- The UK supplied Israel with quantities
of plutonium while Harold Wilson was prime minister, BBC Newsnight can
reveal.
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- The sale was made despite a warning
from British intelligence that it might "make a material contribution
to an Israeli weapons programme".
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- Under Wilson, Britain also sold Israel
tons of chemicals used to make boosted atom bombs 20 times more powerful
than Hiroshima or even Hydrogen Bombs.
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- In Harold Macmillan's time the UK supplied
uranium 235 and the heavy water which allowed Israel to start up its nuclear
weapons production plant at Dimona - heavy water which British intelligence
estimated would allow Israel to make "six nuclear weapons a year".
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- All export licensing of materials associated
with civil nuclear programmes went through stringent checks across Whitehall
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- Foreign Office
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- Last August on BBC Newsnight we revealed
the first British/Israeli deal, the sale of the heavy water, but the government
responded by telling the International Atomic Energy Agency the UK was
not a party to any sale to Israel and that all it did was sell some heavy
water back to Norway.
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- Hundreds of shipments
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- Using Freedom of Information, Newsnight
has obtained top secret papers. They show Foreign Minister Kim Howells
misled the IAEA and that Britain made not one, but hundreds of secret shipments
of nuclear materials to Israel.
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- Tony Benn, who was Minister of Technology
in 1966, is shocked to learn of the sales
- Tony Benn became Minister of Technology
in 1966 while the plutonium deal was going through. The nuclear industry
was part of his "white heat of technology" brief but no one told
him that we were exporting atomic energy materials to Israel.
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- "I'm not only surprised, I'm shocked,"
he says, adding that neither he nor his predecessor Frank Cousins, who
was a member of CND, agreed to the sales.
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- Benn says he always suspected civil
servants were doing deals behind his back but he never thought they would
sell plutonium to Israel. "It never occurred to me they would authorise
something so totally against the policy of the government."
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- Dimona
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- Back in August 1960 covertly taken photos
of a mysterious site at Dimona in Israel arrived at Defence Intelligence
Staff (DIS) in Whitehall. A brilliant analyst called Peter Kelly immediately
realized they showed a secret nuclear reactor and he alerted the rest of
British intelligence.
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- Kelly recognized it was a French reactor
and soon discovered where the heavy water to run it had come from.
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- Selling plutonium to Israel was against
UK government policy
- Britain had bought heavy water from Norsk
Hydro in Norway for its nuclear weapons programme but found it was surplus
to requirements and needed a buyer. The papers obtained by Newsnight show
that a company called Noratom acted as a consultant and arranged the deals
in return for a 2% commission.
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- Britain knew all along that Israel wanted
the heavy water "to produce plutonium" and Israel paid the full
military price - £1 million - to avoid safeguards to stop the plutonium
being used to make nuclear weapons.
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- Kelly discovered a charade was played
out with the UK and Israeli delegations sitting in adjacent rooms while
Noratom ferried separate contracts to and fro so Britain could say they
hadn't signed a deal with Israel.
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- Cover story
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- Once the press heard about Dimona in
December 1960 there was an international outcry. Israel put out a cover
story that it was a small research reactor. This did not fool Kelly. Using
the figure of 20 tons of heavy water he estimated that Israel could build
a reactor capable of producing "significant quantities of plutonium".
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- Michael Crick has used Freedom of Information
to obtain secret papers
- British intelligence learnt there was
also a reprocessing plant and concluded "the separation of plutonium
can only mean that Israel intends to produce nuclear weapons". Kelly
even discovered that an Israeli observer had been allowed to watch one
of the first French nuclear tests in Algeria.
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- Kelly and his colleagues in intelligence
soon found their views about Israel were being challenged by Britain's
representative at the IAEA Mike Michaels, who worked for one of the main
figures in Harold Macmillan's Cabinet - Lord Hailsham.
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- Michaels received a JIC report early
in 1961 estimating Israel would take at least three years to make enough
plutonium and then another six months to work out how to make a bomb.
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- But it occurred to him that a friendly
power might give Israel a small sample of plutonium to speed up the process.
"Perhaps the French have supplied a small quantity for experimental
purposes as we did to the French in like circumstances some years ago,"
he noted in the margin of the report. A few years later Michaels persuaded
the UK to sell Israel a small sample of plutonium when he was aware - as
this note shows - that this might cut months off the time it took them
to get the Bomb.
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- Invitation
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- The Israeli nuclear chief, Ernst David
Bergmann, personally invited Michaels to Israel. Kelly warned Israel might
use Michaels as part of a disinformation campaign to show "everything
is above board". Michaels was given VIP treatment. He met not only
Bergmann but Shimon Peres and Prime Minister David Ben Gurion - the three
fathers of the Israeli Bomb.
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- As Kelly suspected, Michaels' report
gave Israel the all clear and he handed it to Hailsham at a crucial time,
two days before Ben Gurion met Harold Macmillan at Downing Street.
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- Tony Benn thinks it inconceivable that
Harold Wilson knew of atomic exports to Israel
- In 1962 the Dimona reactor started turning
uranium into plutonium, thanks to the heavy water Britain had delivered,
but Michaels continued to protest Israel's innocence.
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- Then at the beginning of 1966 UK Atomic
Energy Authority made what they remarkably called a "pretty harmless
request". They wanted to export 10 milligrammes of plutonium to Israel.
The MoD strongly objected and Defence Intelligence wrote directly to say
the sale might have "significant military value".
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- The Foreign Office told UKAEA "It
is HMG's policy not to do anything which would assist Israel in the production
of nuclear weapons" and therefore they blocked the sale.
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- Sale
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- Michaels wrote angrily "to protest
strongly" against the decision. Five years earlier he had noted such
a sale could speed up the Israeli bomb programme, now he was powerfully
advocating just that. He said small quantities of plutonium were not important
and anyhow if we didn't sell it to the Israelis someone else would. The
Foreign Office gave in and the sale went ahead. Kelly believes Mike Michaels
knew all along that Israel was after the Bomb. He died in 1992.
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- Tony Benn is incredulous that Michaels
never referred the Israeli nuclear sales to him or Frank Cousins. They
were after all the ministers in charge of Britain's nuclear industry including
imports and exports. "Michaels lied to me. I learned by bitter experience
that the nuclear industry lied to me again and again".
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- The atomic files, which have been classified
until now, detail hundreds of nuclear deals with Israel flagged up as sensitive.
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- Benn's initial reaction to whether Harold
Wilson knew about atomic exports to Israel was "it's inconceivable".
Then he muses: "Harold was sympathetic to Israel," before concluding
that this was probably a conspiracy by civil servants and the nuclear industry
to flout HMG policy.
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- This report was shown on Newsnight on
Thursday, 9 March, 2006.
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