‘Puzzled’ Israelis Open Inquiry on Spy Reports

The Israeli Foreign Ministry has launched an investigation into reports that a U.S. Navy analyst passed secret defense material to its embassy in Washington, but it will make no substantive comment on the affair until early next week at the soonest, a ministry official said Friday.

The official, calling the situation murky, said Israeli Embassy officials in Washington “are as puzzled as we are about the whole thing.”

While this official and others here stopped short of flatly denying any Israeli involvement, they said that they found unbelievable the reports that Navy analyst Jonathan Pollard, 31, was arrested for passing Navy codes and other classified information to Israel.

No Covert Activity

Such activity would be in violation of a long-term understanding between Washington and Jerusalem that neither country would conduct covert intelligence operations in the other, they said.

Nevertheless, Israeli officials were clearly worried about the potential impact of the espionage reports on relations with their primary ally.

“Regardless of whether it’s true or not true, whatever is going on behind it, . . . even the reports on something like that are very unpleasant,” one official said.

Pollard, a civilian analyst for the Naval Investigative Service, was arrested Thursday by the FBI outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington. He was charged with providing “highly sensitive” defense documents to a foreign power, identified by government sources as Israel.

“We do not have the slightest idea about this matter,” a Foreign Ministry spokesman said in the only official reaction here Friday. “We are checking the story, and after we shall find out what the facts are, then and only then will there be an official reaction.”

Any Contacts Denied

Israel radio quoted the spokesman as saying that Israel has had no contacts with Pollard and had never heard of him before his name was published in the press. However, the spokesman later denied to The Times that he had made any such comment.

A government source who spoke on condition of anonymity added, “Such activity, if it happened at all, is completely and totally opposed to our policy.”

The Foreign Ministry has asked for more information from its Washington embassy, but “I doubt we’ll have anything before Sunday or Monday,” an official there said.

According to initial embassy reports received by the Foreign Ministry, Pollard drove into its Washington compound when a security gate was opened for another car. He was immediately forced by the security guard to leave, according to the reports.

Israeli intelligence experts were deeply skeptical that anyone at the embassy would have paid Pollard for U.S. defense secrets.

Specific Prohibition

Aharon Yariv, a former head of military intelligence who now directs Tel Aviv University’s Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, said: “When I went as an attache over 20 years ago to Washington, I was told in extremely clear, sharp terms, ‘Don’t you ever think about trying to do some intelligence work. . . . Even if you want to do intelligence work on Arabs--never mind the U.S.--forget it!’ ”

Isser Harel, the first head of Israel’s internal security service, Shin Bet, and longtime director of Mossad, the Israeli version of the CIA, said it is “unbelievable that someone will decide to make some intelligence work in this friendly country. . . . If something happened, it’s just a terrible mistake--a mishap,” he said.

Harel recalled a “minor incident” a number of years ago involving Mossad operatives and Arabs in the United States. “We decided at the time that we won’t do anything illegal in the United States,” he added.

A former deputy director of Mossad who was also stationed in Washington also appeared genuinely puzzled over the Pollard case. The official, who requested anonymity, said that relations between the Israeli and American intelligence communities are so close that “we can get almost anything we want just by asking.” Also, this official said, the political risks for Israel in the Pollard case would seem to far outweigh any possible intelligence benefit.

Israel Is Very Careful

Hirsch Goodman, the veteran military affairs correspondent of the Jerusalem Post who frequently writes on security matters, also debunked the reports.

“One thing you can rely on in this country more or less is the Mossad, and believe me, if they’ve got a guy inside (the American government or military), they’d be so . . . careful it’s incredible,” Goodman said. “They wouldn’t let the guy within 50,000 miles of the embassy.”

Israel was involved in another security flap earlier this year when it was revealed that it had illegally obtained from the United States electronic timing devices, known as krytrons. The devices can be used to set off nuclear bombs, and their export is restricted.

A Defense Ministry spokesman said at the time that the devices were imported by a private company for defense manufacturers without the ministry’s realizing that they were under restriction. Israel offered to return any of the devices that had not already been used.