U.S. AN INTELLIGENCE TARGET OF THE ISRAELIS, OFFICIALS SAY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00806R000200830003-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 24, 2010
• Sequence Number: 3
• Publication Date: June 5, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/06/24: CIA-RDP90-00806R000200830003-5
1
STAT
STAT
WASHINGTON POST
5 June 1986
U.S. an Intelligence Target
Of the Israelis, Officials Say
By Charles R. Babcock
Washington Post Staff Writer
J There is evidence that Israel has
run intelligence operations in the
United States for years, despite
Israeli assertions that the Jonathan
Jay Pollard spy case was an isolated
episode, according to current and
former U.S. intelligence officials.
Israeli intelligence services were
"more, active than anyone but the
KGB .... They were targeted on
the United States about half the
time and on Arab countries about
half the time," John Davitt, long-
time head of the justice Depart-
ment's internal security section un-
til his retirement in 1980, said in a
recent telephone interview.
Davitt, who was responsible for
reviewing all espionage cases pend-
ing at the justice Department, said
he recalled a handful of cases during
his 30 years of government service
in which Israeli diplomats suspected
of espionage were quietly asked to
leave the United States.
A secret 1979 Central Intelli-
gence Agency document on Israel's
"Foreign Intelligence and Security
Services" noted that two of Israel's
first three , intelligence priorities
involve the United States. The
Arab states were the first targets
listed. Second was "collection of
information on secret U.S. policy or
decisions, if any, concerning Israel."
Third was "collection of scientific
intelligence in the United States
and other developed countries."
Other U.S. intelligence officials,
who declined to be identified, said
they were aware of a number of
cases of Israeli intelligence oper-
ations in the United States. Some
involved leaks of classified informa-
tion to Israeli agents by Americans
who were pro-Israel but were not
paid agents like Pollard.
Israeli Embassy spokesman Yossi
Gal Ian night reiterated an earlier
statement that the "Pollard affair
was an-unauthorized deviation from
the cit!arcut Israeli policy of not
conducting any espionage activity
whatsoever in the United States
One previously unpublicized ex-
ample of Israeli activities apparent-
ly involved Rafael Eitan, the long-
time Israeli intelligence official
named yesterday in court papers as
Pollard's chief handler. Eitan's
name appears in a U.S. government
document contained in a file about a
case in the 1960s involving urani-
um, which disappeared from a
Pennsylvania plant and has long
been suspected of being diverted to
Israel for use in an atomic bomb.
A declassified Federal Bureau of
Investigation document shows that
a "Raphael Eitan, chemist, Ministry
of Defense, Israel, born 11/23/26,
in Israel" was part of ' a four-man
Israeli team that asked to travel to
the NUMEC uranium processing
plant in Apollo, Pa., in September
1968. The Washington Post has
learned reliably that the Eitan
named in the Pollard case has the
same birthdate.
Eitan was a participant in the Is-
rae}i kidnaping of Nazi war criminal
Adolf Eichmann from a Buenos
Aires street in 1960, according to
Israeli sources. In 1968, he report-
edly-was an officer of the Mossad,
the Israeli intelligence service.
More recently, he has served two
Israeli prime ministers as adviser
on terrorism.
During the 1960s, the FBI inves-
tigated NUMEC's founder, a U.S.
nuclear scientist named Zalman M.
Shapiro, because inspections by the
Atomic Energy Commission found
that 200 pounds of enriched urani-
um enough to make six atom
bombs-were missing from his
plant near Pittsburgh, according to
previously declassified government
files. U.S. officials believe the ura-
nium had disappeared by the mid-
1960s; Shapiro denied that he gave
the uranium to the Israelis and the
case was closed with no charges
being filed.
Shapiro could not be reached for
comment yesterday. His sister,
Mrs. Zipporah Schefrin, said he was
hospitalized following recent sur-
go:ry. Eitan, who now heads a state-
owned chemical plant, did not re-
turn phone calls in Israel.
liitan was scheduled to be accom-
panied to the NUMEC plant in the
fall of 1968 by Avraham Hermoni,
the scientific counselor at the Is-
raeli Embassy, and by two men
identified as being'from Israel's De-
partment of Electronics, according
to the FBI document made public
under the Freedom of Information
Act. It is unclear whether the trip
ever took place.
Diplomatic lists show that Her-
moni was scientific counselor at the
Israeli Embassy from 1968 to 1972.
Officials at the Israeli Foreign Min-
istry and the Ministry of Science
and Development, which has a De-
partment of Electronics, said yes-
terday that they did not know any of
the names listed in the 1968 FBI
document.
Sources familiar with the
NUMEC case said the FBI learned
of a meeting which Hermoni at-
tended at Shapiro's house with 11
American scientists in November
1968, two months after the planned
trip to NUMEC. In June 1969, the
sources added, FBI agents watched
Shapiro meet in the Pittsburgh air-
port with another scientific attache
from the Israeli Embassy.
Scientific attaches have been
identified as contacts in a number of
suspected cases of Israeli espionage
over the years, according to one
knowledgeable federal law enforce-
ment source. One of Pollard's han-
dlers was a science consul at the
Israeli consulate in New York. An
earlier case involved another U.S.
Navy employe, who was investi-
gated in the early 1970s but not
prosecuted, the law enforcement
source added.
Other intelligence and diplomatic
sources, however, also noted that
Israel and the United States have
had a long tradition of sharing in-
telligence, such as recent cooper-
ative efforts to combat terrorism.
In another case, declassified doc-
uments show that Davitt's staff rec-
ommended in 1979 that a grand
jury investigate allegations that
Stephen D. Bryen, who had been a
member of the Senate Foreign Re-
lations Committee staff, had given
secrets to Israeli Embassy officials.
The recommendation was rejected
by superiors. Bryen, who strongly
denied the charges, is now a Pen-
tagon official responsible for re-
viewing which U.S. technology may
be exported.
f"
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/06/24: CIA-RDP90-00806R000200830003-5
 Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/06/24: CIA-RDP90-00806R000200830003-5
A series of investigations of the
NUMEC case has fueled specula-
tion about Israel's nuclear weapons
capability. The latest episode was in
May 1985, when Richard K. Smyth,
a California businessman, was in-
dicted by a federal grand jury for
illegally shipping to Israel 810 "kry-
trons," electronic devices that can
be used in the triggers of nuclear
weapons. Smyth fled the country
after he was indicted. At the time
Israeli government officials said
some of the krytrons had been used
for nonnuclear purposes and prom-
ised to return those that were un-
used.
Recent public disclosures show
that the CIA believed Israel had an
atomic bomb as early as 1968.
The CIA drafted a National In-
telligence Estimate on the Israelis'
nuclear capability in 1969, but Carl
Duckett, who was head of the agen-
cy's directorate of science and tech-
nology, said that then-CIA Director
Richard M. Helms told him not to
publish it, according to government
documents.
According to Duckett's account,
President Lyndon B. Johnson told
Helms, "Don't tell anyone else,
even Dean Rusk and Robert McNa-
mara," then secretaries of state and
defense respectively. Helms has
said he has no recollection of such a
conversation with Duckett.
By 1974, according to another
CIA document on nuclear prolifer-
ation inadvertently made public, the
agency had concluded: "We believe
Israel already has produced nuclear
weapons. Our judgment is based on
Israeli acquisition of large quanti-
ties of uranium, partly by clandes-
tine means .... "
Washington Post Jerusalem
correspondent William Claiborne
contributed to this report.
STAT
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/06/24: CIA-RDP90-00806R000200830003-5