Ep 87: Israel (Part 2)

In the last episode, we analyzed potential motives that Israel would have to want President Kennedy out of office, making it clear that the Israeli government had a few reasons to want JFK out of the picture. But, this is nothing new in the study of the JFK Assassination. Every accused group or institution that we’ve studied and will be studying has a motive. That’s why they’re even in the conversation. And that’s why this case is so confusing. Sure, Israel had motive, but the real question is whether there was also means and opportunity. And, even then, much like with Lyndon Johnson, just because someone could have pulled it off does not prove that they actually did.

In this episode, we begin to explore whether Israel would have had the ability to assassinate Kennedy by analyzing the relationship of CIA Counterintelligence Chief, James Angleton, and the Israeli government.

ANGLETON BACKGROUND

If you’ve been listening to this podcast since the beginning, chances are that you’ve heard James Angleton’s name before. We talked about Angleton when discussing Mexico City, noting that he showed up at former CIA Station Chief, Winston Scott’s home in Mexico to take files out of his safe after Scott died. We also discussed Angleton in the context of Oswald’s CIA file being bifurcated by Angleton just before the Mexico City station asked about Oswald.^[1] Once we get to the examination of the Central Intelligence Agency, we’ll cover Angleton in-depth. But, for now, let’s get to know James Angleton in the context of his relationship with Israeli.

Starting in 1949, Angleton became the head of Staff A of the Office of Special Operations, which collected foreign intelligence and communicated with friendly foreign intelligence agencies.^[2] In that role, he would meet men like Reuven Shiloah, the founder of the Israeli Mossad.^[3] Angleton, who was rabidly anti-communist like most members of the American establishment, was initially wary of Israel because the Soviet Union was the first nation to give diplomatic recognition to Israel. But Angleton’s concern about Israel being loyal to the Soviet Union was allayed by Joseph Stalin’s arrest and murder of anyone promoting Jewish Culture within the USSR in 1948.^[4] Nevertheless, Angleton knew that Israel was an important strategic partner for the United States because he feared that it would become a place where the Soviets would launch spies into the West.^[5] 

ANGLETON AND MOSSAD

In April 1951, after visiting Washington the year before and being impressed by the Central Intelligence Agency, Reuven Shiloah, reorganized the Israeli security forces to create the Institute for Intelligence and Special Tasks, which became known as Mossad - the Hebrew word for “Institute.” Shiloah worked with Angleton to create an agreement for mutual information sharing between Israel and the US.  Angleton then became the CIA‘s exclusive liaison to the Israeli Mossad,^[6] which provided valuable information to the Agency about Arab states.^[7]

In 1954, Angleton ascended to the role of Counterintelligence Chief of the CIA, a title that he would maintain for twenty years. According to Angleton biographer, Tom Mangold, QUOTE “Angleton was extended such trust by his superiors that there was often a significant failure of executive control over his activities….[Angleton acted] without bureaucratic interference. The simple fact was that if Angleton wanted something done, it was done.”^[8] He even had control of a secret slush fund, which was approved by Director Allen Dulles, but was never audited or reviewed.^[9]

Angleton visited Israel frequently, befriending many of the top leaders of the Israeli government, including Reuven Shiloah’s Mossad successor, Isser Harel, whom Angleton admired for capturing Holocaust architect Adolf Eichmann. Angleton appreciated that Harel was building relationships with African leaders in an attempt to keep them from falling under the influence of the Soviets.^[10]

Angleton also had a good relationship with Harel’s Mossad successor, Meir Amit, who took over for Harel in March of 1963 after Harel had a falling out with Ben-Gurion.^[11] One of Angleton’s closest friends in Israel was Memi de Shalit, a military intelligence officer stationed at the Israeli embassy in the US. When de Shalit returned to Israel, Angleton often visited him. Angleton also got to know De Shalit’s brother, Amos de Shalit, a professor of nuclear physics who was a major contributor to the Dimona nuclear project.^[12] In addition, Angleton knew Asher Ben-Natan, the chief of nuclear procurement for Israel. Their relationship went back to World War II, when Ben-Natan provided intelligence to Angleton and the OSS about the Jewish Agency’s efforts to help war refugees emigrate to Palestine.^[13]

NUMEC

We’ll come back to James Angleton momentarily. But first, let’s pivot to a relevant question about Israel’s nuclear program: “How exactly did they make a nuclear bomb from scratch without the Americans knowing?” We know that Israel did, in fact, manufacture nuclear weapons. This was confirmed in 1986 when former Israeli nuclear technician, Mordechai Vanunu came forward to the British Press revealing dozens of photographs that proved that Israel had at least 100 nuclear warheads.^[14] Vanunu was later drugged by the Mossad in Italy and taken to Israel, where he was convicted and spent 18 years in an Israeli prison.^[15]

So, how did Israel obtain the uranium that would be required for a nuclear bomb? It is widely believed that it was smuggled from the United States by Americans who were sympathetic to the Israeli cause - a claim that deserves a closer look.

The story centers around David Lowenthal, who was raised in the US, but went to Europe after World War II to join the Haganah. The Haganah was the primary Zionist paramilitary organization, which was originally formed to defend Jewish settlements from attacks after a series of riots in the late 1920s and throughout the 1930s.^[16] Lowenthal helped buy a ship that allowed 8,000 Jews to emigrate to Palestine. Later, during the 1948 war, Lowenthal served under Meir Amit, the future Mossad chief.^[17]  

In 1955, David Lowenthal returned to Pennsylvania. Two years later, with the help of business partners Morton Chatkin and Ivan Novick,^[18] Lowenthal purchased a shuttered steel manufacturing plant in Apollo, PA, about 40 miles northeast of Pittsburgh. After Lowenthal resumed steel production at the plant, a subsidiary was formed with the purpose of creating nuclear fuel rods for use in nuclear reactors. The subsidiary was called the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation, or NUMEC.^[19]

Lowenthal tapped Atomic Energy Commission scientist, Zalman Shapiro, to lead NUMEC. The company began processing nuclear fuel rods in 1959.^[20] But, within a few years, enriched uranium began to disappear from NUMEC with unusual frequency, and in far higher volumes than at any other nuclear fuel rod plant. By March of 1968, NUMEC had lost 267 kilograms of enriched uranium that could not be explained.^[21] To put that into context, the bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima had 64 kg of enriched uranium.^[22]

WHERE’S THE URANIUM?

So, what was going on at NUMEC? Why did they seem to be hemorrhaging nuclear material? For the longest time, the answer to that question was unknown. There were numerous investigations into NUMEC, including by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the FBI, the CIA, the General Accounting Office, the National Security Council, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and two Congressional committees. Still, the disappearing nuclear fuel rods remained a mystery.^[23]

Then, in 2009, the FBI released a detailed statement made in 1980 by a former NUMEC employee who worked there from 1965 until 1978. That former employee said that in early April, 1965, he walked out on to the loading dock to get a breath of fresh air. When he was outside he QUOTE “noticed a flatbed truck backed up on to the loading dock with some strange equipment on it.”  

He also saw Dr. Zalman Shapiro, the man in charge of NUMEC, who rarely appeared at the manufacturing plant QUOTE “pacing around the loading dock … while [two other NUMEC employees] were loading stove pipes” on to the truck.” The stove pipes referred to were cylindrical storage containers used to store canisters of high enriched materials in the vaults at NUMEC. Notably, the two other employees who helped load the truck did not normally load and unload from the dock.^[24]

The former NUMEC employee then said that he looked at a clipboard that one of the men loading the truck had been holding after it was laid down on an empty drum on the dock. He then noticed that the shipping manifest on the clipboard said the material was heading to a ship bound for Israel.^[25] The clipboard was then taken back from the unnamed employee and he was told by those loading the truck that the information was QUOTE “confidential and not for his eyes.” The next day the plant personnel manager threatened to fire the man if he did not keep his mouth shut.^[26] 

In addition to this damning report from the former NUMEC employee, declassified FBI reports show that during the time Dr. Shapiro led NUMEC, he collaborated with the Science Attache office at the Israeli embassy in Washington and Israeli intelligence agencies, Shin Bet and Mossad.^[27] Moreover, FBI and Atomic Energy Commission reports indicate in September of 1968, four Israeli citizens known to be affiliated with Israeli intelligence visited NUMEC. One of them was Rafi Eitan, went on to become the head of Israel’s nuclear program Lekem.^[28]

Declassified CIA documents from the1970s show that CIA staffers Carl Duckett and John Hadden concluded that NUMEC uranium had been diverted to Israel. The CIA discovered highly enriched uranium near the Dimona plant with a signature that indicated the uranium could have only come from Portsmouth, Ohio. Uranium that came from Portsmouth was 97.7 percent enriched at the Atomic Energy Commission plant located near the Ohio River. Portsmouth was the only place in the world at that time that could create 97.7 percent enriched uranium. Most of the other uranium was enriched to only 93 percent. The Portsmouth uranium was used solely for US submarine reactor fuel, which is what NUMEC processed.^[29]

ANGLETON’S LOYALTY QUESTIONED

So, it is clear that Israel obtained nuclear fuel rods for Dimona by clandestinely taking them from the NUMEC plant. This begs the question of whether James Angleton was in on it. Angleton failed to notice or to report all of the stolen uranium that went missing from NUMEC, starting in 1959. We know that Angleton was looped in on the NUMEC missing nuclear fuel rod investigation in 1965 and that he discussed the case with his FBI liaison, Sam Papich, as well as CIA Tel Aviv station chief, John Hadden.^[30]

Hadden later told his son, QUOTE “the fact they stole it from us didn’t worry [Angleton] in the least. I suspect that in his inmost heart, he would’ve given it to them if they asked for it…I never sent anything to Angleton on [the nuclear program] because I knew he’d try to stop it if I did.”^[31] Hadden added QUOTE “I thought we ought to learn things about the Israelis, like whether or not they had a bomb. “[Angleton] didn’t think so.”^[32] As Angleton biographer Jefferson Morley noted, QUOTE “Angleton . . .thought collaboration with Israel was more important than U.S. non-proliferation policy.”^[33]

While there is no direct evidence that Angleton knew about the NUMEC fuel rod scheme, given his frequent contact with Mossad leaders and his close personal relationship with Memi de Shalit, whose brother was a scientist on the Dimona nuclear project, it’s easy to say that Angleton should have known about the Israeli nuclear program.

If Angleton wasn’t aware of Dimona’s development, he sure didn’t do anything to try to find out. President Eisenhower’s US Intelligence Board provided oversight of CIA operations on behalf of the White House. In 1960, Angleton ignored a request from the US Intelligence board that all information regarding Dimona be transmitted “expeditiously.”^[34] Moreover, New York Times foreign correspondent, Tad Szulc, said that sources close to Angleton say that he QUOTE “had indeed secretly aided Israel with technical nuclear information during the late 1950s.^[35]

Angleton was asked about this exact issue during his now declassified Church Committee testimony. He denied providing nuclear technical support to the Israelis, but when he was asked about whether he was aware of Israeli efforts in the United States to acquire nuclear technology, Angleton responded that QUOTE “There have been many efforts by many countries to acquire technical knowledge in this country, and that doesn’t exclude the Israelis.” When pressed on the question, Angleton said “Do I have to respond to that?” Then, the committee went off the record, which meant that we don’t know what was said.^[36]

HELPING THE ISRAELI WAR EFFORT

Angleton’s failure to stop Israel from becoming a nuclear power, isn’t the only reason that his critics believe his loyalty to the United States was in question. In October of 1956, there were rumors of war between Israel and Egypt, which led to an emergency meeting called by Robert Amory, head of the CIA Directorate of Intelligence. On October 26^th, Amory presented evidence that Israel was mobilizing to attack Egypt. Angleton told him that was not true because he was just with his Israeli friends the night before and they told him that Israel was merely carrying out protective measures against the Jordanians.

According to reporters Andrew and Leslie Cockburn, a frustrated Amory then said QUOTE “The taxpayer lays out $16,000 a year to me as your deputy director for me to give you the best intelligence available. Either you believe me or you believe this co-opted Israeli agent here [pointing to Angleton].”^[37] Three days after this meeting, where Angleton said Israel would not invade Egypt, Israel invaded Egypt.^[38]

1956 wasn’t the only time Angleton assisted the Israelis’ war plans, wittingly or not. According to what an unnamed National Security Agency official told the Cockburns, QUOTE “Jim Angleton and the Israeli’s spent a year cooking up the 67 war. It was a CIA operation designed to get Nasser.”^[39]

One of the most notable incidents during that period of what came to be known as the Six Day War was the sinking of the USS Liberty by Israeli fighter jets and torpedo boats. The American and Israeli governments both concluded that the attack, which resulted in 34 dead American servicemen, was an accident. However, critics, including the USS Liberty Veteran’s association, numerous historians, and former Secretary of State Dean Rusk, were not persuaded that the attack on the Liberty was an accident, arguing that the assault on the Liberty was instead a false flag attack that was intended to look like it came from Egypt, with the goal of drawing the US into the war.^[40]   

If the argument against Angleton is that he was extremely loyal to Israel, even the Israelis seem to agree with that sentiment. Meir Amit, the head of Mossad starting in 1963, said QUOTE “Angleton was an extraordinary asset for us. We could not have found ourselves a better advocate. He was the biggest Zionist of the lot.”

The Israelis demonstrated their appreciation for Angleton’s support. They threw a 50^th birthday party for him in Israel.^[41] And, when Angleton died in 1987, a special ceremony was attended by five former heads of Israeli intelligence agencies and three former military intelligence chiefs. The Israelis created a monument for Angleton behind the King David Hotel, not far from the walls of the Old City that says “In memory of a dear friend, James Angleton.” That monument is still there today.^[42]

RECENT DECLASSIFIED ANGLETON INFO

In 2025, previously redacted documents were released that shed light on Angleton’s relationship with the Israeli government. There are two major stories for our purposes. 

First, Angleton took credit for securing the release of several Zionist terrorists affiliated with the radical Irgun paramilitary, which had broken away from the more moderate and defense-focused Haganah.^[43] The Irgun was best known as being behind the bombing of the British Administrative Headquarters for Mandatory Palestine in 1946 and the Deir Yassin Massacre, committed along with radical group, Lehi, that killed 107 Palestinian villagers, including children, in 1948.^[44] The leader of the Irgun was Menachem Begin, who would go on to become the Prime Minister of Israel.^[45]

In October of 1946, the Irgun bombed the British Embassy in Rome. The Irgun members involved in that bombing were being held in Italy, awaiting extradition to Britain. According to Angleton’s declassified Church Committee testimony, he ensured that the Irgun terrorists never faced justice. Angleton said QUOTE “We had the members of the group, and then we had the dilemma again as to whether we turned them over to the British authorities and so on. And we were in a position to make the decision one way or the other. And eventually we came down on the side of releasing them.”^[46]

The second major revelation also dealt with Angleton’s now unredacted Church Committee testimony. Angleton said that he oversaw a spy ring involving Jewish emigres and Israeli operatives without any congressional or CIA oversight.^[47] He said that he started QUOTE “with two Jewish men who worked with me during the war.” Angleton sent these men to Israel as spies, and later six more people, all of whom were QUOTE “put through some months of training, outside of the structure” of the CIA.^[48] One of the spies in this off the books network run by Angleton, was Reuben Efron, who Angleton put in charge of running the HT/Lingual program, where Efron personally reviewed the correspondence between Lee Harvey Oswald and his family when Oswald was in the Soviet Union.^[49]

ANGLETON CONCLUSION

So, how does all of this talk about Angleton and Israel relate to the JFK Assassination?

One potentially suspicious anecdote involving Angleton is the story of his visit to former Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion’s house, just after Ben-Gurion resigned in the Summer of 1963. It comes from Efraim Halevy, the Mossad’s liaison officer to the CIA station in Tel Aviv in the early 1960s, who escorted Angleton everywhere he went in Israel. Halevy said that after Ben-Gurion left office, QUOTE “Angleton went down to [Ben Gurion’s home in the Negev desert] to meet him. I didn’t attend those meetings. Those were just the two of them. He had business to transact.”^[50]

Of course, if your theory is that Ben-Gurion was the mastermind and Angleton was the one executing the plan, this meeting seems to provide confirmation. But, then again, it’s also true that Angleton was close friends with Ben-Gurion for many years.^[51] So, this visit, could also be an old friend checking in. The part about having business to transact sounds nefarious, but the truth is that we don’t know what they talked about.

Was James Angleton closer than he should have been to Israel? Yes. Probably. But, as an unnamed friend of Angleton from the CIA told the Cockburns, QUOTE: “You have to understand Jim’s central dominating obsession was communism. Something that for him was the essence of absolute and profound evil. Sure, he liked Israel. But he was not a co-opted Israeli agent as some people in Washington used to call him.”^[52]

According to the most vocal proponents of the idea that Israel was behind the JFK Assassination, one of the keys to Israel’s involvement was its relationship with James Angleton. As students of the JFK case are well aware, Angleton appears to be the one controlling Oswald’s file at the CIA. For author Laurent Guyenot, that control of Oswald’s file, plus Angleton’s very close and unsupervised relationship with Israel, equals Israeli involvement due to Israel exerting influence on Angleton.^[53] Guyenot, without any supporting evidence, goes so far as to say that the Mossad controlled Angleton.

Similarly, Michael Collins Piper, who wrote the most extensive volume espousing the theory that Israel was the primary culprit in the JFK Assassination, also relies to some extent on James Angleton’s close relationship with Israel. However, unlike Guyenot, Piper does not argue that Israel controlled Angleton. Piper expressly states in his book, QUOTE “Angleton was a Mossad loyalist. No control was necessary.”^[54]

NEXT TIME ON SOLVING JFK: We continue our exploration of whether Israel had the means and opportunity to plan and execute the Kennedy Assassination, turning our attention to the theory set forth by Michael Collins Piper, which includes Meyer Lansky, Israeli bankers, and enigmatic entrepreneurial venture, known as Permindex.

^[1] See Solving JFK, Episodes 53 and 55.

^[2] Id.

^[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reuven_Shiloah

^[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Stalin_and_antisemitism

^[5] Jefferson Morley, The Ghost: The Secret Life of CIA Spymaster James Jesus Angleton, at 54-55.

^[6] Morley at 55. 

^[7] Wilbur Crane Eveland, Ropes of Sand: America’s Failure in the Middle East, at 95.

^[8] Tom Mangold, Cold Warrior – James Jesus Angleton: The CIA’s Master Spy Hunter, at 307.

^[9] Mangold at 52.

^[10] Morley at 171-172.

^[11] Id. at 172.

^[12] Id. at 174.

^[13] Id. at 174-175.

^[14] https://www.timesofisrael.com/nuclear-whistleblower-vanunu-convicted-for-violating-parole/

^[15] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mordechai_Vanunu

^[16] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haganah

^[17] Morley at 176.

^[18] https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/nuclear-vault/2016-11-02/numec-affair-did-highly-enriched-uranium-us-aid-israels-nuclear-weapons-program   

^[19] Morley at 175-176.

^[20] Id. at 176.

^[21] Id. at 176.

^[22] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enriched_uranium

^[23] https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/nuclear-vault/2016-11-02/numec-affair-did-highly-enriched-uranium-us-aid-israels-nuclear-weapons-program   

^[24] https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/22176-41-fbi-internal-report-interviews-divert

^[25] https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/22176-41-fbi-internal-report-interviews-divert

^[26] https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/22176-41-fbi-internal-report-interviews-divert

^[27] https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/nuclear-vault/2016-11-02/numec-affair-did-highly-enriched-uranium-us-aid-israels-nuclear-weapons-program   

^[28] https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/nuclear-vault/2016-11-02/numec-affair-did-highly-enriched-uranium-us-aid-israels-nuclear-weapons-program   

^[29] https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/nuclear-vault/2016-11-02/numec-affair-did-highly-enriched-uranium-us-aid-israels-nuclear-weapons-program; Morley at 173.    

^[30] https://www.wrmea.org/2018-may/cia-and-mossad-tradeoffs-in-the-formation-of-the-u.s.-israel-strategic-relationship.html

^[31] Morley at 178.

^[32] Id. at 173.

^[33] https://thegrayzone.com/2025/08/15/cias-angleton-israeli-spy-ring-files/

^[34] Morley at 92.

^[35] Wolf Blitzer, Between Washington and Jerusalem, at 89.

^[36] https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=238702#relPageId=99&search=fissionable

^[37] Cockburn at 65; Morley at 78.

^[38] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suez_Crisis

^[39] Cockburn at 146-147.

^[40] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Liberty_incident

^[41] Laurent Guyenot, The Unspoken Kennedy Truth, at 85 (citing Tom Segev, 1967: Israel, the War, and the Year that Transformed the Middle East, at 329-332).

^[42] Glenn Frankel, The Secret Ceremony, Washington Post, December 5, 1987; Andy Court, Spy Chiefs Honour a CIA Friend, Jerusalem Post, December 5, 1987.

^[43] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haganah

^[44] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irgun

^[45] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menachem_Begin

^[46] https://thegrayzone.com/2025/08/15/cias-angleton-israeli-spy-ring-files/

^[47] Id.

^[48] Id.

^[49] https://thegrayzone.com/2025/08/15/cias-angleton-israeli-spy-ring-files/

^[50] Morley at 171 (citing Arthur Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy and His Times, at 664).

^[51] Id.

^[52] Cockburn at 43.

^[53] Guyenot at 87.

^[54] Michael Collins Piper, Final Judgment: The Missing Link in the JFK Assassination Conspiracy, at 109.