New Doubts Cast on Israel’s Pollard Story

A parliamentary subcommittee probing the Jonathan Jay Pollard spy affair here has uncovered evidence of “lies, contradictions and whitewashing” that cast doubt on the government’s official description of it as a “rogue” operation, subcommittee sources and the Israeli media reported Wednesday.

The Cabinet member depicted as under “the most intensive questioning” by the seven-man panel is Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin, to whom the shadowy Israeli intelligence unit involved in the Pollard case was organizationally responsible.

Rabin, as well as Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, have denied that they or any other Israeli political leader knew about Pollard, a former U.S. Navy intelligence analyst sentenced on March 4 to life imprisonment as an admitted spy for Israel.

Received Stolen Data

However, a source on the intelligence subcommittee of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee confirmed reports in the Israeli press that Rabin has testified that he received some of the U.S. secrets stolen by Pollard. Rabin reportedly added that he was not informed about the source of the material in keeping with the normal intelligence practice of withholding such knowledge from the political echelon.

The intelligence subcommittee, which is chaired by Abba Eban, a former foreign minister and ambassador to the United States, may recall Rabin next week, Israel radio reported Wednesday.

According to the broadcast, the panel, whose deliberations are secret, “has been shaken by the gravity of the picture which has emerged” from two weeks of intensive hearings. Those questioned have included all the Israeli principals in the case, including Shamir, Peres, Rabin and Rabin’s predecessor as defense minister, Moshe Arens, now a minister without portfolio.

“What is clear now is that the political echelon will not come out clean and will be found to have been responsible for mistakes during the recruitment and activation of Pollard and during the subsequent treatment of the affair,” Israel television reported Wednesday.

Subcommittee member Aehud Olmert, quoted in today’s editions of the Jerusalem Post, said it is premature to make any judgments about the panel’s work and called the television report “irresponsible, inaccurate and fragmentary.”

Eban, the panel’s chairman, also criticized the television report, saying that the subcommittee members have spent all their time collecting evidence and “have not spent so much as five minutes between ourselves on discussing or evaluating that testimony.”

Besides the work being done by the Knesset subcommittee, an investigation by a special two-man government committee, appointed March 11, is also under way.

Committee’s Work Hampered

However, that committee has been hampered first by trouble in finding a suitable chairman and later by controversy over its powers and the refusal of three witnesses to testify before it. A lawyer for the three witnesses said Wednesday that his clients had agreed to testify after receiving a promise from the Israeli Cabinet that their testimony will not be turned over to the United States, where it might be used against them in court.

It now appears that the Knesset group will submit its report and recommendations well ahead of any results from the government committee.

The media and a Knesset subcommittee source said there are particular contradictions in the testimony of the political leadership and that of Rafi Eitan, former head of an intelligence organization known by its Hebrew acronym, Lekem.

Also known as the Scientific Liaison Bureau, Lekem was first organized more than 25 years ago to provide the Defense Ministry with scientific and industrial intelligence. It is the agency that paid Pollard and forwarded the material he obtained to Israel.

Mandate Interpreted

According to a subcommittee source, Eitan has testified that he interpreted his mandate as sufficiently broad to cover the Pollard operation but that he had nonetheless told Menachem Meron, a former director general of the Defense Ministry, about it. The director general is the chief civilian aide to the defense minister.

Another chain of testimony reportedly leads by a different route to Rabin’s doorstep. The Israeli press has reported that Col. Aviem Sella, who was allegedly Pollard’s first “handler,” testified before the Knesset subcommittee that he received the permission of his military superiors to work for Lekem while in the United States on a study program.

Those reports have indicated that both the head of the Israeli air force (Sella is a much-decorated pilot) and the armed forces chief of staff, Gen. Moshe Levy, knew of his work for Eitan. The chief of staff is the top military man reporting to the defense minister.

Israeli treatment of both Eitan and Sella since the disclosure of the Pollard affair has raised questions in the United States over the sincerity of Israel’s stated contrition for what it has repeatedly called an unauthorized operation. Eitan was named head of the giant state-owned Israel Chemicals Corp., and Sella was promoted last month to the command of a prestigious air base.

U.S. Angered

Sella’s promotion was particularly irritating to the Reagan Administration, coming just four days before he was indicted by a Washington grand jury as a conspirator in the Pollard affair and five days before Pollard’s sentencing.

According to Israel radio, Eitan on Wednesday submitted an unspecified document to the Knesset subcommittee to support his version of events. The broadcast said the subcommittee was “impressed” and that in the wake of Eitan’s testimony, Rabin may be recalled.

The radio added that “lies, contradictions and whitewashing are among the phenomena described” by subcommittee members, and added, “The conduct of the political echelon from the time that Jonathan Pollard was caught was described as confused, superficial and panic-stricken.”

Shamir, Peres and Rabin, according to Israel radio, have provided “identical versions” of events to the subcommittee, “right down to the expressions used.” The radio described Rabin as the “most irritable” of the three.