07/12/12 – Grant F. Smith – The Scott Horton Show

All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
Our next guest is Grant F. Smith from the Institute for Research Middle Eastern Policy.
That's I-R-M-E-P dot org, IRMEP dot org.
He's the author of a whole bunch of books about the Israel lobby, and they're quite illegal and extra-legal shenanigans in the United States.
So the latest one is Divert, Numek, Zalman Shapiro, and the Diversion of U.S. Weapons Grade Uranium into the Israeli Nuclear Weapons Program.
His latest piece, running at Antiwar.com, Netanyahu worked inside nuclear smuggling ring.
And her espionage debriefing reveals how Israel targeted the United States.
Welcome to the show, Grant.
How are you doing?
Hey, Scott.
Lovely to be here.
Well, good.
Very happy to have you here.
Netanyahu worked inside nuclear smuggling ring.
You don't say.
I do say, and that's kind of the story that went around the world in the succeeding days, and I'm getting emails saying that there's some serious follow-up coming as well, but just to talk a little bit about the boring stuff, and we've talked about this before, but this didn't just fall into my lap, these documents.
We'd started asking for them during the writing of the book on Numek, which is all about nuclear smuggling, and the FBI at first said they didn't have any records, so we bothered their L.A. office, saying, hey, give us records, we know you have them, and they finally found some, and then they denied release, and then we filed appeals, and we've got more appeals being filed, so these documents were grudgingly released, and I think they probably only scratch the surface of the problem, but they point to Benjamin Netanyahu's direct involvement in the nuclear smuggling ring.
All right, well, so there's, what, three or four names in this article that we need to memorize.
I guess first is the Heli Trading Company, is that right?
Heli Trading Company, right.
Okay.
All right, so tell us, give us a cast of characters here, what are we talking about?
Sure, you've got the dashing Hollywood producer, Arnon Milchan, who was inducted into the Israeli Economic Espionage Network, LACOM, by none other than Benjamin Bloomberg and Raphael Eaton, two spymasters.
You've got Richard Kelly Smith, who in 1972 was brought in by Milchan to set up a new company, a front company in California, to begin smuggling material to Israel.
You've got Benjamin Netanyahu, who Richard, well, let me say, Richard Kelly Smith implicated in these documents as being involved in Heli trading in Israel.
You've got the Israeli Ministry of Defense, which would send an order for prohibited items to Heli, which would relay it to Milco, which would ship the orders out without obtaining proper licenses from the Department of Commerce for dual-use items, like Krytrons.
So that's kind of the cast of characters in front companies.
Basically, in 1985, Richard Kelly Smith was indicted, he was actually caught smuggling nuclear triggers to Israel, and fled the country with the help of unknown individuals.
He managed to stay abroad until 2001, when Interpol discovered him in Malaga, Spain.
He had asked the Social Security Administration to begin giving him a Social Security check, so whoever helped him live outside the U.S. apparently wasn't paying him enough.
But he was extradited back to the United States.
And in early 2002, April to be exact, on the 16th and 17th, the FBI did a counter-espionage debriefing of Richard Kelly Smith to ascertain what the network, the smuggling network, really looked like from both ends.
And that is where the documents that formed the basis for the July 4th story came from.
All right, so you have this guy, Milchan, the Hollywood producer, he recruits this guy Smythe, or Smith?
Which is it?
Smythe.
It's spelled with a Y.
Uh-huh.
Yeah, I spelled it wrong on my notes, because I'm stupid.
So he's working on the American side, it has a different name, right?
So, is the American side, and Heli Trading is the Israeli side, but it's basically the same company, say one is just, the American one is just a front for the Israeli Heli Trading there.
Right, and this is not the only instance where it's been run like that, but yeah, exactly.
And then, so Netanyahu was what position exactly at this Heli Trading company over there in Israel at the time?
And we're talking about when, the mid-1980s, right?
Well, the smuggling was taking place in the late 70s, early 80s, and Netanyahu, it's not clear exactly what position he was occupying, but it lists him in the documents as being involved with Heli, and a contact who met, or who would meet with Smythe when he went over to Israel.
So the depth of his involvement is a little bit unclear.
The office of the Prime Minister, when this story started circulating in Israel National News over in Israel, immediately issued a statement denying that he worked in Heli.
So you've got that, you've got that denial.
But again, just circling back to Milchan and Netanyahu, Benjamin Netanyahu and Shimon Peres talked to the authors of a book all about Milchan, which is called Confidential, and they basically said to Milchan, stop talking to anybody about your days being a Lacombe espionage agent against the United States.
And so there's a lot of worry, I think, about any sort of, or any more information coming out about Netanyahu's role in the nuclear smuggling network.
As far as Smythe was concerned, he had nothing really to gain by fingering additional people and actually mentioning the name of the espionage program, because basically he was already in the United States.
He knew he was going to prison and had every motivation to state accurately who the other people were.
He would have only hurt and probably increased his time in jail if he had been making things up.
Now, these Krytrons, you say that they're dual use items.
Is there any question that they were being obtained for use in nuclear weapons in this instance?
Because, you know, if it was the war party saying this, I'd be asking Gareth Porter about all the holes in the story.
Well, no, I mean, there should be there should be sharp questions about that.
I think two things point to their military use in the Israeli nuclear program.
Number one, it was the Department of Defense or the Ministry of Defense in Israel that was sourcing these, according to the documents.
That's something they initially denied.
But this just adds to the evidence that, no, it was, in fact, the Israeli Ministry of Defense that wanted them.
Now, immediately when the story came out back in 1985, Thomas Friedman suggested that these Krytrons can also be used for heating soup and that somebody might have taken these items and attached them to a timer so that they could make cholent.
I just kind of take that and try to say, man, stop right there.
First of all, we got a terrible noise on your line.
We'll have to work that out.
And then second of all, that's OK, because here's the break.
We'll have to take this break.
I'm sorry to interrupt you.
We'll have to figure out what's going on there and bring you back on the other side and let you finish up what you're saying.
Pick up where you left off.
And then also I want to ask about Jonathan Pollard.
Are they really going to let Jonathan Pollard go?
There was a time when there's no way they could do that.
But, hey, maybe those times have changed.
I'm here.
I'm here.
Yeah, worst, worst radio show production in history today.
Yeah.
Hello.
Can you hear me now?
Yeah, I got you.
Oh, man.
I just I just gave the longest winded introduction you ever got.
But I hadn't hit the button.
I guess you could hear me, but the people could not.
So now let me just reintroduce you to Grant Smith from EarMap dot org.
Grant, you were saying.
Right.
So what we had here was a a multi-company smuggling ring.
And the real novelty of the FBI files is that a person who had nothing to lose, nothing more to lose in 2002, actually said that Benjamin Netanyahu was on the Israeli end of the network.
And so the device is in question is a dual use technology which is used as a detonator for nuclear weapons.
It's called a Krytron.
There's a specific reason why it's not allowed to be exported to countries that are operating outside the nuclear nonproliferation treaty.
And this is the type of document the U.S. government fights, typically fights hard not to release.
And the Department of Defense does this as well because they don't really, I think, want Americans to see how the U.S. has really been unable to stem the flow of nuclear materials, technology and know-how to Israel over decades and decades.
And so when we spoke earlier, I mentioned that this Milco Heli trading company network is nothing new.
The only thing that's interesting is that they were smuggling nuclear components.
But there's another company called Telegy, Intelligy LLC, Intelligy NV, which is a multi-node network that was smuggling Textronics oscillators, which are key to nuclear weapons development.
And that happened in 2010.
But instead of any sort of criminal prosecution, as had happened in the nuclear triggers case, all they received was a $25,000 fine and permission to leave the United States.
If you go back in history, back to the conventional weapons smuggling days, you have companies like Materials for Palestine, Foundry Associates, Service Airways, Martech, dozens and dozens of companies that with relative impunity have been able to set up operations, and then if and when any of their leadership is caught, usually manage to score a presidential pardon.
And this has been the case with Al Schwimmer.
This has been the case with Hank Greenspun.
This has been the case with a guy named Charles Winters.
And so it's a really interesting, but I would say extremely damaging to your average American in terms of credibility, interesting mix of how these weapons smuggling networks continually flourish and then are shut down, sometimes in limited cases with embarrassment to the Israeli government.
Well, and maybe this is just a side issue to this, but it also is a great example, another great example of the hypocrisy of the United States, which beats Iran, just for one example of a country at the receiving end of this, beat them over the head all day, every day with a non-proliferation treaty that they're a member of.
And then the US does nothing to enforce our end of it, never even mind the part where we're supposed to get rid of our nukes, but we don't even live up to the part where we don't proliferate nuclear weapons to non-NPT signatory nuclear weapon states, and where we're sworn to only proliferate between us and the British, for example, something like that, through the nuclear suppliers group, and not any other way and whatever.
And there's federal laws that enforce all of this, and these are treaty obligations, and our government will break every part of the non-proliferation treaty all day long while we threaten to blow up the world over not complying with it, even when they are in compliance with it.
Well, I would say it's far worse than that.
One of the things that our $3 billion per year aid package for conventional weapons does is it frees up funding inside Israel so that they can dedicate other resources to nuclear weapons development, deployments, etc.
And in fact, there are even US charitable organizations that raise money in the United States going to some institutions that are actively engaged in weapons research.
So it's not just being hypocritical, it's actually turning a blind eye to the extent that when these issues are actually openly aired, it looks as though the US has let itself be pulled out of compliance with the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.
And this is a subject that is just in dire need of more balanced reporting and exposure.
Yeah, well, it's really something else.
All right, now in the time we have left here, tell me about, because I'm sorry, that's a pretty crappy way to sum that story up, but I want to move on here real quick and I didn't have a good segue handy.
My apologies.
Jonathan Pollard.
Now, I don't know everything about this.
And when William Casey says things, that doesn't necessarily mean I believe it.
If it happens to confirm my bias, that doesn't mean necessarily that even William Casey admitted that this thing was true.
Maybe he's a damn liar, just like all the other times he said things.
But the former head of the CIA, William Casey, said that Jonathan Pollard, in effect, by giving it to Israel, gave the Soviets everything, the entire plan for war, for nuclear war.
The entire family jewels, the real ones.
Is that your understanding of what Pollard did?
And how could it be that he's going to get a pardon while, you know, some two-bit pot dealers rot in jail for 30 years?
My understanding is that yes, and that he was particularly proactive in getting what are called trade goods.
There was this review study, a damage assessment done, and it found that most of the things that he stole for the Israelis would have been extremely helpful, not for Israel's defense, but to trade to the Soviets, whether it was to increase Israel's population with emigres or other issues.
And so my understanding is that the Pollard case was a case of real treason.
And yet, you know, here you have Shimon Peres asking, linking Pollard's freedom to a ceremony at the White House for a Presidential Medal of Freedom.
And there are a lot of Americans on both sides of the aisle in Congress and, you know, former CIA Director Woolsey who are pressuring for Pollard's release.
And so I do believe that Obama, just given his record and the way that his Department of Justice handles this type of thing, will probably release Pollard in February.
Man, yeah, well, I guess they would have to wait until after the election, or would it even matter?
Maybe that would be a benefit if he would go ahead and do that now before the election.
Well, I think he can promise now and then win or lose, release him in February.
But I don't see Pollard staying behind bars for much longer.
Yeah, man.
All right.
Yeah, there's a great article by Seymour Hersh all about it, for one thing.
I know a lot of people just Google it up.
All right.
Thanks very much.
Grant Smith, everybody.
IRMEP.org.
Appreciate it.
Thanks a lot.