Spies Against Armageddon (38 page)

Mardor and Bergman, who proved for decades that they were adept at keeping secrets, intended to grow the Institute at Nes Tziona into a complex of “national laboratories” in the mold of America’s most prestigious defense research centers and laboratories. The Israelis were well aware that the United States set an impressive example of what could be accomplished when people with fine minds, a strong sense of dedication, and assurance of full support from their government are brought together in a brainy hothouse.

The Institute became one of the most clandestine compounds in Israel. Until the mid-1990s, its location was not even marked on maps of the country. That ruse was deemed moot after Arab websites published the coordinates of its precise location, along with pictures of Nes Tziona taken by commercial satellites. Yet electronic spies, high overhead, cannot read minds or see inside buildings. No foreigners and very few Israelis could know or guess, with any precision, what was taking place inside the facility.

Sources claimed, without giving details, that biological and chemical weapons were developed there—as well as protective measures against an enemy attack using those kinds of non-conventional arms. International treaties ban the use of such weapons, but Israelis from Ben-Gurion’s time until the present day believe that the Middle East is a region of fervent hatred, deception, and rule-breaking. The Israelis were not going to gamble their own existence on the likelihood that treaties would be honored.

Israeli scientists and engineers are among the world’s best, so creating a range of offensive measures, antidotes, and defensive mechanisms was well within their capabilities. Quantities and exact locations of stockpiles remain strictly classified.

Examples abound of how sensitive Israel has been about the work done at Nes Tziona, but some specifics about how the authorities preserved secrecy were themselves blocked from publication.

The Institute’s researchers partnered, at times, with the Ministry of Defense, the armed forces, and other parts of the Israeli government.

One of the most innovative attacks on a terrorist was death by chocolate. In 1977, boxes of poisoned chocolates were sent to Dr. Wadia Haddad, the lethally ambitious military chief of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The Israelis knew that Haddad operated Ilich Ramirez Sanchez—the Venezuelan terrorism subcontractor best known as Carlos. Haddad was also the mastermind behind the hijacking of Israeli and Western airliners.

It was fairly easy to discover that the evil doctor loved chocolates, and poisonous sweets were prepared. Haddad, thinking they were from a trusted colleague, ate them; and that was apparently the cause of his death a few months later in East Germany, where doctors were baffled by the 50-year-old’s disease.

Poisons meant to work in untraceable ways became an Israeli specialty, and Russia’s espionage chiefs must have been happy to learn all about many kinds of innovations and inventions by having a spy for almost three decades inside the Nes Tziona institute.

Klingberg was not just any spy. He had a phenomenal memory: retaining names, dates, and places—able to describe in great detail the appearance of people he met and what they wore.

Klingberg kept the genesis of his treason cloaked in double and triple stories. In 1983, after he broke down during interrogation by Shin Bet investigators, he said that he had been recruited in 1957 during a cocktail party at the Soviet embassy in Tel Aviv. The confession was legally sufficient for Shin Bet, and it did not matter precisely how his espionage had begun.

In 2007, when his memoirs were published in Hebrew, he admitted that the prior version was a lie. “I was in the embassy only once, in 1959, with the authorization of Binyamin Blumberg,” he wrote of the founder of Malmab and the chief security officer in the Defense Ministry.

The convicted spy wrote that Blumberg “sent me to meet a Russian scientist couple who had come especially for the first international conference of microbiologists held in Israel. Even Ben-Gurion came to the opening of the conference in Jerusalem. But I did not meet with my handler at that meeting.”

Shin Bet investigators did not believe either version from Klingberg. They suspected that he had been recruited by Soviet espionage during World War II, and already was a trained, committed agent when he arrived in Israel in 1948.

Klingberg’s book added another twist to the mystery, though readers had to keep in mind that the author’s track record for authenticity was poor. His memoirs claimed that he was recruited during his Israeli military service, in 1950.

He wrote that he had been recuperating from a road accident, and while staying in a rehabilitation center he was approached by a young Israeli couple who showed high interest in his World War II reminiscences. Klingberg confided to them that he was a senior army officer in the health service, and that further piqued their interest. The couple suggested that they all get together with some Russians friends, and Klingberg said yes.

Again putting a fog around the start of his espionage, he wrote: “After two years in Israel, I was thirsty for such a contact.” He never met the couple again, but it seems that the man and woman were “helpers”—sympathizers, but not paid agents—of Soviet intelligence. Their job was to spot and develop potential targets for recruitment.

The next stage could have been torn from the pages of a cheap novel, but this—if Klingberg the memoirist was finally telling the truth—was how cliché-ridden an approach by the KGB could be. He said he received a telephone call, a few weeks after parting from the shadowy recruiters. The accented male voice identified himself thus: “I am
tovarisch
Sokolov,” using the Russian word for “comrade.”

Israel and the Soviet Union were still friends. Two years earlier, in 1948, Moscow had supported the establishment of a Jewish state and agreed to arms shipments from Czechoslovakia, one of the Communist satellite states. Czech weapons, including aircraft, played a decisive role in Israel’s War of Independence victory.

The man on the phone, according to Klingberg, “spoke Russian and told me that he had gotten my number from the couple I met at the rehabilitation center, and he asked to meet me.”

It was arranged that Sokolov would come by car and pick up Klingberg in a narrow alley in Jaffa. The Russian, an accredited diplomat at the Soviet embassy in adjacent Tel Aviv, was certainly an experienced case officer. He was full of praise and bonhomie, according to Klingberg—the start of a very long string of compliments, lasting for many years, designed to build up an agent’s self-confidence and courage—but he also seemed worried that Israeli agents might be watching.

Sokolov drove Klingberg in wide circles for almost an hour—to shake any “tail”—before the Russian started asking the Israeli about his life. The chit-chat ended with an enigmatic sentence. “You helped us a great deal in the past during our difficult times in the war,” said the Soviet diplomat. “I can assure you that we remember, with appreciation, people like you.”

Klingberg, a man obsessed with his own honor and value, swallowed fully the bait built of flattery.

According to Klingberg, Sokolov had a second meeting and then a third with him. They agreed to address each other by first names—“Mark” and “Viktor.” Only at the third meeting did Viktor make a pass designed to consummate the relationship: “Look, we want to be in touch with you and might need your help.”

Klingberg recalled: “I certainly didn’t say no. I gave him the impression that I feel committed and that the Soviet Union is close to my heart. Nothing seemed to me dramatic.”

That allegiance to Moscow was certainly genuine, whenever or wherever Klingberg really was recruited to be a spy. He wrote that he would meet Sokolov, his handler, three or four times a year for the next decade or so. They set their meeting places by using classic espionage tradecraft: one man leaving a chalk mark on a certain building, then the other man chalking another building. That was the signal that the meeting would take place, at nightfall, at a location between the marks.

Klingberg was not posted immediately to the secretive biological institute, but his varied assignments for the Israeli army made him seem highly interesting and valuable for Soviet intelligence.

When he entered Nes Tziona in 1957, embarking on 25 years of seemingly solid service there, Klingberg rapidly rose to become the deputy director. The Israeli government paid for study sabbaticals abroad, and he proudly published research papers about epidemics.

Klingberg attended many conferences outside Israel, and these were perfect opportunities to rendezvous with Soviet handlers. There were also numerous meetings inside the Jewish state: almost always at the “Red” Church in southern Tel Aviv—a Russian Orthodox compound, rather obviously under Moscow’s strong influence. Some of the priests and nuns were actually trained officers of the KGB or the military intelligence agency GRU. Because of the military nature of the Institute, Klingberg was run by the GRU.

He and his Soviet handlers must have been highly professional and cautious, because Shin Bet counter-intelligence teams did not detect Klingberg’s secret meetings. One security officer at the Institute claimed that he felt somewhat suspicious as early as 1960, and in the mid-1960s a woman at the World Health Organization in Geneva told Israeli security that Klingberg had been meeting with scientists from Poland.

Upon his return to Israel, he was summoned by Shin Bet for a polygraph test. This was no small matter. He was a senior official and a member of Mapai, the ruling political party. He was personally in touch with Prime Minister Eshkol, Dayan, and other VIPs.

Klingberg pretended to be offended and reacted very angrily to the lie detector invitation. He arrived at Shin Bet headquarters under protest, yet he was hooked up to the very same polygraph that the Israelis had gotten a decade earlier from the FBI. He was asked a series of questions, but he got through the ordeal without a hitch. The graphing pen stayed fairly steady, with no signs of dissembling.

Victor Cohen, Shin Bet’s senior investigator, admitted that the test was a failure. “We asked him the wrong questions,” Cohen explained. Klingberg was asked about reported contacts with agents of Poland’s security service, when he should have been asked about a relationship with Russian handlers.

A few years later, a lie detector was wired onto Klingberg’s palms and fingertips again. Reports of unauthorized contacts had been received, and they had to be checked out, but this time Shin Bet interrogators treated him much more respectfully. Instead of individual, often challenging, and skeptical questions, Klingberg was engaged in a conversation. He emerged as pure and clean as driven snow.

Suspicions were cast again in 1982, when Shin Bet received information that Klingberg was expected to meet his handler at a scientific conference in Switzerland. The Mossad was put in charge of surveillance, and a team did its best to watch the scientist at all times. The watchful eyes turned up nothing.

There was no meeting in Geneva with any Soviets that time, according to Klingberg, because he sincerely had broken his ties with the Russians. He said, many years later, that he leaked no secrets after 1976.

Counterintelligence teams continued to lay traps, and one trap took the form of a Soviet Jew who had recently gotten to the Promised Land. Shin Bet questioned the man upon his arrival, having noticed something suspicious, and he readily admitted that the KGB had recruited him to spy in Israel. Shin Bet then “doubled” the man, by persuading him to pretend that he was still serving the KGB—while occasionally meeting secretly with his true employers at Shin Bet to keep them fully briefed.

This spook game paid off. One day, the new arrival received a coded message from KGB headquarters in Moscow to create a signal for someone by making a chalk mark on a specific wall in Tel Aviv. He did not know what the signal meant, or for whom it was intended.

The Russian Jew did as instructed and informed his contact at Shin Bet. An Israeli counter-intelligence team laid ambush, and a few hours later an unknown person showed up, saw the message, and continued walking. Shin Bet shadowed him all the way to his home and discovered it was Klingberg.

One investigator said: “This time, the fourth time, we decided that Klingberg would not escape our net.” Shin Bet carefully studied Klingberg’s personality, concluding that he had a strong desire for recognition and official honors. This was January 1983.

Shin Bet agents posed as a Mossad team looking for someone brilliant and reliable to go overseas on a secret mission. They told Klingberg that Malaysia, a Muslim country that did not have diplomatic relations with Israel, wanted the help of an Israeli expert on diseases. Flattered by the request, Klingberg said immediately that he would be glad to help. He was told to inform his wife only that he would be out of the country.

On the day set for his flight to the Far East, two Shin Bet operatives picked up Klingberg, but instead of driving him to the airport they headed to a safe house in Tel Aviv. There, two interrogators were waiting for Klingberg. The fiction about a foreign trip would give them time to do their work, with no intervention from his wife or others.

“They had nothing against me to nail me down, not a shred of information that could be admitted as evidence in court,” Klingberg recalled later. “Not a phone call, not a slip of paper. There was nothing. If I had not opened my mouth, they would have let me go.”

Yet, he did talk. “I don’t understand it myself,” Klingberg said while shaking his head. “After all, I knew the Shin Bet people. They promised me that if I told them everything they would release me. What stupidity on my part! How could I have believed them?”

The Shin Bet account of Klingberg’s interrogation portrayed him as stubborn for 34 days, refusing to admit any crimes. The sessions were long, and without a confession the security agency had insufficient evidence to support an indictment in court.

The Shin Bet interrogators were on the verge of despair. But on the likely last day—when it was clear that a court would not extend Klingberg’s period of arrest any longer—one of the questioners had a creative, out-of-the-box idea. Chaim Ben-Ami was a veteran of many investigations, and he decided to use his strong
basso profundo
voice to shout at Klingberg that he was a traitor. The taunting was not about a betrayal of Israel by espionage, but for betraying his parents’ memories by letting them stay in Poland to face death while he escaped to the Soviet Union.