by Dan Raviv
The war years further strengthened Klingberg’s belief in Communism and in the unique, positive, global role of the Soviet Union.
Klingberg was discharged at the end of the war with the rank of captain. Like many Jews who had found shelter in Soviet territory, he returned to his homeland. Of the Jews who came back to Poland, quite a few quickly emigrated to Palestine. Klingberg was a staunch believer in Communism, so he decided to stay in Poland and contribute to the creation of a socialist society there under Stalin’s tutelage.
He married Wanda Yashinskaya, who was a microbiologist and a Warsaw Ghetto survivor. Wanda was made of tough stuff. She was determined, confident, and opinionated. When Wanda decided that they should not live in a Poland where the soil was tainted with the blood of millions of Jews, her husband caved in.
The couple left in 1946, first for Sweden but with the hope of continuing on to what generations of Yiddish-speakers called the goldene medina (golden country): the United States of America.
Paperwork and finances left them stuck in Sweden, where Wanda gave birth to their only child, Sylvia, in 1948. The winter was rough, and the Klingbergs were split on whether to remain in Scandinavia.
According to him, “Wanda wanted to stay in Sweden. But I was offered a chance to volunteer and help Israel in its War of Independence. I wasn’t a Zionist, but since I didn’t like Sweden, I decided to take the offer. She loathed the idea of going to Israel, but she and the baby joined me.”
For young Dr. Klingberg, the decision was justified by one more fact: “I did it also because, at that time, the Soviet Union supported Israel.”
Four days after Klingberg arrived in Israel, he was drafted into the medical corps of the nascent Israeli army. He joined a department that was dealing with the prevention of diseases, and between the battle zones and the arrival of Jewish immigrants in various states of health, there was plenty to do.
In light of his military experience and his medical degree, Klingberg was quickly promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel. He and his family were given an apartment in Jaffa, a previously Arab port city that pre-dated its new Jewish neighbor, Tel Aviv.
The Israel Defense Forces did not ask any questions about his background or his motivations. No security scanning was required. The IDF needed professionals, and it was taken for granted—or accepted merely on his say-so—that Dr. Klingberg truly was a qualified doctor and skillful epidemiologist. Before long, his wife also found a job as a microbiologist with the medical corps.
Klingberg monitored the IDF’s hygiene and vaccinated servicemen against malaria and other sicknesses. The Israeli army, as a mirror image of the society at large, was a tight-knit, intimate community. It was rather easy for this prestigious Polish immigrant to meet, rub shoulders with, and befriend the top echelon: from the chief of staff, General Dayan, to Prime Minister Ben-Gurion.
In 1953, after clashes with his immediate superior in the medical corps, Klingberg resigned as head of the disease prevention department but remained in uniform with another medical unit.
That was the year when, “for the first time since my childhood, I cried like a baby,” he reminisced. “I didn’t cry when I said farewell to my parents and my brother during the war, and not even when I was informed that they were murdered in a concentration camp.” What prompted him and Wanda to weep was the news they heard over the radio on March 5, 1953: that Stalin had just died. “The tears shed by my strong-willed wife further emphasized for me the depth of the tragedy.”
In 1957, a budget crunch forced the closure of the medical unit in which Klingberg had been serving. He was officially discharged from the IDF, but he was not unemployed for even a single day. He gladly accepted a senior post at the IIBR. His wife already worked there, and she eventually completed her Ph.D.
The Institute’s locale, Nes Tziona, had a noteworthy role in Israel’s creation. It was one of the first Jewish agricultural villages, established in Turkish-ruled Palestine in 1883 with the help of the French Jewish philanthropist Baron Edmond de Rothschild. Young Jewish immigrants from Europe settled there, a quarter-century before Tel Aviv was built on sand dunes 15 miles to the northwest. The settlers—in what would become the heartland of the State of Israel—battled malaria, Arab gangs, and other crises to establish a Zionist foothold in the Promised Land of the Bible where Jews had a kingdom long ago.
All around the Institute and its imposing walls, set atop a hill, are orchards: grapefruits and oranges dotting the trees with color, the beauty of citrus blossoms in the spring, as well as the sight and scent of strawberry fields.
The Institute’s original buildings were much older than the secretive laboratories. Decorated by glorious arches and other features of classic Arabesque architecture, these houses had been home to a wealthy Palestinian Arab landowner. As part of the fog of the 1948-1949 war, the Arabs either left or were forced out, and the Israeli government became the landowner.
Over the years, modern buildings were built, some as tall as five stories with glass, steel, some traditional Middle Eastern motifs, and modern anti-intrusion systems. Expensive world-class labs were added for “applied research” in biology, microbiology, chemistry, and pharmacology.
Administratively, the Institute belongs to the Prime Minister’s Office, but responsibility for its security and for guarding its secrets lies with Malmab—the tough-as-nails security agency within the Defense Ministry.
The biological institute, after all, does not exist for the purpose of publishing treatises or winning Nobel Prizes. Its very existence stems from Israel’s perceived need for self-protection of the highest order. Ben-Gurion was obsessed with having a significant technological advantage over his country’s Arab neighbors. Many parts of his vision became classified programs, although it was no secret that the IDF had the Heyl Mada—the Science Corps, known by the Hebrew acronym Hemed, led by Munia Mardor and Professor David Ernst Bergman.
Mardor would become the head of Rafael, the state-owned Armaments Development Authority. In 2002, it would morph into Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Ltd., owned by shareholders but doing vast quantities of secret work, including the weaponization of many scientific innovations. Professor Bergman, of course, had become the one-man Israeli Atomic Energy Commission in the 1950s.
Mardor and Bergman, who proved for decades that they were adept at keeping secrets, intended to grow the Institute at Nes Tziona into a complex of “national laboratories” in the mold of America’s most prestigious defense research centers and laboratories. The Israelis were well aware that the United States set an impressive example of what could be accomplished when people with fine minds, a strong sense of dedication, and assurance of full support from their government are brought together in a brainy hothouse.
The Institute became one of the most clandestine compounds in Israel. Until the mid-1990s, its location was not even marked on maps of the country. That ruse was deemed moot after Arab websites published the coordinates of its precise location, along with pictures of Nes Tziona taken by commercial satellites. Yet electronic spies, high overhead, cannot read minds or see inside buildings. No foreigners and very few Israelis could know or guess, with any precision, what was taking place inside the facility.
Sources claimed, without giving details, that biological and chemical weapons were developed there—as well as protective measures against an enemy attack using those kinds of non-conventional arms. International treaties ban the use of such weapons, but Israelis from Ben-Gurion’s time until the present day believe that the Middle East is a region of fervent hatred, deception, and rule-breaking. The Israelis were not going to gamble their own existence on the likelihood that treaties would be honored.
Israeli scientists and engineers are among the world’s best, so creating a range of offensive measures, antidotes, and defensive mechanisms was well within their capabilities. Quantities and exact locations of stockpiles remain strictly classified.
Examples abound of how sensitive Israel has bee
n about the work done at Nes Tziona, but some specifics about how the authorities preserved secrecy were themselves blocked from publication.
The Institute’s researchers partnered, at times, with the Ministry of Defense, the armed forces, and other parts of the Israeli government.
One of the most innovative attacks on a terrorist was death by chocolate. In 1977, boxes of poisoned chocolates were sent to Dr. Wadia Haddad, the lethally ambitious military chief of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The Israelis knew that Haddad operated Ilich Ramirez Sanchez—the Venezuelan terrorism subcontractor best known as Carlos. Haddad was also the mastermind behind the hijacking of Israeli and Western airliners.
It was fairly easy to discover that the evil doctor loved chocolates, and poisonous sweets were prepared. Haddad, thinking they were from a trusted colleague, ate them; and that was apparently the cause of his death a few months later in East Germany, where doctors were baffled by the 50-year-old’s disease.
Poisons meant to work in untraceable ways became an Israeli specialty, and Russia’s espionage chiefs must have been happy to learn all about many kinds of innovations and inventions by having a spy for almost three decades inside the Nes Tziona institute.
Klingberg was not just any spy. He had a phenomenal memory: retaining names, dates, and places—able to describe in great detail the appearance of people he met and what they wore.
Klingberg kept the genesis of his treason cloaked in double and triple stories. In 1983, after he broke down during interrogation by Shin Bet investigators, he said that he had been recruited in 1957 during a cocktail party at the Soviet embassy in Tel Aviv. The confession was legally sufficient for Shin Bet, and it did not matter precisely how his espionage had begun.
In 2007, when his memoirs were published in Hebrew, he admitted that the prior version was a lie. “I was in the embassy only once, in 1959, with the authorization of Binyamin Blumberg,” he wrote of the founder of Malmab and the chief security officer in the Defense Ministry.
The convicted spy wrote that Blumberg “sent me to meet a Russian scientist couple who had come especially for the first international conference of microbiologists held in Israel. Even Ben-Gurion came to the opening of the conference in Jerusalem. But I did not meet with my handler at that meeting.”
Shin Bet investigators did not believe either version from Klingberg. They suspected that he had been recruited by Soviet espionage during World War II, and already was a trained, committed agent when he arrived in Israel in 1948.
Klingberg’s book added another twist to the mystery, though readers had to keep in mind that the author’s track record for authenticity was poor. His memoirs claimed that he was recruited during his Israeli military service, in 1950.
He wrote that he had been recuperating from a road accident, and while staying in a rehabilitation center he was approached by a young Israeli couple who showed high interest in his World War II reminiscences. Klingberg confided to them that he was a senior army officer in the health service, and that further piqued their interest. The couple suggested that they all get together with some Russians friends, and Klingberg said yes.
Again putting a fog around the start of his espionage, he wrote: “After two years in Israel, I was thirsty for such a contact.” He never met the couple again, but it seems that the man and woman were “helpers”—sympathizers, but not paid agents—of Soviet intelligence. Their job was to spot and develop potential targets for recruitment.
The next stage could have been torn from the pages of a cheap novel, but this—if Klingberg the memoirist was finally telling the truth—was how cliché-ridden an approach by the KGB could be. He said he received a telephone call, a few weeks after parting from the shadowy recruiters. The accented male voice identified himself thus: “I am tovarisch Sokolov,” using the Russian word for “comrade.”
Israel and the Soviet Union were still friends. Two years earlier, in 1948, Moscow had supported the establishment of a Jewish state and agreed to arms shipments from Czechoslovakia, one of the Communist satellite states. Czech weapons, including aircraft, played a decisive role in Israel’s War of Independence victory.
The man on the phone, according to Klingberg, “spoke Russian and told me that he had gotten my number from the couple I met at the rehabilitation center, and he asked to meet me.”
It was arranged that Sokolov would come by car and pick up Klingberg in a narrow alley in Jaffa. The Russian, an accredited diplomat at the Soviet embassy in adjacent Tel Aviv, was certainly an experienced case officer. He was full of praise and bonhomie, according to Klingberg—the start of a very long string of compliments, lasting for many years, designed to build up an agent’s self-confidence and courage—but he also seemed worried that Israeli agents might be watching.
Sokolov drove Klingberg in wide circles for almost an hour—to shake any “tail”—before the Russian started asking the Israeli about his life. The chit-chat ended with an enigmatic sentence. “You helped us a great deal in the past during our difficult times in the war,” said the Soviet diplomat. “I can assure you that we remember, with appreciation, people like you.”
Klingberg, a man obsessed with his own honor and value, swallowed fully the bait built of flattery.
According to Klingberg, Sokolov had a second meeting and then a third with him. They agreed to address each other by first names—“Mark” and “Viktor.” Only at the third meeting did Viktor make a pass designed to consummate the relationship: “Look, we want to be in touch with you and might need your help.”
Klingberg recalled: “I certainly didn’t say no. I gave him the impression that I feel committed and that the Soviet Union is close to my heart. Nothing seemed to me dramatic.”
That allegiance to Moscow was certainly genuine, whenever or wherever Klingberg really was recruited to be a spy. He wrote that he would meet Sokolov, his handler, three or four times a year for the next decade or so. They set their meeting places by using classic espionage tradecraft: one man leaving a chalk mark on a certain building, then the other man chalking another building. That was the signal that the meeting would take place, at nightfall, at a location between the marks.
Klingberg was not posted immediately to the secretive biological institute, but his varied assignments for the Israeli army made him seem highly interesting and valuable for Soviet intelligence.
When he entered Nes Tziona in 1957, embarking on 25 years of seemingly solid service there, Klingberg rapidly rose to become the deputy director. The Israeli government paid for study sabbaticals abroad, and he proudly published research papers about epidemics.
Klingberg attended many conferences outside Israel, and these were perfect opportunities to rendezvous with Soviet handlers. There were also numerous meetings inside the Jewish state: almost always at the “Red” Church in southern Tel Aviv—a Russian Orthodox compound, rather obviously under Moscow’s strong influence. Some of the priests and nuns were actually trained officers of the KGB or the military intelligence agency GRU. Because of the military nature of the Institute, Klingberg was run by the GRU.
He and his Soviet handlers must have been highly professional and cautious, because Shin Bet counter-intelligence teams did not detect Klingberg’s secret meetings. One security officer at the Institute claimed that he felt somewhat suspicious as early as 1960, and in the mid-1960s a woman at the World Health Organization in Geneva told Israeli security that Klingberg had been meeting with scientists from Poland.
Upon his return to Israel, he was summoned by Shin Bet for a polygraph test. This was no small matter. He was a senior official and a member of Mapai, the ruling political party. He was personally in touch with Prime Minister Eshkol, Dayan, and other VIPs.
Klingberg pretended to be offended and reacted very angrily to the lie detector invitation. He arrived at Shin Bet headquarters under protest, yet he was hooked up to the very same polygraph that the Israelis had gotten a decade earlier from the FBI. He was asked a series of q
uestions, but he got through the ordeal without a hitch. The graphing pen stayed fairly steady, with no signs of dissembling.
Victor Cohen, Shin Bet’s senior investigator, admitted that the test was a failure. “We asked him the wrong questions,” Cohen explained. Klingberg was asked about reported contacts with agents of Poland’s security service, when he should have been asked about a relationship with Russian handlers.
A few years later, a lie detector was wired onto Klingberg’s palms and fingertips again. Reports of unauthorized contacts had been received, and they had to be checked out, but this time Shin Bet interrogators treated him much more respectfully. Instead of individual, often challenging, and skeptical questions, Klingberg was engaged in a conversation. He emerged as pure and clean as driven snow.
Suspicions were cast again in 1982, when Shin Bet received information that Klingberg was expected to meet his handler at a scientific conference in Switzerland. The Mossad was put in charge of surveillance, and a team did its best to watch the scientist at all times. The watchful eyes turned up nothing.
There was no meeting in Geneva with any Soviets that time, according to Klingberg, because he sincerely had broken his ties with the Russians. He said, many years later, that he leaked no secrets after 1976.
Counterintelligence teams continued to lay traps, and one trap took the form of a Soviet Jew who had recently gotten to the Promised Land. Shin Bet questioned the man upon his arrival, having noticed something suspicious, and he readily admitted that the KGB had recruited him to spy in Israel. Shin Bet then “doubled” the man, by persuading him to pretend that he was still serving the KGB—while occasionally meeting secretly with his true employers at Shin Bet to keep them fully briefed.
This spook game paid off. One day, the new arrival received a coded message from KGB headquarters in Moscow to create a signal for someone by making a chalk mark on a specific wall in Tel Aviv. He did not know what the signal meant, or for whom it was intended.