Declassified files from long-running investigations of the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation (NUMEC) over alleged illegal diversions of US government-owned weapons-grade uranium to Israel are now available online at http://www.IRmep.org/ila/numec

The 733 pages of information obtained under the Freedom of Information Act for the new book Divert! NUMEC, Zalman Shapiro and the diversion of US weapons-grade uranium into the Israeli nuclear weapons program include:

A 1980 FBI interview of an eyewitness (PDF) of NUMEC executives stuffing U-235 canisters into sealed equipment shipped to Israel.

CIA Director of Operations Carl Duckett's 1978 testimony about NUMEC (PDF) before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Atomic Energy Commissioner Glenn T. Seaborg's reaction (PDF) to news that traces of Portsmouth U-235 of the type supplied to NUMEC had been picked up in Israel...More                  Archive

Shapiro told the appellate judges that AIPAC fired Rosen and invoked "standards" "to get the DOJ off AIPAC's back." But AIPAC had in fact "lauded" Rosen "for the same behavior in the past," Shapiro said.

In an amicus brief, the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy argued that "AIPAC's observable standard for employees is 'solicit, obtain and leverage classified information without being criminally indicted.'"

AIPAC had acknowledged a lack of written standards, according to the appeals court. But its deputy executive director, Richard Lee Fishman, testified that there was an unwritten, "assumed standard that people would obey the law ... with regard to classified information or any other illegal activity." More

A Washington-based research group has posted clips online that underscore how the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee endangers the US and its people...The use of the words ''endanger America'' was evocative, clearly demonstrating that both American interests and American people are being endangered by these policies....This places America in the cross-hairs of both sides: Those who believe that terrorism is the primary threat to US security, and those who believe that terrorism has its root causes, specifically the long-standing Israeli occupation of Palestine and the role played by Aipac in ensuring that the US government and political leadership continues to favour Israel even while publicly claiming to be an ''honest broker''. More

AIPAC History  Proto-AIPAC's incubation in the Israeli embassy in 1948.  Strategic direction-setting by the Mossad and Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Confrontations with the Eisenhower and Kennedy Administrations and the secret battle over registration as an Israeli foreign agent.  FBI espionage investigations of AIPAC.  AIPAC and the clandestine Israeli nuclear weapons program. The grassroots fight for transparency, regulatory oversight and accountability. Presented by Grant F. Smith, Director of IRmep.  http://vimeo.com/40544530

AIPAC Political Power US politicians and the Israel lobby campaign finance network.  Why Israel political action committees use confusing and misleading names.  How ostensibly independent political action committees are coordinated to avoid contribution limits imposed on other industries.  How AIPAC has directed PAC contributions to chosen candidates.  How to track stealth Israel PAC contributions to your representative.  Presented by Janet McMahon, Managing Editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. http://vimeo.com/40563081

AIPAC and the Media Why establishment media outlets consistently fail to present an accurate picture of Palestinian vs Israeli casualties in the ongoing conflict.  Why the background and motives of key Middle East reporters prevents Americans from receiving accurate reporting.  Enduring myths about Israel's value as a US ally.  How to counteract the disinformation network. Presented by Alison Weir, President of the Council for the National Interest and Founder of If Americans Knew. http://vimeo.com/40562968

Promoting Islamophobia  AIPAC's role in promoting Muslim "otherness."  The Clash of Civilization policy framework, why is it of strategic value to Israel, especially after the Cold War? Who funds Islamophobia in the United States?  What can be done about it? Presented by Hatem Bazian. http://vimeo.com/40588460

Exposing, Challenging and Stopping AIPAC Why aren't operatives and their organizations (WINEP, FDD, FPI, AEI, JINSA) ever properly identified in the mainstream media?  Are AIPAC and the larger network of organizations vying to operate as an "alternative government?"  How can proven tactics to confront dangerous policy be implemented in the Internet age? Presented by Jeffrey Blankfort. http://vimeo.com/40627216

"Occupy AIPAC" and "Move Over AIPAC" are annual Washington DC gatherings of over 100 organizations organized by Code Pink to challenge and present alternatives to dangerous and costly Middle East policies.  The Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy (IRmep) is a Washington, DC based organization that studies US Middle East policy formulation.  The Council for the National Interest works for U.S. Middle East policies that serve the national interest.  If Americans Knew is dedicated to providing Americans with everything they need to know about Israel and Palestine. The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs is a magazine published to provide the American public with balanced and accurate information concerning U.S. relations with Middle Eastern states. 

During Feb. 14, 2012 oral arguments before a three-judge panel in the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, attorney David Shapiro argued passionately that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has a long history of obtaining and using classified U.S. government information. The fiery Shapiro clashed with AIPAC's legal team, headed by employment and labor law expert Thomas McCalley. The $20 million question before the judges was whether AIPAC defamed its former top lobbyist, Steven J. Rosen, after it fired him in 2005—but before Rosen, along with his colleague Keith Weissman, was indicted by the Department of Justice under the Espionage Act. AIPAC repeatedly told establishment media outlets that Rosen's "behavior did not comport with standards that AIPAC expects of its employees..."

...Chief Judge Eric Washington seemed to warm to McCalley's arguments until Shapiro let loose an impassioned rebuttal. Shapiro argued that Rosen's standing in the Jewish community had been forever tainted by AIPAC and that he must be "allowed to present his case before a jury."

Judge John M. Ferren demonstrated his acute awareness of the connection between the criminal Espionage Act case—dropped by the Obama administration in 2009—and Rosen's near simultaneous defamation suit filing.

A public interest appeal has also now entered the fray. The day following the oral arguments, the court granted special permission for the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy's motion to file an amicus brief. The 76-page brief, citing recently declassified State Department and FBI investigation files, argues that "AIPAC's observable standard for employees is 'solicit, obtain and leverage classified information without being criminally indicted.' AIPAC is never held publicly accountable for these types of activities which harm governance and public perception of rule of law." The full brief, and AIPAC's last ditch attempt to block it, is available online....(PDF)  More

Radio host Shelton Walden of WBAI's "Walden's Pond" interviews Grant F. Smith about the Israeli nuclear weapons program, why US presidents cannot openly talk about it and the diversion of weapons-grade uranium from a plant at Apollo, PA..

How would the conversation about war with Iran change if Americans knew Israel had a vast arsenal of deployed nuclear weapons?  Did Israel build nuclear weapons in the early 1960's with US material? Why couldn't the United States properly investigate, indict and prosecute those responsible for stealing its most vital military asset?  What can be done to inform more Americans about the coercive nature of US-Israel relations?  MP3 available at WBAI

FBI files detailing Israel’s stealth acquisition of U.S. nuclear triggers were declassified and released on Dec. 28, 2011. The FBI’s secret Portland and Los Angeles inter-office communications were originally scheduled for release in the year 2036. Their availability today reveals how Israel’s elite spy networks acquire U.S. nuclear technologies while evading criminal and diplomatic consequences...

...The declassified details of Smyth’s and Milchan’s flight, elite influence networks, and near complete lack of accountability over the kryton case fits neatly into a larger emerging set of attributes common to many major Israeli espionage efforts in the United States. As happened during NUMEC’s diversion of weapons-grade nuclear material to Israel, apparently more time was spent exploring Milchan’s elite connections than figuring out how to indict LAKAM’s nuclear technology operative. As in the case of the Lawrence Franklin AIPAC espionage affair, the mysterious figures who offered to spirit the main operative out of the United States to overseas safe houses were never apprehended or even publicly identified. More

An espionage ring smuggled 800 krytons to the Israeli Ministry of Defense for use in the clandestine Israeli nuclear weapons program according to newly declassified FBI files. The secret documents were originally scheduled for public release in the year 2036, but were obtained under appeal to the Justice Department by the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy (IRmep). The documents available online at http://www.IRmep.org/ila/krytons reveal new details about the failed effort to indict the nuclear smuggling ring's masterminds. More

...The 1938 Foreign Agents Registration Act is supposed to deter the most egregious foreign meddling in America.  It does so through transparency.  FARA doesn’t prohibit any foreign government from launching US public relations campaigns or lobbying initiatives.  It only insists that the agents of the foreign principal behind such endeavors publicly reveal the control relationships, campaigns, and funding flows...

An amendment to FARA allows an attorney general to admit defeat and formally exempt a foreign principal from all FARA oversight. Since the 1960s white shoe law firms such as Covington & Burling, where Eric Holder was once an attorney, have worked diligently to gut FARA and water down its investigative and enforcement mechanisms. If it wasn’t written for Israel, it’s hard to say who the exemption is for. Crudely abbreviated it reads, “The Attorney General may, by regulation, provide for the exemption..[if the AG] determines that such registration…is not necessary…” More

Internal Revenue Commissioner Douglas Shulman is being asked today to examine the tax-exempt status of the American Committee for the Weizmann Institute of Science. According to a U.S. Department of Defense study performed by the Institute for Defense Analyses, the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel has actively engaged in nuclear weapons research.

The 1987 IDA study documents Weizmann scientists developed a cutting- edge high energy physics and hydrodynamics program "needed for nuclear bomb design." Weizmann also worked on advanced methods for enriching uranium to weapons-grade through the use of lasers. The U.S. worried that Weizmann's supercomputers, if networked with other American-purchased supercomputers, would be used to reduce the size of warheads enough to fit on Israel's long range missiles...

The IRmep complaint asks Commissioner Shulman to investigate how Weizmann's tax-exempt U.S. fundraising branch finances Israeli nuclear weapons development. On January 11, 2010, IRmep Research Director Grant F. Smith and several callers confronted Shulman on NPR over lax IRS enforcement over U.S. tax-exempt organizations funding illegal West Bank settlements. Shulman publicly promised that "If a charity is breaking the tax law, is engaged in activities that they are not supposed to be engaged in, we certainly will go after them." According to outside reports, the IRS began screening new applications for tax-exempt status of organizations potentially involved in settlement funding. According to IRmep Director Smith, "Charitable funding laundered into clandestine nuclear weapons that destabilize and endanger the entire region simply has no place in America."  More

“...Last year we galvanised the Palestine crowd but no one else seemed very interested,” says 24-year-old student Sasha Gelzin, one of the coordinators of Occupy AIPAC. “This year you've had the Arab uprisings and Occupy, you’ve had the thousands of activists making connections between domestic policy and foreign policy...”

"...AIPAC has long been understood to have had a great deal of unelected influence over US foreign policy and “de facto immunity” from investigation, as author Grant F Smith put it in a speech to the conference. The shadow of past, present and future wars in the Middle East has hung over the Occupy movement from the start, and activists are quite clear what they are here for: to prevent another war." More

WASHINGTON-Declassified FBI files reveal details of the founder of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee's (AIPAC) early coordination with the head of Mossad and the Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs. The 198-page file, released under the Freedom of Information Act to the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy (IRmep), is now on the Internet at: http://www.IRmep.org/ila/kenen

According to the FBI, on July 18, 1949 Mossad founder Reuven Shiloah and Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett ordered AIPAC founder Isaiah L. Kenen to implement urgent public relations strategies to boost Israel's economic and military might. At that time Kenen directed the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affair's Israel Office of Information (IOI) in New York which was tasked with receiving encrypted cables from Israel for decoding and placement into prominent U.S. print publications such as Reader's Digest and Cosmopolitan. According to the formerly secret FBI report, IOI established a network of such offices. More. Documents

AIPAC’s Washington policy conference next month is drawing intense scrutiny and unprecedented resistance. AIPAC has worked quietly for years to tripwire the United States into war with Iran. Soon it will “ask” Congress and the president to define “nuclear weapons capability” as the threshold for war, essentially demanding an immediate attack. Because Iran presents no military threat to the United States, many Americans wonder exactly where such costly and potentially disastrous policies are formulated. Recently declassified FBI files reveal how Israeli government officials first orchestrated public relations and policies through the U.S. lobby. Counter-espionage investigations of proto-AIPAC’s first coordinating meetings with the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the head of Mossad provide a timely and useful framework for understanding how AIPAC continues to localize and market Israeli government policies in America. More

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is attempting to block a brief filed by Director of the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy (IRmep) Grant F. Smith in the DC Court of Appeals on February 3, 2012. The 78-page IRmep filing asserts "AIPAC has never abandoned its original role as an arm of the Israeli government in the United States." http://www.IRmep.org/ila/rosen

Citing declassified criminal investigations, IRmep underscores the public's interest in the outcome of the case. "AIPAC's observable standard for employees is 'solicit, obtain and leverage classified information without being criminally indicted.' AIPAC is never held publicly accountable for these types of activities which harm governance and public perception of rule of law."

Exhibits include State Department files declassified on January 20, 2012 revealing in detail how former AIPAC Director Morris Amitay endangered US national security when he obtained Department of Defense secrets in 1974. The IRmep brief also analyzes ongoing financial damages from a 1984-1987 incident. The FBI investigated how AIPAC acquired an International Trade Commission report full of still-classified confidential business information... More

Author Norman F. Dacey made powerful enemies. He turned the cozy estate-planning industry upside-down after publishing How to Avoid Probate in 1965. The book sold 2 million copies as Dacey barnstormed [.pdf] the country advising Americans how to structure their estates to avoid the costs, delays, and publicity of probate by setting up trusts. Dacey engaged in fierce battles with various bar associations who tried to shut down publication of the book by claiming he was practicing law without a license. The tenacious Dacey returned fire, filing scores of libel and First Amendment lawsuits.

Newly declassified U.S. State Department documents reveal a lesser-known but equally intense battle fought by Dacey. The chairman of the American Palestine Committee and close confidant of “Rabbi Outcast” Elmer Berger nearly succeeded in having American Israel Public Affairs (AIPAC) Director Morris Amitay prosecuted for trafficking classified national defense information in the mid-1970s. More                  Declassified documents

AIPAC Director's Use of Classified Missile Data Harmed National Security - State Department

WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Newly released US Department of State investigation files reveal how the American Israel Public Affairs Committee's (AIPAC) acquisition of classified US national defense information harmed national security. (Web documents) In 1976 the Ford administration proposed selling improved Hawk anti-aircraft missiles to Jordan. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee and House Foreign Affairs Committee received a classified Department of Defense notification of sale. AIPAC's Director Morris Amitay reviewed the classified document after being informed "secretly by aides of Senator Clifford P. Case, Republican of New Jersey, and Representative Jonathan B. Bingham, Democrat of New York" according to the New York Times.

Criminal investigation files released on January 20, 2012 confirm the disclosure to AIPAC was "unauthorized" and included the dollar amounts and quantitative configurations of the missile system. The State Department found that "…specific details of Jordan's military equipment needs are information provided us in confidence by that government. The classification of the documents in question was, in our view, substantively proper."  More

...Rosen’s core legal shortcoming is that he stopped short of deposing former AIPAC legislative director Douglas Bloomfield during defamation suit proceedings. During the 1980s document caper, Bloomfield found the classified trade report so valuable he duplicated it for AIPAC’s use before returning the original by order of the U.S. trade ambassador. For his part, in 2009 Bloomfield defended Rosen in the press during his defamation suit by subtly threatening to reveal how AIPAC functions as a foreign agent of the Israeli government if it didn’t settle up with Rosen as promised. Rosen likewise declined to broadly depose Ester Kurz, who also handled the classified trade report in the 1980s. This would have been unsettling to the lobby, since in 2010 Kurz was still holding a top-level job at AIPAC and even received Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the annual D.C. conference... More  Latest court filings

Continue (Year 2011 Research and Events)