ISRAEL LETS OUT A FEW SECRETS TO HONOR FALLEN SPIES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000200850005-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 13, 2012
• Sequence Number: 5
• Publication Date: September 9, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

S` Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/13: CIA-RDP90-00965R000200850005-5
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
ARTICLE APP ED. ' 9 September 1985
ON P
Israel - lets, out_ a few- secrets to
prison. The incident
suicide in
known here as the "Lawn Affair"
after Defense
Minister
honor fallen spies
Pinhas Lavon, rocked the Israeli estab-
gy Jonathan Broiler
Chicago Tribune
RAMAT HASHARON, Israel-
After 37 years, Israel's fallen spies
finally have come in from the cold.
' Their names, 360 of them, are
engraved on the walls of the
Jewish state's first memorial to its
legendary intelligence agencies.
Until now, many of Israel's secret
agents lived and 'died ip the ano-
nymity that their murky protessioni
demands. Others went to their
graves in enemy territory under
take Arab identities.
The Center for Special Studies in
the Memory of the Fallen of
Israel's Intelligence Community,
the title of the recently opened
memorial, chronicles the fierce
Arab-Israeli spy war that has
raged quietly across the globe in
the shadow of the Middle East
conflict.
Some names on the walls are
exposed as spies for the first time.
Others died in circumstances so
mysterious that the directors of
the memorial, former agents
themselves, are reluctant to give
details about their lives. Still
Others have pasts so secret they
cannot .be listed at all.
The center was built after years
of campaigning by relatives of in-
telligence agents to eredt a monu-
ment to their deceased loved ones,
said Yeshayahu Daliot, a former
senior intelligence officer who is
director of the memorial.
"We in the intelligence commu
nity vetoed the idea of a memorial.
for security reasons," he said.
'But then we finally said, 'Why
pot, for God's sake? They sacrifi-
ced their lives. Why not make
Something for them?' 11
The,list of people involved in the
project reads like a "Who's Who"
of Israel's intelligence community.
Among them are Meir Amit, Zvi
Zamir and Yitzhak Hoff, former
chiefs of Mossad, Israel's interna-
tional intelligence agency; and fort
mer military intelligence chief
Working as volunteers, they col-
lected $2 =million from Jews
worldwide to finance the memorl-
$1, built on an acre site in a stand
of eucalyptus trees in Ramat`
Hasharon, a suburb of Tel Aviv.
' Surrounded by a library, an our
bitorium and ~n amphitheater, the
ter of the memorial consists of
labyrinth of sandstone walls di
aided into five shaded alcoves,
each representing a period in the
history of Israel's intelligeucs op.
eradons. The names of the spies.
who died in each period arq etc hd-
into the stone walls. No ranks or.
agency affiliations are mentioned.;
"The maze symbolizes the indi-
rect path and the complexity of
intelligence methods," Daliot said.
"We work in the shadows. The
names and dates of death are
enough. Even here, we operate on
a need-to-know basis."
Showing the way through the
labyrinth, Daliot paused in the sec-
and alcove, which commemorates
the period between 1949 and 1957,
to point -out the name of Jacob
Bokai, the first agent to die after
the birth of the state.
In May, 1949, Daliot recounted,
Bokad, a Syrian-born Jew, was or.
dered by Israeli intelligence to as-
sume the identity of a Palestinian
refugee named Najib Ibrahim
Hamuda and to enter Jordan. To
help establish his credentials, he
lived in a Palestinian refugee:
camp in Jaffa and later went. to an
Israeli prison, where he was oc-
casionally beaten by his Jewish
But crossing into Jordan with a
stream of other refugees at
Jerusalem's Mandelbaum Gate,
Bokai was arrested as being a
Palestinian suspected of spying for
the Israelis. Despite hours of inter-
rogation and torture, he never re-
vealed his identity. On Aug. 3,
1949, the Palestinian named Hamu-
dA was executed for spying and
buried in Jordan under the same
name.
The same alcove also contains
the names of three spies who died
because of one of Israel's worst
security mishaps.
In 1954, Egyptian intelligence
rounded up an Israeli spy ring that
was setting off bombs in Cairo in
hopes of undermining the regime
of President Gamal Abdel Nasser.
Agents Moshe Marzouk and
Shmuel Azar were executed; the
third spy, Meir Binet, committed
lishment and brought down the
government of Prime Minister
David Ben-Gurion.
The next alcove, covering 1957 to
1969, contains the name of Eli
Cohen, perhaps the most famous of
Israeli spies. Known here as "Our
man in Damascus, ' the Iraqi-born
Cohen posed as a wealthy emigre
named Kamil Arnim- Taabes and
penetrated so high into the top
echelons of the Syrian elite that he
was considered a candidate for
defense
caught when the
Syrian secret service, using aopha-
ticated Soviet homing devices,
traced clandestine transmissions
between Mound headquarters and
Cohen's apartment in Damascus.
He was publicly hanged on May 18,
1966. Israel's capture of the Golan
Heights in the 1967 war was large-
ly facilitated by Cohen's informs-
taco:
There also is the name of
Shalom Dani, who died of a heart
attack on May 21, 1963. Dana was
the master forger for Israeli Intel-
ligence and was responsible for all
the forged documents used in
Buenos Aires, Argentina, in the
Mossad's 1960 capture of Nazi war
criminal Adolf Eichmann, Daliot
said.
Still another name is that of
Ze'ev Bar Levi, a cancer victim.
As the intelligence community's
best analyst on Jordan, Bar Levi,
nicknamed 'Giber;' was credited
with saving King Hussein's life in
the 1960s when he advised against
bombing a concentration of senior
Jordanian staff officers near the
border, 17aliot said.
"Giber knew that if all that
brass was around, the king was
there, too," Daliot said.
The . memorial contains a few
surprises. One alcove lists the
name of Yaaoov Bar-Simantov, an
Israeli diplomat who was shot to
death outside his Paris home on
April 3, 1982. Until the memorial
was built, he never had been con-
firmed as an intelligence officer.
There also is the name of
Yonathan Netanyahu, one of the
top officers in the rescue from
Entebbe on July 4, 1976, ,and the
only Israeli soldier to die in that
mission to rescue Israeli hostages
being held in Uganda. "He was a
fighter, but he was also one of
ours," Daunt said.
The maze has one wall that is
blank.
"We don't want to use it, but we
know what will be," Daunt said.
"Believe me, we will use it."
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/13: CIA-RDP90-00965R000200850005-5