Senator Pressures NRC to Clear NUMEC President
of Illegal Uranium Diversions to Israel
IRMEP, Jul 6 2010
The office of Sen Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania attempted to obtain a statement from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission according to documents newly released under the Freedom of Information Act. On Aug 27 2009, Arlen Specter wrote to Rebecca Schmidt asking that the NRC “issue a formal public statement confirming that he [constituent Zalman Shapiro] was not involved in any activities related to the diversion of uranium to Israel.” Zalman Shapiro was formerly president of the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation at Apollo, PA. According to a secret GAO report “Nuclear Diversion in the US?” partially declassified on May 6 2010, NUMEC received over 22 tons of uranium-235, the key material used to fabricate nuclear weapons. Israel’s top economic espionage case officer Rafael Eitan, who handled spy Jonathan Pollard in the 1980s, infiltrated NUMEC under false pretenses in 1968. According to Anthony Cordesman, “there is no conceivable reason for Eitan to have gone [to the Apollo plant] but for the nuclear material.” CIA Tel Aviv station chief John Hadden called NUMEC “an Israeli operation from the beginning.” NUMEC’s venture capital came from David Lowenthal, who had close ties to Israeli intelligence. A Mar 2010 audit by two former NRC officials published in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists confirmed not only that 337kg of NUMEC highly enriched uranium are still unaccounted for but that all circumstantial evidence still points to diversion to Israel. On Nov 2 2009 the NRC denied Specter’s request. Inquiries to the Senator’s Pennsylvania office last week confirmed Specter is not seeking release of all remaining classified FBI and CIA files about NUMEC diversions. Full release is long overdue, according to IRMP director Grant Smith:
For decades researchers sought declassification of all relevant CIA and FBI findings about US diversions to Israel’s Dimona nuclear weapons plant. It is unfortunate that a sitting US Senator is pressuring NRC for statements it clearly is in no position to make while the full account of the US’s involuntary participation in Israel’s clandestine nuclear weapons program remains bottled up in classified CIA and FBI archives.
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