Spies Against Armageddon (12 page)

Hadden drove three hours from Tel Aviv to visit, which provided a fine pretext to drive fairly close to Dimona.

That night, sitting around a campfire, Mrs. Hadden suffered severe stomach pain. He rushed his wife to a hospital in the Negev desert’s largest city, Beersheba, and she underwent surgery on her colon. She was treated very well, and received an unexpected bonus: The lady sharing her semi-private hospital room was none other than Paula Ben-Gurion, the Old Man’s wife.

Hadden made a point of driving to the hospital every afternoon, because those were also David Ben-Gurion’s visiting hours. The spy and the legendary politician had a lot of long chats during the 14 days that their wives were roommates.

The American did not learn any nuclear secrets from the man who launched the secret Dimona project, but he did understand Zionism and Israeli motivations a lot better. “Imagine two weeks with Churchill!” Hadden enthused, years later. “That’s what it was like!”

The visits to Dimona by American nuclear inspectors continued until 1969. They found no incriminating evidence of weapons work. That year, the two governments reached a secret understanding that stopped the visits.

Both capitals, Jerusalem and Washington, had new leaders. Golda Meir had been selected by the Labor Party to replace Eshkol, who had died of illness in February. A month before that, Richard Nixon was sworn in as president and brought in Henry Kissinger as national security advisor.

Kissinger, although not actively Jewish, was always aware that his parents had brought him to America from Germany to escape the Nazi system which took the lives of many of his relatives. He could be tough when negotiating with or lecturing Israeli politicians, but he did feel a strong commitment to the existence of a nation that provided shelter to Jews.

The trio—Golda, Nixon, and Kissinger—agreed that no more inspections of Dimona would be required. The CIA already concluded that Israel had built a few nuclear devices, and fruitless inspections now seemed superfluous. Moreover, the new White House team had apparently concluded that an unquestionably strong Israel would be good for American interests: pushing the Arab countries to negotiate peace by dispelling their dreams that they could, with Soviet assistance, wipe out the Jewish state.

Under Nixon, who did not seem alarmed by or opposed to Israel being a nuclear power, the U.S. government accepted a new formula. It was intended to update and clarify Israel’s pledge not to be the first to “introduce” nuclear weapons into the Middle East.

As drafted by the Israeli ambassador in Washington, Yitzhak Rabin, according to officials who spoke about it many years later, it was now understood that nuclear weapons would be perceived as such only if and when they become operational. The key threshold would be a nuclear test explosion.

In effect, Israel was agreeing not to conduct a nuclear test. In return, it was freed from the burden of inconvenient American inspection visits.

Israel, by standing firm but explaining very little, had won the right to be a unique exception to United States policy favoring nuclear non-proliferation. Israeli leaders never agreed to sign international treaties on the subject, yet they continued—time and again—to hope, and even expect, that America would support the unspoken Israeli nuclear monopoly in the Middle East.

Chapter Six

Harel the Crusader

Although Isser Harel was mostly excluded from the nuclear project that Israeli leaders viewed as the nation’s ultimate defense, he wielded tremendous authority over all other security matters. After heading Shin Bet from 1948 to 1952, Harel added the Mossad directorship to his responsibilities from 1952 to 1963, a longer tenure than any intelligence chief has had in Israel.

Harel spent a lot of his time and energy unmasking men who were spying on Israel—working either for the Soviet bloc or for an Arab government. He was an excellent detector of disloyalty. His naturally suspicious nature seemed perfect for that part of his job.

Yet he failed, for several years, to discover a Communist-bloc mole buried inside Shin Bet. The man was Levi Levi: a simple name, but one of the most daring spies to penetrate Israeli society.

He was born as Lucjan Levi in Poland in September 1922. Levi was an activist in a Zionist youth movement, and he survived the Holocaust by escaping to the Soviet Union. In 1948 he would move to Israel, which seemed perfectly natural.

Many years later, documents found in Poland’s national archives showed that Russian secret police had recruited him during the war, and then he served the Polish authorities by spying on fellow Jews.

“During the period of his collaboration on home territory,” one declassified file revealed, “he delivered a lot of valuable and verified information about Zionist activities in Poland.”

The Communist government in Warsaw expected Levi to spy inside Israel. Indeed, by showing he had a talent for security work, he got a job at Shin Bet. After a few weeks, he was placed in the Special Unit—the predecessor of what would become the operations team for Shin Bet and the Mossad. The unit had no more than 20 staffers, most veterans of the pre-state Haganah.

Levi was different from his colleagues. His manners and sense of dress, including bow ties, did not match theirs. While they smoked cheap, unfiltered cigarettes, he was smoking American cigarettes, such as Kent. When they would drink inferior rough liquor, he would offer them foreign brand-name brandies and whiskey—certainly a treat in mid-1950s Israel.

Levi flew several times to France, ostensibly to visit relatives. He always carried a small Minox camera with him and would keep taking photographs left and right. He would ask his colleagues to pose for photos, and he even took pictures near the entrance of Shin Bet headquarters in the Jaffa flea market.

The others in the unit thought he was eccentric, but it never occurred to them that it was anything more than that. Not a single warning light flashed in their heads. They were all busy with their work: shadowing foreign diplomats, breaking into their embassies and homes, and planting microphones that were provided by the CIA.

However, in 1957 a large wave of immigration swept in from Poland, and Levi’s jig was up. Among the new arrivals debriefed by Shin Bet—as part of Operation Balsam for the CIA—was Jefim Gildiner, who confessed that he had been a captain in Poland’s security service. Gildiner also revealed that he was the case officer for a Polish spy inside Israel: Levi Levi.

“We were shocked,” Amos Manor recalled. Levi was put under surveillance, but he was very cautious; no evidence that would stand up in court was found.

Still, he was called to the government’s manpower office and fired. Astonishingly, Shin Bet allowed him to travel to France—once again to see his “family.” Later, it would be learned that he met in Paris with Polish intelligence officers, who debriefed him and ordered him to return to Israel: right back into the Biblically suggestive lion’s den.

Polish chutzpa reached a new zenith when Levi flew back to Tel Aviv, met with the chief of the manpower bureau, and demanded that he be reinstated in Shin Bet—or he would sue his employer in court.

Shin Bet decided to go back to shadowing him. This time, Levi was spotted making contact with an intelligence controller in Poland’s embassy.

Manor finally had Levi arrested, but he still refused to admit that he was a spy. “We were desperate,” the Shin Bet chief recalled. “We knew we had no serious evidence against him, and we were preparing to release him when a miracle happened!” That occurred courtesy of Israel’s intelligence liaison with French secret services.

A Polish intelligence colonel, Wladyslav Mroz, had just defected to France. In his debriefings, he revealed some details about a spy from Poland inside Israel’s intelligence community.

Manor himself flew to Paris and was handed a dossier by French domestic security, which helped solve the mystery.

Finally, during another round of interrogations supervised by Manor, Levi broke down and confessed. He was tried in secret and sentenced to 10 years in prison. He served seven years, and when freed for good behavior he was put onto a ship out of the country, his eventual fate unknown. It is believed that Levi died in Australia, where he actually did have relatives.

Another bad apple in the clandestine bunch was Mordecai (Motke) Kedar. He had been a petty criminal before being recruited by military intelligence, but he is remembered for the most severe crime committed by an Israeli operative while on an assignment: murdering a Jewish businessman in Argentina who was a
sayan
(a “helper”) for the Mossad.

Sayanim, as revealed by a former Mossad cadet, are foreigners who, for personal reasons, are willing to help by making a lot of arrangements that make things easier for Israeli “visitors.” The helpers are usually Jewish—but not always—and are not to be told anything about the mission itself, largely for their own safety. Israel has never admitted using Jews as sayanim, and doing so could carry a danger of endangering local Jewish communities.

Born in Poland as Mordecai Kravitzki, Kedar was undergoing a total transformation. He was going to be planted inside Egypt by Aman’s Unit 131, the military’s plainclothes operations department. For months in Argentina, he was supposed to be developing a “legend,” a complete cover story.

The reasons for stabbing his sayan 80 times in 1957 were never clear, and all details were concealed when Kedar was secretly put on trial in Israel and then jailed under a false name.

Within Ramle Prison, he was known only as “X4.” In the neighboring cell was Avri El-Ad, the former Unit 131 case officer who was suspected of betraying his colleagues in Egypt. El-Ad wrote later that they played chess, mentally, by tapping out their moves by Morse code on a wall between the cells.

“Don’t let them drag you down!” Kedar once tapped. “If you let them demoralize you, you’re a broken man.”

Kedar refused to confess to any crimes. In prison, he maintained his physical fitness and became a disciple of Ayn Rand. After 17 years in prison—including seven years without a cellmate—this tough guy was released in 1974 and demanded a new hearing. His request was rejected.

When the Aman commander who hired Kedar—Yehoshafat Harkabi, who later would become famous as a professor and peace campaigner—was asked about the obviously horrible personnel choice, he did not rend his clothing in regret. “People who are recruited for these operations are not uncomplicated people,” Harkabi said. “There is always some type of story.”

After serving his prison term, Kedar left Israel and lived a vagabond life—eventually making his way to Los Angeles, as a yacht operator between the United States and Latin America. Nearly 50 years after his conviction in the secret trial, he told a few reporters that he was innocent, that he had been framed by Harel, and that he would write his memoirs and reveal the whole truth. He never did.

Isser Harel, who arranged Kedar’s recall and imprisonment, disclosed that serious consideration had been given simply to killing him so as to cover up the crime. There would then have been less chance of a diplomatic clash with Argentina or any embarrassment to the intelligence community. “I was insistent from the beginning that we cannot take the law into our own hands,” Harel wrote. “For this, there are judges and courts.”

Harel proudly added: “During my tenure as Memuneh, no traitor was ever executed.”

This was narrowly true, although some recalled Avner Israel as nearly an exception. He was the operative who was kidnapped by Harel’s snatch squad in 1954 and died during a flight—because of an overdose of sedative—with his corpse unceremoniously dumped into the Mediterranean.

From Harel’s viewpoint, the Kedar case supplied further proof for his old argument that running secret agents was too serious to be left to Aman. Harel claimed that the Mossad was the most qualified agency to send Israelis on ultra-sensitive missions abroad.

A deal was struck. Military intelligence retained responsibility for operations inside Arab countries—especially the planting of spies under deep cover. But the Mossad would build up its own core of undercover officers, who would be tasked with missions all around the world. Harel’s tiny operations department could now be stretched to global proportions.

The Memuneh got right to the new challenge with his typical, uncompromising vigor. As he had authority over both the Mossad and Shin Bet, he insisted that the new unit be available to both agencies and that it utilize the best human resources of both. It would be bureaucratically based within Shin Bet. Years later, Harel said it was like the “birth” of something new and exciting.

Shin Bet scored a success in 1958 when it spotted Aharon Cohen, an expert on the Middle East for the left-wing Mapam party, having regular meetings with a Soviet diplomat in Tel Aviv who was known to be a spy. Cohen was arrested, but party leaders accused Harel of framing him. They pointed out that Harel had planted microphones in their offices five years earlier. Still, Cohen was convicted and sentenced to five years; Israel’s supreme court later cut the prison term in half.

The success in detecting Cohen’s cloaked foreign relations was partly due to a new surveillance method honed by the Shin Bet operations unit. The team had undergone a major shake-up after the failure to notice Levi Levi’s disloyalty, and among the new tools was a clever trick called “the Comb.” It was a method for catching spies by making them come to you.

“We were a small unit,” said Yair Racheli, one of Shin Bet’s first operatives, joining the agency in the early 1950s. “With our limited resources—dozens of men, just a few cars and insufficient radio communications—we found it hard to shadow the spies of two dozen Soviet-bloc countries. They were professionals and knew how to spot us, how to evade us, and they shook us off.”

So Zvi (Peter) Malkin devised new techniques. Instead of following all the Russian, Polish, Czech, and other presumed spies operating under diplomatic cover wherever they might go, Shin Bet’s men divvied up Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa, and some other key cities. When targets of foreign espionage were identified, the Israelis anticipated where the spies were going and waited for them there.

In a basketball sense, this was zone defense rather than man-to-man. Israel in the 1950s and ’60s was so small, with fewer than three million people, that it really could be sliced into zones.

“Instead of following them, we were waiting for them at the zone where we believed they were heading,” Racheli explained. “A lot was based on improvisation and intuition. Sometimes we were wrong, and they went to another zone. But in the end, the system of combing the cities proved itself and paid off.”

The Comb struck gold for a second time in Haifa on a cold evening in March 1960. A Shin Bet operations team was on a training exercise, practicing Malkin’s surveillance pattern, when one of its members spotted a car and recognized its license plate as belonging to Czechoslovakia’s embassy in Tel Aviv.

The diplomat inside was known to be the station chief of the STB, his nation’s intelligence service. He was also known for his clumsiness, carelessness, and laziness—truly the triumvirate of terrible behavior for a spy. The adrenaline started flowing among the Israelis in Haifa, as the unit leader improvised immediately and changed the exercise into a genuine operation.

The diplomat was soon discovered in a nearby restaurant, in the company of an unidentified man.

Shin Bet shadowing teams now focused on the unknown. He left the eatery and strolled to his parked car, which had Swiss license plates from the canton of Zurich. He drove away, and three Shin Bet cars followed him home. The man was readily identified as Professor Kurt Sitta, a scientist from Czechoslovakia who was teaching at the newly established physics department of the Technion—the university in Haifa that was rapidly becoming an Israeli equivalent of MIT.

Sitta was one of the first Soviet-bloc spies to penetrate Israel’s scientific community. He had previously taught at Syracuse University and in Brazil, and in 1955 the Technion invited him to lecture there. Sitta found that he liked the school, the country, and the people. Or so he said, as he gladly accepted the post of chairman of the physics department.

Sitta’s rare success, as a non-Jewish foreigner in Israel, provided a golden opportunity for the Czechs and their Soviet masters. The intelligence officer at the Czechoslovak embassy in Tel Aviv met frequently with the professor between 1955 and 1960, collecting a mountain of material. It took nearly five years, but with the lucky stroke of a Comb, Shin Bet did finally detect the espionage operation.

The surveillance lasted for three months, from March to June 1960. In addition to meetings with his Czech controller, Sitta proved to be an impressive womanizer. Shin Bet men soon developed a favorite assignment: following and photographing Sitta in the beautiful woods of Mount Carmel overlooking the harbor and the Mediterranean. Once or twice a week, during his lunch break, he would drive his American-made Swiss-numbered car—a rare luxury in then-austere Israeli society—the short distance from his office to the forest with a female student or faculty member. The Israeli surveillance teams were treated to the real-life equivalent of pornography.

On the night of June 16, 1960, two men knocked on the door of Sitta’s villa in an exclusive Haifa suburb with a San Francisco-style view of the sea from high above. One of the men was a Shin Bet operative, and the other was in the Special Branch of Israel’s national police. They drove Sitta away for arraignment on charges of spying.