Press Briefing by Scott McClellan, December 22, 2003.
Q Is the President in favor of international inspection of Israel's nuclear arsenal, which is pretty well known?MR. McCLELLAN: I don't know that I agree with that, the premise of your question. But the United States has a longstanding position of universal adherence to the treaty on the nonproliferation of nuclear weapons. That has been our longstanding position --Q They never signed it.MR. McCLELLAN: -- and that is universal adherence. Well, we have urged all states that have not yet adhered to the treaty to do so, and to accept the IAEA safeguards on nuclear activities that would come with it.Q Are we trying to persuade Israel to sign it, and to be open to inspection?MR. McCLELLAN: I think that, one, in terms of specifics about the Israeli government, you need to refer those questions to the Israeli government.Q No, no, I'm asking our position.MR. McCLELLAN: And I've told you that the long held position of the United States is the universal adherence to the nonproliferation treaty.ISRAEL TO THIS DAY DENIES THAT THEY HAVE NUCLEAR WEAPONS<>
THE HISTORY OF ISRAEL'S NUCLEAR BOMB
Between 15 and 19 September, the General Conference of the IEAE was held. One of the agenda items was Israel and its nuclear weapons. Fifteen Arab countries submitted a resolution calling on Israel to sign the Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and submit its nuclear facilities to international safeguards. Developments in Iran and North Korea were also on the agenda of the Conference in Vienna. In the WISE/NIRS Nuclear Monitor we gave backgrounds on the Iranian (1) and North Korean (2) weapons development and in this issue we describe the history of Israel's nuclear bomb.
(593.5545) WISE Amsterdam - On 12 September, the IAEA called on Iran to prove by 31 October that it had no secret nuclear weapons program. According to the 15 Arab states, Israel also has to be mentioned and be required to sign the NPT. Although Israel is a member of the IAEA it never signed the NPT, being one of the few countries in the world who didn't. Egypt proposed a further resolution calling for a nuclear-weapon-free-zone (NWFZ) in the Middle East.(3)
The resolution on Israel was not adopted, but the General Conference adopted the call for the NWFZ. It mentioned an urgent need for all states in the region to accept full scope safeguards for its nuclear facilities.(4)
Israel started developing nuclear weapons after the Second World War. Its production facilities are located at Dimona in the Negev Desert.
1940's-1950'sAfter establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, the country started to investigate the nuclear option. In 1949, the Hemed Gimmel, a special unit of the Israel Defense Force's Science Corps, began a two-year geological survey of the Negev Desert to discover uranium reserves. Although no significant sources were found, recoverable amounts were located in phosphate deposits.(5)
Close cooperation existed between Israeli and French research institutes. France had been a leading research center in nuclear physics before the Second World War, but had fallen far behind developments in the U.S., Soviet Union and the U.K. Israel and France were at a similar level of expertise and consequently the development of nuclear technology in both countries remained closely linked in the early 1950's. Israeli scientists for instance were involved in the construction of the (military) G-1 plutonium production reactor and the UP-1 reprocessing plant at Marcoule. In the 1950's and early 1960's, France was Israel's principal arms supplier and as instability spread in France's colonies in North Africa, Israel provided valuable intelligence obtained from those countries.(6)
The Israel Atomic Energy Commission was established in 1952. By that time, the Hemed Gimmel had been able to perfect the process to extract uranium found in Negev and was also able to produce heavy water for a research reactor.(7)
Israel choose for the option of heavy water for cooling/moderator and natural uranium as fuel. With normal light water it would need enriched uranium, which was too difficult to obtain. Heavy water reactors with natural uranium fuel are very capable for the production of plutonium.
DimonaOn 3 October 1957, France and Israel signed the agreement for the construction of a 24 MWth research reactor at Dimona (Hebrew for "imagination") in the Negev Desert. Besides, but not committed to paper, was the promise of France to build a chemical reprocessing plant. The complex was built in secret by French and Israeli technicians. French customs officials were told that certain components, such as the reactor tank, were part of a desalinization plant in Latin America. In addition, after buying heavy water from Norway on the condition that it not be transferred to a third country, the French Air Force secretly flew as much as four tons of it to Israel.
Trouble arose during construction in 1960 when France urged Israel to submit Dimona to international inspections in fear of a scandal when it would become clear that France had assisted Israel, especially concerning the reprocessing plant. Israel worked out a compromise. France would supply the uranium and components that were promised and would not insist on international inspections. Israel in return would assure France that they had no intention to make nuclear weapons.(8)
It was impossible to keep the reactor secret for the world. During construction in 1958, U-2 spy planes took pictures of the facility, but the U.S. did not identify it at that time as a nuclear reactor. It was variously explained as a textile factory, an agricultural station or a metallurgical research facility. Until Israeli Prime Minister Ben Gurion stated in December 1960 that Dimona was a nuclear research center for "peaceful purposes". It was too difficult to deny that the facility was something else than a reactor because of its characteristic dome shape.(9) (10)
Dimona went critical in 1964. French officials were surprised to discover that the cooling circuits were designed to support three times the original power level at its start (24 MWth). Without the addition of extra cooling, a scale-up to 70 MWth was indeed done years later.
Next to the reactor and the underground reprocessing plant, Dimona also houses: a uranium processing facility, a waste treatment plant, a fuel fabrication facility, a laboratory and a depleted uranium bullets factory. It would also house a facility for uranium enrichment tests.(11)
Presently, the reactor has been 40 years in operation and is in a bad condition. Last year, former workers revealed to the media that there is a frightening absence of safety procedures and that workers got contaminated and had been exposed to high levels of radiation.(12)
UraniumIt has always been difficult for Israel to obtain uranium for the reactor because it did not sign the Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT). It had developed some capability of extracting uranium from phosphate ores at Dimona, but used also "Grey market" channels to fuel Dimona.
In 1965, up to 100 kilograms of high enriched uranium got missed from the U.S. Numec Corporation in Apollo, Pennsylvania. Because of other (non-)nuclear deals of the Numec chairman with Israel it was believed that the uranium had gone to Israel. Other reports however suggest that much of the missing uranium was recovered from floors and ventilation ducts when the facility was eventually decommissioned.(13) (14)
In 1968, a load of 200 tons of uranium (yellow cake) was hijacked (or simply delivered) from the German boat "Sheersberg A".(15)
Israel also cooperated with South Africa on nuclear technology. It seems to have started around 1967 and continued through the 1970's and 1980's. During that period, South Africa was a principal supplier of uranium for Dimona. There is possibly a role of Israel in a nuclear weapons test in the Indian Ocean (22 September 1979), which is widely believed to be a joint SA-Israel test.(16)
U.S. relationsIsrael has close relations with the U.S. In 1955, when the contract for Dimona had not yet been signed, the U.S. agreed to sell a 5 MW swimming-pool research reactor to Nahal Soreq, south of Tel Aviv. But the U.S. forced Israel to accept safeguards because the U.S. supplied high enriched uranium fuel for the reactor.(17)
With the official announcement of 1960, that Israel had a reactor for "peaceful purposes", the relation between the U.S. and Israel was strained over the issue. In public, the U.S. accepted Israel's "peaceful purposes", but exerted pressure privately. After pressure, Israel finally committed to admit U.S. inspection teams once a year. These inspections took place between 1962 and 1969 but were in fact a big joke. Only aboveground parts of the facility were shown, whereas the reprocessing work took place at many levels underground. The aboveground areas had simulated control rooms and access to the underground rooms was hidden for the inspectors.(18)
The U.S. inspectors were able to report that there was no clear scientific research or civilian nuclear power program justifying such a large reactor but found no hard evidence of "weapons related activities" such as the existence of the plutonium reprocessing plant.
In 1968 however the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency concluded that Israel had started producing nuclear weapons. This was based on information from Edward Teller, father of the U.S. hydrogen bomb. Teller had told the CIA that he had heard this from Israeli friends in the scientific and defense establishment. He told the CIA not to wait for an Israeli nuclear test to make a final assessment because that test would never be carried out.(19)
In 1981, the U.S. embargoed further shipments of high enriched uranium fuel to the Nahal Soreq reactor.(20)
Israeli sabotageIsrael conducted a number of sabotage actions in concern about Iraq's nuclear weapons development. In April 1979, the intelligence agency Mossad is believed to be responsible for two explosions at a construction yard in Seine sur Mer, France. Two research reactor cores destined for Iraq were seriously damaged.
In June 1980, Dr. Yahya Meshed was assassinated in Paris where he was negotiating a contract for Iraq to take over Iran's share of the French Eurodif enrichment plant. Already in 1978, unknown attackers tried to kill him when he was a technical liaison with France for the export of the Osiris research reactor.
Most famous sabotage by Israel is the bombing of the Tammuz-I research reactor at the Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Center near Baghdad. On 7 June 1980, aircraft bombing destroyed the 70 MWth reactor completely. According to Israel, Iraq was about to start producing plutonium in the reactor for the manufacture of a nuclear weapon.(21)
Recently, there were concerns expressed that Israel also wants to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities, such as the Busher NPP when Iran continues its construction with the help of Russia.(22)
StockpileAfter the opening of the Dimona reactor in 1964, it started producing plutonium. It is believed that the first two bombs were ready in 1967 at the time of the Six-Day War. In 1974, the CIA estimated that Israel had up to 20 nuclear bombs.
By the late 1990's, U.S. intelligence organizations estimated that Israel possessed between 75 and 130 nuclear warheads. The warheads can be used in the Jericho missiles as well as bombs in aircraft.
Israel has never conducted a weapons test of its own, apart from the (believed) joint test with South Africa in 1979. However a sub-critical test (with no real nuclear explosion) may have done in November 1966 at Al-Naqab in the Negev Desert.(23)
Nuclear alertsDuring the Six-Day War (against Syria) in June 1967 the first two developed bombs may have been armed. It is also reported that, fearing defeat in the October 1973 Yom Kippur War (against Egypt and Syria), the Israeli army readied 13 bombs of 20 kilotons each for use. Missiles and aircraft were armed with the bombs for an attack on Egypt and Syrian targets.(24) (25)
During operation Desert Storm (U.S. strike against Iraq in 1991), Israel went on full scale nuclear alert when 7 Iraqi Scud missiles were fired at Israeli cities. Only 3 missiles hit Tel Aviv and Haifa with only minor damage. But the Israeli government warned Iraq with a counter strike if the Iraqis used chemical warheads, to mean that Israel intended to launch a nuclear strike if gas attacks occurred.(26)
VanunuIn 1986, former Dimona worker Mordechai Vanunu revealed details of the Dimona plant to the London Sunday Times. The descriptions and photographs he made during his employment supported the conclusion that Israel had a stockpile of 100 to 200 nuclear warheads.(27)
Following his revelations, Vanunu fell into a trap by the Mossad and was kidnapped. In a closed door trial he was convicted to 18-year prison (in isolation). Recently it became known that on 22 April 2004 he will be released.(28)
Sources:(1) WISE/NIRS Nuclear Monitor 584.5495: "Iran's nuclear program", 7 March 2003(2) WISE/NIRS Nuclear Monitor 581.5481: "North Korea's nuclear facilities", 17 January 2003(3) AFP, 17 September 2003(4) IAEA, http://www.iaea.or.at/, 19 September 2003(5) Federation of American Scientists (FAS), 17 August 2000, www.fas.org/nuke/guide/israel/nuke/ see also www.fas.org/irp/imint/is-nuclear.htm for additional links.(6) Israel's Nuclear Weapons Program, 10 December 1997, nuclearweaponarchive.org/Israel/(7) FAS, see 5(8) FAS, see 5(9) FAS, see 5(10) The Nuclear Fix; A Guide to Nuclear Activities in the Third World, WISE, 1982, p. 93-95(11) Dimona Negev Nuclear Research Center, Global Security.org, 12 August 2002, www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/israel/dimona_intro.htm(12) WISE/NIRS Nuclear Monitor 562.5371: "Dimona death factory exposed", 1 February 2002(13) The Nuclear Fix, see 10(14) Dimona Negev Nuclear Research Center, see 11(15) The Nuclear Fix, see 10(16) Israel's Nuclear Weapons Program, see 6(17) The Nuclear Fix, see 10(18) Israel's Nuclear Weapons Program, see 6(19) FAS, see 5(20) The Nuclear Fix, see 10(21) The Nuclear Fix, see 100(22) The Washington Times, 29 August 2003(23) FAS, see 5(24) FAS, see 5(25) Israel's Nuclear Weapons Program, see 6(26) Israel's Nuclear Weapons Program, see 6(27) Dimona Negev Nuclear Research Center, see 11(28) U.S. Campaign to Free Mordechai Vanunu, www.nonviolence.org/vanunu
Contact: WISE Amsterdam
DOUBLE STANDARD - OKAY FOR ISRAEL TO HAVE NUKES AND STEAL URANIUM ORE TOO! OY VEY!!!Monday, May. 30, 1977
HIGH SEAS: Uranium: The Israeli Connection
In the foggy dawn of Nov. 17, 1968, the German-built freighter Scheersberg A (gross tonnage: 1,790 tons) chugged out of Antwerp harbor with a Liberian flag flying from its mast and 560 drums of "yellowcake"—a crude concentrate of uranium—packed beneath its decks. The ship never reached its declared destination of Genoa, Italy. Instead, after 15 days at sea it docked at the Turkish port of Iskenderun on Dec. 2, riding high in the water. Its strategic cargo—200 tons of uranium, worth $3.7 million, that could potentially be used for nuclear weapons—had vanished. The disappearance of the uranium was first disclosed last month by Paul Leventhal, a former counsel to the Senate Committee on Government Operations, at a conference in Salzburg, and the report was confirmed later by European Community officials.
Who had the uranium? And how did they get it? After several weeks of investigation by a team of correspondents, TIME has learned that the Scheersberg As voyage from Antwerp was part of a complex plot concocted by Israeli intelligence agents. Its purpose: to disguise a secret Israeli purchase of much-needed uranium for its French-built nuclear reactor at Dimona in the Negev Desert; an overt purchase might have pushed the Soviet Union into supplying nuclear arms to the Arab states. The Scheersberg A, which is still in service as a tramp steamer under the name Kerkyra, was secretly owned at the time of the uranium caper by the Israeli intelligence service, Mossad. It was one of three ships (another was called the Vita) that Israel used in the late 1960s for secret operations. TIME has discovered that the Scheersberg A was almost certainly involved in the refueling in the Atlantic of five gunboats seized by Israeli agents from the French harbor of Cherbourg in 1969.
In the uranium operation, the Israelis relied on assurances from the West German coalition government of Christian Democratic Chancellor Kurt-Georg Kiesinger that they would be allowed to disguise their purchase as a private commercial transaction in West Germany. In exchange, TIME'S sources say, Israel promised West Germany access to its advanced uranium separation process that can be used to produce nuclear weapons. Asked directly about it, officials in Bonn refused last week either to confirm or to deny any past government involvement in such a deal.
No Hijacking. Investigators for the European Community began looking for the missing uranium several months after the Scheersberg A showed up empty at Iskenderun. They developed evidence that the cargo had not vanished in a hijacking: the uranium was shipped by a firm that knew it would never arrive at its destination in Italy. The firm was a now-defunct German petrochemical company called Asmara Chemie, and it had purchased the uranium—which was mined in what is now Zaire—from the Belgian mineral firm Societe Generale des Minerals. Asmara Chemie had no previous record of buying uranium at all —let alone $3.7 million worth—but on March 29, 1968, Asmara signed a contract to buy 200 tons of uranium oxide. Today the founder of Asmara, Herbert G. Scharf, denies any knowledge of the deal, and one former employee of the firm says, "I assume that somebody must have used our name."
Several of TIME'S sources have identified a former Asmara purchasing agent and stockholder named Herbert Schul-zen as the Asmara connection. Last week Schulzen, now an executive for Kolloid Chemie, a West German dye-making firm, told TIME he could not comment because "secret service agencies" were involved. He added: "When I read in the papers that for nine years various governments have kept the disappearance of the uranium a secret, I cannot as a private individual comment on what is taking place at a [higher] political level."
Asmara at first had ordered the uranium for a third party, a Casablanca pharmaceutical-supply company named Chimagar; like Asmara, it had never bought uranium before. "Laughable," said one of the company's executives last week when told that the firm—which specializes in processing seaweed—had been named as a recipient of the uranium. Indeed, Chimagar was not a good cover. Morocco is not a member of the Common Market, and no nuclear material can be shipped outside the Community without a special permit.
Thus, in August 1968, the uranium contract was amended. Asmara and the Société Générale informed the Common Market that the ore would be shipped to SAICA, a paint company in Milan that also had never been known to use uranium. SAICA was to mix the uranium with an unspecified substance included in the shipment, then return it to Asmara in the same 560 drums. "They chose us merely to get the uranium out of Antwerp into the Mediterranean," said null chairman, Francesco Ser-torio, last week; he claims he wondered about the deal at the time. Nevertheless, Sertorio says he received an advance payment from Asmara Chemie of $12,000 for buying equipment to mix and handle the uranium. Apparently Asmara knew that the Scheersberg A, with its barrels of uranium innocently marked "plumbat" (a lead derivative), would never dock in Italy. A few days after the Scheersberg A sailed from Antwerp, Asmara called SAIGA to say the ship was mysteriously lost and told the paint company to keep the $12,000.
The history of the Scheersberg A's ownership is almost equally mysterious. Less than two months before its fateful sailing from Antwerp, the ship—then known simply as the Scheersberg—was purchased from a Hamburg shipping broker, August Bolten, by a company that was little more than a post office address in Monrovia, Liberia: the Biscayne Traders Shipping Corp., which was incorporated on Aug. 20, 1968, about the time that Asmara Chemie's final contract for purchase of the uranium was completed. Biscayne took title to the Scheersberg A—for $287,000—on Sept. 27, 1968. The company, which was dissolved in 1971, was almost certainly a front for the Mossad. For more than a year, corporate documents prove, Bis-cayne's president was Dan Ert, 40, who admitted in 1973 that he was an Israeli intelligence agent.
Ert, who has changed his name to Aerbel and now lives in Herzliya, was a member of an Israeli "hit team" that in 1973 killed an Arab waiter in Lillehammer, Norway, in the mistaken belief that he was a Palestinian terrorist responsible for the Munich massacre of eleven Olympic athletes. A native of Copenhagen who maintained Danish and Israeli citizenship, Ert tried to win his release by telling his flabbergasted Norwegian interrogators that he was a Mossad agent. To prove it, he mentioned that he "owned the ship" that had secretly carried uranium for Israel. (Ert has since denied saying this.) Ert also gave his captors the secret phone number of Mossad headquarters in Tel Aviv. He was convicted of participating in a murder and imprisoned for seven months.
After Biscayne Traders bought the Scheersberg A, in September 1968, the first of many new crews came aboard. But in Rotterdam, on Nov. 15, a Biscayne Traders representative falsely told the crew—composed largely of Spaniards—that they were no longer needed because the ship had been sold again. On the next day, the uranium was loaded in Antwerp, and a hand-picked crew of Israelis boarded the ship for its mysterious voyage.
Only those aboard know precisely what happened during the 15 days after the Scheersberg A left Antwerp. The ship's officers cannot be traced because they had forged passports and false identities. But one of TIME'S sources talked with a former Israeli crew member in 1973, in the Ivory Coast. According to the sailor, after leaving Antwerp the Scheersberg A sailed straight for the waters between Cyprus and Iskenderun. Without breaking radio silence, it made a rendezvous at night with an Israeli ship that carried a special winch. As two Israeli gunboats hovered near the freighters, the barrels of uranium were transferred in total darkness. Except for an occasional Hebrew command, no one spoke. The uranium, TIME'S sources believe, went to the Israeli port of Haifa, approximately 110 nautical miles from the rendezvous, and the Scheersberg A headed northeast to Iskenderun.
Arrived Empty. Port records confirm that the Scheersberg A arrived empty on Dec. 2. Three days later, most of the Spanish crew who had been dismissed in Rotterdam on Nov. 15 were called back to the ship at Palermo. Curious about its recent travels, some crewmen looked for the ship's log. They found that the pages for the previous 21/2 weeks had been ripped out.
For almost a year, the Scheersberg A carried out normal freight duties in the Mediterranean and Atlantic. Meanwhile, construction of five missile and torpedo gunboats purchased by Israel neared completion in the French port of Cherbourg. The boats were paid for by Israel, but France had halted all military trade with Arabs and Israelis. On Nov. 17, 1969, five weeks before the Israelis seized the gunboats, the Scheersberg A crew was again told that the ship had been sold. A new crew came aboard, and another mystery voyage began. Port records show that the ship left Almeria, Spain, for a course through the Strait of
Gibraltar and up the French coast just three days before the Cherbourg raid, which took place on Christmas morning, 1969. One of TIME'S sources reports that a refueling rendezvous with the gunboats took place in the Bay of Biscay, 300 nautical miles southwest of the mouth of the Loire — easy sailing distance from Almeria for the Scheersberg A.
Hull Scars. After this rendezvous, the ship arrived in the West German port of Brake on Dec. 30. It was sold by Biscayne Traders on Jan. 5, 1970, to a Greek shipping firm for approximately $235,000—or $52,000 less than the 1968 purchase price. It bore scars on its hull, possibly from having scraped against its sister ship while the uranium was being transferred. The Scheersberg A, by then renamed Haroula, was sold again in 1976, to another Greek firm, the Pidalion Three Co.
The European Community investigation into the whereabouts of the missing uranium was frustratingly incomplete. Two months after the Scheersberg A sailed from Antwerp, the Common Market's atomic energy agency (Euratom) routinely asked the Italian paint company SAICA whether the uranium had arrived. When told no, Euratom began an inquiry into what it called the "Plumbat Affair." The search was hampered by the agency's lack of police powers, and after a few months Euratom called on security forces of the Western nations for help. A West German investigation was abruptly —and mysteriously—halted shortly after it began in 1969.
U.S. officials reacted calmly to Euratom's report of the missing uranium. Explains one U.S. nuclear expert: "Yellowcake is a very low level mineral, not bomb material." Only after complicated reprocessing can it be used to make nuclear weapons. It is believed that Israel completed such a reprocessing facility in 1969, and used it to produce a limited number of atomic bombs (TIME, April 12, 1976). The Carter Administration halted all U.S. exports of uranium—including yellowcake—last February, pending a review of U.S. export policies.
In Europe and the U.S., atomic energy officials say that the Plumbat Affair signals a need for tighter surveillance of nuclear shipments. Notes a former Euratom official: "The ways of stepping around international controls are as many as the ways of our Lord."
The tired old tramp steamer that carried the uranium oxide from Antwerp to the eastern Mediterranean is not likely to be involved in so adventurous a mission again. Last week the salt-caked Kerkyra returned empty to the Greek port of Halkis, after carrying a load of cement to Benghazi in Libya on its regular run. Beneath the paint of the new name, dockside onlookers can still discern welded letters spelling out the old, outlined in cement dust. Scheersberg A has come in out of the cold.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,914952,00.html
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