New Nixon Papers: Suggest Israel Stole from US to create their nuclear program...

[The_cavalierman]

I'm not convicting anybody. I find it fascinating that the President who increased foreign aid to Israel by 25 times over his term and a half (69-74) in office had his national security advisor telling him:

(1) Israel was more likely to use nukes than any other country.

(2) They had evidence that Israel stole fusionable material from America.

(3) Israel consistantly mislead or lied to the US about their nuclear program

Keep your friends close....and your enemies closer.

The best spies in America are those of our so called allies to include England.

And yes...we spy on them too..

[JMS]

That 560kg of regular ol' uranium from the U-Boat only would have yielded 4 kg of uranium-235, which is what a fission bomb requires and what the Oak Ridge operation was feverishly producing.

You clearly know much more about the assembley of a 1940's era nuclear weapon than I do. I've heard historical discussions on the matter, and I am attempting to parote what I've heard in those discussions.

The basics of the argument go like this. The captured U-boat contents was classified shortly after it arrived and remained classified until the late 1990's. So it's a relitively new information which historians are still looking at, the Nazi components used in the US bombs. The contents of the U-boat contained more than just the 500 kg's of enriched uranium, but also contained "components necessary for a nuclear bomb".

Their is a book out there called "critical mass" which discusses this.

http://www.lanl.gov/news/index.php/fuseaction/home.story/story_id/2287

“The first big break was finding a secret dispatch from the Commander of Naval Operations in Washington indicating the uranium was stored for the journey in cylinders lined with gold,” explained Mr. Hydrick. “Further research showed that gold, which is a very stable substance, was only used to handle uranium that had already been enriched in order to protect it from contamination by corrosion.” Only enriched uranium is fissile enough to make a uranium bomb. Hydrick explained that, at $100,000 per ounce in 1945 dollars, the enriched uranium was well worth the investment in gold to protect it. According to Hydrick’s sources, gold would not have been used to ship uranium that had not yet been enriched, since the value of raw uranium did not justify such expense. He cites instances in the United States program when uranium that had not been enriched was shipped in cloth bags and steel drums with no protection from corrosion whatsoever.

A second, stronger, validation that the uranium on board U-234 was enriched uranium came from eye-witness accounts of a crew member of the submarine, who was present at both the loading and unloading of the boat. The crew member reported in two memoirs that the uranium containers had the label “U235” painted on them just before they were lowered into the submarine. U235 is the scientific designation for enriched uranium. The same crew member reported that United States Navy personnel later tested the supply tubes of the submarine with geiger counters after it was turned over to the United States and the instruments registered a very high level of radioactivity. Without understanding the import of the U235 designation, the crew member assumed the uranium was left over from Germany’s failed, but later highly publicized, plutonium breeding reactor experiments.

http://www.avhub.net/MI_ABOMBhydricku234.htm

Since you seem to know more about this than I do, and knowing I'm basically parroting what I've read and heard on the subject. You tell me. Have you read up on this event? Do you find these claims at all creditable?

[stevenaa]

Plausible deniablity.....If questioned...we didn't "give" Israel anything

My thought exactly. Classic CYA. " Hey, I said once they may have stole it from us. Would I be dumb enough to mention it if we actually gave it to them" ;)

[Jumbo]

I gave a lot of it back.

[mjah]

Since you seem to know more about this than I do, and knowing I'm basically parroting what I've read and heard on the subject. You tell me. Have you read up on this event? Do you find these claims at all creditable?

Don't give me too much credit, now... I wasn't there either.

But the more I read about this, the less credible it seems to me that it was highly enriched uranium-235 on the U-boat. For starters, the accounts of it being uranium-235 all seem to be anecdotal. Interesting and thought-provoking, but anecdotal and fragmented. I mean, I realize it's unrealistic to expect to find a handwritten note from Truman himself saying "Hey, we found all this great u-235 on U-234 and we're definitely going to use it to shore up the deficit of u-235 for our bomb project. Good thing!" But still, this would have been SUCH a major coup. Lots and lots of people at the center of the Manhattan Project, including Soviet spies, would have known about it.

And the one guy whose story I could find really compelling -- behind one of those links -- seems to be saying enriched uranium from the U-boat was used for both the Hiroshima and the Nagasaki bombs. I can't understand how that could be, because there is literally no use that I know of for significant amounts of u-235 in the plutonium (Nagasaki) bomb. Regular old u-238 seems to have been perfectly fine as a tamper for those plutonium bombs. As far as I can tell, using u-235 when u-238 is suitable would be like insisting that your front lawn be planted entirely in four-leaf clover.

Secondly, Germany had literally NO way to enrich this much uranium -- no more than Brazil, Mexico, or anyone else. I mean, I'm not any kind of expert, but I can't even conceive of any infrastructure Germany could have had to produce that much enriched uranium. They would have had a project multiple times the size of the Manhattan Project, which went completely unnoticed when Germany fell and was scoured by the Americans and Soviets. And the cost of producing that much enriched material -- it surely was beyond Germany's means, given the severely strapped condition of their resources for so much of the war.

Finally, there are so many accounts describing the uranium as just regular old natural uranium ore consisting of 99% regular old uranium-238, and there are plenty of reasons why Germany would have wanted to move the uranium (and quite possibly the gold!) to Japan. The u-235 story is far more interesting, but there's no real smoking gun.

I mean, anything's possible, right? But that's no proof. And I never believe eyewitness accounts unless you have about 100 people saying exactly the same thing. People are surprisingly bad at seeing and remembering.

I can see how regular old Nazi uranium ore would have eventually been made into tampers for countless plutonium bombs. That seems totally plausible. Got it, might as well throw it in with the tons we already have and put it to use... :whoknows:

[JMS]

Don't give me too much credit, now... I wasn't there either.

But the more I read about this, the less credible it seems to me that it was highly enriched uranium-235 on the U-boat. For starters, the accounts of it being uranium-235 all seem to be anecdotal. Interesting and thought-provoking, but anecdotal and fragmented. I mean, I realize it's unrealistic to expect to find a handwritten note from Truman himself saying "Hey, we found all this great u-235 on U-234 and we're definitely going to use it to shore up the deficit of u-235 for our bomb project. Good thing!" But still, this would have been SUCH a major coup. Lots and lots of people at the center of the Manhattan Project, including Soviet spies, would have known about it.

I don't know about that. My step father grew up on the Oak Ridge base. He told me that they had tens of thousands of people there and nobody knew what they were working on or what they were building. I think there were very few people aware of the entire picture.

And the one guy whose story I could find really compelling -- behind one of those links -- seems to be saying enriched uranium from the U-boat was used for both the Hiroshima and the Nagasaki bombs. I can't understand how that could be, because there is literally no use that I know of for significant amounts of u-235 in the plutonium (Nagasaki) bomb. Regular old u-238 seems to have been perfectly fine as a tamper for those plutonium bombs. As far as I can tell, using u-235 when u-238 is suitable would be like insisting that your front lawn be planted entirely in four-leaf clover.

That's a strong point. I'll have to research the issue cause I'm not sophisticated enough to be able to corroberate it.

Secondly, Germany had literally NO way to enrich this much uranium -- no more than Brazil, Mexico, or anyone else. I mean, I'm not any kind of expert, but I can't even conceive of any infrastructure Germany could have had to produce that much enriched uranium. They would have had a project multiple times the size of the Manhattan Project, which went completely unnoticed when Germany fell and was scoured by the Americans and Soviets. And the cost of producing that much enriched material -- it surely was beyond Germany's means, given the severely strapped condition of their resources for so much of the war.

Germany did have a program and they started much earlier than we did. We just bombed them out of commission, and Hitler decided to put his production capacity into other weapons.

Still that's another good point, no way could he have produced 500 kg of processed uranium, but the article says there were other components besides the 500 kgs of uranium.

Finally, there are so many accounts describing the uranium as just regular old natural uranium ore consisting of 99% regular old uranium-238, and there are plenty of reasons why Germany would have wanted to move the uranium (and quite possibly the gold!) to Japan. The u-235 story is far more interesting, but there's no real smoking gun.

I mean, anything's possible, right? But that's no proof. And I never believe eyewitness accounts unless you have about 100 people saying exactly the same thing. People are surprisingly bad at seeing and remembering.

I can see how regular old Nazi uranium ore would have eventually been made into tampers for countless plutonium bombs. That seems totally plausible. Got it, might as well throw it in with the tons we already have and put it to use... :whoknows:

That's a third strong point. This guy is going to be talking again at the smithsonian here in DC, I might bring up some of your points and see what he says.

You make a strong case.

[mjah]

I don't know about that. My step father grew up on the Oak Ridge base. He told me that they had tens of thousands of people there and nobody knew what they were working on or what they were building. I think there were very few people aware of the entire picture.

That's my understanding, too. My buddy's grandma worked there. She said they sat her in front of a dial and said, "Whenever this dial moves, pick up this phone and call us." She had no idea what it was about, but she did it and they paid her.

I'm thinking more about the top level -- scientists and strategists who had to know the big picture if it was ever going to work. There were spies at that level, too.

Anyway, I'd be interested to hear what your boy says at the Smithsonian. Cool stuff.