Former Chief of Israel’s Intelligence Services Confirms Passing on to the U.S. Details of Khrushchev

Issa Harel, former head of the Mossad and the Israeli intelligence and security services for the first 15 years of Israel’s history, has confirmed that it was the Mossad which passed on to U.S. intelligence the details of Nikita Khrushchev’s famous 1956 speech denouncing the previous Stalin regime.

Israel has frequently been rumored to have been the source from which the Americans obtained that important document, but Harel’s statement, in a weekend interview in Maariv, was the first official confirmation from one of those involved.

The interview with Harel followed reports last week in the Washington Post of alleged details of Israeli intelligence activities against the U.S. and details of the Israeli intelligence establishment.

COMPARES CIA DOCUMENT TO NOTORIOUS ‘PROTOCOLS’

Harel said that during the time he headed the Israel security and intelligence establishment (to 1965) there had been no planting of microphones in the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv and no attempts had been made to “plant” Israeli agents in the U.S. diplomatic mission or use female agents to entrap American personnel and gain secrets from them, as the Washington Post had reported.

Harel said that since the CIA had not disclaimed the document, it must be presumed to be an official CIA paper. But he said it contained many inaccuracies. The document’s reference to a Jewish “international network” could only be described as akin to the notorious “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” forgeries, Harel said.

As the document had reportedly been discovered in the U.S. Embassy in Teheran, Harel said he wondered how many other copies were to be found in other U.S. Missions in countries hostile to Israel. He suggested it might have been based on Soviet sources who use this method to disseminate “disinformation.”