concealment of WMD materials [ was RE: Kerry on Yucca Mt. and politics]

["Jaro" <jaro-10kbq@sympatico.ca>]

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I suspect that the topic of concealment

of WMD materials - including nuclear - is a valid topic for this list.

Other people are willing to accord a measure of the benefit of the doubt

w.r.t. those missing WMD materials which Ruth is referring to (below).

Typically, they cite the unexpected discoveries made during the inspections

following the Gulf War.

To me though, the more intriguing example is that of France's achievement -

during World War Two - of hiding their stock of uranium from the Nazis.

Everyone knows about the brutal interrogation methods those animals used -

far worse than anything that the media have been keeping themselves busy

with the last few weeks concerning prisoner abuse in Iraq - yet the Nazis

never succeeded in finding the French stash (by contrast, their numerous

successes in compromising French partisan cells are equally well

known.....).

The recently deceased French nuclear pioneer Bertrand Goldschmidt described

the episode in his book, Pionniers de l'Atome :



<begin quote>



TRANSFER OF THE URANIUM TO MOROCCO

On the other hand, those who saved the stockpile of the College de France by

transporting it to Morocco and then hiding it there rendered an outstanding

service to French nuclear development. They never took advantage of it,

having maintained absolute secrecy on the operation until I undertook to

recount the events for this book.



Halban, who had first gone to England and then later to the United States,

learned before his departure from France on June 18, 1940, of this transfer

to Morocco, but he knew little more than that.. Interrogated on several

occasions by the British and U.S. intelligence services (as was Joliot by

the Germans during the Occupation), he could not give them the least

indication as to where it was. Had he been able to do so, he would certainly

have informed them in good faith, and the fate of this uranium would have

been the same as that of the stock in Toulouse. That would have struck a

serious blow to the subsequent launching of France's national effort.



Trying to clarify this question, I found only a cryptic note in the diary

kept by Halban off and on after his departure from France. In a May 1943

entry he mentions that, in the course of a conversation with Francis Perrin

in New York, he got the vague impression that a physicist from Maurice de

Broglie's laboratory, Serge Gorodetzky, had perhaps transported this uranium

to Morocco in a motorboat across the Mediterranean.



Although it seemed to me improbable that the transport of such a tonnage

could be made in a motorboat and that the one responsible would have kept

the episode secret for nearly half a century, I decided at the beginning of

1987 to talk to Gorodetzky, who had just concluded his career as professor

at the University of Strasbourg. He had in fact played a major role in the

operation but never considered it necessary to boast about it.



As the Germans approached, Joliot had asked the help of the Ministry of

Armaments, on whom he depended to safeguard his uranium stockpile; some 130

crates and small barrels were then evacuated to Bordeaux. This is where

Serge Gorodetzky enters the picture. He had been commissioned at the

laboratory of Louis Leprince-Ringuet at the Ecole Polytechnique, but when

the Germans invaded France he succeeded in obtaining orders from General

Maxime Weygand, the chief of staff for a mission to England. When he arrived

in Bordeaux around June 15, 1940, and found no means to cross the Channel,

he opted for a cargo vessel leaving for Morocco. He was then asked if he

would be willing to take charge, in the greatest secrecy, of conveying to

Morocco and from there possibly to England Joliot's stockpile of uranium

along with some instruments, documents, and precious objects of the

scientist (the diploma and gold medal of the Nobel Prize among them). He

accepted the new mission, and having survived a German bombardment of

Bordeaux, as did the ship, left before the request for the Armistice of June

17, sailed along the coast of Portugal, and arrived unscathed in Casablanca

about ten days later.



Total confusion then reigned in Morocco, where the liner Massilia had just

arrived from Bordeaux loaded with former ministers, members of Parliament,

and other VIPs because the government had decided to move itself, along with

the two chambers, to North Africa. Several of these members of Parliament -

among them Edouard Daladier and Pierre Mendes France - were then accused of

abandoning their post and were arrested on their arrival by General Charles

Nogues, the resident-general, on orders of the Petain government.



Fortunately Jean Perrin, who also arrived on the Massilia, had not been

bothered. Gorodetzky confided in him; there evidently was no longer any

question of transferring the uranium to England, and it became more and more

difficult to prevent the existence of this cumbersome stockpile from

becoming common knowledge in Casablanca. The Moroccan dockworkers already

had found the unexpected weight of the crates and barrels suspicious, and a

radiologist from Casablanca who had been notified - heaven knows how -

urgently wanted to put his hands on the stockpile and hide it in his cellar.



Jean Perrin entrusted the documents to Jean Marçais, director of the

Moroccan Scientific Institute in Rabat. Marçais put Gorodetzky in touch with

the Division of Mines and Geology of the protectorate and its director,

Jacques Bondon, then a young state mining engineer, another modest fellow

who kept the secret of his role (along with his colleague from the

Scientific Institute) until I interrogated them recently. Bondon,

understanding the importance of his task, had the heavy crates and barrels

transported by night from Casablanca to the mine of Khouribga of the

Moroccan Office of Phosphates by the "phosphate train," which returned empty

from the port to the mine.

A few days later the entire stock was placed at the end of an abandoned mine

shaft and the tunnel was walled up. Finally, in order to cover up

effectively all traces of the operation in case anyone should start to ask

indiscreet questions, Bondon, still in the greatest secrecy, drew up a new

plan of the mine - and the mine shaft in question disappeared.



Thus we owe to the devotion and discretion of Gorodetzky, Jean Perrin,

Marçais, and Bondon the crucial rescue of this uranium, which remained

hidden from July 1940 until the beginning of 1946 in a mine belonging to the

Moroccan state without any local or Allied official ever knowing about it.

<END QUOTE>



But that that was "old Europe" (to quote Don Rumsfeld).

Things are different today :-)

(....actually, that's really true, with Tony Blair in the UK at least...)



 Jaro

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^







-----Original Message-----

From: owner-radsafe@list.vanderbilt.edu

[mailto:owner-radsafe@list.vanderbilt.edu]On Behalf Of

RuthWeiner@AOL.COM

Sent: Monday, May 17, 2004 4:24 PM

To: "Stabin, Michael"; radsafe@list.vanderbilt.edu

Subject: RE: Kerry on Yucca Mt. and politics



<snip>

Would that the White House incumbent had been intelligent enough, or honest

enough, to question his own positions on those centrifuge tubes, uranium

purchases, and weapons of mass destruction, for example.

<snip>

 I would rather have a President who listens and is capable of changing his

mind than one who stubbornly sticks to falsehoods and deceptions.



Ruth



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