Lekem

Ha - le- Lischka Kischrej Mada (Hebrew הלשכה לקשרי מדע, dt: Office for scientific connections ) or abbreviated Lakam (Hebrew לק"מ ) was an Israeli news service for the protection and support of the Israeli nuclear program. The department in 1957 under the name " Office of Special Tasks" founded was officially dissolved in 1986.

Foundation

The intelligence shielding of the top-secret Israeli nuclear program monitored initially Mossad and Aman. According to the Prime Minister David Ben -Gurion and his principal adviser on defense matters Shimon Peres, yet there was a need for the establishment of a new service, which would be able to ensure the absolute safety of nuclear information. The establishment of the Lakam in 1957 as a spin- out of the structure of the Defense Ministry was kept top secret. Initially knew even the highest head of the Israeli intelligence services Isser Harel unaware of the existence of Lakam. Informants of the Agency were scientific attaché of the Embassy of Israel in the United States and Europe, and Israeli scientists, to which a certain amount of pressure was exerted to pull a patriotic benefit from the information acquired abroad. Lakam led the supervision of the construction of the officially declared as a textile factory nuclear reactor in the Negev. The first director of the Lakam was Benjamin Blumberg. It first bore the name of the office for special tasks, and only later it was renamed in office for scientific connections around.

Foreign espionage services

Israel began during the consultations with Britain and France to prepare for their intervention in the Suez Crisis of 1956, to be interested in buying a French reactor. Although the efforts were unsuccessful, but France was therefore the construction activities in the Negev wary of. Agents of the French intelligence service ( SDECE ) attempted to penetrate into the building area. Concern also showed the U.S. intelligence services, especially the Central Intelligence Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency who analyzed the data of the Enlightenment image of the construction area. The U.S. and France behaved skeptical about official statements of the Israeli government, which denied the construction of nuclear weapons. France therefore limited its assistance to the Israeli nuclear research program, a radical.

Uranium procurement

Despite the observation by foreign agencies succeeded Lakam to find a source for the supply of raw materials: the company Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation ( Numec ) from the village of Apollo in Pennsylvania.

In 1965, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission discovered that the American nuclear reactors with fuel supplying Numec " lost " 91 kilograms of enriched uranium. The American intelligence service revealed soon the relations of the company to the science attaché at the Israeli embassy in Washington, DC on, who worked for Lakam. The Numec affair brought the United States to the realization that Israel worked on the construction of nuclear weapons.

The next amount of uranium secured together with the Mossad operation Plumbat: Towards the end of 1968 Stang registered in the Federal Republic of Germany freighter " Scheersberg A" from Antwerp to Genoa with a cargo of 200 tons of uranium oxide in the lake, which bought apparently for a German company had been. The ship was found after some time with empty cargo holds in the port of İskenderun again, the uranium oxide was reloaded on the open sea in an Israeli ship.

Change in leadership and job enlargement

When Benjamin Blumberg 1981 retired, Rafi Eitan became his successor. Eitan was advisor to the Prime Minister Menachem Begin for matters of the fight against terrorism and had led the Mossad operation to arrest of Adolf Eichmann. As head of Lakam he was Defense Minister Ariel Sharon. This could expand Lakam in competition with the Mossad and operate worldwide. The aim of the operations of the Agency was, among other things, the United States, with which agreements between the U.S. and Israel have been undermined.

Pollard affair and resolution

Lakams activities would likely continue to remain in the unknown, if not the name Eitans would have fallen in some by the Federal Bureau of Investigation intercepted telephone conversations of Jonathan Pollard in November 1985. This civilian analyst with the U.S. Navy law enforcement agency had an Israeli diplomat in New York City offered espionage services. The Mossad ignored this offer, but Lakam interested. Eitan met with the commanding officer ordered him Pollards Israeli science attachés and instructed him in particular, of what materials Israel was interested. In question thousands of documents of various kinds, which also contributed Pollard and copied and then brought back to the archive came. After the arrest, Pollard, the Israeli government officially declared that the whole operation had taken place without their knowledge. The U.S. intelligence suspected from the beginning to the Mossad, which, however, for its part, the Pollard's report considered dilettantism, which damaged the professional reputation of the Mossad. Shimon Peres denied as Prime Minister of Israel, that he had known about it, that a researcher working for the service he founded, U.S. citizens had been the source of information that would have reached him. Eitan said in an interview with the Israeli newspaper Hadaschot that all activities of the Lakam including the steering Pollard, took place with the knowledge of superiors. After the affair Lakam was disbanded in 1986. After a commission of inquiry in 1987 concluded that it was in Israel's interest to take responsibility for the events that gave in 1998 to the then Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Pollard had worked as a spy for Israel.