LONDON, March 10 (UPI) -- Britain secretly sold Israel plutonium during the 1960s despite intelligence warnings that it could help the country develop a nuclear bomb, it has emerged.
Classified files obtained by the BBC under the Freedom of Information Act detail how civil servants organized the deal with Tel Aviv, apparently without the knowledge of government ministers.
Israel requested 10mg of plutonium in 1966, but was refused after British defense intelligence officials warned that such an amount had "significant military value" and could enable the Jewish state to speed up its nuclear weapons program.
According to the documents, the request was rejected by officials in both the Ministry of Defense and the Foreign Office, who said it was government policy not to assist Israel in the production of nuclear weapons.
But the deal was reportedly forced through in secret by a Jewish civil servant, Michael Michaels, in the Ministry of Technology, which oversaw trade in nuclear material.
The documents also reveal Britain made hundreds of shipments to Israel of material which could have aided its bid for nuclear weapons, including compounds of uranium, lithium, beryllium and tritium, and heavy water.
Peter Kelly, then British defense intelligence's expert on the Israeli nuclear weapons program, knew Michaels. He told the BBC in a program broadcast Thursday night that he believed Michaels knew that Israel was trying to build an atomic bomb, but had dual loyalties to Britain and Israel.
Then Minister for Technology Tony Benn told the program that civil servants in his department kept the deals secret from him and his predecessor, Frank Cousins.
Benn said he had always suspected that civil servants were doing secret deals but never imagined they would sell plutonium to Israel. "I'm not only surprised, I'm shocked," he said. "It never occurred to me they would authorize something so totally against the policy of the government."
He said then Prime Minister Harold Wilson may not have known of Britain's involvement in the Israeli nuclear weapons program.
