TOXIC FRIENDSHIPS, WEAPONS & WASTE
FROM ISRAEL WITH ❤️
Israel Gets High-Speed Computers
The Risk Report
Volume 1 Number 1 (January-February 1995)
In November, the United States approved the sale of powerful computers that could boost Israel's well-known but officially secret A-bomb and missile programs.
The most controversial exports are a pair of supercomputers produced by Cray Research and IBM. Valued at roughly $2 million each, they perform at speeds more than ten times faster than the current level at which most American machines are controlled for export.
"This would be the largest machine ever sold to Israel," said one senior official, describing the Cray Research machine. Several smaller computers approved for individual sale to Israeli universities are also more powerful than anything Israel has now.
The Israel sale highlights a relaxed U.S. policy on the sale of high-performance supercomputers to countries known to be working on weapons of mass destruction. Five federal agencies fought for months over whether to allow Cray Research to sell its machine to a network of Israeli universities, with the National Security Council making the final decision for approval in November. The decision came after a high-level review of supercomputer export policy.
Although supercomputers perform many civilian functions, they were invented primarily to design U.S. atomic and hydrogen bombs. Supercomputers are a powerful tool for developing both nuclear weapons and long-range missiles because they can simulate the implosive shock wave that detonates a nuclear warhead, or model the forces affecting a missile from launch to impact.
The Cray machine is destined for the Inter-University Computation Center, a "wide area network" that connects Israel's leading universities, several of which are known to be working on nuclear weapons and long-range missiles.
A 1987 Pentagon-sponsored study found that Technion University, one of the schools in the network, was helping design Israel's nuclear missile re-entry vehicle. U.S. officials say Technion's physicists also worked in Israel's secret weapon complex at Dimona, where an Israeli reactor makes plutonium for atomic bombs. In 1989, Cray was denied a license to sell a supercomputer to Technion because the university conducted research on nuclear-capable missiles.
Hebrew University in Jerusalem also would be allowed to use the Cray supercomputer, even though the study said Hebrew University supplied physicists to Israel's nuclear lab at Soreq, where scientists were "developing the kind of codes which will enable them to make hydrogen bombs."
And the university network includes the Weizmann Institute, whose scientists, the study said, studied high energy physics and hydrodynamics needed for nuclear bomb design, and worked on lasers to enrich uranium, the most advanced method for making the material dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.
Cray and U.S. officials say the computer's security plan minimizes the risk that it could be used for illicit military calculations. Cray maintains its personnel will have access to the computer at all times, though it admits it won't constantly oversee the machine and cannot disable it in case of diversion. Cray also says high-level technical committees will be formed to oversee Israel's promise not to misuse the machine. "If someone ran a large calculation that seemed suspicious, the U.S. government would know about it and could ask the Israeli government for a copy," a Cray spokesman said.
No one involved argues the deal is without risk. "The question is how much risk we are willing to take," says a U.S. official.
The Pentagon, the Department of Energy and the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA) voted against the Cray sale on the inter-agency working level, while the Commerce and State Departments supported it. The vote also was split on the smaller machines.
The decision then was bumped to the next bureaucratic level, the Advisory Committee on Export Policy. DOE changed its vote to "yes" on the Cray and "no" on the smaller machines, reasoning that if university scientists wanted to work on A-bombs, there would be less risk of detection on the smaller in-house computers.
Cray believes the desire for military secrecy will deter a possible bomb or missile maker from revealing data and software over an open network. But one U.S. official who opposed the sale says that "safeguards are impossible with such wide access." He argues that "the conditions are just a fig leaf" because skilled Israeli scientists could defeat the safeguards. Israel will be permitted to design aircraft on the machine, with air-flow calculations that would be nearly impossible for any expert to distinguish from missile designs or to distinguish effectively enough to support a diplomatic protest.
The U.S. official also contends the sale contradicts current policy. "Other computers went to Israel for joint [U.S.-Israel] programs, or for purely civilian applications, but not to a network where everybody can log on." He and a former U.S. official familiar with nuclear weapon design worry that the boost in computing power will help Israel with its latest engineering problem, shrinking thermonuclear warheads to fit on long-range missiles.
Critics also are concerned with precedent. If you say "yes" to supercomputers going to Israel, they contend, how do you say "no" to India, China and Pakistan?
U.S. Computers Approved to Israel - November 1994
Exporter Speed (CTP)* Buyer
Cray Research 5,225.0 Tel Aviv University
Cray Research 1,325.0 Weizmann Institute
IBM 6,796.1 Tel Aviv University
IBM 1,421.0 Hebrew University
IBM 1,421.0 Bar Ilan University
IBM 1,278.1 Technion Institute
IBM 1,278.1 Weizmann Institute
Silicon Graphics 1,334.0 Weizmann Institute
Silicon Graphics 1,071.0 Bar Ilan University
* Composite Theoretical Performance
https://www.wisconsinproject.org/countries/israel/highspeedcomputers.htm
Americans Pay Dearly to Maintain Israel’s Nuclear Secrets
CIA endangers NUMEC toxic waste cleanup
by Grant Smith | Oct 20, 2011 | 16 Comments
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) has just stopped its $170 million nuclear waste dump cleanup at a former Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation (NUMEC) site in Pennsylvania. In the early 1960s, NUMEC established a plutonium facility in Parks Township — disposing of waste in a large field adjacent to the plant. NUMEC’s waste site was staggeringly inappropriate. According to Atomic Energy Commission surveys and more recent USACE studies, groundwater flows freely throughout the dump at levels where waste resides. Further below the surface, a warren of coal mine shafts from the early 20th century creates the possibility of toxic seepage and sinkholes.
According to what the USACE knows, a contractor failed to inspect the contents of a 55-gallon drum holding radioactive waste before moving it. What nearby residents, contractors, and USACE engineers don’t know could pose an even greater hazard — and the CIA may be in a position to provide a remedy.
According to newly declassified FBI files [.pdf], NUMEC’s venture capitalist David Lowenthal and founder Zalman Shapiro knowingly failed to comply with even the lax AEC standards in force in the 1960s for handling radioactive waste at NUMEC. An FBI wiretap placed on Lowenthal’s phone picked up shocking news of a major illicit radioactive spill on May 5, 1969. Lowenthal and Shapiro were both under investigation for diverting enough HEU to Israel to build more than a dozen atomic weapons. Shapiro and Lowenthal were in the midst of their “exit strategy” — selling NUMEC to Atlantic Richfield, which would (along with successor Babcock & Wilcox and then American taxpayers) be left holding the bag for massive future cleanup and health indemnity costs.
Shapiro and Lowenthal — in line for a $150 per share buyout of their substantial stock holdings — seemed surreally unperturbed as the avoidable disaster unfurled, quickly moving on to the topic of new corporate acquisition targets.
9:18 p.m.: CENSORED reported on a spillage at the plant. They have the area roped off and it will take some pick and shovel work to dig up the contaminated areas. CENSORED said they are getting 100,000 counts. CENSORED said, “Oh, God.” They are dampening it down to avoid dust and will cover it if it looks like it may rain. CENSORED asked if there is anything on AAI? …
9:20 p.m.: CENSORED said that he heard that American Instrument Company [is] up for sale. He said he heard this from the former sales manager.
More recently, Geiger counter–wielding inspectors in Japan used 6,000 counts per minute as a threshold standard for decontamination, only raising it to 100,000 after the Fukushima disaster.
A phone call placed just two minutes after the first about NUMEC confirmed that
it’s not only a bad spill but “actually they are operating outside compliance.” They had the drums all together. They have about 200 drums and estimate that about six a day will corrode through. The trouble lay with a fluoride which was put in to help the decay, and this was not checked. CENSORED said they are also about $230,000 over on their construction costs for the scrap plant. Z [Zalman Shapiro] said if they could get other people, there would be a lot of firing.
Shapiro gained a reputation for disregarding the health concerns of his ill-trained workforce and firing them at will in order to suppress wages in the economically depressed Kiski Valley. New high school graduate hires were callously told to “drink lots of beer” to flush radioactive contaminants out of their systems. Tellingly, both Lowenthal and Shapiro refused to live anywhere near Apollo or Parks Township, preferring spacious homes on the same leafy street in Pittsburgh, all the better to host visiting Israeli nuclear weapons program officials. Shapiro, a brilliant nuclear scientist and longtime Zionist Organization of America leader who has been tight-lipped about NUMEC in recent years, was nominated in 2009 by his daughter for a National Medal of Technology and Innovation. He is still eligible, if chosen from a pool of other talented Americans, for a White House ceremony with President Obama in 2011.
It is too late for the USACE to interview David Lowenthal — who began his career smuggling refugees to Israel — about the location of the 1969 spill. In 1956 Israel began working its top agents to procure materials obtainable only from nations with yellowcake access or billion-dollar gaseous diffusion plants. In 1957 the undercapitalized start-up that was NUMEC — dwarfed by industry cohorts Westinghouse and General Electric — used its connections to winnow its way into the U.S. highly enriched uranium (HEU) stream as a scrap reprocessor and maker of specialized fuels for naval propulsion systems using capital raised by Lowenthal. NUMEC launched in Lowenthal’s defunct, dirt-floored steel milling facilities in the center of a quaint village. In retrospect, NUMEC resembles its true siblings — Materials for Palestine, Foundry Associates, Service Airways, and later, MILCO — all thin front companiesestablished for the sole purpose of stealing and illegally smuggling U.S. arms to Israel. Worker safety, profitability, environmental regulations, and materials accountability all took a back seat to NUMEC’s core purpose — helping build Israel’s clandestine atomic arsenal.
It is unlikely that Shapiro will now step forward and tell the USACE where his fluoride-saturated illegal drum cache is located. Out of compliance, it likely doesn’t appear on any topographical site maps developed by the USACE or its contractors. The CIA, which intensively investigated NUMEC over the diversion of weapons-grade nuclear material into the Israeli nuclear weapons program, could drastically improve the probability of a more successful, safer cleanup. Only the CIA can give an accurate and overdue public estimate of how much U.S. taxpayer–funded HEU was actually diverted from NUMEC into the Israeli nuclear weapons program and is therefore no longer a hazard in any NUMEC waste site. As recently as 2009, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission officially listed vast quantities of missing NUMEC material as still “unaccounted for.” The CIA may also have overseas wiretaps or HUMINT as illuminating and suddenly relevant as the FBI’s. As a public service, it could also release its jealously guarded equity content in a 1978 Government Accounting Office report — which Congress always intended to be public — about NUMEC that was partially declassified in 2010 and scores of other CIA files it has bottled up in National Archives and Records Administration holdings.
Officially, the CIA has never released records or issued formal statements about NUMEC. But the agency’s former employees have been much more vocal. Former CIA Tel Aviv station chief John Hadden once described to the BBC how Rafael Eitan — the master Israeli spy who visited NUMEC [.pdf] undercover in the 1960s and who later handled spy Jonathan Pollard — might have found diverting HEU from NUMEC much lighter work than kidnapping a Nazi war criminal from the streets of Buenos Aires. “Just imagine to yourself how much easier it would be to remove a pound or two of this or that at any one time, as opposed to — which is inert material — as opposed to removing all at one blow. One hundred fifty pounds of shouting and kicking Eichmann. You see, they [the Israelis] are pretty good at removing things.” Hadden claimed that NUMEC was “an Israeli operation from the beginning.”
Carl Duckett, former deputy of the CIA’s Directorate of Science and Technology, also went on record verifying that the agency came to the conclusion by 1968 that “NUMEC material had been diverted by the Israelis and used in fabricating weapons.” Reporters such as John Fialka and former Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials Roger Mattson and Victor Gilinsky, who are still active in the industry, spent years trying to dislodge the CIA’s secret trove of information sealed up in expert briefings about NUMEC. All such Freedom of Information Act requests have been refused, presumably to advance the tired, discredited, yet official U.S. and Israeli policy of “ambiguity” over what the entire world knows anyway — that Israel has built and deployed a massive nuclear arsenal through a series of highly illegal acts.
Given this week’s events, the cost of that unnecessary secrecy to the commonweal is going up dramatically. The CIA’s blanket censorship about NUMEC is now contributing to an entirely avoidable public safety hazard. CIA censorship will only compound American taxpayer and health costs to clean up a dump that with just a bit more warranted law enforcement back in the 1960s would never have existed in the first place.
Grant F. Smith is the author of the new book Divert! NUMEC, Zalman Shapiro and the diversion of U.S. weapons-grade uranium into the Israeli nuclear weapons program. He is director of the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy in Washington, D.C.
Israel’s Nuclear Triggers
Secret files reveal brazen espionage and dangerous immunity
by Grant Smith | Mar 22, 2012 | 10 Comments
FBI files detailing Israel’s stealth acquisition of U.S. nuclear triggers were declassified and released on Dec. 28, 2011. The FBI’s secret Portland and Los Angeles inter-office communications were originally scheduled for release in the year 2036. Their availability today reveals how Israel’s elite spy networks acquire U.S. nuclear technologies while evading criminal and diplomatic consequences.
A krytron is a gas-filled tube used as a high-speed switch. U.S. State Department munitions licenses are needed to export krytrons because they can be used as triggers for nuclear weapons. California-based MILCO International Inc. shipped 15 orders totaling 800 krytrons through an intermediary to the Israeli Ministry of Defense between 1979 and 1983. MILCO obtained the krytrons from EG&G Inc. After the U.S. government rejected several requests for krytron export licenses to Israel, Arnon Milchan’s Heli Trading Company brokered the transactions with MILCO. Milchan is an Israeli movie producer who became successful in Hollywood for such movies as Brazil, JFK, and Pretty Woman.
The FBI file reveals that after the illicit krytron exports were discovered, a U.S. attorney tried to flip MILCO President Richard Kelly Smyth to implicate Milchan during intense plea bargaining. The gambit failed, and in May 1984 Smyth was indicted on 30 counts of smuggling and making false statements. Smyth and his wife promptly fled to Israel and remained at large until captured in Malaga, Spain, in July 2001 after Richard Smyth applied for Social Security benefits. INTERPOL arrested Smyth and extradited him to the United States, where he pleaded guilty to violating the U.S. Arms Export Control Act. In November 2001, Smyth was sentenced to 40 years in prison and fined $20,000, though he was freed within four years because of his advancing age.
In 1985, a federal grand jury was convened in Los Angeles to investigate potentially related Atomic Energy Act and Arms Export Control Act violations, but no charges were ever filed against Milchan or those who secretly helped Smyth flee and who covered his living expenses abroad. A 2011 biography called Confidential: The Life of Secret Agent Turned Hollywood Tycoon Arnon Milchan claims that Milchan was recruited into Israel’s LAKAM economic espionage unit in his 20s and became a key operative for Benjamin Blumberg (head of LAKAM) and Rafi Eitan (who ran Jonathan Pollard and infiltrated NUMEC).
Milchan is also the close confidant of Shimon Peres and Benjamin Netanyahu. According to the book, Blumberg himself taught Milchan how to establish front companies and secret bank accounts to launder millions in commissions obtained during LAKAM and Mossad arms transactions. In turn, it was Milchan who encouraged Smyth in 1972 to incorporate MILCO and share profits on export sales to his Tel Aviv–based Milchan Brothers company. Milchan Brothers received purchase orders from Blumberg and sent them on via secure telex to Smyth. MILCO did 80% of its business with Milchan, including shipments of other dual-use technologies useful to Israel’s clandestine nuclear weapons program such as gyroscopes, neutron generators, high-speed oscilloscopes, and computerized flight control systems. According to the book, after Smyth was ordered to appear before a federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, LAKAM issued a burn notice. Milchan claimed, “I felt bad, but I was ordered to cut all contact with Smyth.” Milchan still officially denies any involvement in MILCO/Heli’s krytron smuggling
The FBI records reveal ongoing interest in Milchan into the mid-1990s. In 1992, a confidential informant relayed details of Milchan’s ties to Smyth. The declassified but heavily redacted “secret” communications reveal the Bureau’s fascination with Milchan, from his 1996 entry in Who’s Who to A-list associates such as Robert De Niro and an unsavory Iran-Contra operative.
Like the NUMEC case, the krytron caper benefited from flawed elite news coverage that today seems superficial if not suspicious. Among the final pages of the FBI’s file is a clipping of Thomas Friedman’s May 1985 New York Timesinterview with Milchan, who had suddenly decamped for Jerusalem after the Smyth indictments. Milchan said he had only recently learned “that a krytron was a small little gizmo which anyone can go buy freely in the United States. You can use them or all kinds of things, including, incidentally, making cholent.” Friedman clarified for readers that “Cholent is a stew of beans, carrots, potatoes and beef that is a traditional Jewish dish prepared on Friday night for eating on the Sabbath. Mr. Milchan said that with a krytron timer a stove could be set to turn on automatically to heat up cholent on the Sabbath without anyone working to light the fire.”
The FBI’s news clipping file contains far less credulous accounts of frantic State Department attempts to secure the return of the krytrons or at least verify that they were not being deployed into Israel’s secret nuclear arsenal. Unlike most U.S. government agencies, the FBI didn’t muzzle itself under “strategic ambiguity” protocols but instead spoke candidly of Israel’s nukes. “At the time of [Smyth’s] disappearance, the U.S. did not have any reliable information that the Israelis were enriching uranium via uranium hexafluoride. That information did not surface for another year until an individual named [Mordecai Vanunu] detailed drawings and photographs of Dimona, Israel’s nuclear research center, to the London Times.”
The declassified details of Smyth’s and Milchan’s flight, elite influence networks, and near complete lack of accountability over the krytron case fits neatly into a larger emerging set of attributes common to many major Israeli espionage efforts in the United States. As happened during NUMEC’s diversion of weapons-grade nuclear material to Israel, apparently more time was spent exploring Milchan’s elite connections than figuring out how to indict LAKAM’s nuclear technology operative. As in the case of the Lawrence Franklin AIPAC espionage affair, the mysterious figures who offered to spirit the main operative out of the United States to overseas safe houses were never apprehended or even publicly identified.
In America today, open financial support for Israel’s clandestine nuclear program is becoming more brazen even as many of its supporters and lobbyists demand U.S. military attacks on Iran’s nuclear program. The American Committee for the Weizmann Institute raises millions in tax-deductible funding for its Israeli parent organization, which was found in a 1987 Pentagon-sponsored study to have developed a cutting-edge high-energy physics and hydrodynamics program “needed for nuclear bomb design.” The Weizmann Institute advanced methods for enriching uranium to weapons-grade through the use of lasers even as the United States worried that Weizmann’s networked supercomputers were being used to reduce the size of warheads. Despite public calls for an IRS review of its tax-exempt status, the American Committee plows on announcing new corporate grants, ever confident that its elite overlapping board, which has included such luminaries as AIPAC/WINEP chairman emeritus Robert Asher, will back Weizmann, ensuring that nuclear funding continues to flow.
Perhaps trying not to be outdone, President Barack Obama announced at AIPAC’s Washington conference that he will soon take center stage in the Israeli nuclear Théâtre de l’Absurde. According to author Avner Cohen, Israeli President Shimon Peres was a key architect of Israel’s nuclear weapons program from its very beginning. In 2010, scholar Sasha Polakow-Suransky released secret documents revealing how Peres even offered to sell nuclear-tipped Jericho missiles to the foundering apartheid regime in South Africa. That is why this summer, when Obama personally awards Peres a Presidential Medal of Freedom, he’ll be conferring America’s highest civilian award to the Middle East’s most notorious nuclear proliferator.
Grant F. Smith is the author of the new book Divert! NUMEC, Zalman Shapiro and the diversion of U.S. weapons-grade uranium into the Israeli nuclear weapons program. He is director of the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy in Washington, D.C.
https://original.antiwar.com/smith-grant/2012/03/21/israels-nuclear-triggers/
Hollywood producer Milchan confirms he was Israeli spy
ISRAEL - USA
FRANCE
Hollywood producer Arnon Milchan, who made hits such as Pretty Woman, L.A. Confidential and Fight Club, confirmed on Monday longstanding rumours that he worked as a spy for Israel, buying arms on its behalf and boosting its alleged nuclear programme.
Issued on: 26/11/2013 - 16:43Modified: 26/11/2013 - 22:29
By:
/
The Hollywood producer behind thrillers “Fight Club” and “L.A. Confidential” knows something about keeping dangerous secrets himself. Film tycoon Arnon Milchan has confirmed he once bought alleged nuclear technology while working as an Israeli spy.
“I did it for my country and I am proud of it,” Milchan told Israeli’s investigative television programme in an interview aired on Monday.
Rumours about the billionaire producer’s double-life as a spy have been circulating for years, but he had not directly acknowledged them until this week.
In a 2011 unauthorised biography, authors Meir Doron and Joseph Gelman revealed that Milchan was an agent for Israel’s top-secret Lekem intelligence group until the mid-1980s.
His work, which included running front companies for Israel’s intelligence services and purchasing components to build and maintain the country’s nuclear arsenal, began in Israel and followed him, at least in part, to Hollywood.
“When I came to Hollywood I detached myself completely from my physical activities to dedicate myself to what I really wanted: filmmaking,'' he told Israel’s Channel 2. “(But) sometimes it gets mixed up.''
The producer, who made blockbusters “Pretty Woman”, “Heat” and “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” also said other big Hollywood names were connected to his clandestine affairs.
Milchan’s name was first linked to Israeli spying as far back as 1985, when aerospace executive Richard Kelly Smyth was indicted for illegally smuggling nuclear arms “triggers” out of the United States.
Smyth, who eluded US prosecutors for 15 years, had shipped the devices to Israel via one of Milchan’s companies.
Israel’s Lekem agency was disbanded in 1987 after it was connected to the spying scandal for which civilian intelligence analyst Jonathan Pollard was sentenced to life in prison.
I FBI Treasury Customs investigation of MILCO - Heli nuclear trigger smuggling to Israeli Ministry of Defense
"...also met Benyamin Netanyahu while Netanyahu worked at Heli Trading..."
Documents
California-based MILCO International Inc. shipped 15 orders totaling 810 krytrons to the Israeli Ministry of Defense between 1979 and 1983. Israeli movie producer Arnon Milchan's Heli Trading Company brokered the transactions. A krytron is a gas-filled tube used as a high speed switch. Export from the US requires a US State Department munitions license because krytrons can be used as triggers for nuclear weapons. The US rejected several requests for krytron export licenses to Israel. MILCO obtained the krytrons from EG&G Inc., but listed them as "pentode" radio tubes before shipment to Israel. The ruse was uncovered by the FBI in 1983.
A US Attorney tried to get MILCO President Richard Kelly Smyth to implicate Milchan in the illegal krytron export during plea bargaining. The negotiation failed, and in May, 1984, Smyth was indicted on 30 counts of smuggling and making false statements. In 1985 a Federal Grand Jury was convened in Los Angeles to investigate potential Atomic Energy Act and Arms Export Control Act violations, but no charges were ever filed against Milchan.
Smyth and his wife fled the US and remained at large until captured in Malaga, Spain in July of 2001 after Smyth applied for Social Security benefits. Smyth pled guilty to violating the US Arms Export Control Act. In November, 2001 Smyth was sentenced to 40 years in prison and a $20,000 fine, though he was paroled due to his "advanced age." In 2016, Arnon Milchan received a 10-year resident visa after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lobbied Secretary of State John Kerry to grant one over the objections of career State Department employees.
New file release May 3, 2017 (Download PDF)
A 2011 biography called "Confidential: The Life of Secret Agent Turned Hollywood Tycoon Arnon Milchan" claims Milchan was recruited into Israel's LAKAM economic espionage unit in his 20's and became a key operative for Benjamin Blumberg (head of LAKAM), and Rafi Eitan (who ran Jonathan Pollard and infiltrated NUMEC). Milchan is the confidant of Shimon Peres and Benjamin Netanyahu. According to the book, Blumberg taught Milchan how to establish front companies and secret bank accounts to launder millions in commissions obtained during LAKAM and Mossad transactions. Milchan encouraged Smyth in 1972 to incorporate MILCO to share profits on export sales with his Tel Aviv-based Milchan Brothers company. Milchan Brothers received purchase orders from Blumberg and sent them via secure telex to Smyth. MILCO did 80 percent of its business with Milchan, including transfers of other US technologies useful to Israel's clandestine nuclear weapons programs. (Gyroscopes, neutron generators, high-speed oscilloscopes, computerized flight control systems.) According to the book, after Smyth was ordered to appear before a federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, Milchan claimed "I felt bad, but I was ordered to cut all contact with Smyth." Milchan officially denies any knowledge of MILCO or Milchan Brothers roles in krytron smuggling
The following FBI files reveal the FBI's interest in Milchan after a confidential informant revealed his ties to Smyth in 1992. The declassified but heavily redacted "secret" communications detail the bureau's fascination with Milchan, from his entry in "Who's Who" to star-studded associates such as Robert Di Niro and an Iran-Contra operative. The final page of the FBI file is a clipping of Thomas Friedman's May, 1985 New York Timesinterview with Milchan who had quickly left the US for Jerusalem. Milchan told Friedman "that a krytron was a small little gizmo which anyone can go buy freely in the United States. You can use them or all kinds of things, including, incidentally, making cholent." Friedman clarified that "Cholent is a stew of beans, carrots, potatoes and beef that is a traditional Jewish dish prepared on Friday night for eating on the Sabbath. Mr. Milchan said that with a krytron timer a stove could be set to turn on automatically to heat up cholent on the Sabbath without anyone working to light the fire."
Document/PDF by release date
Contents 05/2017 New!
U.S. Department of Treasury files released by DHS and ICE. Shipping documents, code word "PINTO," conspiracy to use general license rather than munitions license, evasion of end user certificate, reference to krytrons as "pentodes," denial krytrons were used in nuclear weapons program by the Israeli government, rap sheet, Israeli promise to deliver "unused" krytrons back to the United States.
June 5, 1996 classified file, associates, case narrative, redacted, July 19, 1992 secret memo to FBI director, Arnon Milchan activities reported by an informant, friends Oliver Stone, Sidney Pollack, Barbara Streisand, Tom Cruise, Richard Dreyfuss and Robert DeNiro. Israeli labor party friends, arm dealing links, MILCO. July 1992 request to government of Israel to obtain statement. Subpoena, disappearance of Richard Kelly Smyth, contacts at Rockwell, Founding of MILCO in 1973, recruitment of Air Force Scientific Advisory Board members to MILCO, atomic bomb designers, MILCO nuclear weapons related sales. July 1992 report, Vanunu revelations of Israel's nuclear weapons program, January 1983 burglary of MILCO, FBI discovery of krytron shipments to Israel, attempts to get Smyth to implicate Milchan/MILCO,. May 1984 indictments of Smyth on 30 counts of smuggling and making false statements, overlap with Iran Contra affair bank accounts, Israeli assassinations of Iraqis associate with nuclear program. February 1993 memo about possible ABC Nightly News story, April 1993 video tapes, open source information on Arnon Milchan,
Counterintelligence debriefing of Richard Kelly Smyth. After he is arrested in Malaga, Spain and extradited to the United States, Smyth is debriefed by FBI special agents at the Los Angeles US attorney office. Smyth details his recruitment by Arnon Milchan, meetings with Benjamin Netanyahu who then worked at smuggling front Heli Trading (Milchan Brothers Trading Company) in Israel, and how the "Project Pinto" smuggling operation was rolled up after his arrest for smuggling 800 nuclear triggers and subsequent flight from the U.S.
Open source news database information and "Who's Who in America 1996" entry on smuggling case. "Case Agent [redacted] has requested that this matter be placed in a closed status at this time."
[Redacted pages]
News clipping, The New York Times, Saturday, May 18, 1985
"Israelis Deny Knowing of Export Bar for Device Usable in A-Bomb"
by Thomas Friedman
News clipping The Washington Post, May 15, 1985
"US Asks Israel to Account for Nuclear Timing Devices"
by John M Goshko
FOIA release letter
Message distribution to national an international offices. "The enclosed is for your information. If used in a future report, conceal all sources of paraphrase contents...This entire communication is classified SECRET. LA is advised to provide an appropriate UCFN for captioned matter." (Universal Case File Number)
Message to FBI Director. "Enclosed for Los Angeles is one videotaped copy of two installments of NBC Nightly News that highlights some of the information that was provided to the Bureau and Los Angeles..."
[Redacted]
"Inasmuch as Los Angeles has not initiated any investigative activity re subject, Portland will no longer query mentioned source re subject."
Message distribution to national an international offices. "The enclosed is for your information. If used in a future report, conceal all sources of paraphrase contents...This entire communication is classified SECRET. LA is requested to furnish a communication regarding the status of this pending matter to CI-2F Unit." (Confidential Informant)
Priority message to the FBI Director and Los Angeles office that "...during the later part of next week, during an NBC Nightly News broadcast, Tom Brokaw would reveal the background story of...MILCO"
Record of a routine search on 8/17/1992.
[Redacted]
Secret record of a secure telephone call from special agent in charge of Los Angeles field office to a special agent in Portland on 7/16/1992.
[Redacted]
07/15/1992
Section 4[Redacted]
07/15/1992
Section 3
..."At the time of [Smyth's] disappearance, the U.S., did not have any reliable information that the Israelis were enriching uranium via uranium hexafluoride. That information did not surface for another year until an individual named [Mordecai Vanunu] detailed drawings and photographs of Dimona, Israel's nuclear research center, to the London Times."
"When they repeatedly asked if proper licenses had been obtained and, on 7/24/1982, they resigned. During January, 1983, MILCO's Huntington Beach Offices were burglarized and [redacted] filed a report with the FBI. The FBI advised the U.S. Customs Service of these activities, and during May, 1983, Customs realized that the 'tubes' were actually the mentioned highly-restricted krytrons."
During December, 1984, AUSA [redacted] began plea bargaining negotiations with [Smyth] regarding the illegal sales in efforts to get [Smyth] to provide the government with information regarding [Milchan's] illegal activities. These negotiations failed, and in May, 1984, Smyth was indicted on 30 counts of smuggling and making false statements, based on 15 shipments of krytrons to Israel." Notes on individuals involved in Iran-Contra affair, disruption of Iraqi nuclear reactor through sabotage.
07/15/1992
Section 2
Phone call record continues. "On 8/9/1985, two weeks from the trial date of [Richard Kelly Smyth] the U.S. Department of Justice requested Israel to obtain a sworn statement from [redacted] on same date, U.S. Customs served a subpoena on [redacted] seeking all records of business dealings...On this same date [Smyth] disappeared and a few days later he failed to appear for a motion hearing. As a result his bail was revoked and a warrant was issued for his arrest. He is still a fugitive." Details on how an Air Force Scientific Advisory Board member steered contracts to MILCO. SAB members that invested in and joined MILCO's board of directors. SAB member that worked as an atomic bomb designer at Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project. "Large volume of the Israeli business at MILCO and whether some of the equipment being sold was sensitive and related to nuclear weapons field."
07/15/1992
Section 1
Record of a phone call between a supervisory special agent in Los Angeles and a special agent in Portland classified as "secret." The special agent notifies LA of impending news media coverage of "an extremely successful movie producer in Hollywood" [Arnon Milchan] noting his ties to "Oliver Stone, Sidney Pollack, Barbara Streisand, Tom Cruise, Richar Dreyfuss and Robert DeNiro. The subject's likely location and wealth "close to $1 billion" and close ties to "Labor Party officials in Israel" is noted. Milchan's arms dealing through MILCO and ties to another American are explored in the heavily redacted file.
Why Wasn’t Netanyahu Ever Indicted in the US?
Milchan-Netanyahu nuclear trigger smuggling caper impunity
by Grant Smith | Jun 2, 2020 | 9 Comments
Netanyahu Worked Inside Nuclear Smuggling Ring:
Benjamin Netanyahu’s prosecution for corruption in an Israeli courtroom is now underway. The current Israeli Prime Minister is facing three counts of fraud and breach of trust and one count of bribery.
The first count listed in the charge sheet details Israeli movie producer Arnon Milchan’s long relationship with Netanyahu. Netanyahu received approximately $140,000 worth of cigars, champagne, and jewelry in exchange for favors to Milchan. Those favors included advancing Milchan’s Israeli news media business interests and promoting at Milchan’s suggestion a free-trade zone between Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinian Authority to manufacture low cost vehicles.
Netanyahu’s most important favor to Milchan, according to the charges, was using his influence as Prime Minister to respond in 2013 and 2014 to Milchan’s urgent pleas for help with a 10-year visa to continue residing in the United States.
After Milchan’s application for renewal was flagged by the US Department of State, Netanyahu immediately contacted US Ambassador Dan Shapiro to assist Milchan. But despite that assistance, Milchan’s visa was only extended for a single year, "unlike previous cases where the visa was extended for a longer period of time," according to the charge sheet.
Milchan then demanded that Netanyahu intervene directly with high officials in the Obama administration. Milchan even showed up at the Prime Minister’s Residence with a box of cigars and a crate of champagne, plying Netanyahu to telephone US Secretary of State John Kerry, which Netanyahu promptly did. Kerry subsequently overruled the State Department’s official stance toward Milchan and in 2014 extended Milchan’s US visa for 10 years.
The renewal was of immediate value to Milchan, allowing him to continue producing Hollywood blockbuster movies through his Regency Enterprises. The 2016 movie The Revenant, produced by Milchan and starring Leonardo DiCaprio, generated over half a billion dollars in box office revenues.
Why did the US Department of State originally flag Milchan’s visa? When asked, staffers of the Directorate for Visa Services claimed in 2017 that the Immigration and Nationality Act exempts from disclosure even the fact of whether visa records "relative to a particular individual" exist, much less their contents.
However, other documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act from the FBI in 2012and additional Department of Homeland Security files released in 2017 reveal that Milchan’s involvement in a nuclear weapons technology smuggling ring targeting the United States may have generated the State Department red flag.
The files reveal that Milchan, Netanyahu and American scientist Richard Kelly Smyth in the 1980s unlawfully smuggled 15 shipments containing 810 nuclear weapons triggers out of the United States to the Israeli Ministry of Defense through a network of Milchan companies. Only Smyth was ever indicted and prosecuted. But he mostly escaped punishment by fleeing the United States and then petitioning for leniency on his prison sentence after he was extradited from Malaga, Spain back to the US years later. Smyth reached out to Milchan in 2001 for financial support to help him mount his legal defense.
FBI documents reveal Netanyahu worked at one of the Milchan companies involved in the smuggling ring in Israel called Heli Trading. In his September 20, 2001 letter soliciting financial support from Milchan, Smyth cheerfully noted, "I was delighted to hear your former employee, Netanyahu, had become Prime Minister of Israel."
Given the amount of official information in the public domain, and that more is likely still under lock and key, Americans may well wonder why Netanyahu and Milchan were never indicted in the United States for violating the Atomic Energy Act. Curiously, neither appear in the US Department of Treasury list of "specifically designated Nationals" even though official U.S. information now circulating in the public domain about Netanyahu and Milchan’s activities easily meet the low standards of evidence used to generate the SDN list.
Grant F. Smith is the director of the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy in Washington which is co-organizer of the 2021 Transcending the Israel Lobby at Home and Abroad conference at the National Press Club.
Grant F. Smith is the author of the new book Divert! NUMEC, Zalman Shapiro and the diversion of U.S. weapons-grade uranium into the Israeli nuclear weapons program. He is director of the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy in Washington, D.C.
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American is really the biggest Israeli bootlicker in human history! Shameful.
In psychology they call it codependency, it’s a theory that attempts to explain imbalanced relationships where one person enables another person's self-destructive behavior,[1] such as addiction, poor mental health, immaturity, irresponsibility, or under-achievement.[2]
Definitions of codependency vary, but typically include high self-sacrifice, a focus on others' needs, suppression of one's own emotions, and attempts to control or fix other people's problems.[3]
People who self-identify as codependent are more likely to have low self-esteem, but it is unclear whether this is a cause or an effect of characteristics associated with codependency.[4]
With no consensus as to how codependency should be defined, and with no recognized diagnostic criteria, mental health professionals hold a range of opinions about the diagnosis and treatment of codependency.[41] Caring for an individual with a physical addiction is not necessarily a pathology. The caregiver may benefit from assertiveness skills and the ability to place responsibility for the addiction on the other.[42]
Individuals who struggle with codependency may benefit from psychotherapy, including cognitive behavioral therapy and mindfulness practices.[43]
Many self-help guides have been written on the subject of codependency.[44] Self-help groups such as Co-Dependents Anonymous (CoDA), Al-Anon/Alateen, Nar-Anon, and Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACoA), which are based on the twelve-step program model of Alcoholics Anonymous, or Celebrate Recovery, a Christian twelve-step, Bible-based group, also provide support for recovery from codependency.[45]
Amazing Grace…🗽