The August 8 explosion in Russia that killed seven people and set up a radioactive plume remains unexplained. The Russian government agencies reporting on radiation levels have gone silent. The explosion took place at a missile testing facility where Russia’s latest weapons are developed. When President Vladimir Putin displayed what have been dubbed his “wonder...
Category: Counterproliferation
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JFK Confronted Israel Over Its Secret Nuclear Program
Avner Cohen and Bill Burr are two of the best historians on the secret Israeli nuclear program of the 1960s, which made Israel the Middle East’s first nuclear power. It almost didn’t happen. In a brief for the non-profit National Security Archives and an article for Haaretz.com,Cohen and Burr explain that the program was almost...
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Moon Jae-in Seeks to Forge Peace on the Korean Peninsula
South Korean president Moon Jae-in will visit President Trump in the White House today, the latest step on his long and winding and still unfinished journey toward the goal on which he has bet his presidency: denuclearization and disarmament on the Korean peninsula. As I’ve said before, parochial Americans, obsessed with the North Korean dictator...
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RIP Rafi Eitan, Mastermind of Mossad’s Uranium Heist
On September 10, 1968 Raphael Eitan and three other Israeli nationals arrived in Apollo, Pennsylvania, a small city north of Pittsburgh that was home to a company called the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation. NUMEC packaged and stored enriched uranium, which it supplied to nuclear power plants in northeastern United States. Eitan, who died Saturday...
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Do We Need Spies? For Counterproliferation, Yes
One of the most important–and least controversial–missions for the CIA and other intelligence agencies is counteproliferation: the detection and disruption networks of people seeking to obtain weapons of mass destruction. Defense One reports Slovenia and other small European countries are offering help to develop counterproliferation technology.