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PROFITS OF WAR -- INSIDE THE SECRET U.S.-ISRAELI ARMS NETWORK |
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BOOK TWO: BLOOD MONEY 13. Nuclear Nation FOLLOWING MY SUDDEN dismissal from the Joint Committee, I had plenty of money, but no job. And I get restless without a job. My plan was to go to the United States, look for work, then settle down with Ora and the soon-to-be-born baby and start life afresh. I made a number of exploratory trips to the U.S. and Britain in late 1987. But in November, when I arrived back in Israel, out of the blue I was offered a job at the highest level -- as a special intelligence consultant to the Prime Minister's Office. There were a couple of reasons for the job offer, I concluded. I had, after all, done Shamir a great favor by leaking the Iran-contra story, which helped destroy the competing arms network and hurt his old adversary, Shimon Peres. I was also still one of the guardians of the funds. And Shamir wanted access to them. I told Shamir's spokesman and unofficial national security adviser, Avi Pazner, that I would be happy to accept the post, but I did not want to get involved in any missions that would interrupt the wedding Ora and I were looking forward to. However, they were eager for me to get started, and shortly after taking on my new position, I was called in to meet Shamir. I was to be briefed by two scientists, he told me, and should read some top-secret files as background. Then I would be asked to undertake a secret mission that was vital to Israel's nuclear program. At the time, I knew next to nothing about Israel's nuclear program. My only experience with it was the so-called "Vanunu affair" in 1986. Mordecai Vanunu was a former cab driver who had been talking his head off to a church group in Sydney, Australia's red- light district, King's Cross, claiming that he had worked as a technician at a nuclear facility near Dimona, Israel. When the Israeli intelligence community got wind of this, they immediately checked into Vanunu's background and found it was true. Born in Morocco to a rightwing Jewish family that had migrated to Israel in the early 1960s, he had grown up in Beersheba before being drafted. He was stationed in Dimona and trained as a technician. After his military service, he stayed on. While a Civilian, he also started studying philosophy at the University of the Negev in Beersheba and began sympathizing with the Palestinian cause. He aligned himself with North African Jews who had migrated to Israel and told his pals how horrified he was that Israel had so much nuclear firepower. From his work he had a very good idea what Israel had. Deciding he had had enough of life in Israel, he sold his Beersheba apartment, left his job and the university, and took off with a knapsack on his back. He headed for Thailand and Nepal, where he converted to Buddhism. He stayed free at Buddhist monasteries, although in his knapsack he had a lot of cash from the sale of his apartment. He also had something far more valuable -- photographs and undeveloped film of the inside of the Israeli nuclear facility. In their checks on Vanunu, Israeli intelligence found out that while in Nepal he had contacted the Soviet Embassy in Katmandu and, in the name of socialism, communism, and world peace, offered them the photographs. He was actually flown to Moscow from Nepal with copies, having left the originals in the monastery. He met with the KGB, handed over the photos, and was then debriefed. Although he had been given vague promises by the person who met him in Nepal, all Vanunu got out of his liaison with the Soviets was a ticket back to Katmandu. After that trip he lost confidence in the Soviet system. Confused and feeling betrayed, he picked up his knapsack from the monastery and flew to Australia, having arranged a visa while he was in Israel. He hung around until his visa ran out and, now short of money, decided to stay on illegally. He found a place to live in King's Cross, where he joined a church prayer group. Vanunu found many among the flock who were keen to hear him preach about the evils of nuclear power. He even brought out some of his top-secret photos and handed them around the prayer group. Encouraged by the wide-eyed response, he converted from Buddhism to Christianity and found a job as a part-time taxi driver. Among the faithful in the prayer group was a Colombian, Oscar Guerrero. A freelance journalist, he had fallen on hard times and had taken up house painting and listening to Bible readings. When Guerrero saw the photographs, he told Vanunu that the two of them could spread "the word" by getting the photographs published -- for a fee. First, Guerrero approached the Sydney Morning Herald, but the photographs were rejected on the grounds that Guerrero seemed a suspicious character. However, his approach was passed on to the internal intelligence service, the Australian Security Intelligence Organization, then to the external service, the Australian Security Intelligence Service, which mentioned it to Israel. Now Tel Aviv realized it had a problem. And, there were no easy answers. Guerrero tried The Age newspaper in Melbourne, not realizing it was in the same group as the Sydney Morning Herald. Rejected again, he decided to try the London papers. He put together all the money he had, borrowed from Vanunu's dwindling reserves, and bought himself a ticket for Heathrow Airport. In an astonishing stroke of bad luck, one of the newspaper executives he approached was none other than my associate, full-blown Israeli agent Nicholas Davies, foreign editor of the Daily Mirror. Davies stalled him by telling him that the newspaper needed to bring in an expert to check out his claims. He then called me in Israel, and I sought advice from my superiors. Prime Minister Peres issued an order that Vanunu be stopped at any price and the traitor brought back to Israel. Although the intelligence community suggested that the uproar would eventually die down, Peres raged that he wanted him caught and brought back to be taught a lesson. The same evening I flew to London. The next afternoon, posing as a journalist who was an expert on nuclear and military issues, I met with Guerrero and Nick Davies. I insisted I needed copies of the photos before the newspaper could decide whether it was going to buy the story. Guerrero handed over three samples. "Look at them," he said. "If you think they're good, I'll give you the lot." That same evening the pictures were sent to Israel. The word came back that they were real and that I had to try to discredit Vanunu and his friend. Meanwhile Nick Davies, as ordered by his publisher Robert Maxwell, put together the framework of a disinformation story, to be used later with copies of the photographs, declaring that the Sunday Mirror had looked into the pictures and the men trying to sell them and that it was all a con job. To back up the story, Vanunu's wanderings were detailed. It was at that point that we discovered that Guerrero had already struck a deal with the Sunday Times on an earlier trip to London. The Times was planning to fly Vanunu to London, interview him at length, and publish his story in detail. The arrangement was that after the story had been printed, Vanunu would get £250,000 advance on a book about Israel's nuclear capability that he would write with one of the newspaper's staff. Guerrero's cut would be 10 percent. He had approached the Mirror because he believed he was being cut out of the Sunday Times deal. Vanunu flew to London and was put up in various hotel rooms. We realized at this stage that the story could not be stopped, although the Sunday Times was still a long way from printing anything. I contacted my superiors, and Prime Minister Peres himself decided to throw the full weight of Mossad at Vanunu. The Mossad station chief in London tipped off MI-5 that Israel had a security problem -- on British soil. The British intelligence agency agreed to try to help Israel track down Vanunu but warned the Israelis not to do anything that was likely to cause a political or diplomatic incident on British soil. Sunday Times journalists were followed, but none led their "shadows" to Vanunu's hotel. Finally Nick Davies telephoned a journalist friend, the editor of a Sunday paper, and actually found out the name of the hotel where Vanunu was staying. Davies passed it on to me, and I relayed it to my superiors in Israel. Now, with Mossad fully aware of Vanunu's whereabouts, a plan was put into action, but without the knowledge of Mossad Director Nachum Admoni. The manner in which Vanunu was kidnapped has been well documented, except for one fascinating aspect -- the true identity of the beautiful siren who lured him to his fate. Vanunu met "Cindy Hanin Bentov" one evening while walking through Leicester Square. They started chatting, and she suggested they go to a pub for a drink. She met him two or three times in between the interviews he was giving to the Sunday Times, and during one of their dates she told him about an apartment she had in Rome. She invited him to come with her for a visit. The offer was too tempting to refuse. Vanunu told the Sunday Times he was going away for a long weekend. When he arrived at the Rome apartment, three Mossad agents were waiting. He was grabbed, given a knockout injection and pushed into a large crate. Then the crate was taken to an Israeli ship and loaded on as diplomatic cargo, which meant the authorities could not inspect the container. Once the ship was on its way, he was brought out of the crate, handcuffed, and taken to a guarded cabin. As soon as the vessel arrived in Ashdod in Israel, a colonel in the police presented him with a formal arrest warrant on security grounds. Even though an Israeli Air Force 707 could have flown Vanunu from Britain's Stansted Airport to Tel Aviv, Mossad had been asked by MI-5 not to kidnap him on British soil because this would have embarrassed Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. When Vanunu did not show up in London after his weekend away with Cindy, the Sunday Times decided to run with what it had, along with the photos, on October 5, 1986. The Sunday Mirror already had run its disinformation piece, but it did not have much effect. The Vanunu revelations in the Sunday Times caused a world outcry -- and there was more to follow when he was brought to court and everyone asked how he had been taken back to Israel. He was able to give the world a clue, even though he had been held in solitary confinement. On one of his trips to court in a police van, he pressed the palm of his hand against the van's window. On it, he had written the number of the flight on which he had flown to Rome. Certain members of the intelligence community approached Deputy Prime Minister Shamir, concerned that Peres might be using the Vanunu affair to blow open the Iran-Israel-Maxwell operations. Shamir wanted Vanunu killed, but it was too late. Vanunu was sentenced behind closed doors to 18 years in jail for espionage and treason. The Sunday Times was happy because it got its story without having to pay a penny. And I heard all the fine details from "Cindy," with whom, it happened, I had worked at an earlier period. *** The Vanunu affair in no way prepared me for what I was to learn from the two scientists who briefed me and the files I read in the Prime Minister's Office in preparation for my secret mission. Together, they gave me an overview of the history and scope of Israel's nuclear program. A summary of what I was able to digest follows. I do not present this without a great deal of thought. I do it because I feel it's best for the world to know all it can about secret weapons of mass destruction in every country. The father of Israel's nuclear program in the mid-1950s was the then young Shimon Peres, who was director general of the Ministry of Defense under David Ben-Gurion, the state's first prime minister and defense minister. Peres believed that if Israel was to survive, it had to have a deterrent against the Arab countries, and the ultimate deterrent would be nuclear weapons. With this in mind, Peres flew to France in 1956 for a meeting with President Charles de Gaulle. His mission: to get a nuclear reactor for Israel. De Gaulle, a good friend of Ben-Gurion's from their days in exile during World War II, quickly authorized the sale to Israel of a weapons-grade nuclear reactor with the technology for the development of a nuclear bomb. [1] Israel's first nuclear reactor was set up on the Mediterranean coast in Nahal Sorek in the Yavne area. It was used for research with enriched uranium, which was imported from France. The idea was to see if a nuclear project could be handled with Israeli know-how -- and the aid of Jewish scientists brought in from the U.S. After the initial research yielded positive results, Minister Without Portfolio Yisrael Galili, a leftwing powerbroker who directed the intelligence and security services, took upon himself with Ben-Gurion's blessing the cabinet-level supervision of the program. After tasting success in Yavne, within six to eight months he pushed through another nuclear plant in the Negev Desert near Dimona, some 40 miles northeast of Beersheba. In a memorable speech after the groundbreaking for the super-secret Dimona nuclear plant, the usually subdued Galili stood up in a Mapai Party meeting and, with his chest proudly pushed out, declared, "The third temple is being built!" This astonished other cabinet members, who at the time did not know what he was talking about. Galili continued by saying that the revival of Israel as a moral leader of the world was at hand and dared any of Israel's neighbors to attack. Although the French had not given Israel the know-how, they realized Israel would create its own nuclear program and possibly achieve significant technological advances. Hence, the initial agreement that Tel Aviv would share information with Paris. The prototype of a crude atomic device comparable to the Nagasaki bomb was developed by the early 1960s, and the first test was conducted in a joint Israeli-French operation in the Pacific off New Caledonia in 1963. With a French naval ship doing the monitoring, the relatively low-yield bomb was dropped from a French Air Force plane. The Americans and British thought it was a French test. After the successful drop, Mapai Party leaders were so ecstatic that Finance Minister Pinchas Sapir announced at a convention that Israel's military power was equal to that of France. The sharing of Israeli know-how, French equipment, and French money continued until the outbreak of the 1967 war, when the French accused Israel of starting the conflict. Israel didn't see it that way. It saw Egyptian President Nasser starting tensions by blocking the Tiran Straits, the waterway to the Israeli port of Eilat, for his own internal political reasons and to position himself better in the Arab world. The Israeli government under Prime Minister Levi Eshkol had reconstituted into a wide coalition government in which even the rightwing "Begin party" -- then known as the Gahal Party -- was included. Moshe Dayan, the hero of the 1956 Suez campaign, became defense minister. Basically, all of Israel's war heroes were in power, and with a depression sweeping the country in 1967, they were all itching for a war to solve the economic problems. Nasser's actions were the excuse they wanted, and they hit the Arabs hard. The war was one of the costliest, politically, that Israel ever had, even though the result was seen as a glorious victory with the Sinai, the Golan Heights, and the West Bank falling into Israeli hands -- a total land mass that was three times the size of the nation. Upset at Israel for resorting to war rather than attempting quiet diplomacy, de Gaulle slapped a military embargo on the state. He was also eyeing Arab oil. The row between the two governments meant that the nuclear cooperation came to a complete halt. France wasn't the only nation to sever relations. All the East Bloc countries, other than Romania, cut ties as a result of the war. These countries had previously seen Israel, the home of the kibbutz, as a semi-socialist country and not as a military aggressor. Israel also tarnished its international image by refusing to sign a U.N. agreement not to test nuclear weapons, an agreement that it has not signed even today. Israel found itself in a difficult position. France and the East Bloc had washed their hands of the nation, and military relations with the US. were not close. There were two very good reasons. First, in 1957 Mossad had plotted the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Cairo to cast blame on Egyptian radicals and to force a break in relations between the U.S. and Egypt. The Israeli agents were caught, straining relations between the two countries. Then, in 1967, the U.S.S. Liberty, a "listening ship," was sailing off the coast of Egypt, when it was bombed by Israeli Mirage jets, killing 34 crew members, further distancing Israel from the U.S. Out in the cold, Israel started to look for new friends with whom it could develop its nuclear capabilities. South Africa was waiting. The door to working side by side with the South Africans had in fact already been opened by Shimon Peres as part of his early plan to give Israel a nuclear deterrent. By 1959, there had been military cooperation between the two countries, with South Africa selling uranium to Israel, mined in South-West Africa, now Namibia. The first shipment flown up from the south in 1959 was the seed of commercial El Al flights to South Africa and South African Airways flights to Israel. The crates of uranium came through as agricultural equipment, but later the whole nuclear trade with South Africa was carried out under the guise of machinery and parts to be used for the water pipeline being built from the Sea of Galilee to the south. Under the cover of TAHAL, the government water corporation, tons of uranium were shifted, and the underground silos that were being built were also said to be for the water corporation. The reactor was the one I have mentioned in the Negev Desert, but there were also missile silos in the north built under the name of TAHAL Waterworks. South Africa, of course, expected something in return for its cooperation. When Shimon Peres became the first Israeli official to visit South Africa in 1959, he promised the sale of arms from Israel Military Industries and a share of technology. The first Indian Ocean nuclear testing on Israel's behalf took place in 1968 when a crude bomb with low radioactive fallout was dropped. The test was to see if the detonator mechanism worked. During that same year, South Africa and Israel signed a nuclear cooperation agreement. Israel would train South African scientists and share knowledge with them, and the South Africans would finance some of Israel's nuclear program and provide it with testing grounds in the Indian Ocean. Although Israel now had the Sinai, it was impossible to test bigger bombs there. And to test low-radiation small bombs underground was very expensive. When South African financing started in 1968, the U.S. Congress began pressing Israel for details of its nuclear program and demanded to inspect its nuclear installations. The Israeli government, with Moshe Dayan as defense minister, caved in and agreed to show the Dimona establishment to American inspectors. Israel continued to insist its nuclear program was for peaceful purposes, like electricity. The French kept quiet. Having provided the reactor, they were not keen to incriminate themselves. Prior to the arrival of the inspectors, the Israelis built a false control room inside the nuclear reactor building, with false panels and measuring devices. When the Americans examined it, they were fooled -- or they wanted to be fooled. The team saw a low-level thermal output incapable of military-grade chemical reprocessing. They reported that Israel did not have the technology or the know-how to develop bombs and that CIA reports of cooperation with the South Africans were wrong. Testing continued with the aid of French scientists who had been working with Israel before the embargo and had now stayed on as private citizens, enticed by big salaries. Between 1968 and 1973, 13 bombs were built, each with a destructive power that was three times that of the weapons that wiped out Nagasaki and Hiroshima. In spite of the difficulties, some tests were carried out in underground tunnels in the Sinai; the others were in the Indian Ocean. And if anyone questioned whether Israel would ever be willing to use its nuclear capability, the answer came in 1973 during the October War with the Egyptians and the Syrians. The Syrians penetrated the Golan Heights, and there was fear they would get close to Tiberias. So Moshe Dayan ordered the arming of all 13 nuclear bombs and put 24 B-52 bombers on standby. The U.S. had sold the old planes to Israel, not realizing what Israel needed them for. (Israel had not completed its missile delivery systems at the time and needed the B-52s for bomb drops.) Following the arming of the bombs, the Soviets and the Americans were warned to keep the Arabs at bay -- or else. In response to this action, the Soviets targeted Tel Aviv, Haifa, Beersheba, and the port of Ashdod with nuclear missiles (though not Jerusalem). An alarmed President Richard Nixon announced an all-out military alert around the world and put U.S. forces on combat readiness. As it turned out, the stalemate was overcome, because a week into the war Israel reversed the Syrian advance. Up until the 1973 war, Israel had enjoyed good relations with the black African nations. They had seen Israel as the underdog fighting the Arabs -- a situation that black Africans could identify with because they had their own conflicts with the northern Moslems. But the war brought this bond to an end. The black nations claimed that in crossing the Suez Canal, considered to be the line between Asia and Africa, Israel had actually invaded Africa. Slowly but surely, most black African countries cut relations, eventually spurred on by Libya's President Muammar Qaddafi, who promised monetary rewards to African nations that agreed to wave goodbye to Israel. As it turned out, the Libyan leader never paid. However, to counteract the move by the black nations, the South Africans, who had diplomatic relations with Israel at a consular level, quietly proposed to Israel an exchange of ambassadors. Within months, in 1974, this was implemented by the Labor government of Yitzhak Rabin. After that, Israeli-South African relations developed rapidly. Israeli scientists helped the South Africans develop their own bomb. Curiously, some of the French scientists who were working in the late 1960s in Israel but left when the 1967 embargo was announced, met up with their former Israeli colleagues in South Africa. They started working side by side again in Capetown. The tests proceeded so well that by 1976 Israel had a missile delivery system that was capable of hitting the Soviet Union. A year later, when Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was handing over office to the newly elected Menachem Begin, one of Begin's first orders was to target a number of southern Soviet cities, including Yerevan in Armenia and Baku in Azerbaijan. Begin, conscious in his own twisted way of human rights, was unhappy about the relationship with South Africa, a country he regarded as a pariah. He found himself in a moral dilemma. While he felt that Israel had enough money and know-how to proceed alone with the nuclear program, he realized the need to maintain supplies of uranium from South Africa. Defense and military analysts also urged that the relationship continue. Unwilling to involve himself personally, in 1978 Begin dispatched his first defense minister, Ezer Weizman, to Pretoria to meet Prime Minister P.W. Botha, who was also defense minister at the time. Even though Begin's intentions were to downgrade the relationship, Botha pushed for a wartime alliance between the two governments as the price for continuing nuclear tests. And to Begin's dismay, Weizman agreed with Botha. After Weizman returned to Israel and reported back to Begin, the prime minister, who was never fully in control of Weizman, relented. It took two years to work out the military cooperation agreement. It was drawn up in the special assistance branch of the External Relations Department of the Israel Defense Forces/Military Intelligence. It was referred to as SIMWA, an acronym for the SADF-IDF Mutual Wartime Agreement, drawn up between the South African Defense Force and the Israel Defense Forces. The Israeli version was prepared by the branch head, Lt. Col. Shimon Lavee. The provisions of the agreement were that if either of the two countries was at war or in military operations and there was a shortage of materiel, it could request supplies from the other country, which would provide it from its own stockpiles. Another provision of the agreement was that there would be an annual meeting of the deputy chiefs of general staff, to take place alternately in Israel and South Africa. Between 1978 and 1979 the Israelis sold to South Africa 175mm artillery that could carry small nuclear devices. More than money was involved. Not only did the South Africans agree to invest in Israel's nuclear program, they also decided to give Israel a free hand to carry out tests in the Indian Ocean without South African supervision. In 1979 Israel carried out a number of such tests, one of which was detected by satellite because its big flash occurred during a break in the otherwise cloudy weather. The South Africans rightly denied it was theirs. To this day, the Israeli government has refused to comment on this test. It did, however, issue a blanket denial of Seymour Hersh's book, The Samson Option, which asserts that the 1979 flash was, in fact, an Israeli atomic device. By 1979, Israel had approximately 200 very advanced atomic bombs and nuclear artillery-175mm artillery shells. It also had missile delivery systems that were not all that developed but were capable of reaching the Soviet Union and Baghdad. The go-ahead for Israel to develop a hydrogen bomb for testing was given in 1980 by the director general of the Defense Ministry, Mordechai Tsippori. By 1981, Israel had the H-bomb, having tested it in the Indian Ocean. In that year, the count was more than 300 atomic bombs stored in silos -- the structures had again been built by TAHAL, the water company -- and more than 50 hydrogen bombs. The fleet of B-52 bombers had also increased somewhat. A tactical atom bomb program had also started, under Defense Minister Ariel Sharon. Israeli scientists designed a low-yield, low-radiation atom bomb, very effective for the battlefield. But the supplies from South Africa of the necessary metals and related chemicals were only enough for experiments. The South Africans said they would provide more, as long as Israel promised to sell them this bomb. However, between 1985 and 1988, Israeli-South African relations deteriorated. In part, this was because of the gradual renewal of relations between Israel and the black African states. More importantly, it was because South Africa began to sell conventional equipment and missile technology to Iraq. In 1988, Israel pointed out that the Iran-Iraq war had stopped, so there was no need to help the Iraqis, but all requests fell on deaf ears in Pretoria. This rebuff brought about a complete breakdown in Israeli-South African military relations. The immediate result was that Israel had no place to get the vital minerals and chemicals it needed to move its tactical bomb into mass production. Three critical, and rare, minerals -- uranium, titanium, and molybdenum -- and two even rarer chemical compounds -- heavy water (deuterium oxide) and tritium -- could, as it happened, be found in Peru. [2] So my first assignment for the Prime Minister's Office was to travel to Peru to try to arrange their purchase. _______________ 1. Ironically, in the mid-1970s the French were to sell a reactor to Israel's enemy, Iraq. 2. Heavy water and tritium are usually produced in a laboratory; they can be found in nature, I was told, in areas containing certain radioactive ores. Norway is also known for this phenomenon.
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