In the depths of the Cold War, a legendary Israeli spy made a visit to a Pennsylvania plant that processed government-supplied U-235 uranium into fuel for the U.S. Navy. Around the same time, hundreds of kilograms of uranium disappeared from the plant.
Traces of uranium were found outside Israel’s Dimona nuclear facility in the 1960’s and later revealed to carry the unique signature of uranium from the Philadephia [Apollo] plant.
The mystery of how the uranium traveled from one place to the other is what a Washington-based researcher is trying to unravel through a federal court complaint filed Friday.
The complaint asks for CIA files regarding “the unlawful diversion of U.S. government-owned weapons-grade uranium from the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation (NUMEC) into the clandestine Israeli nuclear weapons program.”
Filed by Grant Smith, who directs the Washington D.C. based Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy, the complaint follows Smith’s victory earlier this month winning release of a 1967 [1987] Defense Department report titled “Critical Technology Assessment in Israel and NATO Countries.” More