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Yossi Melman: "The KGB literally flooded Israel with agents"

Йоси Мельман: «КГБ буквально наводнил Израиль агентами»

Issue #22

Yossi Melman: "The KGB literally flooded Israel with agents"

The author of more than a dozen books on intelligence and spies did not trust Shabtai Kalmanovich, saw through Markus Klingberg and was surprised at the insight of Yuri Kobaladze. Does the number of spies turn into quality, in whose innocence Zhabotinsky's son believed, and how Golda Meir sanctioned the arrest of an Austrian businessman who turned out to be a Soviet illegal immigrant

Pavel Lvovsky
Photo: Ilya Itkin
Kill a defector

- Last winter in Moscow, George Blake, one of the most important employees of the British intelligence services who went over to the side of the USSR, died. Is there an Israeli counterpart to Blake?

There was Professor Hugh Hambledon, a Canadian who worked for NATO and occasionally visited Israel. He was engaged in research in the field of economics. Soviet intelligence recruited him, as they say, at his place of work and asked him, in addition to military secrets, to collect information about the Jewish state. 

I learned about Hambledon quite by accident. They arrested him in Britain. I then worked as a correspondent for the newspaper Haaretz and whiled away the time in the court of the Old Bailey. It dealt with the case of the press secretary of the British Embassy in Israel, who fell in love with an Egyptian diplomat and began to pass on the secrets of the two countries to him. In the adjoining room, the Hugh Hambledon case was being tried, and I read the indictment and saw the word "Israel."

Running for sensations

Yossi Melman was born in Poland in 1950. Seven years later, he left with his family for Israel, where he joined Hashomer Ha-Tzair, a left-wing youth movement. Melman served in the special forces of the Israel Defense Forces "Sayeret Shaked", took part in the battles on the Suez Canal, in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip.

After demobilization, he studied history and international relations at the Hebrew University. He began his journalistic career at the army radio station "Galey Tsahal" and continued in the newspapers "Davar", "Haaretz", "Maariv". Author of 11 books, most of which have been translated into foreign languages.

One of Melman's most high-profile investigations was devoted to the Israeli-French businessman Arkady Gaydamak, who in the mid-2000s tried to break into politics and even claimed the post of mayor of Jerusalem. Gaydamak filed a lawsuit against the journalist, but withdrew it in 2009.

Yossi Melman's hobby is long-distance running. He has taken part in more than 35 marathons in Israel and abroad. Despite suffering a heart attack in 2009, Mellman continued training. On his 66th birthday, he ran 66 km.

The KGB literally flooded Israel with agents, both Soviet and those who were initially supervised by the intelligence services of the socialist countries. In 1958, the operational department of the Shin Bet detained a repatriate from Poland, Levi Levy, who was recruited by local authorities. At the same time, the KGB cooperated with him in Israel.

Was that his name, Levi Levi? Unusual name.

According to Polish documents - Lucian Ignacy. He was born in 1922, joined the youth Zionist movement "Gordonia". He was detained for illegal possession of weapons and offered cooperation. In 1948, Levy Levy repatriated and got a job in the Shin-Bet counterintelligence department. Then the checks were minimal: colleagues trusted each other. And this despite the fact that Levi poured money and constantly carried a camera with him.

Then testimonies of other repatriates began to accumulate - even before leaving, someone told them somewhere that “our heroic Polish patriot” was working in Israeli intelligence. Levi Levi fit the description, he was arrested, interrogated, but they could not present an indictment: there was not enough evidence. And then French colleagues came to the rescue - they received a defector, a Polish officer. Among the information he gave out was one that irrefutably pointed to Levi. Later, the defector was eliminated by the intelligence agents of the PPR. Levy pleaded guilty, served seven years in prison, and then moved to Australia.

- How effective was the tactic you described - to flood Israel with Soviet spies?

Quantity turns into quality. There were quite a few really talented and effective agents. The same Kurt Sitte, a physicist of German origin, an anti-fascist who served time in Buchenwald. After the war, he was recruited by Czechoslovak intelligence. Sitte once taught at Syracuse University in New York, and the FBI got suspicious. His visa was canceled, and then the outstanding - without quotes - scientist accepted the invitation of the Haifa Technion. In 1954 he became head of the physics department and later became a member of the Israeli Atomic Energy Committee.

The Czechs resumed contact with Sitte. The Shin Bet found out about his double life by accident. The physicist communicated too actively with an employee of the Czechoslovak embassy, ​​and he was placed under surveillance. After the arrest of Kurt Sitte, one of those who believed in his innocence was the son of Vladimir Zhabotinsky Ari. He even led a group of activists demanding the release of the physicist.

Markus Klingberg and communist grandson, proud of his grandfather

In 1960, the trial of Sitte began, where employees of the Technion and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem were invited as public observers. After serving two years out of four, Kurt Sitte was pardoned by the President of Israel. He moved to East Germany, where he continued his scientific work.

Sitte is an example of a quality agent. And where is the more famous Shabtai Kalmanovich?

Half in the middle. He was prepared for the heights of intelligence work, they wanted Kalmanovich to penetrate into the highest echelons of power, ingratiate himself with Golda Meir and the leadership of the Nativ organization. In practice, he was able to become only a parliamentary assistant to Knesset member Yigal Gurevich, and then to Shmuel Flatto-Sharon, an adventurous businessman.

In business areas, Shabtai Kalmanovich achieved much more. He got rich thanks to acquaintances that began in South Africa. In parallel, Kalmanovich met with his Soviet curator in the GDR, each time receiving $ 500 from him. Knowing firsthand about Shabtai's lifestyle, I am sure that he presented the curator with gifts that were dozens of times higher than this fee.

An interesting fact is that Kalmanovich was a double agent, but not in the classic version: he was not recruited, but recruited separately. The Shabak security service did not know about his career in the KGB. Kalmanovich was invited for a conversation: you, they say, constantly travel around the world, you have many acquaintances, do you want to tell us certain information?

- Who exposed Kalmanovich as a result?

Perhaps one of the defectors gave his name to American intelligence. Maybe British intelligence, given that shortly before his arrest in Israel, Shabtai Kalmanovich was detained in London. He was suspected of issuing false checks for a multi-million dollar sum. Kalmanovich was first extradited to the United States, then he returned to Israel. In 1988 he was arrested.

I met with Shabtai several times. As a person, he was charismatic. Yes, a charismatic swindler and Don Juan. He bribed the head of the prison, promising that he would sponsor his son's education at one of the Western universities. In exchange for this, the boss provided Kalmanovich with an uninterrupted supply of ... mm ... admirers. 

If we are already talking about the rating of spies, at the very bottom, of course, is Shimon Levinson.

Who is it?

An absolutely unprincipled person, a man who openly admitted that he made a deal with the KGB for money. Levinson was a regular military man, he served in military intelligence for some time. After demobilization, he headed a state company for the production of commemorative medals, but was fired for fabricating false reports. Despite this, he was hired by Shabak, and then by Mossad.

The next step was to work as a liaison officer with the UN. Through this organization, Levinson was offered a position related to the fight against drug traffickers in Thailand. In 1983, while in Bangkok, Shimon Levinzon went to the Soviet embassy and offered his services. He handed over to the curators documents relating to the military aspects and nuclear developments of Israel.

When perestroika began, communication with Levinson was interrupted. He resumed it on his own, in 1991, constantly complaining to people from the KGB that they paid him little. A disgusting type, an example of a pure traitor.

Professor without a degree

- Soviet intelligence actively introduced illegal immigrants into different countries, who studied languages ​​in advance and got used to the desired image. Do you know anything about similar Israeli examples?

Oh yeah. There was such a Lieutenant Colonel Yuri Linov, who was initially trained to work in the United States. Then plans changed, and Linov was sent first to Ireland, where he posed as insurance agent Carl Berndt Muttel, an Austrian by nationality. Having strengthened the "legend", Yuri Linov flew to Israel to restore contact with the KGB agents. The beginning of the 70s, diplomatic relations were broken off after the Six Day War, there were no official contacts, no delegations came. Absolute vacuum.

Linov visited Israel several times. At first, he looked closely at the situation, collected information on his own. He was interested in military bases, the nuclear reactor in Dimona and similar objects. Yuri Linov was a polyglot, loved foreign languages, and during his second trip he even signed up for an ulpan for tourists. During the third trip, he established contact with three members of the KGB spy network. Linov transmitted all the information to the USSR using a miniature transmitter, directly from the hotel room.

The sanction for Linov's arrest was personally given by Golda Meir. During the interrogation, the illegal immigrant told his real biography. He was sentenced to 18 years in prison, but was exchanged two years later.

- To whom?

On several people, including the wife of Eduard Kuznetsov, Silva Zalmanson, and an employee of the Bulgarian UN mission, Heydrich Shefter, who was accused of spying for Israel and sentenced to death. There is an assumption that the Shefter case was deliberately inspired, as pressure on the Israeli government: give, they say, our Linov, otherwise we will shoot your Jew.

In the 90s, Yuri Linov gave an interview to Israeli television, nostalgically recalling his visits to our country.

- Who was the most mysterious character among the exposed spies? 

In many ways, Israel Beer. He moved to Mandatory Palestine in 1938, said that he was from Austria, was a member of the anti-fascist organization "Republican Schutzbund", fought in Spain. Subsequently, it turned out that his entire biography was invented. Beer claimed that he graduated from the Austrian military academy, but Major General Eitan Avisar, who actually studied at this institution, denied this. There were two Jews in the entire academy, Avisar himself - born Sigmund Adler von Friedman - and the future general of the Israel Defense Forces Shalom Eshet (Fritz Eisenstadt).

Shabtai Kalmanovich . It was not possible to get to Golda Meir, but it turned out to get rich

Beer was not just a liar, but a talented liar. In Israel, he made a brilliant career as a military observer. For some time, Beer was even an adviser to Ben-Gurion. As a child, I read the book "Security of Israel - Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow", which Israel Beer wrote in prison after being exposed. He was fundamentally different from the official historiographers. 

Beer, for example, believed that Israel's victory in the War of Independence in 1948 was not a miracle, akin to Hanukkah, not just "a handful of Jews defeated several huge Arab armies", but the result of several factors. The Jewish state had better weapons, the Arabs did not have a single command, their political leaders pursued diametrically opposed goals. To write this in 1965 is an unheard of audacity.

But more mysterious to me is Professor Markus Klingberg.

In what sense?

It is still unclear for what reasons he agreed to work for Soviet intelligence. Each time Klingberg voiced a different version. During interrogations at Shabak, he said that he was recruited in 1956. Then there was a suspicion that the NKVD hooked Klingberg during the Second World War and that in 1949 he immigrated to Israel for intelligence purposes.

According to one version, Markus Klingberg did not have a medical degree, and he offered his services in exchange for the necessary piece of paper. He managed to unlearn six years at the University of Warsaw. After the occupation of Poland by the Nazis, Klingberg fled to Minsk, where he continued his studies. When the Nazis attacked the Soviet Union, Klingberg moved to Moscow and joined the Red Army. He was an assistant military doctor and was engaged in epidemiology. There was just a mass poisoning in the Urals, and Klingberg discovered the cause - soaked wheat, from which low-quality bread was made.

Marcus Klingberg was arrested in 1983. By that time he was a lieutenant colonel, working as deputy director of the secret Institute for Biological Research in Ness Zion. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison. After 15 years, Klingberg was released for health reasons, he went to Paris and wrote a book where the date of recruitment is 1952. Allegedly, he was recruited by a certain member of the Israeli Communist Party, with whom Klingberg rested in a sanatorium in Givat Brener after a car accident.

- What was the relationship between the KGB and the Israeli Communist Party?

After the war, Soviet intelligence tried not to act through the hands of foreign communists. Before the war, there was the Comintern, people sincerely believed in the ideas of Lenin and Stalin, it was easy to recruit them on ideological grounds. And then the crimes of the communist regime began to be gradually exposed, and the Western communists began to criticize their older brothers.

For this reason, both in Israel and in other countries, the KGB preferred to look for and use agents among representatives of the establishment, members of the mainstream parties. Klingberg in this sense was an ideal option - a major scientist, in good standing, a member of MAPAI. 

There were also agents among members of the more left-wing Mapam party. For example, a native of Bessarabia, orientalist Aaron Cohen, who in 1958 handed over some “sensitive information” to a Soviet diplomatic mission officer.

Let's get back to Klingberg. Was he an ideological spy?

Absolutely. Klingberg received no monetary reward. He writes that during the Cold War he came to the conclusion that there should be a balance in the world between the two superpowers - the USSR and the USA. Contrary to the opinion of Israeli counterintelligence officers, Markus Klingberg's wife not only worked with him in Ness Zion, but was also an active assistant in intelligence activities, this is also described in his book.

Nontrivial personality. I even wrote a play about Markus Klingberg, it was staged at the Tel Aviv Chamber Theater. We met in Paris - it was impossible to do this in Israel: after his release, Klingberg had the right to one walk a day, with security guards, whom he had to hire at his own expense. Since I am also from Poland, Klingberg's mentality was clear to me. Even in prison, he dressed elegantly and with all his appearance demonstrated superiority over the "pygmies" investigators. Klingberg's criminal case is built on his frank confession, Shabak had no concrete evidence other than suspicions. And he confessed precisely within the framework of the paradigm described above: “I am so educated, so cool, I have been fooling you for decades.”

Did he feel remorse? In the 1980s, no one had any doubts about the essence of the Soviet regime.

Markus repeated: "I didn't mean to harm Israel, I just wanted to thank the Soviet Union for saving my life."

A tragicomic situation happened to his daughter Sylvia. She had radical views at an early age. Sylvia considered her father a petty-bourgeois henchman who supported the ruling Mapai party. She joined the Trotskyist organization Matzpen and married ultra-left activist Udi Adiva, a former Syrian intelligence agent. Suddenly it turned out that Klingberg-papa was more radical than herself.

Sylvia Klingberg divorced Adiv. Jan Brossa, son from his second marriage, is the deputy mayor of Paris and a member of the Communist Party.

- Heredity?

Yang told me that he was proud of his grandfather.

Appetite while eating

— How did intelligence and counterintelligence become the main topic of your publications? As a child, did you enjoy reading spy novels?

No, but I was interested in politics and from childhood I dreamed of becoming a journalist. For four years, from 1980 to 1984, I was a correspondent for the newspaper Ha'aretz in London. In 1982, Palestinian militants led by Abu Nidal assassinated the Israeli ambassador to London, Shlomo Argov. Three days later, the Lebanese war began. I decided to write a book about Abu Nidal, got acquainted with the employees of Scotland Yard, with their Israeli colleagues.

Yuri Linov . An illegal immigrant who made his way from Austria to Ulpan Linov

Appetite comes with eating. I got involved, began to write about intelligence and intelligence officers and have been doing this for 40 years now. One of my books was even translated into Farsi and published in Iran. Naturally, without my knowledge. 

— Were you published in Russian?

Yes, in the late 90s a book was published, which in the original is called “Imperfect Spies”. In 1999, I flew to Moscow to cover the elections. A journalist colleague approaches: “Do you want Russian intelligence to publish your book?” I looked at him like he was crazy. The colleague explains that there is a certain book publishing house, in Soviet times the KGB was behind it. “But now business comes first for them,” the benefactor patted me on the shoulder and gave General Kobaladze's phone number.

— Yuri Kobaladze?

Yes. He was the press secretary of the SVR, then he was related to this publishing house. I go into the office, Kobaladze peers and says: “But I know you. You were the Israeli correspondent in London for four years.” I did not have time to be surprised at the general's insight, as he explained that at that time he was sent to the capital of Great Britain to work under cover, as a correspondent for the State Radio and Television. We then talked for several years, later Yuri moved to an investment company, went into business. He told me that he wanted to visit Israel, that this land interested him from a religious, Christian point of view.

Let's assume that a time machine exists. Given what you know about the security services, wouldn't you like to go back half a century to join the Shabak or the Mossad?

I did not think about working in intelligence. But he often asked himself the question of which underground organization he would like to be a member of during the years of the British Mandate, if he had been born not in 1950, but 30 years earlier. Despite the fact that I am a person of leftist views, I would join Lehi. This is a controversial organization, its members resorted to terror against the British and Arabs. I spoke with former Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir and asked him what period of his life was the most interesting. Shamir immediately replied that he was serving in Lehi.

I love an interesting life. I would join Lehi, and then, after the founding of Israel, I would sit and be bored.