Rafi Eitan

Rafi Eitan   (spook)
Born	Raphael "Rafi" Hantman 23 November 1926 Ein Harod, Mandatory Palestine
Died	23 March 2019 (Age 92)
Alma mater	London School of Economics
Founder of	Front for the Liberation of Lebanon from Foreigners
Interest of	Virgilio Barco Vargas
Party	Gil

Rafael "Rafi" Eitan was an Israeli intelligence agent, best known for coordinating the Mossad operation that led to the arrest of Adolf Eichmann in May 1960.

Rafi Eitan's career in the Mossad, heading or involved in many secret operations, included unmasking Israel Beer, a former Lieutenant-Colonel in the IDF found to be spying for the Soviet Union; thwarting German armaments sales to Egypt; involvement in the diversion of highly enriched uranium from an American nuclear fuel plant (“The Apollo Affair”); advising Britain's MI6 on counterterrorism operations in Northern Ireland; helping Moroccan ruler King Hassan II to make a political rival in Paris “disappear”; and planning the Israeli Air Force attack on the Iraqi Osirak nuclear reactor in June 1981.

Lekem

In 1981, Rafi Eitan was named head of the Defence Ministry's Lekem, the Bureau for Scientific Relations, replacing Israeli spy-master Benjamin Blumberg, where he continued work on counterterrorism collecting scientific and technical intelligence information from other countries through espionage.

Jonathan Pollard

In June 1984, Eitan was responsible for an espionage operation against the United States during which he recruited Naval Intelligence Analyst Jonathan Pollard to steal American intelligence material. The operation lasted eighteen months and was shut down after the arrest of Pollard in the US in 1985. His arrest revealed the existence of Lekem to the US authorities. Pollard was convicted and served 30 years of a life sentence.

Richard Smyth

Also in 1985 in California, an aerospace engineer, Richard Kelly Smyth, the president of a company called MILCO, was indicted for smuggling over 800 krytrons to Israel without the required US State Department Munitions Export License. Because of their potential for use as triggers of nuclear weapons, the export of krytrons is tightly regulated in the United States. A number of cases involving the smuggling or attempted smuggling of krytrons have been reported, as countries seeking to develop nuclear weapons have attempted to procure supplies of krytrons for igniting their weapons. Just before trial, and facing a possible 105 years in prison, Richard Smyth and his wife suddenly disappeared. Sixteen years later they were discovered and arrested while living as fugitives in Málaga, Spain, and extradited back to the United States where he was convicted in the case. The krytrons shipped by Smyth were sent to an Israeli company called Heli-Trading Ltd owned by prominent Israeli movie producer Arnon Milchan. Before his prominent Hollywood career, Milchan had served for decades as a Lekem agent, under the direct command of Eitan's predecessor, Benjamin Blumberg. It later became clear that the company MILCO served as a Lekem front company for obtaining sensitive equipment, technologies and materials for Israeli secret defence-related programs, and in particular its nuclear program.

 

Event Participated in

Event	Start	End	Location(s)
Herzliya Conference/2009	2 February 2009	4 February 2009	Reichman University Tel Aviv Israel

 

Related Document

Title	Type	Publication date	Author(s)	Description
Document:The plot to blow up El Al Flight 016	Article	6 April 2019	Marianne Colloms Dick Weindling	Two weeks after Nezar Hindawi's trial, French Prime Minister Jacques Chirac was interviewed on tape by Arnaud de Borchgrave, the editor of the Washington Times. When he was asked about the attempt to blow up the El Al plane Chirac said he had been told by the West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and the Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher that they believe it had been set up by Mossad agents to destabilise Syria's Assad regime.

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