An old general's Manhattan Project
By Amir Oren
About a year ago the phone rang in the Manhattan apartment of Yitzhak "Yatza" Yaakov and Tania Mendoza. An Israeli, representing one of Israel's security services in New York, was on the line. His employers had heard that Yaakov had been targeted by some writers interested in security issues - military, technological, intelligence, nuclear. The Israeli on the phone asked about Yaakov's well-being. At the end of the conversation, he made a note to himself to check every now and again whether foreigners, or even foreign officials, were trying to get sensitive information from Yaakov.
Thus, as a sleepy addendum to another case involving publication of Israeli secrets, the Yaakov case began. The matter seemed to move along lazily until five weeks ago, with Yaakov's arrest, interrogation and indictment on charges of providing information to people unauthorized to have it, with the "intention" - in the legal sense, not necessarily the malicious one, but rather with the knowledge that this would be the result - of harming state security.
The defense establishment's refusal to allow the publication of the details or even to explain that refusal lest it reveal some of the damage that the prosecution attributes to Yaakov, leaves unanswered, in public at least, stubborn questions. The two most important questions are: Is it possible that such a security-conscious person as Yaakov would, with his own hands, chop down the tree he helped to grow; or was this all a bureaucracy gone mad, a bureaucratic golem that rose up to slay its master, or at least bother an old, ailing man with much credit to his name.
A reasonable discussion of these questions, within the context of the military censor and court gag orders, requires a basic, simple assumption: Every state has core secrets, and those who know those secrets know that they are a matter of life and death, whether for the individual, like an agent behind enemy lines, or for the general population, in the case of weapons of mass destruction. It's not a very long list; not every document that someone marks "top secret" would cause direct or indirect damage to state security, if it were revealed.
The most confidential secrets, over the years, end up fully or partially in the hands of thousands of civilians. Those who were directly involved, officials whether appointed or elected, and the professionally curious, like journalists and academics. Those who know more than they publish adopt the justification for silence for the sake of security or out of fear of the authorities, or a combination of both. A government's action against someone who knows the secret and breaks the code of silence, is all about limiting the damage from the publicity, punishing those who breached the confidence, and deter others.
Owning a "founder's share" in a state secret does not make the owner immune, but in fact increases the responsibility and expectation that the founder knows the significance of his actions. Because of, and not despite, the central role of Robert Oppenheimer in the development of the American atomic bomb, he was temporarily stripped of his security clearance when he was (wrongly) suspected of being a dangerous supporter of the Soviets. The suspicion itself created a controversy, but the FBI restrained itself and did not reveal its source of information, which came from the American program of wiretapping and decoding Soviet messages.
Brig. Gen. Yitzhak Yaakov, former head of IDF research and development, is not Oppenheimer and not even engineering General Leslie Groves, head of the atomic bomb development project, but he is an officer and engineer with 30 years of experience and knowledge about the state. He continued to stay up to date about developments - and joined that school of thought that claims Israel's nuclear ambiguity had lost its effectiveness. It's a policy that tries to keep the riddle of whether Israel has the bomb, both in the face of general knowledge that it does, but to prevent enemies with a motive to enter a competitive race and from friends to stop keeping a blind eye to it. Journalists who don't publish what they know about this, in essence decide not to challenge the policy of ambiguity.
That policy can be genius, indeed nation-saving, or it may be outdated and disastrous. The opposing view deserves to be heard, even by those who know the secret: the problem is the public multiple of the knowledge.
In September 2000, Yaakov visited Israel and made his way to the Defense Ministry compound in Tel Aviv. He visited the offices of Yehiel Horev, head of security in the defense establishment. One of the few people who received the summary of the Horev-Yaakov meeting got the impression that the meeting took place in a good atmosphere, and that Horev volunteered to help Yaakov by running a security check on Yaakov's notes, if indeed Yaakov did indeed fulfill his ambition of writing his memoirs. But at the time, Yaakov made clear, that ambition was for the future.
Up until that moment, Yaakov was a well-respected pensioner from the defense establishment. From that moment he became a danger. In March, Horev was horrified to learn that the Yaakov's monument to himself may be in the future but it was already growing in the present from roots in the past. The original fear, that Yaakov might end up as a subject in someone else's file, turned into a much greater fear, of Yaakov's own "Manhattan Project": sitting in his New York apartment and writing in detail about what he knows, using various means and with various correspondents.
Pushed by other worried elements in the intelligence community, Horev convened a team of half a dozen security officials, to review the damage and decide what to do. The team recommended arresting Yaakov as soon as he reached the country last month and to start plugging the leaks. A report was sent to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who had only cursory first hand experience with Horev; and to Defense Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, a week after he took up his post and before he was officially introduced to Horev.
State Prosecutor Edna Arbel and Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein were also informed. Rubinstein is an old bitter foe of Horev's, ever since Horev made the attorney general take a lie detector test, so in the legal and defense establishment they're saying that Rubinstein's approval of Horev's plan is the best proof of all that the arrest was legitimate.
If Yaakov lived in Israel, far from foreigners who might be interested in him and his memoirs, he might have avoided much of the unpleasantness of his current circumstances. In his first interrogation, Yaakov promised full cooperation, but he wasn't exactly open, though the atmosphere was pleasant. When he was presented with intelligence material - and shown its implications - he opened up.
The state is not forgiving. It wants Yaakov convicted and behind bars. Wealthy and powerful friends offered to rent him an isolated house and a private army of guards to make sure he stays inside. The Defense Ministry opposes such private arrangement. The state's price for easing the conditions are clear: Yaakov's complete and total cooperation to discover all the damage it says was done, and no such further damage in the future.
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