© Yoav Lemmer-Pool/Getty ImagesRafi Eitan at an Israeli cabinet meeting in 2006
On September 10, 1968 Rafi 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.
Rafael Eitan, who died Saturday at age 92, was an already legendary intelligence operative by the time he came to America in 1968.
In 1960, he led the Mossad operation in 1960 to capture Adolf Eichmann, a Nazi functionary who presided over the liquidation of the European Jews. Eichmann's trial and subsequent execution was a
milestone in world understanding of the Holocaust. As his obituaries noted,
Eitan would go on a storied career that including running Jonathan Pollard, the Israeli spy whose arrest in 1985 cause a
serious rift between the U.S. and Israeli governments.
The
New York Times obituary mentioned of one of Eitan's most audacious and consequential operations:
"He was also suspected of being involved in the late-1960s disappearance of at least 100 pounds of highly enriched uranium from a nuclear fuel plant in the Pittsburgh area; many believed that the uranium was diverted to Israel to help its atomic bomb program."
After an
online complaint from pro-Israeli watchdog group CAMERA, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting,
the Times deleted the offending facts and appended a correction that was, unfortunately, more misleading than the original. The
Times correction stated, "though Mr. Eitan visited the plant around the time of the disappearance, it was never shown conclusively that he had had an important role in it."
Comment: It's also likely that any promises made by NATO were intended to be broken: