Editorial Note: The following news reports are summaries from original sources. They may also include corrections of Arabic names and political terminology. Comments are in parentheses.

 

NUMEC mega-lawsuits could target Israeli gov't if LBJ files declassified - IRmep

On July 17 the  Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel (ISCAP) agreed to review highly classified documents from the LBJ administration for public release.  The top-secret documents purportedly deal with the CIA's initial urgent warnings to President Johnson that Israel was diverting vast quantities of weapons-grade nuclear material from NUMEC, as well as the president and NSC's strategy for dealing with the crisis.  While the CIA has denied all previous Freedom of Information Act and Mandatory Declassification Review requests for NUMEC-related documents, the ISCAP has the authority to overrule, as it has done in the majority of release cases.  A successful document release could allow Parks and Apollo residents to finally seek hefty court-ordered damages from the true perpetrators (or their estates) who have long been shielded from the consequences of their lucrative crimes at NUMEC--Zalman Shapiro, NUMEC's board members and the Israeli government....
 
Israel Lobby Archive file:  http://www.irmep.org/ILA/numec/courtdocs/07182012iscap_confirmation.pdf
 
Extensive analysis in Antiwar.com today: 
http://original.antiwar.com/smith-grant/2012/08/10/us-israel-nuclear-fronts-accountability-drives-fall-apart/
 
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related Business Insider article excerpt

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How Israel Received Weapons-Grade Nuclear Material from a US Company by Michael Kelley
 
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-explosive-story-of-how-israel-received-weapons-grade-nuclear-material-from-a-us-company-in-the-sixties-2012-8
 
...On July 19, 1969, U.S. National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger wrote the following about Israel's nuclear weapons program: "There is circumstantial evidence that some fissionable material available for Israel's weapons development was illegally obtained from the United States by about 1965."
 
About the same time that NUMEC sustained unaccountable losses of HEU-235, the FBI notes, NUMEC was developing and manufacturing food irradiators for Israel.  According to Smith there is no single smoking gun that Shapiro diverted HEU-235 to Israel --but many smoking shell-casings. They include:
 
-- In 1965 a NUMEC employee walked near the NUMEC loading dock and encountered people he could not identify loading cans about the size of HEU-235 canisters onto a ship that was headed to Israel. The employee detailed the event in 1980 when interviewed by FBI agents. Based on the number of reported canisters, Smith estimates up to 346 lbs of U-235 could have been shipped to Israel in this single incident.
 
-- In 1968 NUMEC invited and received Israel's elite nuclear weapons development officials and its top spy under the cover of being "thermo electric generator specialists." They included Avraham Hermoni (technical director of Israel's nuclear bomb project), Ephraim Biegun (head of the Israeli technical department of Israel's Secret Service from 1960-70) and Rafael Eitan (long-time Mossad and LAKAM operative who later directed spy Jonathan Pollard's spy program against the U.S.). Smith notes that in 1986 Middle East analyst Anthony Cordesman said there "is no conceivable reason for Eitan to have gone [to NUMEC] but for the nuclear material."
 
--In June 1978 Department of Energy investigators told former Atomic Energy Commissioner (AEC) Glenn T. Seaborg that traces of Portsmouth U-235 -- the government-owned material primarily delivered to NUMEC for processing into fuel -- had been picked up in Israel. Seaborg, who frequently defended Shapiro during his time as AEC chief, later refused to be interviewed by FBI investigators...
 
Read more:

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-explosive-story-of-how-israel-received-weapons-grade-nuclear-material-from-a-us-company-in-the-sixties-2012-8#ixzz23FSmSS9K