Israel’s Open Secret: Nuclear Armed and Dangerous

For many years, Israel’s open secret is that it’s 1 of 8 known nuclear powers, including America and Russia with about 97% of the world’s arsenal according to Helen Caldicott in her book ‘Nuclear Power Is Not the Answer.’ The others are Britain, France, China, India, Pakistan, and Israel – North Korea a declared but unverified one. In her January 20, 2009 Canadian Medical Association Journal article titled, ‘Obama and the opportunity to eliminate nuclear weapons’ Caldicott wrote: ‘The Cold War is over, but the threat of nuclear war is not. Little progress has been made since 1989 when the Berlin Wall collapsed. In fact, the threat of nuclear annihilation has escalated. In 1972, when 5 nuclear nations….signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty, they agreed to rapidly disarm. They have done the opposite,’ resulting in a greater than ever threat, the Pentagon’s new Nuclear Posture Review and US-Russia deal doing nothing to reverse it.
See http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2010/04/obamas-brave-nuke-world.html.
In his 1991 book, ‘The Samson Option: Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal and America Foreign Policy,’ Seymour Hersh discussed its strategy to launch a massive nuclear counterattack if it felt its existence threatened, the stark message being the next regional war may be nuclear. In his 1997 book, ‘Open Secrets: Israeli Nuclear and Foreign Policies,’ Israel Shahak said that, helped by the Israeli Lobby (and Christian Zionists), ‘Israel (is) clearly prepar(ing) itself to seek overtly a hegemony over the entire Middle East (with no) hesitati(on) to use for the purpose all means available, including nuclear ones.’
Shahak also explained that Israel regards ‘the launching of missiles (onto its territory) as ‘nonconventional’ regardless of whether they are equipped with explosives or poison gas.’ In turn, Israel’s nuclear doctrine dictates that a ‘nonconventional’ attack requires 1 in response, meaning a nuclear one, the foundation of its grand strategy, according to Shahak. According to Hebrew University’s Professor of Military History Martin Van Creveld, ‘We have the capability to take the world down with us. And I can assure you (it) will happen before Israel goes under.’ Israel maintains a double standard. It won’t let another Middle East state acquire nuclear weapons, but will never give up its own or the right to use them preemptively.

Background on Israel’s Nuclear Development
It began with its 1948 founding, David Ben-Gurion (Israel’s 1st prime minister) having told Ehud Avriel, a European operative and later MK, to recruit East European Jewish scientists who could ‘either increase the capacity to kill masses or to cure masses; both are important.’ 1 was Avraham Marcus Klingberg, later an Israeli chemical and biological weapons (CBW) expert and deputy director of the Israel Institute of Biological Research in Ness Ziona, south of Tel Aviv. More on Israel’s CBW program below. Another was Ernst David Bergmann, ‘father of the Israeli bomb’ in charge of the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC). Ben-Gurion was determined to have a ‘nuclear option’ and other ‘non-conventional’ weapons (WMDs) to counter the Arabs’ numerical advantage. In his farewell address to the Israeli Armaments Development Authority (RAFAEL), Ben-Gurion defended the strategy saying: ‘I am confident, based not only on what I heard today, that our science can provide us with the weapons that are needed to deter our enemies from waging war against us.’ Ben-Gurion and later prime minister Shimon Peres became the leading forces behind Israel’s nuclear and CBWs programs. In the late 1940s, Israel and France began collaborating, at the time the IDF Science Corps searched the Negev desert for recoverable uranium. In 1952, the IAEC was established. The Dimona Nuclear Research Center/reactor was secretly completed in 1964 near Bersheeba in the Negev – a heavy water moderated, natural uranium reactor/plutonium reprocessing plant to make nuclear weapons. Designed as a 24 megawatt facility, its cooling system had far more capacity than needed, none for electrical generation, and its plutonium reprocessing capability signified an intent to produce nuclear weapons.
After the 1967 Six Day War, Defense Minister Moshe Dayan ordered full-scale production, averaging 4 – 12 bombs per year. US presidents since Lyndon Johnson supported the program. At the same time, it’s believed testing took place in the Negev, jointly with France in Algeria, later in the Indian Ocean, and perhaps elsewhere. By the early 1970s, Israel had advanced nuclear technology, world class scientists, and several dozen bombs ready to launch. Today it’s believed it has hundreds and a delivery system able to hit distant targets accurately. Earlier, with inadequate uranium supplies, it acquired some clandestinely, and by the late 1960s through close collaboration with South Africa – supplying technological expertise in return for the needed material, the arrangement lasting until apartheid ended in the early 1990s. France and South Africa were Israel’s main collaborators, but also America by going along, staying silent to this day, and initially providing a 5 megawatt highly enriched uranium research reactor as part of Eisenhower’s ‘Atoms for Peace’ program. According to journalist Mark Gaffney, Israel’s program ‘was possible only because of (its) calculated deception….and willing complicity on the part of the US.’ Israeli scientists were trained at US universities and had access to domestic weapons labs. Since the early 1970s, advanced technology transfers were made, including supercomputers able to design sophisticated nuclear weapons and delivery systems. Mordechai Vanunu’s mid-1980s documented revelations provided proof.

Mordechai Vanunu – Heroic Whistleblower/Victim of Israeli Retaliatory Viciousness
A Dimona nuclear technician, he smuggled out dozens of photos and scientific documents, published by the London Sunday Times on October 5, 1986, headlined: ‘Revealed – the secrets of Israel’s nuclear arsenal/Atomic technician Mordechai Vanunu reveals secret weapons production,’ saying: ‘The secrets of a subterranean factory engaged in the manufacture of Israeli nuclear weapons have been uncovered by the Sunday Times Insight team. Hidden beneath the Negev desert, the factory has been producing nuclear atomic warheads for the last 20 years. Now it has almost certainly begun manufacturing thermo-nuclear weapons, with yields big enough to destroy entire cities.’ The Times named Vanunu as its source, having worked at Dimona for nearly 10 years in ‘Machon 2 – a top secret, underground bunker built to provide the vital components necessary for weapons production….’ Nuclear experts examined Vanunu’s documents, called them genuine, and concluded that Israel’s sophisticated technology enabled it ‘to build up a formidable nuclear arsenal.’ According to Theodore Taylor, a world expert at the time: ‘There should no longer be any doubt that Israel is, and for at least a decade has been, a fully-fledged nuclear weapons state….considerably more advanced than (earlier) indicated….’ Other top nuclear scientists agreed – Israel was, and today is, a world nuclear power, possessing sophisticated technology and weapons. Vanunu’s revelations cost him dearly. On October 12, 1986, The Times headlined his September 30 disappearance, 5 days before his story broke. Mossad lured him to Rome, then beat, drugged, and kidnapped him. He was secretly tried in 1986-87, and sentenced to 18 years in prison for espionage and treason – in harsh isolated confinement in a 6 square meter cell. Released in 2004, his behavior and movements were restricted. As a result, harassing arrests followed after giving foreign journalists interviews and trying to leave Israel. He said he suffered ‘cruel and barbaric treatment’ in prison, no surprise since torture is official Israeli policy, usually for Palestinians, but for anyone security services target. On July 2, 2007, Vanunu was again imprisoned for 6 months for speaking to foreign journalists, later reduced to 3 months by the Jerusalem District Court ‘In light of (his) ailing health and the absence of claims that his actions put the country’s security in jeopardy.’ Daniel Ellsberg called him ‘the preeminent hero of the nuclear era.’ He says ‘I am neither a traitor nor a spy, I only wanted the world to know what was happening.’ On December 28, 2009, he was arrested again following his alleged meeting with his girlfriend, a Norwegian national, then transferred to house arrest. On April 14, 2010, Vanunu said ‘The restrictions, not to leave the country for 1 more year (were) renewed. Now 7 years since my release after 18 years in Israel prison.’ He was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize each year from 1988-2004. In March 2009, he asked the Nobel Committee to remove his name from consideration, and in February 2010 again declined the honor, most often given to war criminals. In 1979, he was awarded the Right Livelihood Award, the alternative Nobel Prize, ‘for outstanding vision and work on behalf of our planet and its people,’ and in 2001, Norway’s University of Tromsoe honored him as a Doctor Honoris Causa (History).

John Steinbach on Israel’s Nuclear Program
In 2009, The Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research (ECSSR- nuclearfiles.org) published Steinbach’s paper titled, ‘The Israeli Nuclear Weapons Program,’ saying: ‘With several hundred weapons and a robust delivery system, Israel has quietly supplanted Britain as the world’s 5th largest nuclear power, and now rivals France and China in terms of the size of its nuclear arsenal,’ despite an official ambiguity about an advanced sophisticated program. As a result, a combination of expert analysis and whistleblower revelations provided what’s known. Also occasional slips, like in December 2006 when Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told Germany’s Sat. 1 channel: ‘Iran, openly, explicitly and publicly, threatens to wipe Israel off the map. Can you say that this is the same level, when they are aspiring to have nuclear weapons, as America, France, Israel and Russia?’ Backtracking after a meeting with Chancellor Angela Merkel, he said: ‘Israel has said many times – and I also said this to German television in an interview – that we will not be the first country that introduces nuclear weapons to the Middle East….That was our position (earlier). That is our position (now) – nothing has changed.’ Since the 1970s, Israel’s official position is that it chose ‘an option to produce electricity using nuclear reactors. (This) requires promoting nuclear knowledge and research, preparing sites suitable for building nuclear power plants,’ and weighing the economic benefits. According to Steinbach: ‘Despite this claim, an exhaustive search of publicly available sources indicates the existence of no meaningful Israeli civilian nuclear energy program, past or present….From its inception, the Israeli nuclear program has centered on developing a nuclear weapons program, with any other nuclear program being incidental.’ Steinbach also cites estimates of Israel’s arsenal at ‘from 100 to over 400 bombs,’ there being ‘little doubt that (its) weapons are among the world’s most sophisticated, and largely designed for war fighting.’ They include:
— ‘boosted fission weapons and small neutron bombs, designed to maximize deadly gamma radiation while minimizing blast effects and long-term radiation – in essence designed to kill people while leaving property intact;’
— long range ballistic missiles;
— sophisticated aircraft able to deliver a nuclear strike;
— cruise missiles, artillery shells, and land mines with the same capability;
— ‘In June 2000, an Israeli submarine launched a cruise missile that hit a target 950 miles
away, making Israel only the 3rd nation (besides) the US and Russia with that capability;’
— Israel maintains triad strength, including strategic bombers, ballistic missiles,
and submarines, able to strike well beyond the Middle East; and
— overall, Israel’s capability ‘is much greater than any conceivable need for defensive deterrence;’ like America, it’s for preemptive offense, and given both nation’s belligerence, some day they may launch them aggressively without cause, claiming, of course, it’s defensive.
According to Jane’s Intelligence Review, Dimona’s reactor ‘is suffering severe damage from 35 years of operation,’ worrisome enough for Israeli nuclear scientists to call for its shutdown to avert a potential catastrophe. Also at issue are internal radiological hazards, revealed on a March 2003 BBC program with 5 Dimona workers discussing the effects on their health.

Israel’s Chemical and Biological Weapons (CBW)
Israel signed the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) but didn’t ratify it. It refused to sign the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), and maintains a policy of CBW ambiguity. It’s not known but believed that its Nes Tziyona Biological Institute produces sophistical chemical and biological weapons and state-of-the-art delivery systems. However, in 1993, the US Congress Office of Technology Assessment WMD proliferation assessment included Israel as a nation having undeclared offensive chemical warfare capabilities. In 1998, former Deputy Assistant Defense Secretary Bill Richardson said: ‘I have no doubt that Israel has worked on both chemical and biological offensive things for a long time. There’s no doubt they’ve had stuff for years.’ It’s also believed it has a sophisticated BW capability, and is likely producing, maintaining, and updating its stockpile. On August 7, 2006, Paola Manduca’s Global Research article headlined, ‘New and unknown deadly weapons used by Israeli forces: ‘direct energy weapons, chemical and/or biological agents, in a macabre experiment of future warfare.’ It referred to the summer Lebanon/Gaza offensives, citing reports of ‘New and strange symptoms….reported amongst the wounded and the dead. Bodies with dead tissue and no apparent wounds; ‘shrunken’ corpses; civilians with heavy damage to lower limbs that require amputation, which is nevertheless followed by unstoppable necrosis (dying cells and living tissue) and death; descriptions of extensive internal wounds with no trace of shrapnel, corpses blackened but not burnt, and others heavily wounded that did not bleed.’ On July 11, 2006, Ma’an News Service cited the Palestinian health ministry saying Israel used a new type explosive in Gaza, containing ‘toxins and radioactive materials which burn and tear the victim’s body from the inside and leave long term deformations.’ On July 11, 2006, Gulf News said a Palestinian doctor ‘accused Israel of using a type of chemical ammunition which causes burns and injuries in soft tissue and cannot be traced by X-ray.’ Severe internal wounds were reported. Since the 2nd Intifada’s inception, reports cite ‘unknown gas’ attacks, possibly a nerve agent, anyone breathing it losing consciousness immediately for about 24 hours with high fevers and rigid muscles. Some needed urgent blood transfusions. Asked but not known is whether this is chemical/and or biological warfare. International law bans these weapons. Israel tests new ones in conflict zones – in 2006 in Lebanon and Gaza and against Gazans during Operation Cast Lead. Treating the victims, Norwegian Dr. Mads Gilbert cited white phosphorous that burns flesh to the bone. Also depleted uranium and a new close-range explosive causing severe injuries, including battlefield amputations. Children, he said, had their legs cut off, abdomens sliced open, or simply killed outright.

Final Thoughts
On September 9, 2004, Haaretz (by DPA) headlined, ‘ElBaradei: Israel’s nuclear arms blocking Mideast peace,’ quoting him from the Sydney Morning Herald saying: Addressing Israel’s nuclear arsenal must be part of a peace process settlement. ‘This is not really sustainable that you have Israel sitting with nuclear weapons capability there while everyone else is part of the non-proliferation regime….It is a very emotional issue in the Middle East.’ While Israel maintains ambiguity and world leaders keep mum, Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Erdogan, not shy about confronting Israel, said this before attending Obama’s nuclear summit: ‘We have yet to see an international community, which is so sensitive about Iran’s nuclear program, taking a firm stance against Israel,’ a notorious nuclear outlaw. ‘We do not want to see nuclear armament in our region. Our policy on this issue is very clear no matter which country has it. That could be Israel or Iran or any other country.’ On April 14 in Paris, Erdogan called Israel the biggest threat to Middle East peace, not just because of its nuclear arsenal, but for its disproportionate force against Palestinians. His comments came a day after Israel compared him to Libya’s Gaddafi and Venezuela’s Chavez, a sign of continued frayed relations between the 2 nations, including an angry exchange with Israeli President Shimon Peres at the January World Economic Forum. He’s now confronting Israel’s nuclear threat, a real one under its 1st strike doctrine to destroy the entire region if threatened. With its history of open belligerence, the possibility is too great to ignore, and too important not to confront given the consequences if initiated.
http://uruknet.info/index.php?p=m65344&hd=&size=1&l=e
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2010/04/israels-open-secret-nuclear-armed-and.html

You can read the report here..  http://www.irmep.org/co1162251.pdf

Declassified GAO Report Exposes Fatally Flawed Israel Investigations

by Grant Smith, May 10, 2010

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The 2010 Review Conference of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons is underway at UN Headquarters in New York. A working paper calls for a nuclear-free Middle East. It would require member states of the NPT to “disclose in their national reports on the implementation of the resolution on the Middle East all information available to them on the nature and scope of Israeli nuclear facilities and activities, including information pertaining to previous nuclear transfers to Israel.” On May 6, 2010, the Government Accountability Office (formerly known as the General Accounting Office) released the previously secret 1978 report “Nuclear Diversion in the U.S.? 13 Years of Contradiction and Confusion” [.pdf]. It fills in important historic gaps about weapons-grade uranium diversions from the U.S. to Israel.

U.S. presidents have long acquiesced to “strategic ambiguity” – a policy of neither confirming nor denying that Israel even possesses nuclear weapons. This pretext has allowed the U.S. to deliver the lion’s share of its foreign assistance budget to Israel, despite clear legal prohibitions imposed by the Glenn and Symington amendments to the Foreign Assistance Act. UN member countries have long suspected that the United States either turns a blind eye or actively supports the transfer of know-how, weapons-grade uranium, and dual-use technology to Israel. The 62-page General Accounting Office investigation and correspondence confirms the United States refuses to mount credible investigations that would enable warranted prosecutions of the perpetrators.

“Nuclear Diversion in the U.S.? 13 Years of Contradiction and Confusion” investigates the period between 1957 and 1967 when the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation (NUMEC) received over 22 tons of uranium-235 – the key material used to fabricate nuclear weapons. NUMEC’s founder and president Zalman M. Shapiro was head of a local Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) chapter and a sales agent for the Defense Ministry of Israel in the U.S. In the early 1960s the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) began documenting suspicious lapses in security at NUMEC’s plant at Apollo, Pa. In 1965 an AEC audit found NUMEC could no longer account for over 200 pounds of highly enriched uranium. Subsequent estimates spiraled to almost 600 pounds.

The GAO was chartered by Congress to investigate four allegations about what happened to the uranium. The first was that “the material was illegally diverted to Israel by NUMEC management for use in nuclear weapons.” This was a result of early AEC and FBI investigations into the activities of Zalman Shapiro. The second theory “the material was diverted to Israel by NUMEC management with the assistance of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)” came from the CIA’s silence and demonstrated lack of interest in the entire matter. The final theories explored by GAO were more general, that “the material was diverted to Israel with the acquiescence of the United States Government” or “there has been a cover-up of the NUMEC incident by the United States Government.”

GAO solicited all available information developed by the CIA, FBI, Department of Energy, and AEC, but was “continually denied necessary reports and documentation … by the CIA and FBI.” GAO attempted to fill in gaps or outright refusals to cooperate by directly interviewing FBI special agents. The GAO also intended to make the report public, in order to respond to growing public concerns. Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.), the chairman of the House Subcommittee on Energy and Power, who requested the inquiry, was assured six months before it was issued that only the most sensitive areas in the report would be classified. The CIA and FBI insisted that the entire report be classified at the “secret” level over the objections of Dingell, who said, ”I think it is time that the public be informed about the facts surrounding the … affair and the possible diversion of bomb-grade uranium to Israel.”

The GAO report lambastes the FBI’s on-again off-again approach to investigating NUMEC: “The FBI, which had the responsibility and authority to investigate the alleged incident, did not focus on the question of a possible nuclear diversion until May 1976 – nearly 11 years later. Initially, the FBI declined DOE’s request to conduct an investigation of the diversion possibility even though they are required to conduct such investigations under the Atomic Energy Act….”

The FBI’s initial investigation during the 1960s quickly zeroed in on NUMEC management, but FBI recommendations for action were stymied. According to the GAO, “The FBI became so concerned about the security risks posed by NUMEC’s president that they asked DOE whether it planned to terminate his security clearance or stop the flow of materials to NUMEC. According to the FBI’s liaison with GAO, the FBI recommended that NUMEC’s operating license be taken away….” When the FBI request was ignored, it dropped the entire investigation between 1969 and 1976.

It took a direct order from President Gerald Ford in 1976 for the FBI and Department of Justice to “address the diversion aspect.” The renewed investigation soon led to reversals of official U.S. government positions on NUMEC. According to the GAO report, “until the summer of 1977, the only publicized Government view on the NUMEC incident was that there was no evidence to indicate that a diversion of nuclear material had occurred.” By February 1978, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) announced it had “reconsidered” its previous position that there had been “no evidence” to support diversion.

But the 11-year gap “obviously hampered” the effort. The GAO revealed that the DOE’s nuclear materials safeguards, which before 1967 tracked the monetary value rather than the precise mass of the uranium, were seriously flawed. NUMEC claimed key records covering a period of heavy uranium loss were destroyed during a “labor dispute” in 1964. NUMEC paid a $1.1 million fine for 206 pounds of missing uranium in 1966, which closed the DOE case. NUMEC also hired away one of the DOE’s chief on-site investigators to enhance the appearance of serious materials control and accountability. The GAO found that even by 1978 the FBI had not contacted key individuals in the affair. An FBI agent-in-charge told the GAO it did not investigate the source of funds to pay NUMEC’s DOE fine anticipating “legal difficulties.” So the GAO investigated the matter, placing its own telephone calls to Mellon Bank.

The GAO report is highly critical of the CIA: “From interviews with a former CIA official and with former and current officials and staff of DOE and the FBI we concluded that the CIA did not fully cooperate with DOE or the FBI in attempting to resolve the NUMEC matter.” The report is inconclusive about exactly what happened at NUMEC, but not about the agencies involved in the investigation through 1978. “We believe a timely, concerted effort on the part of these three agencies would have greatly aided and possibly solved the NUMEC diversion questions, if they desired to do so.”

The passage of time has removed any remaining doubts that NUMEC diverted uranium to Israel. Rafael Eitan, who visited NUMEC in 1968, was later revealed as the top Israeli spy targeting U.S. nuclear, national defense, and economic targets when his agent (U.S. Navy analyst Jonathan Pollard) was arrested spying for Israel in 1985. 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,” a conclusion supported by its startup financing and initial ties to Israeli intelligence. Why both the Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon administrations failed to credibly investigate NUMEC as a diversion challenge is also now obvious.

John F. Kennedy’s direct diplomatic pressures for U.S. inspections of Israel’s Dimona reactor grew throughout 1962-1963. During a Dec. 27, 1963, meeting with Foreign Minister Golda Meir, Kennedy expressed his hope that the relationship was a “two-way street.” Meir reassured President Kennedy that there “would not be any difficulty between us on the Israeli nuclear reactor.” Kennedy delivered a final ultimatum to Israel on July 5, 1963, insisting that Dimona undergo serial inspections “in accord with international standards” in order to verify its “peaceful intent.” Simultaneously, the Kennedy Justice Department was waging an intense battle behind closed doors to register and regulate Israel’s elite U.S. lobby, the American Zionist Council, which was bringing in funds from overseas to lobby. Kennedy’s assassination in November traumatized the nation and led to the complete and permanent reversal of both initiatives.

According to Avner Cohen, in 1958 Israeli Prime Minister David Ben Gurion had arranged with Abraham Feinberg, a “major Democratic fund-raiser,” to secretly finance a nuclear weapons program among “benedictors” in America. Abraham Feinberg, who backed Harry S. Truman’s successful whistle-stop election campaign, was personally succinct about his role in the U.S. political system: “My path to power was cooperation in terms of what they needed – campaign money.” Feinberg opened doors in Congress for up and coming leaders of the Israel lobby, including AIPAC founder Isaiah L. Kenen. According to Seymour Hersh, “there is no question that Feinberg enjoyed the greatest presidential access and influence in his 20 years as a Jewish fund-raiser and lobbyist with Lyndon Johnson. Documents at the Johnson Library show that even the most senior members of the National Security Council understood that any issue raised by Feinberg had to be answered.” His power and role in financing Lyndon B. Johnson’s election prospects temporarily quashed scrutiny of Israel’s nuclear weapons program – in the U.S. and abroad – at a critical moment.

On Oct. 14, 1964, less than three weeks before the 1964 presidential elections, Johnson’s top administrative assistant Walter Jenkins was arrested in a public restroom on sexual solicitation charges. At least $250,000 Abraham Feinberg raised for Johnson was located in Jenkins’ office safe. Johnson phoned his trusted aides Bill Moyers and Myer Feldman with orders to move the cash, which they did with the help of a heavy briefcase. Israel would later replenish Feinberg’s coffers (as it had with Zalman Shapiro through sales commissions) with multi-million dollar favors, such as major ownership in the nation’s Coca-Cola franchise.

In 1968 as Israel noticeably ramped up activities at the Dimona nuclear weapons facility, Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford placed a final urgent call to Johnson, “Mr. President, I don’t want to live in a world where the Israelis have nuclear weapons.” President Johnson was abrupt before he hung up on Clifford, “Don’t bother me with this anymore.” By the time Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meier lobbied President Nixon to redefine U.S. non-proliferation policy as “ambiguity” toward Israeli nuclear weapons, Israel’s stockpile and number of deployed weapons was steadily growing.

The report reveals why the 2010 Non-Proliferation Review Conference at the UN – like the GAO – isn’t really capable of challenging the true drivers of Middle East nuclear proliferation. “Nuclear Diversion in the U.S.? 13 Years of Contradiction and Confusion” is a report so unique and noble in intent that there will probably never be another like it. While it leaves unexplored the ongoing presence, influence, and effect of Israel’s lobbyists working at the center of U.S. presidential administrations, for concerned Americans the GAO provides a snapshot of a moment in time before their Congress, aspiring politicians, and mid-level management of government agencies all “got the memo.”

In 2010 that unwritten memo reads something like this: Crimes committed in the name of Israel – no matter how audacious – will never be properly investigated, let alone prosecuted… so don’t waste your time.

http://original.antiwar.com/smith-grant/2010/05/09/declassified-gao-report/