In contrast to the past, during the past 30 years all Israeli governments have forbidden any espionage activity against the US.
By YOSSI MELMANArnon Milchan became a secret agent for Lekem(photo credit: REUTERS)
A few months ago I met veteran US journalist Jeff Stein in a Tel Aviv café.Stein, a contributing editor for Newsweek, the US weekly newsmagazine, had come to Israel in search of material for a series of articles about the intelligence community, and he informed me that he had met senior intelligence and security officials.Two Stein articles were published in Newsweek in May accusing Israel of continued espionage efforts against the US. Citing anonymous sources, the article claimed that 16 years ago Israeli operatives tried to plant bugs in the presidential suite of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem during a visit by US vice-president Al Gore.According to Newsweek, the alleged Israeli espionage operations are the main reason behind the refusal by the US intelligence community, spearheaded by the FBI, to add Israel to the list of 30-something states that benefit from the US Visa Waiver Program.Some Jewish organizations are trying to discredit Stein. They claim that some of his sources are known to be anti-Israel, including activists of the US branch of BDS – the anti-Israel boycott, divestment and sanctions movement. They even hint that he is an anti-Semite and portray him as an obsessed Israel basher. In our meeting, I did not notice any sign of this. What I did find was that he was completely ignorant about Israel. He lacked a basic understanding of Israeli politics, its intelligence agencies and the complexities of Israel-US relations. By the way, Gore stayed at the Inbal Hotel and not the King David, as Stein wrote.The truth is that his stories barely raised a ripple in the US. Neither the general public nor administration officials were aware of them. Certainly, major newspapers and TV networks did not follow them. With all due respect, Newsweek is no longer what it once was.The only arena where the allegations resonated was among Jewish groups and individuals, and Israeli politicians and media. Yuval Steinitz, the minister in charge of the intelligence community, gave an impression of panic by demanding that the US Congress’s select committee on intelligence investigate the allegations and clear Israel. This was an unnecessary reaction. Those who are privy to the true relations between the two countries – the intelligence select committee is one of those in the loop – know better.The fact is that for almost 30 years, Israel has not conducted espionage activities on American soil nor against US targets elsewhere. Such activities ceased after Jonathan Pollard, an intelligence analyst for the US Navy, was arrested, exposed as an Israeli spy and sentenced to life imprisonment.Yet, despite Israeli claims at the time, the Pollard case was not an isolated, rogue operation. Pollard was run by a small but important intelligence unit known by its Hebrew acronym Lekem, which stands for Bureau of Scientific Relations. Part of the Defense Ministry, Lekem, headed by Benjamin Blumberg, was in charge of scientific and technological espionage.It was tasked with acquiring, at all cost, whatever was needed for Israel’s nuclear program that could not be obtained openly in international markets.
The reason that Lekem was chosen to run Pollard was very clear. Neither the Mossad nor the IDF intelligence directorate (Aman), which have jurisdiction for foreign espionage, wanted to operate on American soil and handle a spy who was an American Jew and intelligence official. They feared damaging their good relations with their counterparts, the CIA and the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) as well as US Army intelligence units.Lekem, which was less known to US counter-intelligence agencies, if at all, was ordered to carry out the mission. All Israeli leaders of the mid-’80s, including prime ministers Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Shamir and defense ministers Moshe Arens and Yitzhak Rabin, knew that Israel had a wellplaced spy in the heart of the US intelligence community, and all Israeli espionage agencies, including Mossad and military intelligence, shared Pollard’s stolen secrets.The naked truth is that even before its inception and even more so since independence in 1948, Israel time and time again violated US laws, spied on US soil, stole its secrets, and violated its sovereignty.During that period, some Israeli diplomats and military attachés based at the embassy in Washington were declared by the State Department as persona non grata and ordered to leave the country. In some lesser cases, they were warned to stop their illegal activities, which were directed mainly against Arab diplomats with the aim of recruiting them.In the late ’50s and for almost 30 years, Israeli espionage efforts were mainly directed at stealing US military and nuclear know-how. Some Israeli scientists visiting US universities and sensitive laboratories, Israelis on business trips, military personnel on exchange programs or working on joint projects with American security manufacturers occasionally were asked by Lekem or IDF intelligence to obtain stateof- the-art technology and plans.In rare cases, some of the Israeli operations were exposed by the FBI and US Customs. Israelis were expelled, equipment confiscated, complaints filed but they usually managed to get away unpunished. This happened even with the two most daring and outstanding operations targeting the US nuclear sector. In the first case in the ’60s, according to US documents, a joint Lekem- Mossad team led by master spy Rafi Eitan stole enriched uranium from a depot of the NUMEC company in Apollo, Pennsylvania, which was handling nuclear waste for the US Atomic Energy Commission. NUMEC’s owner was Zalman Shapiro, an Orthodox Jew who later would be on the board of governors of the Israeli Intelligence Heritage Center.An inter-agency inquiry task force set by the US government suspected that Israel was behind the thievery but found no evidence to substantiate the allegation.In another case in the ’80s, the Los Angeles company Milco and its manager Richard Kelly Smyth were found guilty of smuggling krytrons, a high-speed switch that could be used as a trigger for nuclear weapons, to Israel. Smith fled to Spain and was declared as a fugitive by a US court. More than a decade later, he was extradited.It turned out that Milco was founded by Arnon Milchan, an heir to a wealthy Israeli family. As a young playboy, he was recruited by Shimon Peres (then deputy defense minister) and became a secret agent for Blumberg’s Lekem. In the ’70s, Milchen illegally purchased top-secret drawings for uranium enrichment centrifuges in Germany for the Dimona reactor. With the money, commissions and slush funds he earned from his deals on behalf of Israeli intelligence, he turned into a flamboyant, successful Hollywood film producer.Somehow, probably with the help of Peres, Milchen, unlike Smyth, managed to avoid US prosecution.The Milchen and Pollard fiascos, which exploded in Israel’s face in the same year, 1985, became a turning point in US-Israel relations. On the surface, it was the nadir in the two countries’ intelligence ties. Israel had to return the stolen krytrons to the US and apologized to the Reagan administration for the incidents. It dismantled Lekem (though the scientific and technological needs of the Jewish state have not evaporated) and, most importantly, agreed not to spy anymore against the US.As far as it is possible to verify, Israel has indeed fulfilled its promise. All Israeli governments of the last three decades have ordered the chiefs of the intelligence community not to breach US sovereignty.As the years passed, relations between the two intelligence communities not only returned to normal but even improved and joint operations were mounted. In the ’80s and ’90s, they targeted Soviet and Russian efforts to obtain Israeli-American technologies and, later, Al-Qaida and Hezbollah terrorists. Lately, they have reportedly focused on sabotaging and slowing down Iran’s nuclear ambitions.According to secret documents revealed by Edward Snowden, a contractor working for the US National Security Agency, NSA maintained an extraordinary cooperation agreement with IDF military intelligence.However, it would be naïve to believe that the two countries don’t collect information about each other. This is carried out via open sources or interception of communications and electronic signals (Sigint), without recruiting agents and violating the sovereignty of the other side.Yet, there is one trait that has infected Israel’s security and intelligence chiefs. This is the parochial readiness to talk and brief foreign journalists, usually without checking their backgrounds and track records, even if they work for unimportant media outlets – as the Jeff Stein case has illustrated.
