Listen now!
Jeffrey Blankfort, host of the KZYX radio program “Takes on the World,” interviews Grant F. Smith about the forthcoming book Divert! NUMEC, Zalman Shapiro and the Diversion of US Weapons Grade Uranium into the Israeli Nuclear Weapons Program
Smith traces how covert Haganah conventional arms smuggling operations by Israel and US supporters in the 1940s led to the establishment of a front company for nuclear materials theft by 1956. NUMEC was a US corporation established in Apollo, PA to secretly supply material to Israel’s clandestine nuclear weapons program. Newly declassified files reveal how the FBI kept tabs on Shapiro, NUMEC’s president, David Lowenthal, a key venture capitalist, and top Israeli spies and nuclear weapons scientists Shapiro invited to visit. NUMEC is now subject to a $170 million environmental cleanup. The Department of Energy still lists 269 KG of NUMEC’s bomb-grade material as “unaccounted for” the highest loss in US history.
Takes on the World program page