on the agenda realistically.

When Iraqi Scuds were falling here in the Gulf War and as revenge for the Israel Air Force's destruction of the Osirak nuclear reactor under Begin's orders, a panicky public was revealed, which fled daily in the tens of thousands from Tel Aviv. During the course of the war, media representatives met several times for conversations with Chief of Staff Dan Shomron. On one occasion, suddenly there was a warning siren. The chief of staff immediately went down to the security bunker and as we started to make our way out one of the commentators, who is now one of the most popular on television, whispered: "I fear that without an atom bomb this isn't going to end." It ended without an atom bomb and with one fatality in Tel Aviv. Saddam Hussein was also finished off much later by the Americans.

'World should focus on Israel's nukes'

Press TV

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan says the dispute over Iran's nuclear program has been resolved and the international community should focus on Israel now.

"In fact, there is no nuclear weapon in Iran now but Israel, which is also located in our region, possesses nuclear arms. Turkey is the same distance from both of them," Turkey's Star newspaper quoted Erdogan as saying on Tuesday.

"What has the international community said against Israel so far? Is this the superiority of law or the law of superiors?" he added.

Most experts estimate that Israel has between 100 and 200 nuclear warheads, largely based on information leaked to the Sunday Times newspaper in the 1980s by Mordechai Vanunu, a former worker at the Israel's Dimona nuclear reactor.

Israel, which has started several wars in the region in its 60-year history of occupation, maintains a policy of deliberate ambiguity over its nuclear weapons program and does not allow international inspectors to visit its nuclear sites.