Synopsis
Roger J. Mattson’s Stealing the Atom Bomb: How Denial and Deception Armed Israel provides a meticulous investigation into the "NUMEC affair," a long-standing controversy involving the potential diversion of weapons-grade uranium from a processing plant in Apollo, Pennsylvania, to Israel during the 1960s. Mattson, a former high-ranking official at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, uses declassified documents and forensic analysis to argue that the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation (NUMEC) served as a conduit for Israel’s clandestine nuclear weapons program. The narrative centers on Zalman Shapiro, the president of NUMEC, whose close ties to Israeli intelligence and the documented loss of hundreds of kilograms of highly enriched uranium raised significant red flags within American intelligence circles.
The book contends that the disappearance of this material was not merely the result of sloppy accounting or industrial waste, as was often officially claimed, but rather a deliberate act of state-sponsored theft. Mattson explores the interplay between the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, the FBI, and the CIA, detailing how institutional inertia and political sensitivities often hampered investigations. He suggests that the high-level "denial and deception" mentioned in the title extended beyond the perpetrators to include U.S. officials who may have preferred to overlook the diversion rather than confront the geopolitical fallout of Israel’s nuclear emergence.
Beyond the technicalities of nuclear material accounting, Mattson’s work serves as a critique of the oversight mechanisms intended to prevent proliferation during the Cold War. By reconstructing the timeline of visits by Israeli agents to the Pennsylvania plant and the subsequent discovery of "material unaccounted for," the book paints a picture of a successful intelligence operation that significantly accelerated Israel's pursuit of a nuclear deterrent. It ultimately challenges the official historical narrative, suggesting that the birth of Israel’s nuclear capability was inextricably linked to a security breach on American soil that the U.S. government has never fully acknowledged.