An alleged spy with no real secrets
By Yossi Melman
Ha'aretz Correspondent
On March 24, a Saturday, dozens of military officials, economic leaders and friends gathered to celebrate the 75th birthday of retired Brigadier General Yitzhak Yaakov. Four days later, on March 28, he was arrested by Defense Ministry investigators and police detectives, on suspicion of espionage. The arrest took place as Yaakov and his wife, Tanya, were planning to leave for a week-long holiday to Turkey.
The birthday party served also to honor him for his contribution to research and development for Israel's defense and civilian industry. Yaakov is regarded by many of his friends as the father of Israeli R&D, first as part of his service in the IDF and the Defense Ministry, and later as part of the Development Ministry, where he served as Chief Scientist after his retirement from the IDF in 1974. He later continued as Chief Scientist at the Trade and Industry Ministry, which absorbed the Development Ministry.
In 1997 Yaakov left civil service and embarked on a career as a private businessman, and later worked mostly in the United States. In his offices in New York he was among the first who developed the idea of getting U.S. venture capital fund investments in Israeli high-tech firms. Many of the Israeli firms currently considered among the leading and most successful companies, both in Israel and the U.S., such as Comverse of Kobi Alexander, began with the assistance of Yaakov.
According to his friends, Yaakov never became wealthy, but he is considered to be solvent, and lives modestly. He does not have a flat in Israel, and when he comes for visits he stays with family or friends. This was also the case during his most recent visit, when he was arrested.
Yaakov was born in 1926. He is an engineer by training, and a graduate of the Technion in Haifa in mechanical engineering. After serving in the Palmach, he joined the IDF's R&D division at the General Staff. During the 1960s he continued his studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, and on his return he was appointed to the post of deputy chief scientist at the Defense Ministry. In 1971 he was assigned the job of setting up an R&D department at the Defense Ministry and was promoted to brigadier general.
He met Tanya in the United States, where she had emigrated from the Soviet Union soon after World War II. Their marriage was his second. He divorced an Israeli wife with whom he has two daughters, both living in Israel.
Tanya developed extensive business contacts in the Soviet Union, during the Cold War and continued them through the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe and the collapse of the Soviet state. Yaakov had very little business in Russia and Eastern Europe, and sold mostly medical equipment to Russia. Those who know him say that this side of his business was relatively minor and not very successful. As far as anyone knows, his business dealings in Eastern Europe have little if anything to do with his arrest.
Yaakov's friends have expressed puzzlement as to what kind of secrets an elderly man who finished his military career, and with it his access to sensitive state information, some 27 years ago, could have allegedly passed on. According to them, Yaakov has no updated knowledge and in his civilian work, both for the state and privately, he concentrated on civilian high-tech technologies, even though some of the companies he dealt with did produce some military equipment. None of the material, they claim, could have posed a serious danger to state security.
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