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On September 6, 1968, AEC told FBI it was giving permission for NUMEC to entertain an unclassified visit by four Israeli citizens. At the time, Shapiro was president of the NUMEC subsidiary of ARCO. NUMEC, AEC and FBI documents listed credentials for the four Israelis.302
•Avraham Hermoni, Scientific Counselor, Israeli Embassy, Washington, DC;
•Dr. Ephraim Biegun, Group Leader, Department of Electronics, Ministry of Defense, Israel;
•Abraham Bendor, Department of Electronics, Israel; and
•Raphael Eitan, Chemist, Ministry of Defense, Israel.
The FBI redacted almost the entire declassified version of the seven-page document listing these names and affiliations and telling of their visit to NUMEC.
It is likely that FBI knew more about these four men than was disclosed by the information NUMEC provided to AEC. The Israeli experts at CIA must have known more: CIA officers had been working with Biegun, Bendor and Eitan for years, leading Riebling to opine that CIA’s James Angleton had arranged their visit to Apollo.303 Peter Stockton, long-time senior investigator for subcommittees of the Energy and Commerce Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives had this to say about that possibility. “I met James Jesus Angleton many times. Once I said to him ‘why did you help Israel get this stuff [the NUMEC uranium]?’ Angleton said he didn’t want fissile material to go to Israel because then it could go anywhere.”304
More is known today about the four Israeli visitors in 1968 than NUMEC told AEC and FBI. At the time of the visit, Avraham Hermoni (1926-2006) was a chemist serving as Scientific Counselor, and LAKAM Station Chief in the Israeli embassy in Washington, a post he held from late 1968 to 1972. The FBI knew of Hermoni’s activities in the U.S., including his establishment of a network for gathering technical intelligence. From 1959 to late 1968, Hermoni served as technical director (vice president) at RAFAEL.15 There he served as the technological eyes and ears for RAFAEL’s boss, Munya Mardor. Hermoni oversaw RAFAEL’s role in the nuclear project, which was under the direction of Shimon Peres, then serving as Israel’s deputy minister of defense. Hermoni also introduced and put into use, for the first time in Israel, the PERT methodology [Program Evaluation and Review Technique], which the U.S. Navy first used in managing the development of the submarine-launched Polaris missile. The U.S. launched its first Polaris in 1960. Hermoni came to Washington as Scientific Counselor in time for the September 1968 visit to NUMEC.305 After leaving the U.S. in 1972, he returned to a senior position with RAFAEL.306 The 1968 meeting at Apollo was not Hermoni’s only encounter with Shapiro; ten years later, Shapiro told Congressman Udall that he and Hermoni had other meetings.307 At the time of the 1968 visit to NUMEC, Hermoni was an accredited Israeli diplomat and must have known the true identities of the other three visitors. Thus, he participated in and likely orchestrated the lie to U.S. officials about the identities of his companions.308
Decades later, in a brief biography of Hermoni, Avner Cohen told the story of a chance meeting that occurred while Hermoni was the science attache at the Israeli embassy in Washington.309
One evening, during an intermission of a cultural event at the Kennedy Center, Hermoni noticed John Hadden, the former CIA station chief in Tel Aviv (1964-68), in the audience. Hermoni knew well that one of Hadden’s most important tasks while in Israel was to monitor the nuclear project. As they recognized each other in distance, Hadden shouted, “Avraham, does it work?” to which Hermoni promptly responded, “One hundred percent it does.” Both laughed.
At the time of his visit to NUMEC, Ephraim (Froike) Biegun headed the technical department in the secret service of Israel (Shin Bet). He was born in 1932 and sent to the U.S. as a young man by senior Israeli intelligence administrators to learn about modern technology. Upon his return, he served from 1954 to 1957 in the technical unit of Shin Bet. He headed that unit from 1960 to 1970 and from 1970 to 1977 was the consul for scientific affairs in Israel’s New York consulate. Avraham Bendor/Shalom said of Biegun, “Froike has done things that until then we had only read about in the books.”310
At the time of their visit to NUMEC in 1968, Rafi Eitan and Avraham Bendor/Shalom were the director and deputy director, respectively, of the covert operations unit that served Shin Bet, Mossad and Aman. In addition, they were on special assignment to LAKAM. Their participation was possible because LAKAM’s director, Binyamin Blumberg, had established good relations for his small, secret agency within the Israeli intelligence community and was able to use Bendor and Eitan’s services in advancing the Israeli nuclear weapons program.311
Bendor, who later changed his name to Avraham Shalom, worked for Shin Bet for 35 years and headed that agency from 1981 to 1986. He was born in 1928 and accompanied his parents from Germany to Palestine in 1933.
Avraham Bendor
Director of Shin Bet
1981-1986
He served in Palmach, the fighting force of the Haganah, and participated in some of Shin Bet’s most notorious operations. For example, he served on the team of Israeli agents that captured Nazi war criminal Adolph Eichmann in Argentina in 1960, returning Eichmann to Israel where he was tried, convicted and executed for his role as Hitler’s administrator of the “final solution.” After serving as deputy to Rafi Eitan in the covert operations organization, Bendor headed the Protective Services Branch of Shin Bet and then became the agency’s director in 1981. He resigned under pressure in 1986 for ordering and then attempting to cover up the beating deaths of two Palestinians who blew up an Israeli bus. “Avrum lied and kept lying,” a senior security official involved in the bus affair recalled in 1995. “He failed because he was too sure of himself and too used to hearing how great he was.”312
Israel’s President Chaim Hertzog pardoned Bendor/Shalom for his role in the beating deaths, and, after the dust settled, Prime Minister Peres helped him get a job with Shaul Eisenberg, a former Mossad agent who owned companies worldwide, some engaged in aircraft and arms sales. While working for Eisenberg, Shalom went back to his original name of Bendor and worked out of New York. Although he made good use of his background in selling defense contracts, he could not get a job in Israel because of his notoriety.313
NUMEC’s fourth visitor in September 1968 was Raphael (Rafi) Eitan. He is not to be confused with General Rafael “Raful” Eitan, onetime chief of staff of the Israeli army. Rafi Eitan was born on Kibbutz Ein Harod in 1926. His parents had emigrated from Russia to Palestine in 1923. He joined the Haganah in 1938 at the age of 12, and soon swore an oath of allegiance to Zionism. In 1944, he joined the Palmach, a commando unit of the Haganah. He attended the London School of Economics after high school. He served with the Palmach during Israel’s 1948 war for independence. His first commander was Yitzhak Rabin. He and his brother changed their last name to Eitan in 1948. He became an intelligence operative and moved up in the ranks of Mossad, eventually becoming leader of the joint operations department that served the three Israeli intelligence agencies. Eitan led the team that captured Adolph Eichmann in Argentina in 1960. He became deputy chief of operations of Mossad (1963 to 1972) and chief organizer of the Mossad/LAKAM team in the Plumbat affair that diverted 200 tons of natural uranium oxide (yellowcake) from Europe to Israel in 1968. Eitan left Mossad in the mid 1970s when it became clear he would not be selected to lead the agency.314
Rafi Eitan
Mossad and LAKAM
1950-1985
Eitan reportedly left Mossad embittered, angry and determined to settle the score. His close friend Ariel Sharon, who joined him in exile from government, became minister of agriculture in 1977 and convinced newly elected Prime Minister Menachem Begin to retain Eitan as an advisor on counterterrorism. When Sharon became defense minister in 1981, he chose Eitan to replace Binyamin Blumberg as director of LAKAM, while maintaining Eitan’s role as counterterrorism advisor to the prime minister.315 Eitan was serving as Begin’s assistant during Israel’s bombing of the Osirak nuclear reactor in Iraq in 1981 and the e
arlier bombing of the reactor’s fuel while it was stored in Paris. He also played a role in planning the invasion of Lebanon in 1982, serving as liaison to Bashir Gemayel, leader of the Lebanese Phalangists. When Sharon left government in 1983, after being found responsible for the massacre of Palestinians in refuge camps outside Beirut, Eitan stayed on as head of LAKAM and served as counterterrorism advisor to Yitzhak Shamir, Begin’s successor.316
In 1985, Eitan resigned from his dual posts following public disclosure of his authorization and then direct involvement in Jonathan Pollard’s spying on U.S. naval intelligence. Within days, the Israeli government organized an initial post-event investigation led by a three-man team that included Avraham Shalom (Bendor). Shalom and his colleagues soon concluded that Pollard was part of a “rogue” intelligence-gathering unit that was intended, among other things, to find out if America was spying on Israel.317
Although the government of Israel was aware of Eitan’s activities with Pollard, it left Eitan out in the cold. Journalist and author Wolf Blitzer opined that Eitan authorized the Pollard gambit as a means to settle the score with Mossad. To a degree, he succeeded. David Megan, one of Eitan’s supporters in the Knesset, said, “During this period in which Eitan headed LAKAM, it reached the peak of its achievements.” A security official who testified to a special committee of the Knesset that investigated the Pollard affair echoed this sentiment, “since Rafi arrived, we called [LAKAM] ‘Rafi.’ The material Rafi Eitan was made of was more than once described by the highest echelon as ‘priceless.’”
The verdict on Eitan was not unanimous. Another Israeli official said that when the Pollard caper grew increasingly dangerous, Eitan refused to call it to a halt, “He was like an alcoholic. He needed just one more drink—and then he would quit.” Pollard was harsher, “The quality of tradecraft exhibited by Rafi in this affair was less than poor—it was criminally irresponsible.” Blitzer gave a more balanced summary of the spymaster’s performance, “Eitan, for his part, has said publicly that he was authorized to recruit and run Pollard. He has refused to say who provided him with that authorization, although . . . a lifetime of experience in spying (including in the United States) must have convinced him that that authorization was simply built into his LAKAM mandate.”318 After months of recriminations, and a promise from the government of Israel to disband LAKAM, the Pollard affair blew over.
Later, when Sharon was elected prime minister, he appointed Eitan to chair Israel Chemicals, the largest state-owned industrial company. After 1993, Eitan was involved in large scale agricultural and construction ventures in Cuba. In June 1997, he allegedly told an Israeli newspaper reporter,319
I failed in the Pollard affair, just as I failed in other intelligence operations beyond enemy lines. That is the lot of an intelligence officer who runs complex intelligence operations. When you work a lot and do a lot, especially in the intelligence field, you win some and you lose some. Nobody knows either about your successes or your failures. It doesn’t cause a fuss. But this was a big fuss. You take such a possibility into consideration, but there is nothing you can do about it.
Eitan’s referral to the Pollard operation as “beyond enemy lines” shows how at least one high-ranking member of the Israeli intelligence community viewed its relationship with America.
Eitan was elected to the Knesset in March 2006 as head of the Gil Pensioners Party and served as Israel’s minister for pensioners.320
Late in 2012, the National Security Archive at George Washington University released a newly declassified 1987 CIA damage assessmentof the Pollard case. In that report, CIA recorded Pollard’s statements that Rafi Eitan briefed him in Paris in November 1984 on operational planning and tasking for his espionage in the United States. Pollard said Eitan was then advisor to Prime Minister Shamir on counter terrorism and was in charge of Pollard’s activities. At one point Pollard said Eitan asked him to provide “material reporting ‘dirt’ on Israeli political figures, any information that would identify Israeli officials who were providing information to the United States [redacted].” He also said he was “sworn in” as an Israeli citizen during the meeting with Eitan in Paris. He added that Eitan downplayed security concerns and pledged that, in any case, Israel would “take care of” Pollard if he were caught.321
In early 2013, the 86-year old Eitan was still controversial. The Times of Israel quoted him at length regarding Ariel Sharon’s plans in 2006 for dividing the West Bank with the Palestinians. Eitan recounted private conversations with Sharon on that matter and then leaped into a host of current events. Besides lamenting that President Obama had not agreed to free Jonathan Pollard from prison, Eitan told the reporter that America made “fatal mistakes” in its handling of the “Arab Spring” in Egypt. Eitan criticized U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by name. “This is idiocy—an act of stupidity that will resonate for generations.” Eitan also justified holding prisoners in solitary confinement and hiding their identity from the public, but said it was getting harder to do so because of growing liberalization of Israeli censorship rules. “Now, keeping secrets is hard.”322
In December 2014, Eitan was once again in the news claiming that Pollard’s 30-year tenure in U.S. prisons was Pollard’s fault. If he had followed Eitan’s instructions, he would have escaped to Israel when brought under FBI scrutiny. Instead, he ran to the Israeli embassy where Eitan claimed there was no alternative but to deny him access, thus abandoning him to the FBI.323 Pollard’s supporters in Israel took an opposing view. One noted, “Eitan’s wife, who interviewed alongside her husband on the same program, described her husband as ‘a man who can lie convincingly without blinking an eye.’”324
The U.S. government paroled Pollard on November 20, 2015. Israeli and American government spokespersons denied that his release had anything to do with the nearly simultaneous deal the United States and others had made with Iran to curb its nuclear weapon enterprise. His lawyers served on a pro bono basis, stood by him for years and arranged housing and a job for him in anticipation of his release.325 The length of his imprisonment was controversial. To some it was not long enough. “This was one of the 10 most serious espionage cases in history,” said Joseph E. diGenova, the former U.S. attorney who prosecuted Pollard. “I’m delighted he served 30 years. I wish he would have served more.”326 Morton A. Klein, national president of the Zionist Organization of America, expressed a contrary view, “We are delighted to learn that Jonathan Pollard has been released from prison. . . . [He] is the only American citizen sentenced to life in prison for passing classified information to a U.S. ally—in this case Israel. There was, thus, no treason involved.”327 Klein’s argument neglects an earlier case of espionage on behalf of an American ally. In 1953, the United States executed Julius and Ethel Rosenberg for passing atom bomb secrets to the Soviet Union during World War II when the USSR and the United States were allies.
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Pollard was not Israel’s only spy in the U.S. to be managed by Shimon Peres and Rafi Eitan. Another of their proteges operated here with impunity for decades. On July 18, 2011, Yossi Melman, writing in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, reported on a biography, Confidential: The Life of Secret Agent Turned Hollywood Tycoon, about Hollywood producer Arnon Milchan, a billionaire Israeli citizen.328 The book described how Milchan led a double life as a longtime weapons dealer and Israeli intelligence agent who purchased U.S. equipment for Israel’s nuclear weapons program at the same time he made his way into Hollywood’s inner circle of super-wealthy movie moguls. Biographers Gelman and Doron recount Milchan’s life story, including his friendships with Israeli prime ministers, U.S. presidents and Hollywood stars.329 Milchan’s services to the Israeli security services were long rumored, but in an interview with his biographers, he confirmed his espionage activities for the first time, including the fact that Benjamin (Binyamin) Blumberg first met him in 1965 in the Tel Aviv office of the Zionist Organization of America. The book quotes former Israeli President Shimon Peres, a close
friend of Milchan, as saying, “I am the one who recruited him.”
Milchan’s recruitment apparently occurred in the 1960’s when Peres was Israel’s deputy minister of defense and Lyndon Johnson was president of the United States. Milchan served as an agent for LAKAM until it and Rafi Eitan were removed from the U.S. in the wake of the Pollard affair. According to Melman’s account of the book, “Blumberg was Milchan’s friend, and used him (as well as other Israeli businessmen) to set up straw companies around the world, and to open secret bank accounts for financing the nuclear plant in Dimona and other Israeli security industries. . . . Besides using businessmen, LAKAM also appointed scientific attaches in Israeli embassies around the world. After he was fired, Blumberg was replaced by Rafi Eitan, who continued to use [Milchan’s] services.” The news account goes on:
For years, Milchan operated in secret, yet in the mid-1980’s U.S. customs uncovered an attempt to smuggle ‘switches’—equipment that can be used both for medical purposes and for nuclear weapons manufacture. . . . Richard Kelly Smyth [American physicist and business associate of Milchan] was arrested and released on bail. He fled the country soon after.
Smyth was declared a fugitive, and according to some reports found refuge in Israel. In 2001, he was captured in Spain and was brought back to the U.S., where he stood trial and was incarcerated. The FBI began an investigation into Milchan’s affairs, yet he has never been charged.
Stealing the Atom Bomb: How Denial and Deception Armed Israel Page 16