ISRAELI SPY UNITS GET UNWANTED PUBLICITY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000201130002-6
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 20, 2012
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: June 9, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/01/20: CIA-RDP90-00965R000201130002-6
APPEA1
WASHINGTON POST
9 June 1986
Israeli Spy Units Get Unwanted Psiblicit`-
Cabinet Denies Sug estions That Pollard (peration 11ils It icier Than . h I nnu?/cvlticecl
By William Claiborne
Washington Pont Foreign Service
JERUSALEM, June 8-Israel today strongly
denied as "unfounded" suggestions by U.S. offi-
cials that the Israeli-run Jonathan Jay Pollard
espionage operation was much more extensive
than Washington has been told by Israel.
The sharply worded Cabinet statement came
after a turbulent two weeks of disclosures and
allegations that have brought an unwanted glare
of publicity to Israel's intelligence organizations,
long-respected by many as among the world's
most efficient, and acute embarrassment to the
fractious "national unity" coalition government.
Today's statement was the strongest the gov-
ernment has issued since Pollard pleaded guilty
last week. At that time, the names of alleged
Israeli coconspirators were disclosed, along with
details that suggested an Israeli espionage op-
eration in the United States far more extensive
than the unauthorized "renegade" operation that
Israel said had operated without the knowledge
of officials at the political level here.
The Cabinet of Prime Minister Shimon Peres
said in a statement released after its regular
weekly meeting today that the Israeli govern-
ment had "provided full cooperation regarding
the Pollard case and remains in close contact
with Washington in order to clarify the issues
which were raised lately."
The statement pledged "a continuation of the
cooperation" but added that Israel "is concerned"
about allegations by some U.S. officials "and
hopes they will not continue."
The Cabinet was referring to suggestions by
some U.S. Justice Department officials that Is-
rael withheld information from a State Depart-
ment and Justice Department team that came
here last year to interview Israeli officials about
the case against Pollard, a former U.S. Navy ci-
vilian intelligence analyst who last week pleaded
guilty in a U.S. District Court to conspiring to
pass U.S. military secrets to Israel.
"The relations between the United States and
Israel are very close, and it is inconceivable that
attempts to disrupt these relations will succeed,"
the Cabinet said, repeating its assertion that the
spy unit that handled Pollard "exceeded its au-
thority" and had been dismantled and that no
espionage activities are now being conducted
against the United States.
Since late last month, Israel's domestic and for-
eign intelligence wings have both been shaken by
unaccustomed controversy. Abroad it was fresh
disclosures about the extent of the spy network
for which Pollard worked; at home it was allega-
tions that Israel's highest-ranking domestic intel-
ligence official participated in the fatal beating of
two handcuffed Arab prisoners captured after a
1984 bus hijacking and then covered up the inci-
dent.
The principal Israeli figures involved in the
two cases-Rafael (Rafi) Eitan, former chief of
operations of the external intelligence service,
the Mossad, and Avraham Shalom, chief of the
domestic intelligence service, the Shin Bet-
were both members of a team that in 1960
snatched Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann off a
street in Buenos Aires and brought him secretly
to Israel, where he was tried and hanged.
But in terms of the government's and society's
reactions to the two current scandals, the sim-
ilarity ends there.
In the case of Shalom, the nation is still en-
gaged in a wrenching, introspective national de-
bate about the conflict between the fundamental
principle of the rule of law and what Israel. sees
as its unique security problems.
In the case of Eitan, who headed the Washing-
ton spy ring that recruited Pollard, the reaction
here has been a curious mixture of muted am-
bivalence and stiff-necked defensiveness.
While Shalom has been condemned by some
politicians and the press for his alleged cover-up-
and ordered by Israel's attorney general to endure
a humiliating police investigation-Eitan has been
handed a comfortable new posting as chairman of a
huge state-owned chemical conglomerate.
His principal "handler" of Pollard, according to
the U.S. indictment, then-Lt. Col. Aviam Sella,
who ostensibly was doing graduate studies at
New York University, was promoted to brigadier
general in the Air Force upon his hurried return
to Israel and given command of the country's
biggest air base.
Informed Israeli sources said that the other
unindicted coconspirators in the Pollard case-
Science Attache Yosef Yagur and embassy sec-
retary Irit Erb-have been given attractive new
assignments in the Foreign Service.
Even though the Peres government continues
to insist that Eitan was running a renegade spy
operation unknown to his superiors in Jerusalem,
the former Mossad agent has not been con-
demned publicly by the government or parlia-
ment-or much of the public-for establishing a
spy network that stole top secret military doc-
uments from a close ally and patron nation.
The fact that Eitan has not been publicly chas-
tised but rather has been rewarded with a pres-
tigious executive position prompted the military
affairs commentator for Haaretz newspaper, Zeev
Schiff, to ask in a commentary published today
whether the Pollard ring actually was "renegade."
One senior Israeli official said privately, "The
only crime Eitan committed was getting caught."
Some Israeli officials, speaking on the condi-
tion that they not be identified, have bitterly con-
demned the U.S. Justice Department for what
they term an anti-Israeli campaign of leaks of
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embarrassing details of Eitan's espionage net-
work. These complaints have generally been
coupled with charges that the American press
has been "blowing out of proportion" a case that
these officials view as essentially closed.
One senior official, pressed on the question of
whether the $300,000 Pollard allegedly was
promised over a 10-year period by his Israeli
control agents did not suggest something wider
than a small "renegade" spying operation, ap-
peared annoyed when he retorted: "Thirty thou-
sand a year is peanuts."
Acceptance of Eitan's espionage ring as al-
most inconsequential-except for the embar-
rassment it caused-is not confined to govern-
ment.
Israel's normally free-wheeling press, includ-
ing opposition papers that rarely fail to turn a
scandal into a political cause, have limited their
coverage of the new Pollard disclosures mostly
to playbacks of what the American press has un-
covered about the extent of the Eitan spy ring.
With one or two exceptions, none of the usu-
ally strident Hebrew newspapers has carried a
locally written story that attempted to answer
such questions as how extensive Israel's espio-
nage activity in Washington was, or whether
Peres and his Cabinet knew about it, or who was
the unnamed Israeli diplomat in whose suburban
Maryland house Pollard held clandestine meet-
ings, or whether Sella's military superiors knew
about his role in the spying operation.
When questioned about this unusual absence
of aggressive reporting, several Israeli journal-
ists at first cited censorship. Israeli military cen-
sorship requires that all locally written stories
dealing even peripherally with national security
matters be submitted for review by the censors,
who routinely excise sensitive material.
But when reminded about the traditional cen-
sorship dodge of leaking restricted material to
foreign journalists, waiting for its publication
abroad and then reprinting it here on the basis
that it has already been made public, the Israeli
journalists conceded that the government's
blackout on any substantive disclosures on the
Eitan espionage ring has had an inhibiting effect
on their treatment of the story.
Mirroring the government's ambivalence on
the seriousness of the case, the journalists also
characterized the new Pollard disclosures as ad
"internal affair" between the U.S. Justice and
State departments.
There is also a widely held belief here that
Pollard was mostly supplying Israel with docu-
ments concerning the activities of its Arab en-
emies. 'We were getting information about our
enemies that the Americans should have been
giving to us anyway. Is that the same as stealing
state secrets that could harm the United States'
security?" one Israeli official asked.
a.
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/01/20: CIA-RDP90-00965R000201130002-6