US
fugitive held in arms trade inquiryBy Julian Borger in
Washington
Tuesday July 31,
2001
The Guardian
Unlimited
The arrest of a 71-year-old American
fugitive in Spain has reopened a US inquiry into a smuggling
operation that supplied sensitive technology to Israel through a
company owned by a leading Hollywood film producer.
Richard Kelly Smyth, an avionics
expert and a former Nasa consultant, was arrested on July 10 in
Malaga on charges of nuclear arms trafficking and falsifying
documents. He and his wife had disappeared a week before his trial in
1985, triggering reports that they had been killed to silence
them.
In the 1980s Mr Smyth's firm, Milco
International Inc, sold high-speed switches, known as krytrons, to an
Israeli company, Heli-Trading.
Heli-Trading was owned by Arnon
Milchan, an Israeli-born businessman responsible for producing a long
list of Hollywood blockbusters including Pretty Woman, LA
Confidential and Fight Club. His company, Regency Productions, has
become a fixture of the Hollywood scene.
Krytrons are used in high-speed
photography and strobe lights, but the glass switches can also serve
as a trigger for a nuclear bomb, and their export is subject to
strict controls under the Arms Export Control Act.
However, according to Mr Smyth's
indictment, Mr Milchan exported the krytrons falsely labelled as
radio tubes.
Mr Milchan was not available for
comment yesterday, but in an interview last year on the CBS news
programme 60 Minutes he said he had allowed the Israeli government to
use his companies as a means of trading with the US. He said he was
not personally involved in the krytron deal.
Before establishing himself as a
movie producer, Mr Milchan was an arms trader, serving as a
middle-man between Israel and other governments, including the South
African apartheid regime.
Heli-Trading and Milchan Brothers,
another firm owned by the producer, also asked Milco to supply lasers
and chemicals used in solid fuel for powering long-range
missiles.
A former Milco director, a nuclear
scientist called Robert Mainhardt, resigned claiming that Mr Milchan
and Mr Smyth had asked him to obtain designs for advanced nuclear
reactors and uranium hexachloride, used in the enrichment of uranium
to bomb-grade quality.
Mr Milchan, who is a citizen of both
the US and Monaco, and who counts the Israeli politicians Shimon
Peres and Ehud Barak among his close friends, told CBS he was
addicted to danger.
"There was something in me that
wanted to do the most scary things," he said. "For me, it's maybe
like a drug. I guess I need a dose of it for oxygen."
The US justice department did not
return calls about Mr Smyth's case yesterday, but Washington is
expected to request the fugitive's extradition from Spain shortly.
