Onetime Israeli Master Spy Linked to U.S. Case

Israeli government officials refused to comment Tuesday on published reports that a famous intelligence agent, who once advised the prime minister’s office on terrorism matters, is the key Israeli figure in the case of a U.S. Navy intelligence analyst accused of selling defense secrets to Israel.

Speculation first surfaced here over the weekend that Rafael Eitan, a close associate of leading right-wing Israeli politicians, had acted as the control officer for Jonathan J. Pollard, the American arrested for espionage last Thursday in front of the Israeli Embassy in Washington.

Israeli radio reported this morning that an Israeli diplomat from its embassy in Washington has been ordered back to Jerusalem in connection with the case. Neither Israeli radio nor the FBI has identified the Israeli.

It is unclear how this unnamed Israeli diplomat might be implicated in the case, but speculation here has been that some Washington-based embassy figure would have had to have been an intermediary between Pollard and a higher-level control officer in Israel.

An Israeli government source close to a continuing high-level Israeli investigation into the affair said Tuesday that government censorship has prevented the Israeli press from publishing Eitan’s name as the key suspect. However, two newspapers and Israel radio named him Tuesday, basing their reports on a Washington Post article published the same day.

The Post did not name Eitan, but media sources here said Israeli journalists had learned his identity from the newspaper.

Repeated attempts to contact Eitan by telephone for comment were unsuccessful. His wife, reached at home at 9:30 p.m. Tuesday, said that he was asleep.

Eitan served in the Jewish underground along with Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir before Israel gained statehood in 1948. He went on to a career in the Mossad--the Israeli version of the CIA. He was part of a special Mossad team that pursued Adolf Eichmann in Argentina in 1960, and Eitan himself subdued the Nazi war criminal on a Buenos Aires street.

In July, 1978, he was appointed adviser on terrorism to Prime Minister Menachem Begin on the recommendation of another close associate--then-Defense Minister Ariel Sharon, who is minister for trade and industry. Eitan continued in his advisory post after Shamir succeeded Begin as prime minister in 1983, but was replaced the next year when the current Labor Party prime minister, Shimon Peres, took over from Shamir as head of a broad coalition with Likud.

Officials refused to disclose what post, if any, Eitan currently holds, although one government source said he is still involved with the intelligence system.

Coincidence of Name

He is not the same Rafael Eitan who once was chief of staff of the Israeli armed forces and who is now a member of Parliament from the small, nationalist Tehiya party.

Peres’ coalition government has not admitted Israeli complicity in the Pollard affair, although its only substantive statement on the incident, issued Sunday, was widely interpreted as confirmation that the intelligence services were involved.

In that statement, the political leadership expressed “shock and consternation” over the affair and promised that if there had been any deviation from a longstanding ban on intelligence-gathering in the United States, those responsible would be punished.

Government sources said Tuesday that a “deviation” clearly did occur, and they expressed the hope that there will be a full public disclosure of Israeli involvement in the case by the end of the week. In the meantime, they refused to discuss details of the case, arguing that a premature disclosure might result in further embarrassment if it turned out to be incomplete.

Underlining the sensitivity of the case, one source said that Peres, Shamir and Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin have been meeting daily to review the investigation.

Comments by Arens

Interviewed on his return from a trip to the United States on Tuesday, Moshe Arens, a Cabinet minister without portfolio, commented: “I don’t think we calmed the Americans yet. We must reveal the facts. . . . Only when the facts are known will we be able to clear the smoke and repair the damage.”

Arens said Secretary of State George P. Shultz told him that President Reagan first heard about the Pollard affair on the flight back to Washington from the summit conference at Geneva. Shultz quoted Reagan as saying, “I don’t understand why they (the Israelis) are doing it,” according to Arens.

Government sources insisted that the current Israeli leadership was unaware that Pollard was selling U.S. defense secrets to Israel.

One Cabinet minister said that if such an operation had been approved under a previous administration, it should have been brought to the attention of the current team when it took office.