ISRAELI SPY VISITED PLANT WHERE URANIUM VANISHED

Document Type: 
Collection: 
Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 
CIA-RDP90-00965R000201290001-0
Release Decision: 
RIFPUB
Original Classification: 
K
Document Page Count: 
1
Document Creation Date: 
December 22, 2016
Document Release Date: 
February 10, 2012
Sequence Number: 
1
Case Number: 
Publication Date: 
June 17, 1986
Content Type: 
OPEN SOURCE
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PDF icon CIA-RDP90-00965R000201290001-0.pdf82.58 KB
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Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/02/10: CIA-RDP90-00965R000201290001-0 6 ARflCu A.-KAWD *4 PAGE WASHINGTON TIMES 17 June 1986 Israeli SjJ"y visited plant where uranium vanished UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL Rafael Eitan, the Israeli named re- cently as part of an espionage ring in the United States, traveled in 1968 to a nu- clear plant in Apollo, Pa., where large amounts of weapons-grade uranium dis- appeared and was allegedly diverted to Israel, according to documents released yesterday. Mr. Eitan, a former chief of operations for the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, was one of four Israelis who re- ceived U.S. clearance to meet with of- ficials at the NUMEC nuclear plant in Apollo, Pa., on Sept. 10, 1968, according to information in declassified FBI doc- uments. Tivo reports on that meeting, included in thousands of pages of documents re- leased recently under the Freedom of Information Act, listed Mr. Eitan as a chemist with the Ministry of Defense in Israel. Anthony Cordesman, a former Penta- gon official now a professor at Geor- getown University and director of an Arlington, Va., defense "think tank," said Mr. Eitan's participation in the 1968 meeting was "extremely hard evidence" that he was operating with Israeli intelli- gence in the United States. At the time, Mr. Eitan was a member of a select Israeli intelligence unit, tradi- tionally associated with Ariel Sharon, a leader in the hardline Israeli Likud party, that actively sought information about U.S. defense capabilities, Mr. Cordesman said. "There is no conceivable reason for Eitan to have gone [to the Apollo plant] but for the nuclear material:' Mr. Eitan is a celebrated Israeli intel- ligence agent who was a member of a team that snatched Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann off a Buenos Aires street in 1960. U.S. prosecutors earlier this month said Mr. Eitan directed the Israeli opera- tion that recruited Navy analyst Jona- than Pollard, who pleaded guilty to sell- ing secret American documents to Israel. Pollard's wife, Anne Henderson-Pollard, also pleaded guilty to lesser charges in the espionage ring, which dated from at least June 1984. An FBI spokesman said the investiga- tion was closed but could not comment because the Pollard case is still pending. Justice Department spokesmen also de- clined immediate comment. Since the Pollard episode began with Pollard's arrest last November, straining U.S.-Israeli relations, Mr. Eitan has been given the post of chairman of a government-owned chemical conglomer- ate. His participation in the so-called espi- onage ring, as well as that of Aviem Sella, an Israeli Air Force brigadier general identified as Pollard's first "handler," has er the ring was a "renegade" operation as Israel has claimed and whether that government has cooperated fully in the U.S. investigation. The small Apollo processing plant was the subject of a decades-long U.S. inves- tigation into the suspected diversion of hundreds of pounds of enriched uranium to Israel. Code-named "Divert;" the probe was first launched in 1966 when the gov- ernment found that 206 pounds of en- riched uranium had vanished from the plant without a trace. di ants show that the FBI. the CIA and the Atomic Energy Commission, which has since been disestablished, ppent 1 years trymg to discover what happonart to t t~ a uranium investi aan egations it was somehow 2114tsed to s- rael b Zalman Shapiro. a Jewish scien- tist who ea the Nuclear Materials and Eauilnmeni Corp, i -ter inauiries also examined whether U.S. officials may have known about the diversion and let it happen. While Mr. Shapiro headed the nuclear plant in Pennsylvania, 267 kilograms, or 587 pounds of uranium turned up miss- ing. Mr. Cordesman said, "There is no question that material leaked from the NUMEC plant was used in the original Israel nuclear weapons:' By some well - re arded intelligence estimates, Israelis said have at least 100 nuclear weapons. Israel two nuclear plants, both heavily guarded secret installations. The biggest is near Dimona in the northern part of the and Negev and was built in 1957 by France. The second is a small experimental station at Nahal Sorek, on the Mediterranean coast. Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/02/10: CIA-RDP90-00965R000201290001-0