JEWISH COMMUNITY OF HEBRON
IV. Jonathan Jay Pollard:
Mossad 'mole,' or Russian?
Whose ally is Israel, anyway?
On Nov. 21, 1985, the American people were informed that a U.S.
Naval Intelligence civilian specialist named Jonathan Jay Pollard had been apprehended that day by the FBI, at the Israeli embassy in Wash ington, while desperately seeking to flee U.S. law enforcement. Pollard, it was reported, had been confronted by the FBI three days earlier, with
solid proof that he was spying for Israel.
Could it be, as the Pollard case seemed to indicate, that the country which most Americans assume to be our closest ally in the Middle East, and some claim to be our closest ally anywhere, was also soliciting Amer ican citizens to become its agents and stealing U.S. secrets?
It was doing both. Jonathan Jay Pollard was a Mossad agent. But he
may or may not have known, that he was actually a Soviet agent,
operating under a "false flag." For as subsequent investigation established, the unit of the Mossad for which Pollard worked, sought to obtain U.S.
secrets for the purpose of passing them on to the Russians.
In the days and weeks following his arrest, and Pollard's subsequent
confession of espionage, the U.S. news media, the U.S. State Depart
ment, and the government of Israel insisted that the Pollard case really
signified little of importance. Pollard was an "aberration," they all re peated, and had approached the Israelis on his own initiative, an apple falling into their lap. He had not been actively recruited by Israel, they
alleged.
More revelations came. A more elaborate coverup accompanied them.
Government spokesmen and press claimed that Pollard was an an agent of a "rogue" network, of some overly zealous and insubordinate Israeli bureaucrat who, overstepping agreed-upon guidelines, secretly employed Pollard, without his superiors' knowledge. Israel could not be blamed for such an unsanctioned activity.
But Pollard's espionage was not merely an aberration, as Israeli and State Department spokesmen repeatedly claimed. Rather, Pollard was
simply one, relatively low-level asset of a vast Mossad apparatus pene
trating the U.S. government and other institutions. As Executive Intel
ligence Review pursued its investigation of the Pollard case, examining
both the selected facts that broke in the Eastern Establishment press,
and, more importantly, the leads that were suppressed, the reality of
Jonathan Pollard, in custody after his arrest, Nov. 21, 1985
what Pollard represented began to forcefully assert itself. The Pollard case is merely the "tip of the iceberg," with the deepest implications for U.S. national security. It proves, simply by itself, the need for the United States to radically alter its view of its alleged close ally, Israel.
The arrest
Pollard was a 31-year-old civilian counter-terror specialist at the U.S.
Naval Investigative Service's Anti-Terrorist Alert Center, in Suitland, Maryland. He had first been approached by the FBI on Nov. 18, as he
was leaving his office for home. According to some accounts, federal authorities had been alerted to Pollard's suspected treason, some time before, when some of Pollard's co-workers had become highly suspicious of his requests for classified material which could not conceivably have
been of use to him. They informed the FBI.According to the testimony of FBI spokesman Eugene J. Noltkamper, when Pollard was confronted with the accusations against him at the Suitland center that day, it was discovered that he was carrying an envelope containing 60 classified documents relating to U.S. intelligence gathering operations, and also to an unspecified foreign government's
weapons systems. In a clumsy attempt to justify himself, Pollard told the
agents that he was simply taking these documents to a collegue's office.
The FBI made inquiries. That unidentified offical told the FBI that he
was not expecting the documents from Pollard.With Pollard in custody, the FBI began a detailed search of his home at 1733 20th Street in Washington. During this search, they retrieved
additional U.S. classified documents which had been stashed in boxes
in Pollard's bedroom. Still later, the FBI agents seized an even greater
number of classified documents, after following leads that resulted from monitoring a phone call which Pollard made to his wife, during an initial
interrogation that evening. In the call, which he attempted to portray
as merely devoted to household concerns, Pollard instructed his wife to
remove a "cactus" and other possessions from their apartment. Sometime
EIR Special Report
later, the FBI received a call from a resident in Pollard's building who told them that she had been requested by Anne Pollard to safeguard a suitcase of theirs, which had been concealed in the stairwell of their
Dupont Circle apartment building. Upon retrieving and examining the contents of the suitcase, law enforcement authorities discovered a mass of classified intelligence documents. Among them were plans for a new U.S. weapons system, which was labeled with the project's acronym,
"Cactus."
The FBI did not immediately arrest Pollard or his wife, but instead
maintained a 24-hour surveillance of his activities. It was only after
Pollard and his wife drove their 1980 Mustang to the Israeli embassy
compound, and Pollard's wife carried two bags into the embassy's un derground garage, on Nov. 21, that they made the arrests.
During interviews the evening of his arrest, Pollard revealed that he had contacted the Israeli embassy immediately following his discovery by the FBI on Nov. 18, and requested asylum. Pollard reported that an
unidentified Israeli offical at the embassy agreed to provide assistance,but only if he could shake the FBI surveillance, which both he and the
Israeli officer knew to exist.
At a federal court hearing on Nov. 27, FBI special agent Noltkamper testified that Pollard had admitted that he had sold classified U.S. gov ernment documents to Israel. Pollard confessed that these documents included details about U.S. weapons systems and military strength, and
also that of several other nations. Pollard told the FBI that he had beenan Israeli spy since 1984, and that he had received over $50,000 from the Israeli government. Pollard further admitted that he was in regular contact with Ilan Ravid, then scientific attaché at the Israeli embassy, who gave Pollard detailed instructions regarding the targets of his espi
onage activities. Pollard also admitted that Ravid paid him $2,500 a
month in cash, and also cocaine. He also implicated Yosef Yagur, a science officer at the Israeli consulate in New York.
Within hours of his arrest, Ravid and Yagur were spirited back to Israel
by plane, to avoid interrogation in the United States. It emerged that
both Ravid and Yagur were not simply science attachés employed at the Israeli embassy and consulate, but also agents of Lekem, the Hebrewacronym for the Science Liaison Bureau, an espionage unit within the
Israeli Defense Ministry.
Then, on Nov. 24, the Israeli Hebrew daily Davar and other Israeli press reported that the director of Lekem was one Rafi Eytan, popularly known as "Dirty Rafi," one of Israel's legendary spymasters. Published accounts in both the United States and Israel reported that Eytan not only directed the activities of his subordinates, Ravid and Yagur, but that he himself had met with Pollard on several occasions during his
regular trips to the United States.
Reviewing these facts, EIR investigators asked themselves: Is Jonathan Jay Pollard simply a Mossad agent, as he himself confessed, and as his relationship to Ravid and Yagur suggested? In the world of statecraft and intelligence, what is apparent is rarely what is real. Usually, reality bears
little relationship to those things credibly reported as fact in the New York Times. EIR investigations determined that Pollard, far from simply
a Mossad agent, was also, despite possible ignorance of the fact, spying
for Moscow.
This is not exclusively EIR's judgment. EIR's assessment has been
adopted increasingly in the intelligence community, even by that caste of professional Soviet watchers, in several nations, who, as a rule, typically grossly misestimate the nature of Soviet intelligence operations. Com
: L
menting on the Pollard case, a senior British source told EIR (Jan. 15,
1986): "In return for the U.S.S.R.'s release of Soviet Jews, the Israelis have been passing on material to the U.S.S.R. as a quid pro quo. This
has been going on for years." The Edinburgh-based John Erickson, a
British Sovietologist, reported, "The Soviet Union and Israel are much
closer than most people think...."
In intelligence jargon, Pollard was a "false flag" agent, the dupe who is recruited into espionage for one country, while in reality working for
the intelligence services of an entirely different nation, a country to which the duped operative might even be sincerely hostile.
As the interrogations of Pollard proceeded, Pollard's admissions dem onstrated without question that he sincerely believed that he was working solely for the Israeli Mossad. But then, Pollard was a merely a low-level operative, a cocaine user whose readily apparent James Bond fantasies made him an easy target for the agencies that manipulated him. What Pollard viewed as the nature of his own activities is a consideration, but not at all the most important feature in such investigations.
Pollard was a spy for Moscow, despite his own beliefs, because the
Eytan-directed Lekem intelligence network for which he worked, was
consciously deployed by Eytan on the Soviets' behalf. Despite the em barrassed Israeli government's efforts to label Eytan a "rogue," "insubor dinate," or "acting independently," Eytan was none of these. Eytan,
despite his misrepresentation in the U.S press, has been a life-long, close
political ally of Gen. Ariel Sharon, and professionally associated with Sharon in espionage and related work for several decades. Of necessity, whatever involves Eytan, involves Sharon, who is now making a Soviet backed bid to become the next prime minister of Israel.
The actual significance of the Pollard affair is that what is called the Mossad, Israeli foreign intelligence, and what is called the "Zionist lobby"
in the United States, is increasingly, largely a tool of Soviet intelligence.
The Pollard affair is far from an "aberration." Israel is not, and has not
been, a "client state" of the United States.
Admittedly, Moscow's effective control over Israel only became lurid during the spring 1985 "Bitburg cemetery affair," when Israel overtly
worked with Russia in running a black propaganda operation depicting President Reagan as a "Nazí sympathizer" for visiting the German cemetery. However, the ties of the Mossad to the KGB are longstanding.
Currently, Israeli politics is determined by a race between the Armand Hammer-patronized faction of General Sharon, and that of Israeli Prime
Minister Shimon Peres, over which will be the first to consolidate a new, strategic deal with Moscow. The winner of the race will receive upwards of 400,000 Soviet Jews, which Moscow will ship to Israel to populate Israel's expanded land mass, in particular, the West Bank. This new
immigrant group, which will represent a huge percentage of the Israeli electorate, is expected to be forever grateful to the Israeli faction which
enables it to escape Russia.What Israel is expected to do for the Soviets is illustrated by Pollard's activities, and the deployment of the Mossad and Zionist lobby as an
adjunct of Warsaw Pact intelligence.
EIR Special Report
Pollard's 'Irgun'
controllers
The Israeli faction which controlled Pollard, that of Eytan and Sharon, has been gaining increasing control of Israeli policy since 1977, when they were brought into the newly elected government of Menachem Begin. Sharon's undisguised ambition is to become effective ruler of Israel, as prime minister or otherwise. Reflecting their patronage, the Sharon faction has been deeply involved in sponsorship of "Arab terrorism," in Jewish fundamentalist plots to destroy the Al Aqsa mosque on the Temple Mount, and in promotion of the rapid development of organized crime
as the base of the Israeli economy.
The NKVD, the predecessor agency of the KGB, preferred the Irgun to the Haganah in the 1940s. The KGB prefers the "Second Generation
Irgun" of Sharon today.
To understand Pollard, it is necessary to understand that during most of the period that Eytan fielded him, Eytan was not only the director of Lekem, but also the Advisor to the Office of the Prime Minister on the
Warfare against Terror, popularly known as Terror against Terror. Under Eytan, Terror against Terror rapidly became the command center for a re-emerged Irgun underground, and the base for an Irgun effort to take over over all other Israeli intelligence agencies, including the Mossad,
Israel's foreign intelligence arm, and Shabak, its domestic branch.
The Soviets and the Israelis have come to an understanding, based upon a division of labor between the two: The Israelis will cover for Soviet-sponsored terrorism in Europe, and will concentrate their own efforts inside North America. The major requirement for this special relationship between Moscow and Jerusalem is to keep the United States
off balance and blindsided on the intelligence front-to the benefit ofboth.
Irgun vs. Haganah
We identify here the essential features of the role of the Irgun (Hebrew
for "The Organization") which gave rise to the current Mossad faction
of Sharon and Eytan.The Irgun Zvai Leumi was founded in 1929 through a fusion of the
youth section (Betar) of the Revisionist Zionism of Vladimir Jabotinsky,
and a split-off from the Jewish Defense Units, the Haganah. This split off, known as "Haganah B," was led by a Haganah officer named Abraham Tehomi, who joined forces with two of Jabotinsky's followers, Irma Hal pern and Moshe Rosenberg. They established their Jerusalem unit in April 1931. Jabotinsky was in all probability an agent of the Czarist Okhrana and its GPU successor, and was described by Israel's first head of state, David Ben-Gurion, as "another Hitler." At the outset, the Irgun was a terrorist-counterterrorist organization with its own intelligence
network.
During the 1930s, the Irgun was led by David Raziel and his collab
orator, Abraham Stern, who later split off from the Irgun (at least, nominally) to form the notorious Lehi or Stern Gang in 1940. This was the unit, in collaboration with Irgun commander Amichai Paglin, which later, in 1946, blew up the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, killing 98
British soldiers and officials.
The counterparts of the Irgun were the Labor Zionists and their Jewish Defense Units, the Haganah. Led by David Ben-Gurion and Chaim Weizmann, the Haganah received its training from a top British military intelligence officer named Orde Wingate, who was himself a fanatical
Zionist. A political-scientific intelligence espionage operation was set up
by Chaim Weitzmann under the guidance of Winston Churchill's top
"spook," Sir William Stephenson, the man who helped set up the U.S.
Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the precursor of the Central Intel ligence Agency. This apparatus later established the Institution in He
brew, the Mossad.
The atrocities of the Irgun and the Stern Gang, against Jewish op
ponents as well as Arabs, produced deep bitterness between the Haganah and Irgun. Only certain capabilities of the Irgun were brought into official
service. Ben-Gurion's Haganah, upon independence, formed a govern.ment. The Irgun and its network was accepted only as the Haganah
Labour Party's junior partners. Likewise, the Mossad came to exhibit a
divided character, between a dominant Haganah and an "opposition" or
"minority" faction from the Irgun. This minority position may have
something to do with the Irgun's disposition to spectacular and bold actions to make their power felt, typified by Amichai Paglin and former
Minister of Economics, Ya'akov Meridor, within the Mossad organization.
In the interests of "survival" at any cost, both the Haganah and the
Irgun made tactical and strategic deals with the Nazis. Repeatedly, rep.resentatives of the Irgun met with Heinrich Himmler's chief deputy, Adolph Eichmann, and other SS and Gestapo leaders. As admitted by former top Irgun figure Yitzhak Ben-Ami, in order to "help Eichmann get the Jews out of Europe, the Irgun leadership made a series of deals
with Eichmann." It is certain that the Irgun leadership of Begin, Paglin, and Meridor, which trained the faction which controls Sharon and Eytantoday, provided the Gestapo and the SS intelligence network with the names of British agents and otherwise betrayed the Allies in exchange
for selected Jewish emigration.If Irgun leaders made deals with Nazis, why not with the Soviet in telligence services? In fact, during the same period that the Irgunists were
betraying the Allies to the Nazis, they were also betraying Western interests, as well as the Nazis, to the Soviet NKVD. This is certainly
how their successors are thinking about the Soviet Jewish immigrationquestion today. Through a series of complex deals arranged through
"Trust" financial figures such as Armand Hammer, Israeli leaders now find themselves prepared to undermine the waning power and influence of the United States. From the standpoint of the doctrine of "survival,"
it appears wise that Israel make its deal with the Russians.
The Eytan-Sharon
connection
Although neither Sharon nor Eytan run this "Second Generation"
Irgun, and in fact have their political origins in Haganah circles, the Sharon combination is entirely a vehicle for an Irgun takeover of Israel.
The history of Sharon-Eytan seizure of control over much of Israeli intelligence, makes this clear.
In 1977, Ariel Sharon, running on his own Shlomtzion party ticket, was elected to the Knesset, in the same general election which installed Herut
party leader and former Irgun commander Menachem Begin as Prime
Minister. Sharon had not always been a politician. As recently as 1973, he was an active-duty Israeli Defense Force general.However, in 1973, Sharon was approached by Meshulam Riklis, an Israeli emigré, now based in New York City, and one of the world's top organized-crime figures. At Riklis's request, and with his lavish financial backing, Sharon left the IDF and entered politics. The Trust's "Sharon
project" had begun.
It would be incorrect to say that Sharon's controller, Riklis, had always been an operative for the Irgun faction of the Mossad. In fact, Riklis
had fled Palestine at the outbreak of the War of Independence, in part
because of the price put on his head by the Irgun. Riklis was known tobe then working for British intelligence.
EIR Special Report
Once based in the United States, in Minneapolis, Riklis came under the patronage of Burton Joseph, of the I. S. Joseph grain cartel, and member of a family long associated with the Minneapolis mob and Hubert Humphrey machine. Joseph went on to chair the Anti-Defamation League.
Through Joseph's financial backing, Riklis, then an impoverished He
brew school teacher, embarked on a spectacular business career. From1953-63, every one of Riklis's corporate takeovers, which so amazed the naive public, was funded by Joseph. By the late 1960s, Riklis had indeed
become big-time, and for a while, controlled the Lansky money-laundryknown as Investors Overseas Services (IOS).
In 1971, still closely tied to the Lansky mob, Riklis was instructed by today's ADL national chairman, Kenneth Bialkin, of the law firm of
Willkie, Farr and Gallagher, to sell his control of IOS to Bialkin's client,a new mobster on the scene, Robert Vesco. Riklis went on to take over
Rapid American Corporation and several other narcotics-linked com
panies.
During approximately the same period that he was parlayed from a
Hebrew teacher into a kingpin of organized crime, Riklis became one ofthe key weapons procurers and money launderers for the Mossad. Ac cording to some sources, Riklis was originally blackmailed into this ac
tivity, through his continuing fear of Israeli retribution for his betrayalof Israel during the War of Independence. According to these sources,
Riklis was offered "protection" by the Mossad faction associated with Moshe Dayan in return for his services.Regardless, when Riklis sponsored Sharon's ambitions in 1973, he was
acting for the Lansky-allied ADL, and an associated faction of the Mossad.
Shortly after his election to the Knesset, a campaign, significantly enough, managed by Rafi Eytan, Sharon's Shlomtzion party was offered entry into Begin's Likud bloc, and Sharon was positioned to obtain a
ministry.
According to the reliable publication Israel and Palestine, Sharon first
made a determined effort to be appointed to the post of defense minister.
Failing this, Sharon proposed the creation of an entirely new position
a Minister without Portfolio in charge of the warfare against terrorism.
This ministry was to be an upgraded version of the Advisory Office to the Prime Minister on the Warfare against Terrorism, an office formed
in the early 1970s.
Begin refused both suggestions. Instead, Sharon became Minister of Agriculture; Terror against Terror remained attached to the Prime Min