ESPIONAGE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01070R000301960010-0
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 11
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 14, 2010
• Sequence Number: 10
• Publication Date: November 27, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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RADIO TV REPORTS, INC.
4701 WILLARD AVENUE, CHEVY CHASE, MARYLAND 20815
[phone]
PROGRAM
Nightline
STATION
W J L A- T V
ABC Network
DATE
November 27,
Espionage
1985
11:30 P.M.
CITY
Washington, D.C.
TED KOPPEL: Jonathan Pollard, accused of spying for
Israel and Pakistan. Ronald Pelton, accused of spying for the
Soviet Union. Larry Wu-tai Chin, accused of spying for China.
All worked for supersecret U.S. agencies. All were indicted
today.
Good evening. I'm Ted Koppel. And this is Nightline.
It's as though the country had been struck by a sudden
epidemic of espionage. But in each case it's actually been going
on for years.
We'll look at what's going on with a man who spent much
of his career at or near the top of the intelligence community.
KOPPEL: Somehow, we expect our adversaries to spy on
us. So that when we hear of espionage conducted in behalf of the
Soviet Union or the People's Republic of China, we may wonder
about the motives of the Americans who spied for them, but we can
hardly question the motives of the governments that hired the
spies. After all, the United States is certainly trying todo the
same thing in Moscow and Beijing.
But Israel is a friendly government. More than that, it
is a government very heavily dependent on the good will and the
generosity of the United States. Why would it jeopardize that
good will when Washington already provides it with enormous
quantities of intelligence material?
Here's our Tel Aviv bureau chief, Bob Zelnick.
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BOB ZELNICK: Jonathan Pollard, 31 years old, an
American Jew, employee of the Naval Investigative Service,
apprehended outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington, accused of
selling top secret data to Israel. Sources here say Pollard's
embassy contact man, 27-year-old Elan Ravid (?), has already been
brought home, and a more senior embassy official may follow.
It's enough to give an Israeli Prime Minister a case of
instant lockjaw.
From the outset, Israel's leaders have declared their
ignorance of the Pollard operation, pledging a full investigation
of what they say is a deviation from Israeli policy.
MAN: It is Israel's policy to refrain from any
intelligence activity related to the United States, in view of
the close and special relationship of friendship prevailing
between the two countries.
ZELNICK: The strategic relationship between Israel and
the United States is close, and leaders of the two countries are
generally solicitous of each other's turf. Yet veterans of
Israel's highly skilled and professional intelligence community
have expressed doubt that an operation as sensitive as the
Pollard matter could have occurred without high-level oversight.
MAN: I don't think that any intelligence agency will
have that authority to do it on its own.
ZELNICK: Pollard was a frequent visitor to Israel who
once studied at the Weizmann Institute in Tel Aviv. Israeli
press reports suggest he was recruited not by Israel's crack
Mosad intelligence agency, but by this man, Rafi Eitan, former
Prime Minister Menachem Begin's adviser on terrorism. Eitan has
worked in the Defense Ministry under three ministers: Ariel
Sharon, Moshe Arens, and Yitzhak Rabin. All are maintaining
silence pending the outcome of an investigation conducted by
Prime Minister Peres.
Israel already gets much U.S. intelligence developed
from human and technical sources. But there are advantages to
getting information fast and unedited.
Consider October's bombing raid against PLO headquarters
in Tunis. At the time, Israeli officials bragged about its
pinpoint accuracy.
YITZHAK RABIN: The long arm of the IDF can reach
terrorism wherever it is located.
ZELNICK: Satellite photos and PLO communications
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intercepted by American vessels could have been useful in
identifying key targets in an operation the U.S. could not
sanction in advance.
Also, sources here say much of the Pollard intelligence
dealt with estimates of the performance of Egyptian troops in
operations like Bright Star, an exercise conducted jointly with
the United States. The U.S. provides Israel with little
information about the military situation in such pro-Western Arab
countries as Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.
There are times when Israeli and American interests
clash. In 1954, with Britain planning to turn the Suez Canal
over to Egypt and the United States seeking to strengthen ties
with the Nasser government, Israel tried to sow Western doubts
about Egypt. And in June 1967, in the midst of the Six Day War,
Israeli planes attacked the American spy ship Liberty, killing 34
sailors and wounding 1971. The vessel had been buzzed by Israeli
aircraft for six hours and attacked for two hours. But in the
end, President Lyndon Johnson accepted Israel's claim that her
pilots thought the ship was Egyptian.
MAN: The United States never conducted any intensive
congressional hearings into it. The Administration at the time
semed to try to hide the whole incident under the rug because of
embarrassment. I don't think -- I think it could have been
pursued a lot more vigorously than it was.
ZELNICK: There have been other incidents, as well. The
suspected 1960s diversion of uranium from this Pennsylvania
facility to Israel's widely reported nuclear arsenal, and last
year's reported theft from the United States of nuclear
triggering devices, again for the Israeli program.
In the Pollard case, like these earlier examples,
whatever their private anger, American officials have moved
quickly to heal the wounds.
MAN: I'm hopeful and I have a conviction that both
governments can work together to successfully resolve the
problem of any damage that might be done.
ZELNICK: The United States tolerates these occasional
Israeli excesses because Washington believes it's getting more
than its money's worth from the strategic partnership with
Israel. America's F-15 and F-16 aircraft were first tested in
combat by Israel. These Israeli-made reconnaissance drone
aircraft are being purchased by the Pentagon after proving their
worth in Lebanon. The Navy also leases Israeli Kfir jets for
training purposes, a plane strikingly similar to Soviet MIGs.
Israel services America's Sixth Fleet at the port of Haifa,
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giving the U.S. something very close to a base in this vital part
of the world.
These troops from the predominantly Christian South
Lebanese army are trained and equipped by Israel. Similar
instruction has been given to security forces from Central and
South American countries, a situation where direct U.S.
involvement would have been awkward.
And this was the Israeli weapons display at a recent air
show in the Negev. Israel has provided spare parts of American
equipment to Iran and sold weapons to other recipients where
direct U.S. sales would have caused domestic political
controversy.
In intelligence, too, the Israelis have delivered key
contributions in three major areas.
MAN: One is what is going on in the Middle East. This
is obviously our main effort.
The other is technical data on Soviet material which has
been or is being used by our neighboring countries.
general.
ZELNICK: After every war the Israelis have turned over
captured Soviet guns, tanks and antiaircraft weapons for analysis
by the United States. In the Lebanon war the Israelis showed
that reconnaissance planes, artillery and bombs could take out
Soviet ground-to-air missiles manned by the Syrians. And the
thousands of PLO, Shiite and other Arab prisoners interrogated in
Israeli jails over the years have provided the West with
information of incalculable value in the long battle against
terrorism.
Diplomats have been called honorable men sent abroad to
lie for their countries. Espionage is an even blacker art.
Practiced by a tough little nation like Israel against foes, and
even friends, it can be downright nasty.
Incidents like the Pollard affair cause America to think
twice about its relationship with Israel. But all such
reassessments have concluded that the Israelis have proven
themselves too many times in too many ways to be discarded.
KOPPEL: When we come back we'll talk about the Pollard
case and today's other major espionage arraignments with one of
America's top intelligence professionals, Admiral Bobby Inman.
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KOPPEL: Three of the people who went to court today on
espionage charges were employed by three American intelligence
organizations: U.S. Naval Intelligence, the National Security
Agency, and the CIA.
Our guest tonight is unusually well qualified to discuss
what these cases represent. Admiral Bobby Inman was Director of
Naval Intelligence from 1974 to 1976. Admiral Inman was Director
of the National Security Agency from 1977 to '81. And he was
Deputy Director of the CIA from 1981 to 1982.
Admiral Inman joins us nowlive from our affiliate KUVE
in Austin, Texas.
Let's start, Admiral Inman, with the Pollard affair.
Does it strike you as a very professional job?
ADMIRAL BOBBY INMAN: Not as professional as I've been
accustomed to expecting from the Israeli services.
KOPPEL: Why not?
ADMIRAL INMAN: Well, hiring someone, someone, at least
from the media coverage, who was pretty boastful, talked a lot
about his contacts, someone who worked to be visible on the
Washington scene, that's not the kind of agent that you're likely
to find reliable over a long time frame.
KOPPEL: What
apparently been blown,
the Israeli Embassy?
ADMIRAL INMAN:
the choice of candidate.
about the notion that once he has
he goes running right to his contact at
It demonstrates the lack of wisdom in
On the other hand, it's hard to get intelligence, often,
Ted. And sometimes when you really want information, you'll take
risks on the people that you rely on.
KOPPEL: There is a huge public relations risk involved
here, too. After all, Mr. Pollard is an American Jew. That
means that when he is blown in an operation like this, there's
likely to be a tremendous backlash in this country. The question
is going to be raised: Are there other American Jews spying for
Israel?
That kind of thing certainly has to be considered by the
Israelis. Why, in this case, do you think they didn't?
ADMIRAL INMAN: The desire to get their hands on some
specific kinds of information. And none of us yet know exactly
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what they were getting from the Pollard case that made it worth
the risks, in the judgment of at least some officials.
KOPPEL: If young Mr. Pollard was a bad security risk
from the point of view of the Israelis hiring him as a spy, then
surely the question has to be raised, was he not an even greater
security risk from the point of view of Naval Intelligence, which
hired him in the first place? And if my friend John Scali is
correct -- he reported tonight, and I'm sure he has it on good
authority, that Pollard was actually up to head up the Middle
East desk for Naval Intelligence. That's extraordinary.
ADMIRAL INMAN: Well, unfortunately, sitting down here
in Austin and 3 1/2 years removed, I don't have a good track on
Pollard's performance, when he was hired, and what kind of jobs
he's performed.
The assignment to the center to track terrorist activity
would reflect that he was considered to have some promise. At
least, you hope when a new center's created like that, as
important as the issue of terrorism is, that people who were
judged to be the best analysts were sent there.
KOPPEL: Yeah, but, you know, Admiral Inman, you're a
tough fellow, so I'm not going to let you get away that easily.
If it is valid to make the point that the Israelis may have
miscalculated in their judgment of him, what I'm raising here is
a question which will allow us eventually to get into the broader
issue of the other people who have now been charged with
espionage, is a question of how character assessments are made.
If he is such a braggart, a fellow who goes around town braqging
about his association with the Israelis -- he is said publicly to
have told people that he spied for the Israelis. How come we
didn't know about that?
ADMIRAL INMAN: Ted, the one thing I think you have to
give some credit for, for all the other cases we're looking at,
we found out about them only because a defector told us about
them. This is the only case I know of where suspicions were
aroused in co-workers, and the whistle in this case was blown by
the co-workers.
So there clearly are a lot of questions that have to be
answered: How'd he get hired? What kind of profile was there?
But at least, unlike the other cases, there was some sensitivity
to these co-workers which caused the focus to come on Pollard in
the first place.
KOPPEL: I should make the point that, obviously, none
of these people that we're going to be talking about tonight has
been convicted of anything yet. These are simply charges that
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have been made against both Mr. Pollard and Mr. Larry Wu-tai Chin
and Ronald Pelton. But we're going to be talking about all of
them as we move along.
I would just like you to talk a little more, if you
would, Admiral Inman, about what it is that the Israelis could
hope to get from someone like Mr. Pollard that they couldn't get
in the normal course of events with the United States. There's
an enormous amount of exchange of intelligence information that
goes on, isn't there?
ADMIRAL INMAN: The U.S. has extensive intelligence
relationships with a great many countries, all of those where
there's a treaty relationship, and others where we're committed
to the long-term security of the country. In the case of Israel,
it's a commitment to their security that's of very long standing.
That exchange of information is usually keyed to the
kind of relationship. For NATO, it would contain information
that could be used for offensive purposes, as well as defensive
purposes. For most of the other relationships, the exchange
focues on information to be used to defend the country. It would
not provide information that they could use if they want to use
preemptive attacks elsewhere.
So, sitting down here, purely speculating, I'm wondering
were they after, through Pollard, information that they could use
for preemptive attacks against the PLO or other potential
targets?
KOPPEL: Admiral Inman, we're going to take a break.
KOPPEL: We all remember, even those of us who've had
nothing to do with the intelligence community, the wonderful
opening of the old Mission Impossible series, where the tape, as
it is unraveling, ends up by saying, "In the event of anything
going wrong, the Secretary will disavow all knowledge."
Is that what's going on right now in Israel? Or do you
think that people at the top really didn't know what was
happening?
ADMIRAL INMAN: It's entirely plausible that the top
officials did not know the specifics of an agent. Those who are
in position to govern, to make decisions want information.
They're not usually eager to know the details of how that
information is achieved. For one reason, they don't want to run
the risk that they might expose it somewhere along the way.
The additional factor that drives them is that they want
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to be able to deny.
While I accept it as entirely plausible that Prime
Minister Peres might not have known the identity of the
individual, I think it's unlikely that the government was not
aware that the government had sources other than liaison to try
to keep them apprised of events in this country.
KOPPEL: All right. Then a very difficult question,
which you may not be able to answer at all. But it's, I think, a
fair question to ask.
Does Israel seem to have the sense, then, that no matter
what it does in such matters, ultimately things will be brushed
aside or swept under the rug? And would they be justified in
making that assumption?
ADMIRAL INMAN: Ted, I think the judgment's made on a
somewhat different basis. Even countries that are very close
friends have worries that at some point in time the interests of
the two countries may not be the same. There's the certain
nervousness that they be properly apprised about where policy may
go or what kinds of systems might be available to use in case of
a conflict, lack of certainty that the relationship is such that
everything is told to you.
So I think even with the closest of friends, you have to
expect that there will be some caution, some extra measures to
try to protect themselves against untimely surprise.
KOPPEL: Let's talk for a moment about the other two
cases. I mean Larry Wu-tai Chin, who worked for the Foreign
Broadcast Information Service over at CIA, and Ronald Pelton, who
worked at the National Security Agency.
Now, not so many years ago, even the name National
Security Agency, possibly even when you were heading that
organization, was classified. I mean it was that secret an
organization. It is still a very secret organization. But at
least you can tell us what it does, in general. Would you?
ADMIRAL INMAN: Well, the National Security Agency has
the primary responsibility for the U.S. Government for the
collection of signals intelligence, intelligence derived from the
communications of other countries, intelligence derived from
telemetry from missile tests, intelligence derived from radar
emissions.
KOPPEL: All right. So this would be information that
would be, first of all, enormously hard for any other organiza-
tion to come by; and secondly, very crucial in terms of gauging
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an adversary or potential adversary's capability. Therefore, I
would assume that the people you bring into an organization like
this would have to go through a fairly thorough vetting and
fairly thorough security check.
ADMIRAL INMAN: Back in the late Fifties, NSA suffered
through several very damaging, very embarrassing spy cases. As a
result of that, Congress enacted legislation setting certain
standards for the National Security Agency that in fact don't
exist for any other agency. When I was the Director of NSA, I
was the only head of an intelligence agency in Washington that
could not waive a background investigation.
And I think what this tells us for all of this range of
spies is that even for the agencies where they use polygraph and
extensive personality surveys as they're employing people, that's
no guaranty that they won't turn sour along the way.
KOPPEL: Some of your congressional -- not your
congressional critics, but congressional critics of the NSA are
saying that the NSA has been particularly lax about instigating
counterintelligence and has rejected a number of congressional
suggestions, a number of White House suggestions that it needs to
pay more attention to counterintelligence.
ADMIRAL INMAN: I'm aware of where the charges arise,
and they're spurious.
KOPPEL: Why?
ADMIRAL INMAN: The NSA has long had very detailed
efforts to look at the prospect of being [unintelligible]. It's
some of the most sensitive things that you do. And in dealing
with some congressional staff who are notorious for leaking
secrets, I made the decision, and my successors have, not to give
them access to the most sensitive tools that belong to that
agency. And I'd make the same decision all over again.
KOPPEL: Admiral Inman, we've got a couple of minutes
left. We're going to take a break and we'll come back with some
final questions and answers.
KOPPEL: Back once again with Admiral Bobby Inman.
Why so many arrests now, do you think?
ADMIRAL INMAN: It may, to some degree, be the result of
additional assets the FBI's gotten over the last several years
beginning to expand our ability to be more effective in counter-
intelligence. And over a long period of years we drew down
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assets rather than adding to them.
Some of it also, clearly, is a result of the defectors
who've given leads.
ADMIRAL INMAN: That's right.
And these tend to come in cycles. We had a series of
them in the late Fifties, early Sixties. We've got another
series now.
What I have to worry about, Ted, is what about all the
ones who haven't yet been detected on which there are not leads?
All of these we're looking at now turn out to be from the
intelligence agencies, and they clearly are prime targets. But I
have to be skeptical that they're the only organizations of the
government that have been penetrated for espionage activities.
KOPPEL: By which you mean what? Congressional aides?
People in the news media?
ADMIRAL INMAN: No, I mean other -- clearly, our
adversaries and our friends have to be interested in sources of
other depatments of government, not just intelligence.
And we've got a new problem here that we didn't deal
with in earlier years. None of these are cases where they're
blackmailed. Only the Pollard case may have some ideological
ties. These are people who either had financial difficulties, or
simple greed, and decided...
KOPPEL: Well, Wu-tai Chin could...
ADMIRAL INMAN: ...to sell secrets.
KOPPEL: ...could be ideological. Right? Mr. Chin?
That's possible that he's ideological.
ADMIRAL INMAN: May have had a tie, but there's at least
a good trail from the media that it's been a profitable source of
outside income.
KOPPEL: So your concern, then, is -- well, I can
understand what your concern is. But in the few seconds we've
got left, what do you about it?
ADMIRAL INMAN: In the world ahead of us, we've got to
figure out how do we also deal with those who, for financial
reasons, decide to sell secrets, whether it's secrets from
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corporations or secrets from governments. There are questions of
ethics. But there are also questions, how are we able to trail
when American citizens who are employed by the government have
unaccounted-for income, or when they get in deep distress and
they've got access to secrets and they're tempted to sell them.
KOPPEL: All right. Admiral Inman, with you as a guest,
I always wish we had more time. But we don't. And thank you
very much.
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