J.G. Sourwine, counsel for the Senate Internal Security Committee, characterized six Israeli diplomats as “intelligence agents” and “espionage agents” for a foreign country, it was learned here yesterday, following publication of testimony taken last fall at a closed hearing conducted by the Senate group.
The issue had been brought up during a hearing into the activities of Abba Mr. Schwartz, then administrator of the State Department’s Bureau of Security and Consular Affairs. Mr. Schwartz resigned from that post last month, after learning, upon returning from a Government mission abroad, that his post would be abolished.
At the time of the hearing, it was known, Mr. Sourwine had questioned Mr. Schwartz about his alleged “former association with espionage agents of a foreign government.” The testimony now published named those persons as Theodore T. Kollek, former Israeli Embassy Minister and now Mayor of Jerusalem; Meir Schalit, former first secretary at the Israeli Embassy here; Reuven Shiloah, late Minister at the Embassy; Eliasiv Ben-Horin, of the Israeli mission here; Eliahu Epstein, Israel’s first Ambassador to the United States, who has since hebraized his name to Elath, and is now president of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem; and Elieser Linah, former Israeli consul in Munich, West Germany.
The published testimony shows that Mr. Schwartz had replied to Mr. Sourwine’s inquiries that, to the best of his knowledge, the men mentioned were not intelligence agents. “I knew these men,” he had answered, “as people who were interested in the refugee problem, and that was my contact with them.”
Mr. Schwartz had contact with many persons interested in the refugee problem, when he worked for the Intergovernmental Committee for European Migration. During his appearance before the Senate subcommittee, Mr. Schwartz made it clear that he knew only four of the Israeli diplomats that Mr. Sourwine mentioned. He said that he did not know Mr. Ben-Horin and Mr. Linah.
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