Apology on Spy Followed Shultz Call to Israel

Israel’s qualified apology over the Pollard spy affair was part of an American-Israeli understanding reached during a 3:30 a.m. telephone call Sunday from U.S. Secretary of State George P. Shultz to Prime Minister Shimon Peres, officials here confirmed Monday.

Peres disclosed the contact in a closed meeting with American Jewish leaders less than 24 hours after Cabinet Secretary Yossi Beilin read the apology to Israeli and foreign journalists. The apology to the United States was issued in Peres’ name.

“We reached a complete agreement and understanding between us,” Peres said of his conversation with Shultz. “The matter was entirely cleared up.”

The Israeli prime minister’s remarks at a breakfast meeting with the 80-member Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations were released to the press by conference spokesman Richard Cohen.

Another Israeli official confirmed that the Shultz call, which Peres said awakened him, was the political “turning point” in a spy scandal that both governments now seem anxious to put behind them. The two men reportedly agreed during their lengthy conversation on the text of the Israeli government statement released Sunday.

The reported understanding is likely to leave many unanswered questions, however, and was purposely left vague out of deference to Israel’s concern that revealing details could compromise the Israeli Establishment and rock the political leadership.

The government refused to comment officially on terms of the understanding, but the Israeli media reported that they include permission for U.S. representatives to question at least three Israelis implicated in the case.

Those questioned will be the two Israeli science attaches recalled from the United States immediately after Jonathan J. Pollard’s arrest outside the Israeli Embassy on Nov. 21 and Rafael Eitan, who has been identified as the head of a little-known intelligence branch of the Defense Ministry to which Pollard reportedly fed information. The Navy intelligence analyst is said to have received $2,500 a month from Eitan’s intelligence unit.

Without directly confirming the reports, a government source emphasized that the three Israelis would be questioned, rather than interrogated, and added, “I am not so sure how soon it will take place.”

Israel radio also reported that offices of the semi-secret intelligence operation, known by its Hebrew acronym, LEKEM, are to be closed in New York, Washington, Boston and Los Angeles.

‘They Will Be Closed’

“If, in fact, those four LEKEM offices do exist, and if in fact LEKEM is found to be the agency conducting the spying, they will be closed with the disbanding of the LEKEM agency,” commented a senior government source who requested anonymity.

Without naming any organization, the Israeli government in its qualified public apology Sunday pledged that if a continuing internal investigation confirms its role in the spy affair, “the unit involved in this activity will be completely and permanently dismantled.”

“During the past 24 hours, we cleared up a great deal of misunderstanding between the United States and Israel, and I am optimistic that we will return to the fine U.S.-Israel relationship which had reached new heights in recent months,” Peres was quoted as telling the Jewish leaders Monday.

He called the U.S-Israeli relationship one “that is important to us and to the Free World.” Peres discussed the Pollard affair for 10 minutes and twice emphasized that it was an isolated incident.

Contrary to Policy

“I object to certain hints in the media that a community or a country was spying,” he said. “In fact it was a single spy, which did cause unpleasant occurrences in our midst and which was contrary to our policy, which is not to spy against the United States.”

“This was not and is not a Jewish affair or a national affair,” Peres repeated later in his remarks. “It is a case of a single person, and we will take steps to investigate what led to it and to see to it that justice is done.”

The American Jewish leaders said they are satisfied with Israel’s apology. “That ought to put the matter at rest as it involves the relations between the two countries,” said Kenneth J. Bialkin, chairman of the Presidents’ Conference and head of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith.

Bialkin dismissed fears that have been raised here that by using an American Jew as an agent, whoever was responsible for the Pollard affair has exposed 6 million American Jews to possible suspicion of dual loyalty.

‘Failed His Trust’

“To me, as an American, Mr. Pollard is a man who failed his trust, not a Jew who failed his trust,” said Bialkin. He said that the dual loyalty question is one “fed by enemies to friendship between Israel and the United States or by anti-Semites.”

Most Israeli newspapers supported Sunday’s apology, regretting only that it had not come earlier.

At least one government minister, as well as press commentators, had worried publicly that the Pollard affair might threaten pending legislation in Washington that would save the Israeli Treasury an estimated $700 million by cutting interest rates on its outstanding debt to the United States.

However, the National Religious Party’s newspaper, Hatzofeh, complained that the government had gone too far with its apology. It urged Israel to “maintain its coolness and to refrain from further apologies and obligations, especially since the last ones were already somewhat exaggerated and even verged on swallowing Israeli pride in order to placate the angry Uncle Sam. There is a limit to apologies, too.”

Questions Unanswered

The apparent agreement to play down the affair leaves a number of questions unanswered, at least publicly. Some of those, regarding Pollard, may yet be answered during court proceedings against him in Washington. Other questions, involving the Israeli organization that employed him, may never be answered outside a select circle of Israeli political leaders.

The Israeli government has never officially confirmed the existance of LEKEM, much less its history or the extent of its operations, and even its conditional promise to dismantle “the unit” is ambiguous.

“Nobody is going to stop the activities of an organization that operates all over the world,” said one official who requested anonymity.

According to the details that have emerged, the organization was established many years ago to gather scientific and technical intelligence. Its official name has been variously translated as “Bureau of Science Relations,” “Office of Scientific Liaison” or “Office of Scientific Data Collection.”

Use of Publications

Israeli officials have suggested that the organization began by using only “open sources” of information, such as technical publications and other scientific contacts. But Pollard’s connection raises the question of whether it uses other clandestine agents.

The two Israeli diplomats who have been implicated in the Pollard affair in the United States were both science attaches--Yosef Yagur, science consul in New York, and Ilan Ravid, deputy science attache at the Israeli Embassy in Washington. Israeli officials said both reported through LEKEM.

It is unclear what, if any, relationship the shadowy organization may have with Israeli science attaches elsewhere in the United States and Europe.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry lists scientific attaches at four of the country’s 10 diplomatic missions in the United States--Boston, Los Angeles, New York and Washington. Israel also maintains consulates in Atlanta, Chicago, Houston, Miami, Philadelphia and San Francisco.

In 3 Other Countries

A ministry official said Israel also has science attaches in Austria, France and West Germany.

Also murky are the relationship that various top Israeli political leaders may have with LEKEM and with Eitan, who in addition to being a former operations chief of the Mossad is also reputed to be its most recent director.

Israeli officials have said consistently that no Cabinet member was aware of Pollard’s spying until after he was arrested, and no evidence has emerged here to the contrary. The officials say that it is normal that the minister with organizational responsibility for an intelligence operation would not know the identity of a clandestine agent.

Nonetheless, the conservative daily newspaper Maariv suggested that the political entanglements affected by the Pollard affair are so complex that any attempt to pinpoint even indirect ministerial responsibility for the incident could topple the fragile national unity coalition between Peres’ centrist Labor Alignment and the rightist Likud Bloc.

Recommended by Sharon

Eitan was hired by Likud Prime Minister Menachem Begin as his counterterrorism adviser in 1978 on the recommendation of Eitan’s friend and patron, Ariel Sharon. Sharon later became defense minister and architect of Israel’s war in Lebanon and currently serves as trade and industry minister.

Eitan continued as counterterrorism adviser under Begin’s successor, Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, who is now foreign minister. But Peres replaced Eitan when he took over the prime minister’s office 15 months ago.

Exactly when Eitan assumed his “second hat” as head of LEKEM is unclear, although it was apparently under either Begin or Shamir. He retained that job after the Peres team took over, operating at least occasionally out of the prime minister’s office, according to Israeli sources.

Israeli officials have claimed privately that Pollard went to work for LEKEM in the spring of 1984, near the end of Shamir’s term as prime minister. However, he is also reported to have visited Israel as long as 11 years ago, and college friends say he boasted then of being a Mossad agent.

Also unclear is the nature of the documents Pollard supplied to his Israeli handlers.

Officials here insist that he provided nothing that compromised U.S. security. American Jewish leader Bialkin said Monday that he has been told in “fleeting discussions” with Israeli leaders that the material passed on by Pollard “does not go to elements of U.S. defense or elements of U.S. preparedness.”