El asesinato de J.F.K. La película de Oliver Stone.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy, uno de los presidentes más queridos y carismáticos de la historia de los EE.UU. murió asesinado el 22 de noviembre de 1963 en Dallas, Texas. Así pues, el pasado viernes 22 de noviembre de 2013 se cumplía el quincuagésimo aniversario de su muerte.

Pensé que debía escribir algo sobre él. Al fin y al cabo, no sólo es un hito en la historia americana, sino uno de mis ídolos, por muchas razones que no hacen al caso.

Buscando inspiración para escribir el artículo, volví a ver -por enésima vez- la película "JFK" -estrenada en el año 1991- de uno de mis directores favoritos, Oliver Stone.

Mientras veía los primeros fotogramas, empecé a pensar... "¿Es posible que un asesinato que está condenado a no ser desvelado jamás, se resuelva en una película rodada en Hollywood?" Al fin y al cabo, aunque recibió ciertas críticas cosméticas, la realidad es que la película de Stone recaudó 205 millones de dólares, ganó dos Óscar y fue nominada para otros ocho, incluido el premio a la mejor película. "... ¿Lo habría permitido el Sistema, de apuntar en la dirección correcta?"

No, pues claro que no. Si esta película hubiera sido rodada por un cineasta amateur, con medios precarios y se proyectara en un ambiente underground, fuera del circuito de las salas comerciales, entonces me podría valer. Pero no había sido así. Entonces... ¿dónde estaba el truco?

Seguí viendo la película, y alrededor del minuto 5' 43'', le di al botón de pausa del mando a distancia.

El productor del film "J.F.K." según puede verse a los 5' 43'' de la película.

De manera que el productor ejecutivo, es decir, el que financió la película, era un tal Arnon Milchan.

¿Y éste, quién es?

Arnon Milchan nació en Rehovot, Palestina, entonces bajo mandato británico (el estado de Israel no se fundó hasta 1947), el seis de diciembre de 1944, de familia judía.

Simon Peres, ex-presidente de Israel, afirma en una entrevista: "Arnon es especial. Yo le recluté. Cuando yo era Ministro de Defensa, Arnon estuvo involucrado en numerosas operaciones de defensa e inteligencia. Su punto fuerte es establecer relaciones al más alto nivel... Sus actividades nos dieron una gran ventaja estratégica, diplomática y tecnológica."

Las actividades de Milchan incluían "la compra de componentes para la construcción y el mantenimiento del arsenal nuclear israelí."

El telón comenzaba a descorrerse. Por mucho que me gustara Oliver Stone, los hechos son tozudos. Arnon era un espía y traficante de armas israelí que trabajaba para el estado de Israel. Y fue quien financió la película. ¿Con qué fondos? ¿Cómo consiguió Milchan su enorme fortuna?

Después de trabajar para la inteligencia israelí, Milchan se trasladó a Estados Unidos e hizo amistad con Martin Scorsese, Roman Polanski, Sergio Leone, Terry Gilliam y Oliver Stone, entre otros. En 1991 fundó su propia productora, New Regency Productions, asociada con la Warner Brothers, y más tarde con Rupert Murdoch y la 20th Century Fox. Su fortuna personal se estima en unos 4.200 millones de dólares (en el año 2013), y figura en la lista Forbes de personas más ricas: en el lugar 290º del mundo y 4º de Israel.

¿Y cuándo había comenzado Israel la construcción de su primer reactor nuclear, con la colaboración de Milchan?

En el desierto del Negev hay una instalación nuclear situada unos trece kilómetros al sur de Dimona, destinada a la construcción de armas nucleares. Israel confirma su existencia, pero no el propósito de la instalación. Es información clasificada y está prohibido sobrevolar su espacio aéreo. De hecho, en la guerra de los Seis Días un misil israelí derribó un avión Mirage III israelí -sí, habéis leído bien, de su propio ejército- y, en 1973, cazas israelíes derribaron un avión de pasajeros libio, causando la muerte de 108 personas. ¿La causa? En ambos casos, acercarse demasiado al espacio aéreo de la central de Dimona.

La construcción de la central comenzó en 1958, con ayuda francesa. Se hizo creer a los funcionarios de aduanas franceses que las mayores piezas del reactor formaban parte de una planta desalinizadora destinada a Sudamérica. Peres y Ben Gurion recaudaron 40 millones de dólares para su financiación, procedentes "de los amigos de Israel de todas las partes del mundo."

El Sunday Times desvela los secretos de Dimona y las advertencias de Mordechai

Vanunu. En aquel entonces, Israel "sólo" era la sexta potencia nuclear mundial.

Vista aérea del complejo nuclear de Dimona.

Israel, junto con India y Pakistán, forma parte del grupo de tres países que se han negado a firmar el tratado de no proliferación de armas nucleares.

Cuando los servicios de inteligencia norteamericanos averiguaron el propósito real del complejo, a comienzos de los años sesenta, la Casa Blanca solicitó a Israel que permitiera la realización de inspecciones internacionales. Israel accedió, siempre que fuera EE.UU. y no la Agencia Internacional de Energía Atómica quien las llevara a cabo, y que se le comunicara previamente. Eso es lo que se llama "inspección por sorpresa", como deben ser todas las inspecciones que se precien.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy

Ben Gurion, a la derecha

David Ben Gurion, presidente de Israel de 1955 a 1963, solicitó un encuentro privado con Kennedy, por entonces presidente de los Estados Unidos, que se celebró en el Hotel Waldorf Astoria, en Nueva York. Fue un desastre. A Ben Gurion le pareció que Kennedy era demasiado joven para ser presidente y no quiso tomarle en serio. Empezó a dirigirse a Kennedy como "young man" en sus cartas, lo que Kennedy, con razón, se tomó como una ofensa personal.

En cuanto a los informes sobre la actividad de la central nuclear de Dimona, Kennedy estaba harto. Y le dijo a su amigo Charles Bartlett "esos hijos de perra me mienten constantemente acerca de su capacidad nuclear."

Porque, gracias al preaviso pactado, antes de la llegada de los inspectores, los técnicos israelíes tenían tiempo de ocultar partes claves de la instalación, para que no quedara en evidencia el motivo real de su existencia. 

Reuven Pedatzer escribió en el diario israelí Ha'aretz, el 5 de febrero de 1999, lo siguiente:

"El asesinato del Presidente Americano John F. Kennedy marcó un abrupto fin a la presión masiva aplicada por la administración de EE.UU. sobre el gobierno de Israel para que suspendiera el programa nuclear. En el libro de Cohen 'Israel y la Bomba', queda sobradamente demostrada la presión aplicada por Kennedy sobre Ben Gurion... donde Kennedy deja más que claro al primer ministro que no permitirá bajo ninguna circunstancia que Israel se convierta en una potencia nuclear. Lo que implica que si Kennedy hubiera seguido con vida, es dudoso si Israel tendría hoy en día una opción nuclear."

Y el congresista Paul Findley, en su Informe Washington sobre los asuntos de Oriente Medio, afirmaba:

"Es interesante, pero no sorprendente, hacer notar que, con todo lo que se ha hablado y escrito sobre el asesinato de Kennedy, nunca ha sido mencionada la agencia de inteligencia israelí, el Mossad."

Al menos, que se mencione alguna que otra vez...

Lyndon B. Johnson, que llegó a la presidencia a raíz de la muerte de Kennedy, nombró Fiscal General a Nicholas Katzenbach, el 11 de febrero de 1965. Katzenbach envió un memorándum a la Casa Blanca aconsejando la creación de una comisión para investigar el asesinato de Kennedy. "El público debe aceptar que Oswald fue el asesino y que no hubo cómplices que estén todavía en libertad". Esto condujo a la creación de la comisión Warren, que ocultó la realidad a los ciudadanos americanos. El autor de la teoría de la bala mágica que habría herido al presidente y al gobernador Connally, fue Arlen Specter, abogado de Kansas, hijo de emigrantes judíos rusos.

Di Caprio, Milchan, Spielberg

Evidentemente, Arnon Milchan no iba a financiar una película en la que se insinuara que el Mossad podía tener algo que ver en el asesinato de Kennedy. Cuando el pueblo norteamericano empieza a comprender que la verdadera "teoría conspiratoria" es imputar el gigantesco complot que condujo al asesinato de JFK a un loco solitario -Lee Harvey Oswald- entonces filmamos una película en la que se menciona al "complejo militar-industrial", a la CIA, al FBI y al mismísimo Lyndon B. Johnson. Está claro que tienen que estar involucrados de alguna manera, por acción u omisión. Pero en la película no se cita al Mossad para nada, y se afirma rotundamente que la Mafia no pudo estar implicada.

Habrá que pensar que tanto el Mossad como la Mafia tuvieron algún tipo de implicación ya que -aunque la gente sólo se acuerda de Al Capone y Lucky Luciano, que acabaron en la cárcel- quien realmente tenía y tiene el control de la delincuencia organizada en EE.UU. no es la mafia italiana, sino la mishpucka judía que en su día fundaron Arnold Rothstein, Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Siegel, Moe Dalitz, John Jacob Factor, Alex Louis Greenberg, y sus acólitos Sidney Roy Korshak, Jack Arvey, David Lionel Bazelon, Mickey Cohen, Charles Bluhdorn y demás. Los que empezaron en Chicago y Nueva York, para emigrar después a Los Ángeles y Hollywood y convirtieron a la ciudad de Las Vegas -que hasta que se legalizó el juego en 1931 era poco más que una parada para que repostaran agua los trenes que viajaban entre Los Ángeles y Alburquerque- en una muy distinta, dedicada al juego y demás actividades "accesorias". Sheldon Adelson, el de Eurovegas, alabado por Esperanza Aguirrre, que se reúne con el rey y con Rajoy, ¿es italiano? Y los 181 representantes multimillonarios del Keren Hayesod United Israel Appeal que se reunieron con el rey el pasado seis de noviembre, ¿son italianos? ¿Venían a interesarse por la salud del rey?

Pero, volviendo a Dimona, la CIA e Israel prepararon conjuntamente el secuestro en Roma de Mordechai Vanunu, un técnico nuclear israelí que en 1986 alertó al diario británico "The Sunday Times" del desarrollo de armas nucleares por parte de Israel, tras lo cual fue sentenciado a 18 años de prisión. Vanunu llegó a escribir una carta en la que afirmaba que había un nexo de unión entre el asesinato de Kennedy y la guerra de los Seis Días que Israel desencadenó contra sus vecinos árabes en 1967.

Y que Israel tendría material nuclear suficiente para fabricar unas 20 bombas de hidrógeno y unas 200 bombas atómicas convencionales. De hecho, hoy en día, Israel es la cuarta potencia atómica mundial, por detrás de Rusia, Estados Unidos y Francia, superando a China y al Reino Unido.

Mordechai Vanunu

Robert DeNiro y Arnon Milchan

Según un enlace que nos pasa un colaborador anónimo, Arnon Milchan ha explicado que aprovechó gran parte de su estancia en Hollywood para comprar armas y equipo en nombre del Gobierno israelí, según explicó al programa Uvda, del Canal 2 israelí, el pasado lunes (25 de noviembre), comprando uranio al régimen sudafricano del Apartheid. Estuvo acompañado por Robert De Niro. “Yo lo sabía”, declaró el actor. “Me contó en su momento algo relacionado con esas pequeñas cosas que activan una cosa nuclear”.

Es decir, que durante su estancia en Hollywood seguía trabajando para Israel y el Mossad.

Imagen imprescindible. Un miembro del servicio secreto de la escolta de Kennedy protesta -el único que lo hizo- cuando se le ordena bajar del coche del presidente, que quedaba así indefenso ante los tiradores, en la Plaza Dealey de Dallas.

Kennedy bajo el cartel "Stemmons Freeway". A la izquierda, tras

el muro, dos de los posibles tiradores y asesinos del presidente

El 8 de mayo de 2017, Ian Greenhalgh firmaba un artículo titulado "El productor de cine y la red de contrabando nuclear israelí", que llevaba el siguiente prólogo del editor:

"Arnon Milchan era, y probablemente lo es todavía, un activo del Mossad. Una de sus misiones como productor de Hollywood fue ocultar la verdad acerca de la implicación del gobierno israelí en el asesinato de JFK. Como productor de la película del mismo nombre de Oliver Stone, se encargó de que Stone no llegara al fondo del asunto. Es cierto que Stone identificó correctamente a Permindex como un elemento esencial, y a Clay Shaw como un personaje clave, pero en la película se les menciona como pertenecientes a la CIA, cuando en realidad pertenecían al Mossad. Permindex era, de hecho, la base del Mossad en Estados Unidos, fundada por Roy Cohn, Luis M. Bloomfield y Tibor Rosenbaum, todos ellos del Mossad, al que, de hecho, contribuyeron a fundar."

El artículo del blog se publicó el 23 de noviembre de 2013. Es reconfortante observar como, tres años y medio después, se confirma la hipótesis Milchan en un medio norteamericano. No podía ser de otro modo. Una película que narrara los verdaderos motivos del asesinato de JFK no se podría haber filmado en 1991 ni tampoco en 2017. Y no sabemos si alguna vez saldrá a la luz pública la verdad de lo sucedido en Dallas el 22 de noviembre de 1963, el día en que el régimen político norteamericano murió definitivamente.

THE SUNDAY TIMES

Revealed: the secrets of Israel’s nuclear arsenal

INSIGHT

THE secrets of a subterranean factory engaged in the manufacture of Israeli nuclear weapons have been uncovered by The Sunday Times Insight team.

Hidden beneath the Negev desert, the factory has been producing atomic warheads for the past 20 years. Now it has almost certainly begun manufacturing thermo-nuclear weapons, with yields big enough to destroy entire cities.

Information about Israel's capacity to manufacture the bomb comes from the testimony of Mordechai Vanunu, a 31-year-old Israeli who worked as a nuclear technician for nearly 10 years in Machon 2 - a top-secret, underground bunker built to provide the vital components necessary for weapons production at Dimona, the Israeli nuclear research establishment.

Vanunu's evidence has surprised nuclear experts who were approached by Insight to verify its accuracy because it shows that Israel does not just have the atom bomb - which has been long suspected - but that it has become a big nuclear power.

Vanunu's testimony and pictures, which have been scrutinised by nuclear experts on both sides of the Atlantic, show that Israel has developed the sophisticated and highly classified techniques needed to build up a formidable arsenal.

They confirm that:

Israel now ranks as the world's sixth most powerful nuclear power after America, the Soviet Union, Britain, France and China - with an arsenal far greater than those other countries, such as India, Pakistan and South Africa, which have also been suspected of developing nuclear weapons.

It has possessed its secret weapons factory for more than two decades, hiding its plutonium extraction processes from spy satellites and independent inspections during the 1960s by burying it beneath an innocuous, little-used building.

The plant is equipped with French plutonium extracting technology, which transformed Dimona from a research establishment to a bomb production facility. Plutonium production rates amount to 40kg a year, enough to build 10 bombs. In the past six years Israel has added further equipment to make components for thermo-nuclear devices.

The 26 megawatt reactor, also built by the French, has been expanded and is probably now operating at 150 megawatts to allow it to extract more plutonium. An ingenious cooling system disguises the output.

The nuclear scientists consulted by The Sunday Times calculate that at least 100 and as many as 200 nuclear weapons of varying destructive power have been assembled - 10 times the previously estimated strength of Israel's nuclear arsenal.

The scientists include Theodore Taylor, who was taught by Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb, and worked on America's first bomb designs. He later went on to head the Pentagon's atomic weapons test programme.

Dr. Taylor studied the photographs taken by Vanunu inside Dimona and a transcript of his evidence near Washington last week. He said: "There should no longer be any doubt that Israel is, and for at least a decade has been, a fully-fledged nuclear weapons state. The Israeli nuclear weapons programme is considerably more advanced than indicated by any previous report or conjectures of which I am aware."

He added that Vanunu’s testimony was entirely consistent with an Israeli capacity to produce 10 nuclear weapons a year that are significantly smaller, lighter and more efficient than the first types of weapons developed by Russia, America, Britain, France or China.

Another scientist who authenticated the evidence uncovered by Insight is Dr. Frank Barnaby, a nuclear physicist who worked at Aldermaston, the British nuclear weapons research establishment in Berkshire and who recently retired as the director of the Swedish Institute for Peace Research, which monitors nuclear proliferation.

“As a nuclear physicist,” says Barnaby “it was clear to me that details he gave me were scientifically accurate and clearly showed that he had not only worked on these processes but knew the details of the techniques. Also the flow rates through the plant, which he quotes exactly confirm the quantities of plutonium that were being made.”

Vanunu says that, despite tight security, he was able to smuggle a camera into Machon 2 and take more than 60 photographs. Insight debriefed him for four weeks and invited Barnaby to interview Vanunu in an attempt to find scientific flaws in his story. “His testimony is totally convincing,” concluded Barnaby.

The assesments of Taylor and Barnaby have been confirmed by other top nuclear scientists who were shown the pictures and detailed evidence. Because they work in sentitive positions in Britain’s atomic energy industry and nuclear weapons manufacturing, they have asked to remain anonymous.

Irael has refused to comment on the evidence. But it has confirmed that Vanunu did work for the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission in Dimona. He was made redundant last November with 180 other Dimona workers during a cost-cutting drive by the establishment. Security men had grown concerned about Vanunu’s developing political contacts with West Bank Arab students during a part-time philosophy degree course he was taking at Beersheba University.

Israel is a small nation surrounded by hostile Arab states, most of whom have sworn at various times to try to destroy Israel and sweep its people into the sea. Although Israeli conventional forces have been able to hold off Arab attacks, it has always been suspected that the Israelis would want weapons of last resort to protect themselves. Israel would have no difficulty in dropping its nuclear bombs on any of its Arab neighbours.

It has been suggested though never proved, that when Israel was in danger of losing the Yom Kippur War in 1973 after the initial Egyptian attack, the then prime minister, Golda Meir, ordered nuclear devices to be moved to airbases.

Last Thursday, a senior US government source at the time, now retired, confirmed the incident to The Sunday Times.

Inside Dimona: full story pages 2 & 3.

TIME MAGAZINE
HIGH SEAS: Uranium: The Israeli Connection
Monday, May. 30, 1977

In the foggy dawn of Nov. 17, 1968, the German-built freighter Scheersberg A (gross tonnage: 1,790 tons) chugged out of Antwerp harbor with a Liberian flag flying from its mast and 560 drums of "yellowcake" -a crude concentrate of uranium- packed beneath its decks. The ship never reached its declared destination of Genoa, Italy. Instead, after 15 days at sea it docked at the Turkish port of Iskenderun on Dec. 2, riding high in the water. Its strategic cargo -200 tons of uranium, worth $3.7 million, that could potentially be used for nuclear weapons- had vanished. The disappearance of the uranium was first disclosed last month by Paul Leventhal, a former counsel to the Senate Committee on Government Operations, at a conference in Salzburg, and the report was confirmed later by European Community officials.

Who had the uranium? And how did they get it? After several weeks of investigation by a team of correspondents, TIME has learned that the Scheersberg As voyage from Antwerp was part of a complex plot concocted by Israeli intelligence agents. Its purpose: to disguise a secret Israeli purchase of much-needed uranium for its French-built nuclear reactor at Dimona in the Negev Desert; an overt purchase might have pushed the Soviet Union into supplying nuclear arms to the Arab states. The Scheersberg A, which is still in service as a tramp steamer under the name Kerkyra, was secretly owned at the time of the uranium caper by the Israeli intelligence service, Mossad. It was one of three ships (another was called the Vita) that Israel used in the late 1960s for secret operations. TIME has discovered that the Scheersberg A was almost certainly involved in the refueling in the Atlantic of five gunboats seized by Israeli agents from the French harbor of Cherbourg in 1969.

In the uranium operation, the Israelis relied on assurances from the West German coalition government of Christian Democratic Chancellor Kurt-Georg Kiesinger that they would be allowed to disguise their purchase as a private commercial transaction in West Germany. In exchange, TIME'S sources say, Israel promised West Germany access to its advanced uranium separation process that can be used to produce nuclear weapons. Asked directly about it, officials in Bonn refused last week either to confirm or to deny any past government involvement in such a deal.

No Hijacking. Investigators for the European Community began looking for the missing uranium several months after the Scheersberg A showed up empty at Iskenderun. They developed evidence that the cargo had not vanished in a hijacking: the uranium was shipped by a firm that knew it would never arrive at its destination in Italy. The firm was a now-defunct German petrochemical company called Asmara Chemie, and it had purchased the uranium -which was mined in what is now Zaire- from the Belgian mineral firm Societe Generale des Minerals. Asmara Chemie had no previous record of buying uranium at all -let alone $3.7 million worth- but on March 29, 1968, Asmara signed a contract to buy 200 tons of uranium oxide. Today the founder of Asmara, Herbert G. Scharf, denies any knowledge of the deal, and one former employee of the firm says, "I assume that somebody must have used our name."

Several of TIME'S sources have identified a former Asmara purchasing agent and stockholder named Herbert Schul-zen as the Asmara connection. Last week Schulzen, now an executive for Kolloid Chemie, a West German dye-making firm, told TIME he could not comment because "secret service agencies" were involved. He added: "When I read in the papers that for nine years various governments have kept the disappearance of the uranium a secret, I cannot as a private individual comment on what is taking place at a [higher] political level." 

Asmara at first had ordered the uranium for a third party, a Casablanca pharmaceutical-supply company named Chimagar; like Asmara, it had never bought uranium before. "Laughable," said one of the company's executives last week when told that the firm -which specializes in processing seaweed- had been named as a recipient of the uranium. Indeed, Chimagar was not a good cover. Morocco is not a member of the Common Market, and no nuclear material can be shipped outside the Community without a special permit.

Thus, in August 1968, the uranium contract was amended. Asmara and the Société Générale informed the Common Market that the ore would be shipped to SAICA, a paint company in Milan that also had never been known to use uranium. SAICA was to mix the uranium with an unspecified substance included in the shipment, then return it to Asmara in the same 560 drums. "They chose us merely to get the uranium out of Antwerp into the Mediterranean," said null chairman, Francesco Ser-torio, last week; he claims he wondered about the deal at the time. Nevertheless, Sertorio says he received an advance payment from Asmara Chemie of $12,000 for buying equipment to mix and handle the uranium. Apparently Asmara knew that the Scheersberg A, with its barrels of uranium innocently marked "plumbat" (a lead derivative), would never dock in Italy. A few days after the Scheersberg A sailed from Antwerp, Asmara called SAIGA to say the ship was mysteriously lost and told the paint company to keep the $12,000.

The history of the Scheersberg A's ownership is almost equally mysterious. Less than two months before its fateful sailing from Antwerp, the ship -then known simply as the Scheersberg- was purchased from a Hamburg shipping broker, August Bolten, by a company that was little more than a post office address in Monrovia, Liberia: the Biscayne Traders Shipping Corp., which was incorporated on Aug. 20, 1968, about the time that Asmara Chemie's final contract for purchase of the uranium was completed. Biscayne took title to the Scheersberg A -for $287,000- on Sept. 27, 1968. The company, which was dissolved in 1971, was almost certainly a front for the Mossad. For more than a year, corporate documents prove, Bis-cayne's president was Dan Ert, 40, who admitted in 1973 that he was an Israeli intelligence agent.

Ert, who has changed his name to Aerbel and now lives in Herzliya, was a member of an Israeli "hit team" that in 1973 killed an Arab waiter in Lillehammer, Norway, in the mistaken belief that he was a Palestinian terrorist responsible for the Munich massacre of eleven Olympic athletes. A native of Copenhagen who maintained Danish and Israeli citizenship, Ert tried to win his release by telling his flabbergasted Norwegian interrogators that he was a Mossad agent. To prove it, he mentioned that he "owned the ship" that had secretly carried uranium for Israel. (Ert has since denied saying this.) Ert also gave his captors the secret phone number of Mossad headquarters in Tel Aviv. He was convicted of participating in a murder and imprisoned for seven months. 

After Biscayne Traders bought the Scheersberg A, in September 1968, the first of many new crews came aboard. But in Rotterdam, on Nov. 15, a Biscayne Traders representative falsely told the crew -composed largely of Spaniards- that they were no longer needed because the ship had been sold again. On the next day, the uranium was loaded in Antwerp, and a hand-picked crew of Israelis boarded the ship for its mysterious voyage.

Only those aboard know precisely what happened during the 15 days after the Scheersberg A left Antwerp. The ship's officers cannot be traced because they had forged passports and false identities. But one of TIME'S sources talked with a former Israeli crew member in 1973, in the Ivory Coast. According to the sailor, after leaving Antwerp the Scheersberg A sailed straight for the waters between Cyprus and Iskenderun. Without breaking radio silence, it made a rendezvous at night with an Israeli ship that carried a special winch. As two Israeli gunboats hovered near the freighters, the barrels of uranium were transferred in total darkness. Except for an occasional Hebrew command, no one spoke. The uranium, TIME'S sources believe, went to the Israeli port of Haifa, approximately 110 nautical miles from the rendezvous, and the Scheersberg A headed northeast to Iskenderun.

Arrived Empty. Port records confirm that the Scheersberg A arrived empty on Dec. 2. Three days later, most of the Spanish crew who had been dismissed in Rotterdam on Nov. 15 were called back to the ship at Palermo. Curious about its recent travels, some crewmen looked for the ship's log. They found that the pages for the previous 21/2 weeks had been ripped out.

For almost a year, the Scheersberg A carried out normal freight duties in the Mediterranean and Atlantic. Meanwhile, construction of five missile and torpedo gunboats purchased by Israel neared completion in the French port of Cherbourg. The boats were paid for by Israel, but France had halted all military trade with Arabs and Israelis. On Nov. 17, 1969, five weeks before the Israelis seized the gunboats, the Scheersberg A crew was again told that the ship had been sold. A new crew came aboard, and another mystery voyage began. Port records show that the ship left Almeria, Spain, for a course through the Strait of 

Gibraltar and up the French coast just three days before the Cherbourg raid, which took place on Christmas morning, 1969. One of TIME'S sources reports that a refueling rendezvous with the gunboats took place in the Bay of Biscay, 300 nautical miles southwest of the mouth of the Loire -easy sailing distance from Almeria for the Scheersberg A.

Hull Scars. After this rendezvous, the ship arrived in the West German port of Brake on Dec. 30. It was sold by Biscayne Traders on Jan. 5, 1970, to a Greek shipping firm for approximately $235,000 -or $52,000 less than the 1968 purchase price. It bore scars on its hull, possibly from having scraped against its sister ship while the uranium was being transferred. The Scheersberg A, by then renamed Haroula, was sold again in 1976, to another Greek firm, the Pidalion Three Co.

The European Community investigation into the whereabouts of the missing uranium was frustratingly incomplete. Two months after the Scheersberg A sailed from Antwerp, the Common Market's atomic energy agency (Euratom) routinely asked the Italian paint company SAICA whether the uranium had arrived. When told no, Euratom began an inquiry into what it called the "Plumbat Affair." The search was hampered by the agency's lack of police powers, and after a few months Euratom called on security forces of the Western nations for help. A West German investigation was abruptly -and mysteriously- halted shortly after it began in 1969.

U.S. officials reacted calmly to Euratom's report of the missing uranium. Explains one U.S. nuclear expert: "Yellowcake is a very low level mineral, not bomb material." Only after complicated reprocessing can it be used to make nuclear weapons. It is believed that Israel completed such a reprocessing facility in 1969, and used it to produce a limited number of atomic bombs (TIME, April 12, 1976). The Carter Administration halted all U.S. exports of uranium -including yellowcake- last February, pending a review of U.S. export policies.

In Europe and the U.S., atomic energy officials say that the Plumbat Affair signals a need for tighter surveillance of nuclear shipments. Notes a former Euratom official: "The ways of stepping around international controls are as many as the ways of our Lord."


The tired old tramp steamer that carried the uranium oxide from Antwerp to the eastern Mediterranean is not likely to be involved in so adventurous a mission again. Last week the salt-caked Kerkyra returned empty to the Greek port of Halkis, after carrying a load of cement to Benghazi in Libya on its regular run. Beneath the paint of the new name, dockside onlookers can still discern welded letters spelling out the old, outlined in cement dust. Scheersberg A has come in out of the cold.

Fuentes principales:

1. http://elpais.com/elpais/2013/12/13/gente/1386960625_522173.html
2. http://elpais.com/diario/1994/12/01/sociedad/786236408_850215.html
3. Colaboracion de un lector anónimo, sobre el productor Arnold Milchan: http://www.lashorasperdidas.com/index.php/2013/11/26/el-prodctor-de-l-a-confidential-y-el-club-de-la-lucha-se-declara-agente-de-la-inteligencia-israeli/
4. Colaboracion de un lector anónimo, sobre el productor Arnold Milchan: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/26/arnon-milchan-israeli-spy-past
5. http://www.spyculture.com/movie-producer-israeli-nuclear-smuggling-ring/
6. https://www.richardsilverstein.com/2012/07/21/fbi-documents-confirm-involvement-of-hollywood-mogul-in-israeli-nuclear-smuggling-ring/
7. http://mondoweiss.net/2012/07/netanyahu-implicated-in-nuclear-smuggling-from-u-s-big-story-in-israel/
8. http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=5739062
9. http://www.veteranstoday.com/2017/05/08/the-movie-producer-and-the-israeli-nuclear-smuggling-ring/
10. Katzenbach surname: https://www.houseofnames.com/katzenbach-family-crest
11. https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/lyndon-johnson-no-better-friend-1.6073630