There is no doubt that Sperber had been recruited by Markus Wolf. Once he arrived in France, however, he was only concerned about his research and gave up being the spy he was supposed to be.Yet he was still being kept on by his East German employers. He therefore needed to pretend to provide them with something, which explains why he sent them non-classified documents using the full range of spy techniques that he had been taught. To the GDR it looked like he was still fulfilling his mission, without actually betraying his adopted country.
Jean Guisnel and Bernard Violet
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Since the early 1970s the DST regularly brings researchers together - 15,000 a year - in lecture halls to try and install a minimum sense of a ‘culture of secrecy’. The problem was that the scientists were reticent and conversely, demanded on their part even larger exchanges with research facilities in every field from all around the world.The heads of the intelligence services would pull their hair out when they saw scientists persisting in opening the doors of their laboratories and research centres to their foreign counterparts.
Of the 80,000 visitors and foreign trainees who came to France under this pretence in 1986, the DST controlled 34,000, with 800 coming from the USSR and 2,000 from Japan, of which 700 had shown a particular interest in the Commission for Atomic Energy.
[Later these two journalists would assign this quote to Maurice Bernard, the director of research and studies at the Polytechnic School.]
Communication was the key: you had to know what other scientists had discovered and then learn what they deemed to be important even faster. In essence, the research is transparent with a global reach.The results are that an institution such as a multinational company like IBM, or a nation such as the USSR, who both have their own strategic interest in carrying out research, have to give greater freedom of communication to their scientists, however great the risks, be they commercial or political, that that freedom poses to the corresponding entity. History has shown that the deprivation of freedom will stifle all research in years to come.
Chapter 18
Pollard: the Spy amongst friends
In 2001, an extensive Israeli intelligence network was dismantled in the United States. It comprised of more than 100 alleged fine-arts students, who were, in fact, agents with links to advanced technology companies. The fake students were quietly arrested by the FBI and the majority were subsequently expelled, with only a dozen or so remaining imprisoned in the United states.
The FBI neither confirmed nor denied the information when it was revealed by an investigator for the American Fox News channel. Naturally, the Israeli authorities vehemently denied it. However, Fox News is generally considered to be very close to the conservative Right and therefore on the side of President Bush. It may therefore be that Washington approved or even encouraged what was an embarrassing revelation for Israel. What is even more interesting is that the arrests of the Israeli agents took place during the Summer of 2001, just before the events of 11 September. Some of the agents in the Israeli network had visited the places where the suspected Al-Qaida members responsible for diverting the planes had lived. Was this just a coincidence? If not, what were the Israeli spies doing? Were they watching future terrorists? If so, did they have information about the planned attacks? Again, if this is true then why did not Israel, which is often jokingly referred to as the 51st state of the United States, warn its best friend?
There are many troubling questions that boost what is a very thorny and sensitive issue regarding Israeli spying in America. This is because there were precedents that had already caused a stir. The Pollard Affair, for example, which was revealed in 1985 by the US Secretary of Defense, Caspar Weinberger, is considered one of the most serious spy stories in US history!
If the issue of Israeli spying activity in the US is so sensitive, it is because the two countries had very close ties, not to mention the fact that there was a community of 6 million Jewish people living in North America. Israeli intelligence was often tempted to recruit from the Jewish diaspora, leading to the issue of dual loyalty: loyalty to one's country and the desire to help the Jewish state. This was a very serious question as this helped feed the suspicions of an entire community and the spread of anti-Semitism.
At least officially, the Israeli services tried to avoid appealing to American Jews for espionage matters. In reality, however, it was quite the contrary. American Jews often held prominent places in administrations, businesses and the media, not to mention the intelligence services. It was therefore tempting to offer them to put aside the American citizenship and remind them that their first priority should be to the help Israel. Of course, this was significant for those willing to betray their true country, but the Israelis had a very strong argument to convince them: they told them that the Americans were keeping secrets from them, especially information essential for the security of Israel. It was therefore the duty of future agents to collect this information, without feeling that they were betraying anyone.
There were many examples of this. In 1960 it was discovered that the owner of a uranium treatment plant was providing information to the Israeli consulate. In 1977, the deputy director of the US Air Force was dismissed: he had been sending classified information to
