News
Report: KGB infiltrated Israeli political, defence and industry establishments
A lengthy expose in Yediot Ahronot this morning claims that during the Cold War, the Soviet Union’s KGB intelligence agency succeeded in recruiting senior Israeli assets, including a Major General on the IDF’s General Staff.
The detailed report, published in several parts, claims that those recruited by the KGB also include Knesset members and engineers working on classified projects. Specifically, former-MK Elazar Granot, who was leader of Mapam (a pre-cursor to Meretz) and a member of the Knesset’s influential Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee in the 1980s is named.
Granot has since passed away, but Yediot Ahronot quotes his son Dan Granot, who said: “My father did not have any access to classified information, so even if he had wanted to – he did not have the ability to be a spy.”
Other individuals implicated by the report include a senior engineer on Israel’s National Water Carrier Project and an official in a classified position at Israel Aerospace Industries, involved in the development of the Lavi fighter jet. Another KBG agent codenamed “Malinka” was thought to be an officer in the Shin Bet’s counter-intelligence division.
However, the recruit which Yediot Ahronot says “stood out above the rest” was an unnamed IDF Major General, a member of the IDF General Staff, who passed away soon after Israeli intelligence became aware of his activity. According to the report, some of the spies mentioned were uncovered by Israeli intelligence over the years, tried and sentenced.
The new information is part of a wealth of documents smuggled out of the Soviet Union by KGB defector Vasili Mitrokhin, who arrived in the UK in 1992. His information was considered one of the greatest intelligence leaks in history, exposing undercover agents across the world. UK intelligence at the time informed their Israeli counterparts of the documents and the relevant information pertaining to Israel.
However, it is only recently that Israeli researchers on behalf of Yediot Ahronot have studied the Mitrohkin files, which are deposited in Churchill College, Cambridge, in detail.