by Dan Raviv
The Russian Jew did as instructed and informed his contact at Shin Bet. An Israeli counter-intelligence team laid ambush, and a few hours later an unknown person showed up, saw the message, and continued walking. Shin Bet shadowed him all the way to his home and discovered it was Klingberg.
One investigator said: “This time, the fourth time, we decided that Klingberg would not escape our net.” Shin Bet carefully studied Klingberg’s personality, concluding that he had a strong desire for recognition and official honors. This was January 1983.
Shin Bet agents posed as a Mossad team looking for someone brilliant and reliable to go overseas on a secret mission. They told Klingberg that Malaysia, a Muslim country that did not have diplomatic relations with Israel, wanted the help of an Israeli expert on diseases. Flattered by the request, Klingberg said immediately that he would be glad to help. He was told to inform his wife only that he would be out of the country.
On the day set for his flight to the Far East, two Shin Bet operatives picked up Klingberg, but instead of driving him to the airport they headed to a safe house in Tel Aviv. There, two interrogators were waiting for Klingberg. The fiction about a foreign trip would give them time to do their work, with no intervention from his wife or others.
“They had nothing against me to nail me down, not a shred of information that could be admitted as evidence in court,” Klingberg recalled later. “Not a phone call, not a slip of paper. There was nothing. If I had not opened my mouth, they would have let me go.”
Yet, he did talk. “I don’t understand it myself,” Klingberg said while shaking his head. “After all, I knew the Shin Bet people. They promised me that if I told them everything they would release me. What stupidity on my part! How could I have believed them?”
The Shin Bet account of Klingberg’s interrogation portrayed him as stubborn for 34 days, refusing to admit any crimes. The sessions were long, and without a confession the security agency had insufficient evidence to support an indictment in court.
The Shin Bet interrogators were on the verge of despair. But on the likely last day—when it was clear that a court would not extend Klingberg’s period of arrest any longer—one of the questioners had a creative, out-of-the-box idea. Chaim Ben-Ami was a veteran of many investigations, and he decided to use his strong basso profundo voice to shout at Klingberg that he was a traitor. The taunting was not about a betrayal of Israel by espionage, but for betraying his parents’ memories by letting them stay in Poland to face death while he escaped to the Soviet Union.
Ben-Ami recalled: “He looked at me, said nothing, and then started crying.” Klingberg, choking back tears, asked Ben-Ami to call in the other interrogator—who played the role of “the good cop”—because the spy was finally willing to provide a confession.
During his trial, Klingberg argued that Shin Bet extracted his confession by illegitimate means, in return for a promise of leniency or outright release. “But it was my word against theirs,” the spy had to acknowledge. “The judges believed them, of course—not me.”
Klingberg wrote in his memoirs that he had confessed only because he was shown photographs of his daughter in Paris: a hint, as he took it, that Israeli intelligence knew everything about her and could easily harm her at any moment.
At the time, Klingberg said, he felt suicidal. There was intense pressure from his wife Wanda—who was permitted to visit—not to reveal anything. “It is true that my wife did not like the fact that I had talked in the interrogation, but she is not the reason that I tried to kill myself,” Klingberg said in Paris. “I tried to commit suicide twice. The first time was even before I made a confession. That was after four days of interrogation. I tried to stick something metallic into the power outlet in the room and electrocute myself. But it didn’t work.”
The second time was after he confessed. “I swallowed medicine. I asked my wife to bring me my blood thinner pills. But to say that she tried to get me to commit suicide? Absolutely not. The decision was mine. I saw that it was all over, and I didn’t want my family to suffer because of me.” His attempt at an overdose failed.
Wanda Yashinskaya did, in fact, have strong reasons to be worried when her husband started talking to the Shin Bet. After she died in 1990 and her cremated remains were placed in a cemetery in Paris, Klingberg revealed that his wife had been his partner in espionage.
While she held her own job at the top-secret Biological Institute, Wanda provided the GRU with bacteria and virus samples and some other formulas and secrets. Confirmation of the deceptive duo’s partnership raised the suspicion that the Soviet Union planted both of them in Israel at the very start.
Klingberg was found guilty of treason and espionage, and he was sentenced to 20 years in prison. The entire process—arrest, interrogation, indictment, court hearings, and the verdict—took place in total secrecy. Not a word about him or the charges appeared in the mostly hyperactive and free Israel press.
Even in prison, he was given a cover identity: a prisoner ostensibly named Avraham Greenberg, in order to prevent leakage of the case to the public at home and abroad.
The censorship was heavy and strict. Journalists who took an interest in the case were immediately visited by Shin Bet agents and warned to publish nothing about it.
As for Klingberg’s agreement never to use his real name, even inside the prison walls, he explained after his release: “I was threatened with worse prison conditions and the loss of rights, especially visiting rights. It was made clear to my wife and daughter that if they revealed the fact of my arrest, they would not be allowed to visit me. Thus, they were forced to tell anyone who asked—friends, mainly—that I was hospitalized in a Swiss sanatorium.”
The Rashomon of varied stories about Klingberg from various angles included not only when and where he had started working for the Soviets. The vexatious narrative extended to why: the scientific spy’s primary motive.
Shin Bet and Malmab interrogators reached the surprising conclusion that the main reason was blackmail. According to their narrative, Klingberg was not actually a fully qualified medical doctor. He did not finish his studies in Poland because of the war. In the 1950s, to get a pay raise at the Institute, he was asked to provide a certificate or diploma to show that he had completed his medical training and exams.
He approached the Soviet embassy in Tel Aviv for help in obtaining a diploma from the University of Minsk as evidence of his studies there. Intelligence officers at the embassy apparently discovered the truth, but they did arrange to forge a diploma for Klingberg—and, in return, they compelled him to work for them. As with most efforts to seduce and induce people to sell out their country, once they begin they are trapped.
Klingberg, however, rejected this explanation. To him, honor was more important than gold, and the thought of being unqualified angered him. “I am a certified medical doctor,” he insisted with a force that belied his almost nine decades. “I completed my studies. I wasn’t pressured. I agreed to work for the Soviet Union because they saved my life. And out of belief in the cause of Communism. I wanted to help them to balance their inferior knowledge against the Americans and the West during the Cold War.”
One truth is shared by both sides. Shin Bet agreed that Klingberg was not spying out of greed and was not paid for his services. The professional assessment of the damage done, however, is grave. Shin Bet and defense officials believe that Klingberg helped the enemies of the state by handing over biological and chemical secrets: an important, though never discussed, factor in Israel’s ultimate lines of defense. Israeli intelligence assumes that the Russians relayed all the information to their Arab partners, in various deals and intelligence exchanges.
Klingberg, for his part, showed no remorse. “I do not regret anything I did, even though I am not proud of what I did,” he said. “If I were approached today, I would certainly not agree to work for the Russians. But I did it because I felt it was the right thing to do. Why? Because of the Cold War. I wanted the two bl
ocs in the Cold War to be at the same level, out of a desire for a more balanced world.”
It is the same kind of argument that American and, especially British, traitors recited to their interrogators and prosecutors over the years after being caught spying for Russia.
The Klingberg case, partially and unintentionally, helped to lift the cloud of secrecy that shrouded the biological institute for half a century. After his release was made public, it was suddenly no longer a taboo in the Israeli media to talk about the place. This was regrettable, in the eyes of the Nes Tziona directors and the security officials at the Ministry of Defense.
In the new spirit of uncovering some truths, it was revealed in 2009 that the head of the Institute—Dr. Avigdor Shafferman, who ruled the facility with an iron fist—had used Israeli soldiers as guinea pigs to develop a possible anthrax vaccine of doubtful value.
A French newsletter reported that, in return for sharing test results from the vaccine, the Pentagon and the United States Army financed a $200 million project enabling the Institute to build a pharmaceutical production line that apparently was not needed.
It would take Shin Bet a few years to recover from the Klingberg case—clearly a major defeat at the hands of the Soviets. Israel’s intelligence community also had to repair the damage done to its reputation in the eyes of American espionage counterparts.
The Israelis found solace in “Golf Ball,” the code name they gave to one of the most imaginative counter-intelligence operations in the history of Shin Bet.
It began by pure chance, and noticing an unmatched pair of socks on Alexander Lomov’s feet was a key part of the unexpected opportunity.
Lomov was a non-Jewish Russian who arrived in Israel with his wife Alexi in the spring of 1986 to assume the title of administrator at the “Red” Russian Church. He would manage a collection of properties, as well as a few dozen priests and nuns, practically owned by the Soviet government—as opposed to the “White” Russian Church that remained loyal to the czar deposed in 1917 and would never cooperate with the Reds.
Lomov’s religious managerial role was merely a cover, for he was in fact a professional intelligence officer employed by the overseas directorate of the KGB. Alexi was his radio operator, fully trained in encryption and code books. After the Six-Day War of June 1967, when the Soviets broke diplomatic relations with Israel, the Russian Church became the headquarters for KGB spying in the Jewish state.
Shin Bet, as a matter of routine, mounted around-the-clock surveillance of the administrators. It did not take long to discover that the Lomovs—who lived in the Red Church’s famous Russian Compound in Jerusalem—were not in love with each other.
Marital strife signaled opportunity for Shin Bet officers, who prided themselves on noticing even the most minute detail. Lomov’s socks often did not match, and this suggested stress or a drinking problem. The Israelis started imagining various techniques of taking advantage of the undercover Russian: situations that might involve blackmail or other psychological pressure.
Continued surveillance confirmed that Lomov was often drunk and occasionally beat his wife. Shin Bet more intensively worked on ways of inserting some leverage between them, hoping that Alexi would betray him and become a mole for the Israelis.
It was noticed that she often shopped in a certain Jerusalem supermarket. One day, at that store, Alexi met and chatted with another Russian-speaking woman, who was a very good listener. Alexi started dishing all of her ugly family secrets. One thing led to another, and the new “friend” introduced Alexi to a circle of friends. One of them was a young, handsome fellow who started to romance the loveless and desperate Alexi.
He happened to be a subcontractor for Shin Bet. He was not a full-time employee, but someone who could be hired for the purpose of political seduction.
This was an almost classical “honey trap,” as the technique is known in the spy trade. It usually, however, involved the use of females to trap males. In recent years, the gender gap has narrowed rapidly—and all sorts of combinations of males and females have been effective.
Before long, the Israeli lover boy offered Alexi a deal. He said he had a friend who could help her start a new life in America. All she would have to do was meet them, and tell them everything she knew about espionage and politics. Alexi agreed.
She met Shin Bet operatives, who struck an explicit deal with her. She would provide all the code books for KGB communications at the Jerusalem “station,” and in return she would be given a new identity and settled in the United States.
Shin Bet had indeed been in touch already with the CIA, which agreed to accept the female radio operator into a “rehabilitation” program in America. Alexi proved to be a gold mine. The code books she supplied helped the Israeli and Western intelligence communities intercept Russian intelligence messages in many countries: to expose a few more spy networks, and to reconstruct some of the past activities of the Soviet Union.
This defection had a happy ending. Alexi left her husband a note in their home: “I am in the company of good friends. If you want to repair our relations and to have a new beginning with me, please call this number in the next 24 hours.”
Shin Bet officers did not believe that Alexander Lomov would do it. But he did. He dialed the number, and he joined his wife. The couple was debriefed by Shin Bet for a week and then flown to the United States for further questioning by the CIA and the start of a new life. When last seen by the Israelis, the Lomovs were getting along better.
For Shin Bet, there was a measure of revenge against the Soviets for decades of high-level espionage by Marcus Klingberg. In addition, the Lomov affair brought relations between the CIA and Israeli intelligence to a new zenith of cooperation and trust.
Chapter Seventeen
Ambiguity and Monopoly
The director of the Mossad, Yitzhak Hofi, arrived in Paris in early April 1979, traveling under a bogus name and wearing a disguise. The espionage agency often consulted and used Israelis who worked in theaters as experts on changing a person’s appearance. An addition as simple as a glued-on beard, a wig, or eyeglasses could make someone look completely different.
Unlike routine visits, in which the head of a foreign security service has a formal liaison session or a courtesy call on a host country to share information, Hofi’s unheralded stay in Paris was hidden from France’s security services.
Hofi was there on official but unacknowledged business. He was following the Mossad and military traditions that put the top commander in the field: at the front, overseeing a dangerous operation. His proximity can help when there is a need for uninterrupted communication and an instant decision.
A psychological factor is even more important. The message the Mossad chief conveys to his people is: I am with you, and the entire organization is behind you 100 percent.
Hofi was described by a longtime senior operative in the Mossad as a man “of steel and infinite patience” and “a born commander,” yet in the early hours of April 6 he was nervously waiting inside the Israeli embassy for some news.
Then, the coded message arrived: “Mission accomplished.” Hofi flashed a big smile and headed back to Israel immediately.
Five-hundred miles to the south, his Kidon boys had just successfully completed their latest act of stealth. In the pre-dawn hours, an explosion in a warehouse at La Seyne sur Mer, an industrial part of the port of Toulon, severely damaged two cores of a nuclear reactor.
These cores had been nearly ready to be loaded onto a ship headed for Iraq. They were to be installed in a nuclear facility that Saddam Hussein was constructing just south of his capital, Baghdad. The reactor, which he called Tammuz—the name of a Babylonian deity in ancient Iraq—was known to the French as Osirak.
Iraq’s nuclear program was of great concern to Israel. Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Defense Minister Shimon Peres, in 1974 to 1977, kept warning about it. They used secret and open diplomacy, trying to persuade France, Italy, Brazil, and other coun
tries to stop helping Saddam fulfill his megalomaniacal dreams of having weapons of mass destruction.
Israel asked the United States to exercise any influence it might have, and in consultations Israeli intelligence found that its basic assessment of the Iraqi program matched the CIA’s view. They differed only about the date by which Saddam would be capable of building nuclear bombs.
The situation foreshadowed what Israel and the United States would face 35 years later, when debating how to confront the nuclear program of Iraq’s neighbor, Iran.
When Menachem Begin and his Likud party won the 1977 election and formed Israel’s first right-wing government, Israeli politics had a sensational change of orientation. Yet the country’s efforts on the Iraq issue continued as before. Begin and his foreign minister, Moshe Dayan, repeatedly tried to persuade France’s leaders that it was irresponsible and immoral to allow a menace such as Saddam to have a nuclear reactor.
Israel’s new leaders stepped up their diplomatic campaign—but they also had something else in mind.
Officially, the 40-megawatt reactor was supposed to be for scientific research purposes. But it was clear, certainly to Israeli leaders, that Saddam wanted his new toy for a variety of reasons: to establish hegemony over the region; to threaten his arch-enemy, Iran; and to dominate the other oil-exporting nations of the Middle East. Posing a nuclear threat to Israel would be part of that formula.
This was an especially emotive topic for Prime Minister Begin, who—more than any other Israeli leader—was obsessed by the Holocaust. He often spoke about Jewish history, anti-Semitism, and the murder of six million Jews in Europe. For Begin, it was always as though it had just happened yesterday—and must never happen again.
He ordered Hofi to increase the Mossad’s collection efforts aimed at Iraq’s progressing nuclear program, but at the same time to prepare plans of action. Aman used its research and technological departments to assess Iraq’s intentions and capabilities, while the Mossad worked at learning everything it could about the construction of the reactor.