Israel a Slew of Unanswered Questions

By Jacob V. Lamar Jr.

It was 3:30 a.m. in Jerusalem when Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres was awakened by a telephone call from California. For the next hour he and U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz discussed how to extricate the Israeli government from an ever thickening diplomatic quagmire. For ten days the Peres Cabinet had sidestepped the implications of the arrest in Washington of Jonathan Pollard, a Navy counterintelligence analyst, on charges of selling top-secret information to Israel. Even as details of Peres' internal investigation of the affair began leaking to the press, the Prime Minister stubbornly refused to comment on the case. When Shultz placed his call to Peres, the Reagan Administration was impatient for at least some sign of progress on the Pollard inquiry. It was time to confront the issue.

That afternoon the Prime Minister released a brief, carefully worded statement. "Spying on the United States stands in total contradiction to our policy," it read. "Such activity, to the extent that it did take place, was wrong and the government of Israel apologizes." Peres vowed that if government officials were implicated in the espionage, "those responsible will be brought to account, the unit involved . . . will be completely and permanently dismantled, and necessary organizational steps will be taken to ensure that such activities are not repeated."

Still, the statement left disturbing questions unanswered. Would the U.S. be allowed to question key Israeli officials who may have dealt with Pollard? Would Israel return intelligence documents it had obtained through him? Who recruited Pollard? How much, if anything, did the top men in the Israeli government know about his activities? Peres said only that his investigation was "still incomplete," and declared that Israel would uncover "all the facts to the last detail no matter where the trail may lead."

Secretary Shultz was quick to applaud Peres' qualified apology. "We are satisfied," he said. Shultz later announced that a team of American investigators would travel to Israel this week to interview officials implicated in the case. "We have every reason to believe the issues involved will be resolved satisfactorily," he said. "We expect these matters to go forward expeditiously and completely." Not everyone in the Reagan Administration was so sanguine. "The apology went a long way to meeting the concerns," said a high-ranking Administration official, "but we await the results." A top intelligence officer expressed skepticism of the State Department's motives. Said he: "They are afraid of the Jewish lobby on one hand and that it might cause the downfall of Shimon Peres on the other."

The controversy swirling around Pollard began last month when co-workers at the Naval Investigative Service in Suitland, Md., reported that the 31-year- old analyst had been taking home highly classified material. When confronted by the FBI, he readily admitted to receiving nearly $50,000 since early 1984 for peddling secrets to Israel. A few days later, Pollard and his wife, Anne Henderson-Pollard, drove to the Israeli embassy in Washington, seeking political asylum. The embassy turned them away, and Pollard was promptly arrested by FBI agents. If convicted, he faces a maximum sentence of life in prison on charges of espionage. Several days after his arrest, two Israeli diplomats were recalled to Jerusalem: Yosef Yagur, the science attache at the New York consulate, and Ilan Ravid, deputy science attache in the Washington embassy. Simultaneously, the Israeli press reported that the Peres investigation had found that Pollard's secret supervisor was a top intelligence official, Rafi Eitan, who was running his own spying operation in ) Washington unbeknown to his superiors in Jerusalem. A special adviser on counterterrorism to former Prime Ministers, Eitan also held a high-level position in the Liaison Bureau for Scientific Affairs, known by its Hebrew acronym, LAKAM. Established by Peres when he was deputy Defense Minister in the 1960s, LAKAM employs agents to gather scientific and technological data. Eitan has denied any involvement with Pollard.

Israeli sources said last week that Eitan's secret spying unit had been disbanded on Peres' orders. But there may still be some reluctance in the Peres Cabinet to turn documents stolen by Pollard over to the U.S. Among them: information on Arab military operations, Soviet technology and weapons systems and, most troubling to Jerusalem, U.S. analyses of Israel's intelligence- gathering capabilities. Some Israeli officials do not want to see Pollard convicted and worry that information about covert activities, once returned, might be leaked.

Meanwhile, the case against Henderson-Pollard, 25, who was originally charged only with unauthorized possession of classified documents, grew more complicated. Government lawyers argued last week that she may have been more deeply involved in her husband's activities. According to a 24-page memorandum filed in federal court, shortly after her husband had been questioned by the FBI she asked a neighbor to retrieve a suitcase from the basement of her apartment building. Henderson-Pollard, a free-lance public relations consultant, claimed that the suitcase contained documents she had wanted to use in "a presentation" at the Chinese embassy. Saying that "something had happened" to her husband, she asked the acquaintance to meet her at a hotel, where she had apparently decided to burn the papers.

The friend called the FBI, which found the suitcase crammed with top-secret papers, some on Chinese spy operations in the U.S. Prosecutors concluded that Henderson-Pollard had planned to offer the goods to the Chinese. Her attorneys said that she had intended only to meet with the Chinese in an effort to launch her own p.r. project. Government prosecutors did not buy the explanation. "What better way to further her new career in public relations," they asked, "than to provide this type of would-be client with classified information?"

With reporting by Michael Duffy/Washington and Robert Slater/Jerusalem