Spies Against Armageddon

by Dan Raviv

  Believing that there was now an opportunity to send Israeli intelligence a very stern message—that it should stop all espionage in the United States—federal prosecutors came down very hard on Pollard. The government attorneys declared: “This defendant has admitted that he sold to Israel a volume of classified documents, ten feet by six feet by six feet” if all gathered into one huge pile.

  Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger wrote his own letter to Judge Aubrey Robinson: “It is difficult for me to conceive of a greater harm to national security than that caused by the defendant.” Weinberger said privately that Pollard deserved to be hanged or shot, adding that repairing the damage he caused could cost the United States a billion dollars.

  Pollard, meantime, made the mistake of boasting that he had been “quite literally, Israel’s eyes and ears over an immense geographic area stretching from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean.” His own memo to the judge also offered the opinion that the information he gave to Israel “was so unique” that the country’s political leaders must “have known about the existence of an agent working in the American intelligence establishment.”

  The way the Israeli handlers had “tasked” him, he said, indicated “a highly coordinated effort between the naval, army, and air force intelligence services.”

  True as the assessment may have been, inflating the importance of his undercover work certainly did not get him a lighter sentence.

  On March 4, 1987, nine months after pleading guilty in a bargain that was supposed to mean he would not have to spend the rest of his days in prison, Pollard was given a life sentence anyway. Weinberger’s letter had swayed the judge. Pollard’s wife Anne was sentenced to five years, and she served three.

  The Israeli government, though caught red-handed in November 1985, evaded questions for a few days but then had no choice but to admit that Pollard’s actions were an Israeli operation. Prime Minister Shimon Peres told President Reagan by telephone that it had not been authorized and would not happen again.

  Eitan—feeling under pressure to resign—testified later to an Israeli inquiry committee, apparently referring to special operations going back even earlier than kidnapping Eichmann in 1960: “All my actions, including Pollard, were done with the knowledge of those in charge. I do not intend to be used as a scapegoat to cover up the knowledge and responsibility of others.”

  The others to whom Eitan referred were the leaders of two government administrations in Jerusalem: Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, who had been a senior Mossad man; Prime Minister Shimon Peres, who had created Lakam; Defense Minister Moshe Arens, whose background was in military aeronautics; and Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin, a former army chief of staff.

  They might not have been aware of Jonathan Pollard’s name, but they must have had high appreciation of where the intelligence “product” was coming from.

  U.S. investigators rushed to Tel Aviv to test the Israelis’ assertion that the American probe would get all possible assistance. The Israeli liaison assigned to “help” them was Avraham Shalom, the Shin Bet chief who later would stumble and fall in a scandal over the killing of bus hijackers. Shalom would protect the intelligence community’s interests, but definitely not Pollard’s.

  Documents provided by Pollard were returned to the Americans. True, Israel was assumed to be keeping extra copies, but now prosecutors could see the full scope of what Israel had been given.

  At the same time, Israeli intelligence maintained its standard, strong instinct for deception. That was why Shalom, the cover-up king, got the liaison job. The Americans were introduced to “everyone” involved with Pollard, but somehow Avi Sella was not mentioned.

  Later, when the Americans discovered Sella’s role, they demanded that his promotion to be commander of one of Israel’s most important air bases be cancelled. The United States threatened to halt all cooperation with the air force. Sella was forced to retire from the military.

  The Americans were also annoyed to see that Eitan—after the abolition of his agency, Lakam—was given a plum job as head of Israel Chemicals, the largest state-owned industry.

  Instead of pleasing U.S. investigators with the provision of documents and some testimony, Israeli intelligence was getting on their nerves even further by treating Eitan and Sella so kindly.

  Lakam’s duties were now to be spread among various parts of the government and private companies. After all, Israel still had its complex military-industrial requirements. They could not change, simply because America was angry.

  When it came to public relations and politics, however, Israel had suffered a setback. The trusting relationship that it had with the United States, though never really perfect, was severely dented by the revelation of what Pollard had been doing.

  As for the spy himself, he quite justifiably felt betrayed—similar to the fate of the imprisoned Jews who had worked for Israeli intelligence in Egypt in the 1950s. As in most criminal cases, Israel could have demanded that in exchange for its cooperation, its agent would be given a light sentence. But Israel did not ask for that.

  This behavior led Pollard and his supporters—as his cause would come to be associated mainly with right-wing Israelis and American Jews—to think that Israel did not want him to be released. Perhaps it was feared that, as a new immigrant there, he would give so many speeches that he would be a nuisance. He also might be regarded as a living stain on the country’s conscience.

  He was not totally abandoned, however. The Israeli government paid millions for his legal defense and helped Anne—who divorced Jonathan—to recover and settle in Israel. More importantly, the government eventually started lobbying publicly for his release. Cabinet members, members of parliament, and ambassadors visited him in prison. He was given a document showing that he had been granted Israeli citizenship, under his real name.

  Prime ministers asked, at every meeting with American presidents, whether Pollard could be granted clemency.

  It almost happened in 1998, during peace talks the Americans were hosting between Israel and the Palestinians in Maryland. President Bill Clinton nearly agreed to a demand by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Pollard be freed as part of a deal to evacuate some West Bank land. But the CIA director, George Tenet, threatened to resign if Pollard were released. He and other American intelligence officials contended that it would set a terrible precedent to be lenient in any way with Pollard—who violated his duties of secrecy. They wanted everyone with a security clearance to see that spying, no matter for which foreign country, would be dealt with extremely harshly.

  For years to come, the Jewish community in America and Israel would continue to feel the fallout of this ugly affair. The FBI, noted for always being suspicious, never abandoned the belief that Israeli intelligence had penetrated even more deeply into the U.S. government. For many FBI agents, Pollard was just the tip of an Israeli iceberg.

  That approach led to misinterpretation of even the tiniest clues. For years, the Mossad and then the Foreign Ministry had a code name for the CIA: “Mega.” In 1997, the Israeli ambassador in Washington received a request from Jerusalem to find out what the American thinking was on a development in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. After conferring with the State Department, which was quite routine, the ambassador, Eliyahu Ben-Elissar—ironically a former Mossad operative—turned to Yoram Hessel, the Mossad station chief based at the embassy, whose prime responsibility was to liaise with the CIA.

  Since this was over the weekend, Hessel was at home. Knowing he was on an open phone line, Ben-Elissar asked Hessel to find out what “Mega” thought about the topic.

  The phone conversation was monitored by America’s NSA and passed to the FBI. The G-Men immediately guessed that Mega was the code name of a very senior Israeli agent who was still totally undercover.

  FBI suspicions have also haunted many Jews employed in the U.S. government. The FBI frequently did not trust them, and when a Jew was called in for extra security screening, that person’s loyal
ty to America was being questioned.

  AIPAC—the pro-Israel lobby group—was also targeted by investigators. Some of AIPAC’s employees were routinely involved in collecting information from open sources which had relevance to U.S.-Israel relations. They met regularly with State Department and Pentagon officials and with Israeli diplomats, visiting officials, and cabinet ministers.

  To federal investigators, these meetings looked like a guilty fabric of improper links. In 2005, trying to confirm the suspicions, the FBI concocted some information about a supposed terrorist threat to Israelis in Kurdistan, in northern Iraq, and sent that to Larry Franklin, a non-Jewish Pentagon official with pro-Israel leanings. Franklin, in one of his encounters with AIPAC officials Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, passed on the information. A short while later, Rosen and Weissman gave the warning to an Israeli diplomat. To them, it was a matter of life and death. For the FBI, it was prima facie proof of espionage.

  Charges were filed against Franklin, Rosen, and Weissman. The Pentagon analyst pleaded guilty, as part of a plea bargain, and was sentenced to 10 months of house arrest. Rosen and Weissman were harassed by investigators and prosecutors for years, but charges were dropped in 2009.

  Pollard remained in jail since 1985, still serving his life sentence. Israelis kept pressing for his release, directly by pleading to U.S. administrations, and indirectly by trying to cook up clandestine deals.

  The Committee to Release Jonathan Pollard, backed by the Israeli government, raised the possibility of swapping him for an Israeli army officer who was imprisoned after entertaining a recruitment approach by the CIA.

  His name—Yossi Amit—was not well known, in part because of judicial gag orders and military censorship in Israel that made media coverage difficult. Yet the basic notion that the CIA probed into Israeli secrets, while Israel did some spying inside the U.S., was far from shocking to officials who were truly in the know.

  It was true that the Mossad and the CIA reached an understanding in the early 1950s that they would not spy on each other, but perhaps the real deal was that they should not get caught doing it.

  American intelligence certainly used the National Security Agency to listen in on security-related conversations and data in Israel. U.S. diplomats based in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem gathered all they could from open sources—so as to be well informed about Israeli political intentions, as well as technological and military capabilities.

  In rare cases, it can now be stated with confidence, the United States did send spies into Israel. They were on specific missions to learn about military, economic, and scientific projects—including the nuclear program. Defense Minister Rabin remarked immediately after Pollard’s arrest, but without details, that Israel had discovered five American spies in the late 1970s and early 1980s in sensitive nuclear and industrial facilities.

  Israeli intelligence, for its part, was more aggressive inside the United States. The main goal, however, was not to figure out what the administration in power intended to do. That kind of analysis was openly available from knowledgeable people at the Israeli embassy and the AIPAC lobby.

  The only field where the Israelis were anxious to know the very latest was technology. For that purpose, they had few inhibitions against covert operations, paying American agents or tasking Israeli official visitors to steal secrets. Thus, the FBI or U.S. Customs agents would occasionally expose Israelis—or Americans working for Israel—who were breaking the law.

  If there were a competition of ignominy, Israeli losses would outnumber America’s embarrassments. The only exposed case in which the CIA was close to running an Israeli as an agent was that of Amit. When the Pollard case came to light, a member of the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee let it slip that American spies had run at least one Israeli soldier as an agent. The senator was almost surely referring to Amit.

  While Pollard suffered in prison and campaigned to have his life sentence cut short, Amit was spending seven years in a cell in Israel’s most heavily guarded prison at Ramle, 20 miles east of Tel Aviv.

  Amit was a former major in Aman’s agent-running Unit 504. His crime: unauthorized contacts with the CIA.

  He was born in 1945 in Haifa. His father was a police officer, and Yossi studied at a military academy. In 1963, after graduating, he joined the IDF, passed the officer training course with flying colors, and served in a special forces unit.

  Amit was wounded in a battle with Palestinian guerrillas in Lebanon. After recovering, he joined Unit 504 and ran Arab agents in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Egypt. Amit did well there, and at the callow age of 32 he was commander of the unit’s northern base, which was responsible for operations in Lebanon.

  He became privy to the unit’s most guarded secrets, including operations that most anyone would call dirty. Amit admitted, years later, that he participated in extrajudicial liquidations of Palestinian agents who betrayed Israel.

  He also came across drug dealers whom the Mossad and 504 exploited and turned a blind eye to their activities. Some nights he would return home from his secret meetings with drug smugglers deep inside Lebanon, his clothes reeking of hashish.

  Though Amit was a tough, bright, and ambitious intelligence officer, the scenes he witnessed scarred his soul. His promising career came to an unexpected end in 1978, when police detectives arrested him on suspicion of drug dealing. Major Amit denied the charge, but a court martial was convened. Military doctors declared that he was mentally unstable and had suicidal tendencies, so he was ruled unfit to stand trial.

  Amit attributed his mental state to the dark side of his work for Unit 504. He was discharged from the army and forced into a mental hospital for three years. Electroshock therapy only seemed to make his condition worse.

  In 1981 he returned to his wife Tzila and their children in Haifa. He did odd jobs, and among other things he worked as a private investigator.

  Three years later, he happened to meet an officer in the U.S. Navy, whose ship was docked in the port of Haifa. The man called himself “David”—with no last name given. The two of them seemed to get along wonderfully.

  Amit told David about his work in Israeli intelligence and complained about always being short of money and having difficulty finding a decently paying job. The American confided to Amit that he would soon retire from the navy and set-up a textile business in Germany. Perhaps there would be a place there for his new friend Yossi?

  Amit loved the idea. In 1985, he flew to Frankfurt at his own expense to meet David. They met in a hotel and discussed their future partnership in textiles.

  David, it seems, was either a CIA talent scout or a genuine naval officer who was ordered to keep in touch with the Israeli intelligence major he had just happened to meet.

  The American did Amit favors, such as paying for a visit to a medical clinic, where his old physical injuries were assessed.

  David then introduced Yossi to another friend, “Bob,” mysteriously calling him “one of the good guys.” Bob, as though making casual conversation, mentioned everything he knew about the Israeli—and that included quite a lot that Amit had never told David. Bob’s brown shoes were so distinctive, with dots and other design details, that Amit could not help but notice them.

  Bob said, “We need your help,” and asked for details about Unit 504 and Israeli military intelligence in general.

  Amit said he would love to work for the Americans—and stated, “I’m crazy about intelligence work”—but he stipulated that he would not agree to do anything for them within the borders of Israel. Instead, he suggested that they use his knowledge of Arab countries, notably Syria and Lebanon, which he knew well after running agents there.

  Amit asked for a salary, a United States passport, and help in leaving Israel. Bob said, “I think we can work something out,” and asked Amit for more details about Israel. Amit declined.

  Bob then said, “Okay. You want to work for us? We have to work out some details, and first we have to check your reliability.” Amit ag
reed to take a lie detector test and to an evaluation of his personality.

  The polygraph quiz included, again and again, whether anyone in Israel knew about his trip to Germany. The Americans obviously suspected that Amit was a double agent, sent by Israeli intelligence to trap the Americans—just the same suspicions that Israel would have about any walk-in.

  Another member of the CIA team—a woman who called herself “Lesley”—praised Amit for his test results and told him he had a very high IQ. The Israeli could not tell, of course, whether she was merely using flattery to win his confidence and cooperation.

  At a certain stage during the test, the Americans departed from the room, leaving their documents on the table. Amit did not touch the papers or even peek at them. As a trained intelligence operator, he knew the papers had been left there deliberately to test his honesty.

  Later, Bob told Amit that they needed more time to check out the possibility of recruiting him. The American with the memorable footwear took $2,000 in cash from his pocket and offered it to Amit “to cover your expenses.” Amit refused to take the money.

  David called later and asked if he could be in touch in the future. “Remember that I’ll be calling myself ‘Herbert’ when I call,” he said. Amit still wanted this job, whatever it might be, but he got the impression he was not being hired.

  On his flight home to Israel, he was certain he saw Bob on the airplane. There was no beard or long hair now, so those had obviously been false. But it was unmistakably Bob: His height and his distinctive brown shoes were those of the man he had met the previous day. Amit still had the eye for details of a good intelligence officer.

  He never heard from Bob or David again.

  As time went by after the meetings in Germany, Amit’s frustration grew. He was still having nightmares about his military intelligence experiences, and he was almost perpetually in a foul mood. He started talking too much—even about his close brush with the CIA.