Decline of The Superspies

In the shadowy world of cloak-and-dagger spy operations, tiny Israel for years ranked as a world-class player. Agents of MOSSAD, the country's equivalent of the CIA, electrified the world in 1960 by capturing Nazi War Criminal Adolf Eichmann and spiriting him out of Argentina under the noses of authorities. The intelligence network cast by MOSSAD and Shin Bet, Israel's FBI, was so exhaustive in the Middle East that Washington often relied on it for information and analysis. Even when the objectives of Israel's spooks were debatable, their methods virtually defined professionalism and supersecrecy.

Recently, however, Israel's vaunted state-security apparatus seems to have gone amuck. Shin Bet has been under a cloud for some time, but especially since last summer, when its director and three aides were forced to resign amid allegations of complicity in the murders of two captured Arab bus hijackers. In October a technician at Israel's top-secret nuclear complex at Dimona, Mordechai Vanunu, revealed the purported details of the country's nuclear weapons program, never officially acknowledged, in London's Sunday Times. He was later reportedly lured to Rome by a female MOSSAD agent and kidnaped. The caper put a strain on Israel's relations with Britain and Italy.

Then came Iranscam and the revelation that two Israeli businessmen, joined by an Israeli antiterrorist adviser attached to the Prime Minister's office, may have instigated -- and certainly cooperated in -- the sale of U.S. weapons to the militant Islamic regime in Tehran. The renewed furor over the Pollard affair thus not only dragged Israel's most shocking security misfire back into the spotlight but dredged up the whole sorry security mess. The Pollard case, says founding MOSSAD Chief Isser Harel, ranks as "the worst-bungled affair in Israel's history."

What went wrong? For one thing, Israel began conducting some of its intelligence operations outside established channels and out of sight of civilian political scrutiny. Pollard, for example, was "run," at least ostensibly, by a little-known scientific liaison office, called Lakam, in the Defense Ministry. In an interview with the Jerusalem Post, Harel called the unit, since disbanded, a "bastard in the intelligence community." Harel also contended that in the past, MOSSAD avoided using Jews of other nationalities as spies, for fear of compromising their communities abroad. "Should we create a situation in which people in the U.S. consider Jews a security risk?" he asks.

Israeli leaders have shown a singular lack of enthusiasm for punishing those responsible for the security scandals. The fired Shin Bet officials were given pardons after acknowledging the allegations against them. Some critics believe the reluctance to demand accountability is part of a continuing cover- up conducted by top political leaders. As in Iranscam, the government got into trouble because it failed to establish firm oversight responsibilities. Says Communications Minister Amnon Rubinstein, a former law professor: "The problem is that the politicians do not exercise the sort of vigilance that we expect of them. What we see is a diminishing of the control of elected bodies over professional bodies."

The government of Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir plans to take steps toward tightening its control over Israel's intelligence agencies. In the past, the government relied heavily on the "X-Committee," a highly secretive Cabinet group that sometimes reviewed sensitive covert operations. The group fell into disuse in the mid-'70s because Israeli leaders thought there was no longer a need to maintain such broad supervision over covert intelligence. Its revival could prove a useful step toward reform, provided the group exercises the political judgment that lately appears to have been lacking in Israeli security matters.