I honestly can’t think of many more topics that are more appropriate for a conspiracy forum than this.
Incredibly, while many well-meaning and otherwise intelligent individuals are beside themselves over alleged Russia/Trump collusion, actual collusion is occurring between the US and another country. However, since the country in question is Israel, TPTB have no desire to whip the people into a frenzy.
via antiwar:
According to Entous, President Trump’s aides felt “blindsided” by Israeli ambassador Ron Dermer’s urgent demand to sign a fourth letter. Only a small number of “senior American officials” in the previous three administrations even knew about the existence of such letters. Though said not to specifically mention Israel’s arsenal, Israeli leaders interpret the letters as binding American pledges not to publicly mention Israel’s nuclear weapons or press Israel to sign the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT).
The Israelis, empowered by their $6.3 billion per year US affinity network, are ever eager to curtail informed public discussion and policymaking about Israel’s nuclear weapons stockpile. Entous notes that Israel already had three nuclear devices by 1967 but does not examine how a country with no infrastructure to produce highly-enriched uranium managed to assemble such weapons. According to CIA and FBI files, Israel colluded with Pennsylvania nuclear processing plant administrators, two connected to Israeli intelligence and three with strong connections to the Zionist Organization of America, to divert enough US government-owned highly-enriched uranium to build several devices in the 1960s. The pillage of NUMEC, a privately-held thinly capitalized Atomic Energy Agency contractor, left behind a toxic mess and hundreds of poisoned, uncompensated victims.
The article concludes:
Most Americans believe Israel has nuclear weapons and that Congress should factor Israel’s nuclear arsenal into congressional discussions about US foreign aid given to Israel to allegedly maintain its “qualitative military edge.” In polls, Americans consistently say the US gives too much aid to Israel.
Excluding clandestine US aid funneled through black budgets, US presidents and Congress have given an inflation-adjusted sum of $222.8 billion to Israel since the Symington & Glenn Amendments became law in 1976. Since Bill Clinton became the first known US president to sign a secret letter to Israel, inflation-adjusted aid to Israel has grown to $99.9 billion.
While the MSM has whipped people up into a fury over alleged Russia/Trump collusion, the US government has routinely colluded with another country, namely Israel. Shockingly, each new administration is “expected” to obey the wishes of Israel, and yet the MSM rarely touches upon this disturbing level of blackmail.
via newyorker:
When a delegation of senior Israeli officials visited the Trump White House on February 13, 2017, they wanted to discuss several issues with their new American counterparts. Topping the list was a secret letter concerning a subject the Israelis had promised the Americans never to discuss publicly—Israel’s undeclared nuclear arsenal. In a recent piece for The New Yorker, I described a tense scene in the West Wing as the Israeli delegation—which included Israel’s Ambassador to the United States, Ron Dermer—tried to get the letter signed by President Donald Trump. By all accounts, the American Administration was eager to please the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, whom Trump had promised to lavish with unprecedented support. But, at that chaotic moment, Trump’s aides felt blindsided by the Israeli request. They knew nothing about the existence of any letters and were confused by the sense of urgency coming from the Israelis. The Americans had other pressing concerns—later that day, Michael Flynn, the national-security adviser, would hand in his resignation letter—and they didn’t appreciate feeling as though the Israelis were telling them what to do. “This is our fuckin’ house,” one of the Americans snapped.
The White House’s reaction was understandable. There had been a similar moment of surprise eight years earlier, when Barack Obama became President and received a similar request. The very existence of the letters had been a closely held secret. Only a select group of senior American officials, in three previous Administrations, knew of the letters and how Israeli leaders interpreted them as effectively an American pledge not to press the Jewish state to give up its nuclear weapons so long as it continued to face existential threats in the region. (American officials say the letters weren’t that explicit and fell short of constituting a binding commitment.) When Trump’s aides moved into the White House, they didn’t find any copies of the previous letters left behind by their predecessors. The documents had been sent to the archives. The Israelis, however, had copies.
Israel crossed the nuclear threshold on the eve of the Six-Day War, in 1967. At that time, it had three nuclear devices, according to Avner Cohen, a nuclear historian at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey and the author of two books on the origins of Israel’s nuclear program. Israeli efforts to build a bomb at the nuclear complex in Dimona had been a source of tension with Washington for nearly a decade. But, by the fall of 1969, when Golda Meir, Israel’s Prime Minister, met with Richard Nixon at the White House, Israel’s possession of nuclear weapons was a fait accompli and the two sides reached an unwritten understanding: the Israelis would not declare, test, or threaten to use their nuclear weapons, and the Americans would not pressure the Israelis to sign a landmark international nuclear-nonproliferation treaty known as the N.P.T. (Israel never became a signatory, and U.S. efforts to inspect Dimona stopped.)
Successive Israeli governments abided by the arrangement, which, in Hebrew, is referred to as “amimut,” which means opacity. In English, the arrangement is often referred to as Israel’s “policy of ambiguity.” A joint document describing the agreement was never prepared. Instead, each side relied on its own notes, a former official said. President Gerald Ford abided by Nixon’s deal. Israeli officials were concerned that Jimmy Carter would chart a different course, but the American position, through the Carter and Reagan Administrations, remained unchanged.
h/t axolotl_peyotl