Unraveling the occurrences of the year range 2012-2016 encapsulated in the incident number 167
In the 1960s, the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation (NUMEC), based in Apollo, Pennsylvania, was a private company under U.S. Navy contracts, handling highly enriched uranium. The company was managed by Zalman Shapiro, a Zionist businessman with close ties to the Israeli government.
A puzzling mystery unfolded when hundreds of pounds of weapons-grade uranium disappeared from NUMEC's inventory. While the official explanation was loss due to processing waste or material unaccounted for, U.S. intelligence sources strongly suspected diversion of this fissile material, with Israel as the prime beneficiary.
During the presidency of Jimmy Carter (1977–1981), National Security Council documents and CIA internal investigations confirmed these suspicions. The CIA's counterintelligence chief, James Angleton, played a central role in this episode. Angleton, who had an extensive covert partnership with Israeli intelligence, actively helped shield the diversion from full U.S. government scrutiny.
Newly declassified documents reveal that Angleton pressured the FBI and the Department of Justice to curtail investigations after initial evidence of theft emerged in 1965. Moreover, a 1977 CIA analysis documented that uranium seized near Israel’s Dimona nuclear site had traceable links back to the United States, strongly suggesting the material originated from NUMEC diversions.
An investigation in 1977 revealed that key information was deliberately withheld from FBI investigators for almost two years, and that the U.S. government chose diplomatic considerations over fully confronting Israel’s nuclear procurement activities. This approach effectively allowed Israel to develop its nuclear arsenal covertly using stolen U.S. uranium, notably through the NUMEC controversy.
The affair, sometimes called the "Apollo Affair," remains one of the most secretive and controversial episodes in U.S.-Israeli nuclear relations. It highlights the complex interplay of intelligence, diplomacy, and nuclear non-proliferation policy in the Cold War era, revealing how strategic alliances sometimes overshadowed strict enforcement of nuclear material controls.
The NUMEC case was adjudicated during the fiscal year 2014. Key documents related to the affair, such as the Action Memorandum for Zbigniew Brzezinski (July 29, 1977), the document regarding Israel and MUF (July 28, 1977), the Memorandum for the Attorney General (November 20, 1978), and the Nuclear MUF document (August 2, 1977), are now available for public scrutiny at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum.
Further documents, such as the document regarding the Diversion of Nuclear Material to Israel (November 6, 1978), the AEC Licenses (1977), and the meeting with Carl Duckett (November 3, 1978), also shed light on this intriguing chapter in U.S. history.
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