Stealing The Atom Bomb: How Denial And Deception Armed Israel

408 Pages·2016·3.76 MB·English

by  Roger Mattson

STEALING THE ATOM BOMB
HOW DENIAL AND DECEPTION ARMED ISRAEL
Roger J. Mattson
Copyright @ 2016 by Roger J. Mattson All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any
manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical
reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Roger J. Mattson, [email protected].
Second edition
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.
Print ISBN: 978-1515083917
The document on the front cover is from FBI files.
The FBI redacted it before release.
It contains the names of the four Israeli spies who visited NUMEC on September 10, 1968,
What Readers Said About Stealing the Atom Bomb
“Mattson was known at NRC for his direct manner and willingness to voice
unvarnished opinions. He has done it again in this very interesting book—the
research is most impressive.” J. Samuel Walker, former historian of the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission and author of Three Mile Island: A Nuclear Crisis in
Historical Perspective.
“As the possible spread of nuclear weapons continues to trouble the Middle East,
this extensively documented book is a timely reminder that nuclear proliferation
began there, in Israel, in the 1960s. Mattson’s meticulous research spotlights the
core question for Americans: why, in 2016, are U.S. intelligence agencies still
trying to hide how Israel obtained U.S. Navy uranium to make its first bombs?”
Margaret Ryan, former editor (1986-2008) of Nucleonics Week.
“What a painstaking book! It needed to be done and Mattson hit the right reason,
which is the moral one. This is a mighty work about tragic legal and political
failings that will inform curious people for generations.” John Fialka, former
reporter on intelligence, military and energy for the Wall Street Journal and the
Washington Star.
“This book is painstakingly researched and gracefully written. I am floored,
really, at its portrait of my father; I can almost feel his ironic gratitude to the
author. I see here the careful balance my father maintained, reckless forces all
around, guided by his own principles.” John Hadden, playwright, director, actor,
teacher and author of Conversations with a Masked Man: My Father, the CIA,
and Me.
“Stealing the Atom Bomb is the definitive book about how and why a team of
spies and their American associate diverted U.S. weapons-grade uranium into
the Israeli nuclear weapons program—and why the American government never
did anything about it.” Grant F. Smith, director of the Institute for Research:
Middle Eastern Policy and author of Divert!
“No one has done a more thorough analysis of the disappearance of bomb-grade
uranium from a U.S. plant in the 1960s, and the evidence points to an Israeli
operation.” Victor Gilinsky, former Commissioner of the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission.
“This is the most authoritative account of the 1960s diversion from the United
States of highly enriched uranium that was used to accelerate Israel’s nuclear
weapons program. In meticulous detail, citing hundreds of internal U.S.
government documents, Mattson exposes the lies of senior U.S. and Israeli
government officials in their efforts to cover up the diversion and protect the
perpetrators; and he reveals how the CIA continues to needlessly classify 40 to
50 year old documents that could give U.S. citizens and federal authorities a full
accounting of this shameful blotch on our government’s conduct.” Thomas B.
Cochran, Ph.D.
“This is a well written, important book. How did Israel become a nuclear
weapons state and what roles, if any, did U.S. government agencies and political
leaders play? Mattson’s book provides a major resource to those seeking answers
to these questions.” William Dircks, former Executive Director for Operations,
Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Table of Contents
Preface
Part One: Prelude to Nuclear Espionage
1. CIA, FBI and AEC: from 1945 to 1965
2. Israel’s Nuclear Genesis
3. The Apollo Uranium Plant (1957-1965)
Part Two: Missing, Not Lost
4. Where Oh Where (1965)
5. Secret Investigation (1965)
6. Ambiguous Membership (1967)
7. Desert near Dimona (1968)
Part Three: The Genie, the Bottle and the Brain Drain
8. Visitation (1968)
9. Divided Loyalty (1969)
10. Quixotic Quest (1970)
Part Four: Need to Know
11. Reprise (1976)
12. Conran the Whistleblower (1977)
13. Emergent Theories (1978)
14. CIA Hydra (1979)
15. Wrap-up (1979-1980)
Part Five: Whodunit
16. Shapiro’s Recollections
17. Alternative Hypotheses
18. Apollo Sunset
19. Toward a Deeper Understanding
Acronyms
About the Author
Bibliography
Endnotes
Acknowledgements
Writing this book required help. Primary among the helpers were Dr.
Victor Gilinsky and the late Dr. Henry Myers who followed much of the same
trail as I in the 1970s, and then helped to sort out the facts and commented on
drafts en route to this final product. Grant Smith aided my work by commenting
on drafts, persisting in appeals of the many document denials by CIA and FBI
and researching the life of David Lowenthal, the origins of Apollo Industries and
the reach of the Israel Lobby. The archivists and FOIA specialists at various
libraries and government agencies were professional and helpful. Thanks also to
friends and family who read drafts of the manuscript and made helpful
comments. At the top of the list of contributors is Donna Mattson who was there
from the investigations in the 1970s to the writing of this book, not just to
encourage, empathize and edit, but also to help recall the facts of the case and
the people of the AEC in the 1960s.
Previous accounts of the NUMEC affair include the book Divert by Grant
F. Smith, an investigative reporter and author who heads the Institute for
Research: Middle East Policy. Victor Gilinsky and I wrote two articles that were
published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists to describe the likely fate and
the coverup of the missing uranium at Apollo. The reports of journalists David
Burnham of the New York Times and John Fialka of the Washington Star tracked
the story as it first unfolded in the public domain in the late 1970s. This account
draws upon those earlier efforts, which are acknowledged with gratitude.
Much is owed to the reviewers of the manuscript for their wisdom and the
course corrections they suggested. They included David Burnham, Thomas
Cochran, Avner Cohen, William Dircks, John Fialka, Victor Gilinsky, John
Hadden, Jack Newman, Margaret Ryan, Samuel Walker and Leonard Weiss. A
special thanks to J. B. Rivard for the suggestions I heeded and the ones I did not.
The photos and graphics are in the public domain.
Mistakes that remain are mine.
Preface
In March 1976, General Brent Scowcroft, National Security Advisor to
President Gerald Ford, hastily convened a meeting of the National Security
Council staff. Scowcroft called the meeting to address the concern of
Commissioner Marcus Rowden of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC)
that some younger members of the NRC staff were about to “spill the beans”
about an American company called NUMEC. Rowden’s alarm stemmed from a
briefing of NRC officials by a high-ranking official of the Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA) that occurred just days before. The CIA official told NRC for the
first time of CIA’s conclusion of nearly a decade before that NUMEC was the
source of highly enriched uranium that aided startup of Israel’s nuclear weapons
program.
The NRC people were stunned to learn of CIA’s conclusion, not least
because NUMEC was one of their licensees. More importantly, the new
information from CIA confirmed what a senior NRC staff member, James
Conran, had been trying to tell his managers for months. He had stumbled on
similar information about NUMEC in the files of the former Atomic Energy
Commission (AEC). The Energy Research and Development Administration
(ERDA) inherited those files when AEC was abolished in 1975. The ERDA
people were determined to keep the NUMEC files away from the NRC, which
had also spun off from the old AEC. Because his NRC managers did not heed
his concerns, Conran was about to go public and blow the whistle that his work
was being impeded by an inappropriate claim that he had no “need to know.”
Rowden asked for the NSC meeting to discuss how to contain the spread of what
he secretly knew to be damning information about the relationship among
NUMEC, America’s nuclear program and Israel’s nuclear program. The meeting
led to nearly forty more years of official denial and obfuscation of the NUMEC
affair, a situation that continues to this day.
The account presented in this book is the product of a perennial
preoccupation with the NUMEC affair. My first knowledge of it dawned in April
1977 with an early morning phone call from Rowden, by then the Chairman of
the NRC. He sent me on a short-term mission that grew to occupy my private
thoughts, haunt too many sleepless nights and guide my persistent inquiry for