Wow, they had the West goin’ for 1400 years...
Why should they? Look who is in the White House!
Duh!
Fact: ALL Muslims lie, as they think the circumstances warrant - it's a religious right called al taqiyya.
Won't be started by the US. Obama's got their six.
Iran can expect an angry letter from the UN anytime now.
If youd like to be on or off, please FR mail me.
..................
I am shocked.
Relevant to all this is a story I’ve just read that is apparently very big with the anti-Israel, pro-Arab crowd. Just wondering if any FReepers have some information in it.
A fellow named Grant F. Smith, who edits an online site calling itself “Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy,” has been pushing a story about allegedly smuggled US technology into Israel for its nuclear weapons program. The technology in question was something called a “krytron,” which looks a bit like an old-fashioned vacuum tube, and is used in strobe lights, photocopy machines, and interestingly as a trigger for nuclear devices. Smith linked to a heavily redacted FBI file recently declassified telling the following story:
Back in the 1980s, a physicist and businessman named Richard Kelly Smyth ran a company in the U.S. called MILCO, which shipped a lot of tech equipment to an Israeli import/export company operating in the U.S. called Heli. The guy in charge of Heli at the time was a young Israeli entrepreneur destined to become a famous Hollywood movie producer named Arnon Milchan (”Pretty Woman,” “L.A. Confidential,” etc.). Over the course of a few years, MILCO shipped over 800 krytrons to Heli, who, according to records, shipped these to the Israeli Ministry of Defense.
According to some accounts of this story, Benjamin Netanyahu worked for Heli at the time, and that is how he and Milchan got to know each other.
Additionally, Milchan was supposedly running Heli intentionally as a front organization for a military department in Israel known as LAKAM, set up (according to these accounts) specifically for smuggling technology to Israel.
Since these krytrons are considered “dual use” by the U.S., a special permit is required to ship them abroad; a permit that had apparently been at first denied. The legal issue arose when MILCO’s Richard Kelly Smyth shipped them out claiming they were “general use” vacuum tubes.
Anyway, the FBI nabbed Richard Kelly Smyth, who panicked and fled with his wife to Malaga, Spain, where they lived off their Social Security and charity from friends and family for 15 years. A silly slip-up by Smyth brought them to the attention of Interpol, and they found themselves extradited back to the U.S. Smyth served some minimal time in prison on account of his age (72), and was released in 2005.
Several papers have had stories about this. Additionally, two writers have recounted it in their recent biography (unauthorized) of Arnon Milchan. You can read about it here:
One source of this story, from a nuclear-proliferation page on a King’s College, London, website, says that after the original arrest of Richard Kelly Smyth, the Israeli military returned the remaining krytrons, denying they were intended for weapons use.
Now, my own take on this is that Israel already had nukes by the 1980s; I think they tested their first nuke around 1963 off of New Caledonia, with the help of the French. So I’m not sure that by the 1980s, they would have so desperately required a simple device like a krytron to set off their own weapons if they can develop their own nukes, wouldn’t they also be able to develop their own triggers?
However, the anti-Israel crowd has been pushing this story pretty hard; it crops up on websites and message boards a lot. When I follow the links, I always come up with Grant F. Smith and his Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy, but I can’t find any background on him. I’ve checked “Discover The Network.org” and done some general Google searches, but have come up empty.
If any FReepers have information on the guy, his organization, or any further details on the above story, I’d sure appreciate it. Many thanks!
- GoodDay