>> JOHN KERRY FILES...
His brother's keeper
By Sara Leibovich-Dar
haaretz
In 1972, John Kerry tried to get elected to the U.S. Congress as a representative from Massachusetts. His brother, Cameron Kerry, helped with his election campaign. He was a Catholic at the time. Twelve years later, in 1984, John Kerry ran for the Senate. His brother was at his side again - this time as a Jew. A year earlier he had undergone a Reform conversion and married Kathy Weinman, a Jewish lawyer from Michigan.
It's three days after Super Tuesday earlier this month, the day of nine Democratic primaries, when John Kerry consolidated his victory and was named the party's presidential candidate. Cameron Kerry laughs when asked if his conversion changed the nature of his advice to his brother.
"It didn't make any difference," he said in a telephone interview from his Boston law office. "Jews were always involved in Democratic politics, and were around the Democratic Party. It doesn't affect what I am doing. I am the cheerleader, adviser and surrogate to my brother."
He takes a relaxed attitude toward his conversion. "It was important to my wife and to her family. We decided to raise our children Jewish. After this, the conversion itself was a small step, which came easily and comfortably."
How did your family react?
Kerry: "They supported me. We grew up in a cosmopolitan environment."
Cameron Kerry is the youngest of four siblings. The family history is complicated. John and Cameron Kerry's grandfather, Frederick Kerry, was born as a Jew named Fritz Kohn, in the town of Bennisch in the Austro-Hungarian empire (today Horni Benesov, in the Czech Republic). His wife, Ida Loewe, was also born a Jew. In 1902, after marrying and becoming a father, Kohn changed his name in the population registry to Frederick Kerry. In 1905 he came to the United States, where he lived as a Catholic. In 1921 he committed suicide, apparently as a result of financial difficulties. His American descendants were Catholic. Two members of his family who remained in Europe were murdered in Nazi concentration camps.
Cameron Kerry says that when he discovered, about a year ago, that his grandfather was a Jew, he felt it was ironic. He says that his wife and children laughed when they heard about it. He told Reform Judaism magazine in the fall of 2003, "I guess things come full circle." In an interview with the Detroit Jewish News, he said that he was surprised at the number of Jews in his synagogue who had told him similar stories, and concluded "It's an American story."
Boarding-school childhood
Richard, the father of John and Cameron Kerry, was the youngest of Frederick and Ida's three children. He was born and grew up in Massachusetts, was an U.S. Army Air Corps pilot during World War II, and a lawyer and diplomat in the American foreign service. His wife, Rosemary, nee Forbes, was born in France. Her father was a wealthy banker, she grew up in France and England. One of her ancestors, John Winthrop, was one of the founders of the city of Boston.
Richard Kerry didn't tell his children anything about his father. At the end of the 1990s, after he fell ill with cancer, he told John that Frederick had committed suicide, but he didn't tell him about his grandfather's Jewish origins. Kerry found out from a newspaper article researched by The Boston Globe. It isn't clear whether Richard knew and hid the information from his children, or actually didn't know anything about his father's origins. Richard died in 2000 at the age of 85. His wife, Rosemary, died two years later at the age of 89.
Peggy is the eldest of Richard and Rosemary's four children and today works with the U.S. delegation to the UN in New York, as a liaison officer with non-governmental organizations. John is the second child. Diana, who lives in Manchester, Massachusetts, is a teacher who has taught in Boston, Iran, Thailand and Indonesia. Cameron is the youngest. He was born in Washington and grew up in Oslo and Germany, where their father was send by the foreign service, and attended private boarding schools in Switzerland and in New Hampshire. He received his bachelor's degree from Harvard, and went on to study law at Boston College Law School - like his brother.
Although the children of the family studied in boarding schools while their father roamed the world as part of his work, Peggy says in a phone interview from New York that they were a close family. Their sister Diana, in a conversation by phone from her home in Massachusetts, says that because they weren't together much, every time the family members did meet, they enjoyed their time - whether spending vacations together or visiting relatives, and her brothers loved doing sports like sailing and skiing together.
Peggy Kerry confirms that her parents were very accepting of Cameron's conversion. "It wasn't that they didn't care, our parents left us the decisions." She says that she had no problem with it, either. She believes that every child can do what he thinks is right, and adds that in the U.S. many people change their religion. Diana Kerry says that her mother agreed to raise her children as Catholics although she herself was an Episcopalian, so that this idea was not new to the family.
Cameron Kerry is quite active as a Jew. "My wife goes to Temple Israel in Boston whenever she can. I pray there on Friday evenings. I celebrate the High Holy Days, I fast on Yom Kippur. We celebrate the Passover seder with my wife's family, at our home the first night and at my brother-in-law's, the second."
Asked if his older brother had ever come to a seder, Cameron says that John knows what it is, and that he has celebrated it with Jewish families, but not in his brother's home.
Does Judaism mean for you as a convert a different way of thinking?
"It has impacts, but I can't say how. For me it was natural, it's part of family life. My two daughters, aged 17 and 13, have a strong sense of Jewish identity. One is the head of the Jewish Student Union in her high school, the other is appearing in `The Sound of Music' at her school tonight as the Mother Abbess. The costume made for her includes a chasuble with a cross on it, but she has substituted her tallit [prayer shawl]."
Do you advise your brother on Israel and the Middle East?
"John has his own policy in these matters. I am not his adviser for Israel and the Middle East, although I can help and it is very fascinating for me. He visited Israel many times after he was elected to the Senate in 1984, and met many leaders. I have never visited Israel. When my daughters were young I didn't want to travel far away."
Let others decide
Asked what he thinks about the separation fence, Cameron Kerry says that he prefers to let John's positions speak for themselves. As to the question of whether it would be better for the State of Israel and for American Jews if Senator Joseph Lieberman, who is Jewish, were the Democratic candidate, the younger Kerry says he prefers not to reply, and that other people should decide.
Will John Kerry will be a president who is sympathetic to Israel?
"He will make the world a safer place."
Will the fact that the brother of the Democratic candidate for president is a Jew affect the Jewish vote? Diana Kerry thinks it won't. She says that the American Jewish community will examine John's abilities and his opinions, adding that her younger brother's religion will not affect the policies of her older brother.
The decline in anti-Semitism and the fact that John Kerry's brother has no job in the administration make his Jewishness a "non-issue," says Stuart Eisenstadt, deputy secretary of the U.S. treasury in the Clinton administration. He explains that people make their decisions according to the candidate and not according to who his brother is.
Jack Rosen, president of the American Jewish Congress, says in a phone interview from New York that Cameron's Jewishness won't hurt his brother, but John Kerry will have to deal with President George W. Bush's credentials. According to Rosen, the question of Kerry's Jewish family connections will be secondary, and he adds that the incumbent president has a record in areas related to Israel - he has raised the level of support for it, and for that reason Kerry's positions on these issues will be more relevant than his brother's Jewishness.
Prof. Eytan Gilboa of the department of political studies at Bar-Ilan University believes that Cameron Kerry's Jewishness, as well as the Jewish roots of the Kerry family, will be of importance in the election campaign.
"If [President George W.] Bush could find Jewish roots, he would use them, too," says Gilboa. "The wife of candidate Howard Dean is Jewish, Wesley Clark has a Jewish grandfather, and they all considered Judaism a good sales pitch. In these elections there is a tremendous battle for every vote, after the last elections were decided by a few hundred votes. Although the Jews constitute only 2 percent of the population, according to the myth, Jewish capital constitutes half of the contributions to the Democrats. The Jews also vote in very high numbers, about 90 percent of the vote, as opposed to an overall voting rate of about 50 percent. The Republican Party also wants Jewish capital and the Jewish vote.
"In the last presidential elections, about 20 percent of the Jews voted for Bush. At his headquarters they are hoping for a Jewish vote of 30 percent. The competition for Jewish capital and the Jewish vote will be more significant this time. That is why candidates are emphasizing their Jewish roots."
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Who's afraid of Mordechai Vanunu?
By Yossi Melman
In June 1976, after a chance conversation with a friend who was employed at the nuclear reactor in Dimona and had good things to say about his place of work, Mordechai Vanunu decided to try his luck there. On the advice of his friend, he scoured the want ads in the papers for one for workers at the Dimona Nuclear Research Center, as it is officially called (or, according to the Hebrew acronym, Kamag), and when he found such an ad, he submitted an application. He was invited for a preliminary meeting, followed by a more comprehensive interview and a security-clearance process, which he passed successfully. A month later, he was informed that he had been hired. The document approving his entry into a preliminary course was signed by Aryeh Felman, then the head of the security screening department in the Shin Bet security service.
Vanunu's preparatory employment course lasted two months. It was an accelerated program in which newcomers were taught basic terms in English, math and physics, and given an introduction to the world of nuclear reactors. In his testimony in Israeli courts after revealing the secrets of the Dimona reactor to the Britain's Sunday Times, Vanunu said: "At the end of the course we had an exam. The majority passed. But a few people were rejected, one for a drugs background, another because he had left-wing relatives, things like that."
Vanunu wasn't rejected. He was accepted for a training course at the nuclear plant. The fact that he was hired was the first in a series of security blunders that characterized the affair from the outset. It now emerges that Vanunu had applied for a job at the Shin Bet a few years earlier, but was rejected on grounds of incompatibility. His application form and the reasons for the rejection appeared in his personal file at the Dimona facility. But despite this, the security officer there, Zvi K., authorized his employment without bothering to check the matter with the Shin Bet.
In 1980, Zvi K. was promoted to director of personnel at the reactor. He was replaced as security officer by Yehiel K., who had completed a tour of duty as security officer of the Defense Ministry mission in the United States. Yehiel K. held the post for seven years, until October 6, 1987 - the formative years of the affair. In 1987 he was appointed internal comptroller of the Dimona facility; he retired two years ago.
The division of power and responsibility for protecting the nuclear reactor were not precisely established or formalized in that period. The security officer received his salary from the Israel Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC), which is responsible, among other things, for the facility. Professionally, the security officer is accountable to the chief security officer in the Defense Ministry (known by the Hebrew acronym Malmab), at the time Chaim Carmon (???). He also receives instructions from several units of the Shin Bet: The protective security department, which in the Vanunu period was run by Savinoam Avivi, is supposed to provide the security officer with professional guidance. The security screening unit carries out the reliability tests and background checks of candidates for jobs in plants under the auspices of the defense establishment or other highly sensitive places. The counterespionage and political subversion branch has the task of supervising, collecting information and thwarting subversive activity by both foreigners (including diplomats) and Israeli Jews. (A different Shin Bet unit, the Arab Affairs Department, deals with political subversion by Arab citizens of Israel.) The head of the counterespionage branch from 1981 to 1985 was Peleg Radai.
All these individuals bear responsibility, to one degree or another, for the security blunders in the Vanunu affair. The junior technician from Be'er Sheva, one of 10 siblings in a family that emigrated from Morocco in 1963, succeeded in fooling everyone. This is the secret that hasn't yet been told in the affair: the story of the security fiasco that made it possible for Vanunu to do what he did, and the story of the subsequent attempts at cover-up, whitewashing and protection of senior figures in the defense establishment, who were bent on divesting themselves of responsibility for the failure.
What makes Horev run?
The 18-year prison term to which Vanunu was sentenced - which will end on April 21 - is almost exactly the same period as that in which Yehiel Horev has served as chief of internal security in the defense establishment. Vanunu's success in divulging Israel's nuclear secrets to The Sunday Times - which ran the story on October 5, 1986, headlined "Inside Dimona, Israel's nuclear bomb factory" - hastened Horev's appointment to the high-ranking post, and since then he has viewed himself as the guardian of the secrets of the nuclear reactor in Dimona. Fortunately for Horev, in the critical period when Vanunu was fired and went abroad, he was on study leave at the National Security College. However, he was involved in the affair before that, as deputy chief of security at the Defense Ministry, and also after Vanunu's abduction and arrest, as a member of an investigative commission.
Yehiel Horev (Zilberman) was born in Tel Aviv in 1944, and at an early age moved to Kibbutz Hulata, in Upper Galilee. He did his army service in the Golani infantry brigade, reaching the rank of lieutenant. In the course of his reserve service, in the Armored Corps, he was promoted to the rank of major. At the end of the 1960s he took part in an Israel Defense Forces mission that trained the army of Congo. Returning to Israel in 1969, he was recruited as a security officer in an IAEC unit in the center of the country.
In 1975, Horev was promoted and made responsible for the physical protection department in the Defense Ministry. From the latter's headquarters at the Defense Ministry compound in Tel Aviv, he oversaw the protection of all the facilities, sites and plants of the defense establishment. The most closely watched "jewels in the defense crown" were the nuclear facility in Dimona and the Biological Institute at Nes Ziona, south of Tel Aviv, where, according to foreign reports, Israel's nonconventional weapons (nuclear, biological, chemical) are manufactured. The physical protection department is responsible for the connection with the security officers of the plants and for issuing their instructions, and its task is to oversee and ensure that they are doing their work properly.
Even at this early stage, the basic traits that characterize Horev to this day were noticeable: devotion to duty alongside blandness, pettiness and acute suspiciousness, but also personal integrity and a strong desire to expose corruption and failures, as well as a penchant for vengefulness. The affairs of the secrets that leaked from the two places considered Horev's holiest sites - the Biological Institute, which produced a senior spy in the person of Prof. Marcus Klingberg, and the Dimona nuclear plant, about which secret information was revealed through Mordechai Vanunu - were formative events in the development of his world view.
Shortly after taking office as chief of securityat the Defense Ministry, Horev began to take punitive measures to hobble Vanunu. He is responsible for the harsh conditions in which Vanunu was held, which included years in solitary confinement, and the sharp limitations on the number of visitors he could have. A few years ago, Horev removed from his office Amiram Levine, a senior official in the department of special affairs and information protection. In Horev's view, Levine displayed carelessness by not censoring properly the transcripts from the Vanunu trial that the Supreme Court allowed to be published.
Today, after failing to persuade the political echelon to place Vanunu under administrative detention (arrest without trial) even after he completes his prison term, Horev is fighting a rearguard battle to prevent Vanunu from leaving Israel and to place him under supervision and restrictions that will be tantamount to house arrest. Horev has always been considered the strictest of all the security chiefs in Israel, especially in regard to the protection of institutions such as the Dimona facility and the Biological Institute. He is apprehensive that if Vanunu goes abroad, he will continue to be a nuisance by stimulating the public debate over Israel's nuclear policy and the nuclear weapons he says Israel possesses.
A good many experts, both in the Shin Bet and the IAEC, take issue with Horev's unrelentingly rigorous approach. According to these experts, who are afraid to be identified by name, Horev, by imposing restrictions on Vanunu, will achieve the exact opposite of his intention, as international attention will then be focused on Vanunu and on Israel's nuclear secrets. Moreover, many people wonder what Vanunu could possibly reveal beyond what he already has. What additional secrets could be known to Vanunu, who for nine years worked as a junior technician and was a shift manager at the nuclear plant in Dimona, and for nearly 20 years has had no contact with his former place of work?
The fact is that almost everything relating to the Vanunu affair has been made public. The secrets of the Dimona reactor, including its units and structure, were published, in the wake of Vanunu's information, by The Sunday Times. Also known are the circumstances of Vanunu's abduction in Rome in an operation mounted by the Mossad espionage agency, which was closely overseen by Shabtai Shavit, then the deputy chief of the Mossad. Even the identity of "Cindy," the Mossad agent who lured Vanunu to fly with her from his place of hiding in London to the apartment of her "sister, the journalist," in Rome, where she was supposed to grant him sexual favors, was exposed in the international press: Cheryl Hanin Bentov.
The feeling, then, is that all the hyperactivity being displayed by Horev and those who support his approach is intended only to divert attention from what has not yet been revealed: the security blunders and their cover-ups. This is also apparently the reason that all the senior officials who were responsible for the blunders refused to respond or be interviewed for this article.
Formative resolutions
Mordechai Vanunu attended Beit Yaakov, a religious elementary school run by the ultra-Orthodox Agudat Israel movement. He went on to Ohalei Shlomo, a high-school yeshiva, but dropped out and entered the IDF at the age of 17. He served in the Engineering Corps and reached the rank of first sergeant. In 1973, he enrolled for a preparatory program at Tel Aviv University and excelled in mathematics and physics. However, extended reserve duty in the 1973 Yom Kippur War combined with a shortage of funds forced him to break off his studies and return to his parents' home in Be'er Sheva. These were the circumstances that prompted him to look for a job with the Shin Bet and then with the Dimona nuclear facility.
On January 1, 1977, Vanunu joined one of the special buses that took employees from Be'er Sheva to the reactor every day and passed through the gates of Israel's most secret plant. The new employees were taken to the facility's school, where they signed a pledge of secrecy and undertook not to talk to anyone about their work. Vanunu then received his security pass, whose number was 9657-8. He underwent a medical check and was found fit, and was sent to take another course, this one more advanced, in nuclear physics. This course placed emphasis on uranium and radioactivity.
For the next 10 weeks, the new employees went through another round of training for their work at the reactor. The training period concluded at the end of June 1977, and Vanunu and his colleagues were formally admitted to the "holy of holies" of Israel's security religion. Vanunu received another security pass, numbered 320, which gave him entry to "Machon [Institute] 2" where, according to what he told the Times, nuclear weapons are manufactured. He was also assigned a locker (No. 3) for his personal effects.
Most of his work was on the night shift in the control rooms of Machon 2, from 11:30 P.M. until 8 A.M. After the first flush of excitement wore off, Vanunu found the work boring and monotonous. In the summer of 1980, after returning from a trip abroad, he left his rented apartment in Dimona and for $20,000, including his savings and funds from his siblings, bought a small flat near Ben-Gurion University (BGU) of the Negev in Be'er Sheva. Around this time he also made two resolutions that would shape his life: to attend university and to keep a personal diary.
After initially enrolling to study economics, he changed his mind and opted for geography and philosophy. According to his brother Meir, Mordechai began delving deeply into the writings of classical philosophers and gulped them all down - from Aristotle to Spinoza, and from Kant and Descartes to the moderns such as Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and Sartre. He became familiar with abstract thought, which emphasizes the self, the individual and his responsibility. The information about his readings in philosophy is contained in his diary, in which he always made the entries at night, during the long hours of his boring shift at the nuclear facility.
In the eyes of his employers, Vanunu was an outstanding employee during his first five years of work at the plant. There were no complaints against him or reports about unusual behavior. Beneath the surface, though, Vanunu began to change.
"His political world view was also shaped at the university," says Meir Vanunu. In his youth, Mordechai had identified with the extreme right and saw nothing amiss with the racist ideas of Rabbi Meir Kahane and his Kach movement, but he now embarked on a long journey that led him to the political center and finally to the extreme left. He was elected to the student council on the ticket of Campus, a Jewish-Arab students' organization, was active in promoting the rights of Arab students, took part in demonstrations against the war in Lebanon and the occupation, and submitted a request to join the students' association of Rakah, the Communist Party.
In the summer of 1982, when he was called up for reserve duty at the height of the Lebanon War, Vanunu, who objected to the war's goals, refused to serve in field tasks in his Engineering Corps unit, preferring instead to do kitchen duty. In the next two years he became known on campus as a radical in terms of his world view and as an eccentric in terms of his behavior. He was photographed, for example, dancing naked at a campus party and was a nude model for art students. It turns out that all this activity was known to the security officials at the Dimona reactor.
Drift to the left
Yehiel K., who was the Dimona reactor's security officer in those years, created for himself - in the plant and at BGU (where a number of Dimona employees at the nuclear facility were studying, teaching or doing research) - a network of "loyalists" whose task was to report unusual occurrences. To this end he also made use of the good working relations he developed with the university's security officer, Zvi Schwartz.
In 1982, reports started coming in to Yehiel K. from Schwartz and others about Vanunu's "deviant" behavior on campus: his participation in demonstrations against the Lebanon War, his connections with Arab students, his nude dancing at the party and his pronouncements against Israel's nuclear policy. At the Dimona facility, whose staff has a highly developed security sense, any and all evidence of unusual behavior, however minor, is supposed to receive immediate and thorough treatment.
Indeed, as soon as the reports started coming in, Yehiel K. felt that there was a "real problem" and took action at a number of levels. First, he reported the matter to the personnel director at the nuclear plant, Zvi K., the former security officer, and also to the director general of the reactor facility, Avraham (Roberto) Saroussi. In addition, Yehiel K. sent reports on the subject to the Defense Ministry security chief, Chaim Carmon, and to the professional unit in the Shin Bet - the Jewish Department in the counter-espionage branch - and kept copies of all the reports in his office.
Vanunu thus became a "checkee" - someone who had to be checked and placed under supervision. According to the instructions and the procedures in the defense establishment, once an employee becomes a "checkee," his employers are barred from taking any action against him without the authorization of the security officials, so that they can keep him under tabs without arousing his suspicion. But at the Dimona plant people ignored the instructions and continued to treat Vanunu as an outstanding worker. They even sent him to an advanced course for senior staff. This period saw several waves of dismissals at the reactor, due to budget cuts. Accordingly, Yehiel K. sent Zvi K. and Avraham Saroussi a list of employees who must under no circumstances be laid off without his prior approval. One of the names on the list was Mordechai Vanunu.
The counterespionage branch also issued a directive not to fire Vanunu. For Yehiel K. this was superfluous, as he had already issued such an instruction. At one stage, Peleg Radai, head of counterespionage, convened a special meeting in which it was decided to call Vanunu in for questioning. On the same occasion it was also decided to recruit Vanunu as a department informer to win his loyalty, but mainly "to put him into a framework" in order to keep him under close watch.
The mission was assigned to Avraham B., head of the unit in the Jewish Department that dealt with subversion by the extreme left. Avraham B. and his immediate superior, Yisrael G., the head of that department, met with Vanunu at least twice. Avraham B. asked Vanunu about his political activity and for the names of the friends he had met with, and sought information about the parlor talks in which Vanunu had taken part and about his membership in various organizations. Mainly, though, he wanted to know whether Vanunu had told any of his associates in the political groups, and especially the Arab students, about his job.
Vanunu, who was tense and nervous at the meetings, replied in great detail to all the questions. He said that none of his friends in the political groups knew that he worked at the Dimona facility, even though he had spoken out against Israel's nuclear policy. He explained his deep political involvement as stemming from his opposition to the war in Lebanon. Vanunu was warned that he had signed a secrecy pledge and that he had to report any attempts to make contact with him to the reactor's security officer. Avraham B. advised Vanunu to break off his relations with the Arab students and stay away from them, hinting that otherwise Vanunu's advancement at work was liable to be affected.
At the conclusion of each meeting, Avraham B. drew up a report describing the stages of Vanunu's slide into the radical-left organizations. However, the language of the reports was not especially acute. Nor did Avraham B. recommend taking immediate action against Vanunu. There are three versions about one important issue: Was it suggested that Vanunu become a paid informer? One version is that the attempt to recruit Vanunu as an informer for the department had failed. Vanunu simply refused to cooperate. According to a different version, Vanunu did cooperate and agreed to report on his friends, but his handlers afterward broke off the connection with him because his reports were considered unreliable. In retrospect, former Shin Bet officials say that the decision to break off the connection with Vanunu was a mistake and that the organization should have continued to run him "on empty" and reward him for his reports, in order to maintain close contact with him. The third version is that no one suggested he become an informer.
Contrary to instructions
Even before he received the first reports about Vanunu, Chaim Carmon, the chief security officer in the Defense Ministry, wasn't pleased with the work of Yehiel K. Carmon persuaded the director general of the Defense Ministry, Avraham Maron, and then Maron's successor, David Ivri, and the chief of the Shin Bet, Avraham Shalom, to use their influence with the director general of the IAEC, Uzi Eilam, to replace Yehiel K. However, Eilam refused. He was satisfied with Yehiel K.'s work and viewed the requests of Carmon and the Defense Ministry as little more than a caprice attributable to the "wars of the bureaucrats." Seeing no other choice, Carmon decided to ask his deputy, Yehiel Horev, to act as a kind of "overseer" of security at the reactor and Yehiel K.
Carmon was unable to find a common language with Peleg Radai, the head of the Shin Bet's counter-espionage and subversion branch. In retrospect, he believed that Radai had been wholly preoccupied with the internal struggle that had been going on in the Shin Bet since April 1984. That month, two Palestinian terrorists who had been taken captive in an operation to rescue the passengers of the hijacked No. 300 bus, were killed on orders of the Shin Bet chief, Avraham Shalom.
Shalom then ordered his aides to obscure, cover up and whitewash the deed and even to lie to a number of commissions that were established to investigate the episode. Radai, together with two other senior Shin Bet officials, Reuven Hazak and Rafi Malka, demanded Shalom's resignation.
As a result, Carmon decided to bypass Radai and directly contacted the head of the Shin Bet himself. However, Avraham Shalom, too, was completely absorbed in the battle against the "rebels," whom he perceived as simply wanting to dump him in order to bring about the appointment of Reuven Hazak, his deputy.
In the summer of 1985, the heads of the personnel department at the reactor called in Vanunu for a talk. Contrary to the instructions of Yehiel K., Carmon and Radai not to take any action against Vanunu without their authorization, they informed the technician that he was going to be transferred from Machon 2 to a different unit. Vanunu, who already knew that he was being targeted by the defense establishment and suspected that the transfer was politically motivated, reacted angrily. He made remarks along the lines of, "You're out to get me. You want to screw me. If you don't want me to work here, then fine, I'm ready to quit."
The personnel executives jumped at the suggestion and together with Vanunu arranged for his name to be included on the next list of 100 employees who were being let go. The decision was approved by both Zvi K., the personnel director, and the reactor's director general, Avraham Saroussi. It was only after Vanunu's name was placed on the list that Yehiel K. received a report that the technician had been fired - contrary to his instructions.
In October 1985, the three Shin Bet "rebels" were suspended and afterward resigned from the security service. Mordechai Vanunu's contract at the nuclear facility also concluded that month. Shortly afterward, Yehiel K. received a report that Vanunu had sold his apartment in Be'er Sheva and his old car and was planning to leave the country. Yehiel K. reported this immediately to Carmon, whose response surprised him: "Cancel his security clearance." Yehiel K. replied: "You're confused. His security clearance was long since revoked. He doesn't work for us any more. Now the problem is his trip abroad."
Carmon thereupon proposed to the Shin Bet that Vanunu be "BC-ed" - jargon based on "Border Control," meaning to enter a person's name into the computers of the Border Control officers and thus keep tabs on his every departure from and entry into the country. Carmon's suggestion was mentioned in passing at a meeting of the counter-espionage branch and not discussed further. Afterward, Carmon was even prepared to declare Vanunu insane to prevent him from leaving the country, but no serious discussion was held about that idea, either.
The cover-up
In 1984, shortly after Carmon asked him to oversee Yehiel K. and the Dimona facility, Yehiel Horev went on leave to study at the National Security College. Vanunu was fired in October 1985 and received severance pay for his nine years of work at the plant. He sold his car and his apartment and that December, bought a cheap one-way ticket to Bangkok. Seemingly, he was one more young Israeli going on a soul-searching quest in the Far East. Vanunu, though, had other plans, albeit as yet undefined. In his luggage, he hid two rolls of film that he had shot secretly at various places in the reactor during his employment there. In Thailand he visited a Buddhist monastery, which made such a powerful impression on him that he contemplated a conversion to Buddhism. He then changed his plans and went to Sydney, Australia. There he met an Anglican priest named John McKnight and joined his small church.
Vanunu converted to Christianity, conducted soulful talks with the members of the congregation and became friends with Oscar Guerrero, who introduced himself as an occasional journalist. Vanunu told him about his work at the reactor and about the photographs he had taken there. Guerrero, who saw a possible lucrative deal in the making, enthusiastically persuaded Vanunu to offer his story to the media. Together they made the rounds, but no one, not Australian papers and not Newsweek magazine, believed them, until finally The Sunday Times decided that the story was worth checking out.
After about two years at the National Security College, Horev resumed his work in the Defense Ministry. By coincidence, he returned to work on the very day that the defense establishment learned that Vanunu was going to publish his story in The Times. The report came from the Mossad, which was then engaged in an operation aimed at finding and capturing Vanunu.
Carmon, the chief securityofficer in the Defense Ministry, happened to be abroad at the time, and Horev, his deputy, was appointed to head an interdepartmental team to deal with the case, with representatives of the Shin Bet and the Mossad. After Vanunu was abducted in Rome and brought back to Israel by sea, Horev was appointed by Carmon to take part in a committee set up to examine the course of events, together with Avner Barnea, then head of the training division of the Shin Bet. From the point of view of the internal security chief and the Shin Bet, the establishment of the committee was tantamount to going through the motions, something like letting the cat guard the cream.
Neither of the two organizations, not to mention their chiefs, wanted any sort of in-depth investigation. Carmon hoped that Horev, his deputy and protege, would not issue a sharp report against him. Over the years it became clear to Barnea that Horev himself, on the instructions of Carmon, was involved in the issue of security at the reactor and thus, ostensibly, due to a conflict of interest, should not have been a member of the committee.
They met with Yehiel K., the Dimona plant's security officer, in his office at the facility. They questioned him very briefly, for only a few minutes, and Horev went on to other matters at the reactor. They never asked Yehiel K. for the documents, charts or correspondence in his possession. Yehiel K., for his part, never offered them.
The watered-down report they issued mentioned flaws that had been discovered, but termed them structural flaws. The committee found that there had been poor communication between the various security branches, and recommended improved liaison between the Shin Bet, the nuclear facility and the chief security officer. In addition the committee recommended improving the security arrangements at the Dimona plant and to conduct random checks. Even though the report was not exactly drafted in a clear manner, it is evident from it that the way all the elements in this affair operated, as one person involved defined it, was "one big disgrace. Everyone was consumed by blindness and fell asleep on the job - they simply didn't do anything and behaved like kids , not like professionals who are expected to act in a thorough way, with responsibility and careful consideration."
The only individual singled out for having possibly been negligent was Yehiel K., who was said not to have complied with the agreements about not firing Vanunu. Katz never saw the report, but years later, in Shin Bet training courses on protective security, he was noted as having acted properly.
Whatever became of ...?
At the end of 1985, with the No. 300 bus affair at its height - though still kept secret from the public - the Shin Bet chief, Avraham Shalom, neutralized Peleg Radai, and the counterespionage and political subversion branch was effectively placed in the hands of Radai's deputy, Aharon G. Shortly afterward, Radai and his two fellow "rebels" left the Shin Bet and established Shafran, a private security company.
Yehiel K. had asked to switch jobs at the beginning of 1985, long before Vanunu was fired. His request was granted only after Avraham Saroussi resigned as director general of the Dimona facility and was replaced by Giora Amir. On the day Yehiel K. left his post as security officer, October 6, 1986, Vanunu was tied up in a small cabin on a vessel that was plying the waters of the Mediterranean en route to Israel. Yehiel K. became internal comptroller of the reactor.
Zvi K. retired from the Dimona plant about five years ago, but was occasionally employed as a consultant to the facility. The director general, Avraham S., retired a few years ago, and Avner B. left the Shin Bet in 1993 and became a businessman.
Carmon remained in the Defense Ministry for a few more years and then retired. Some time later, Horev told friends in the ministry that if it had not been for him, Carmon would have been removed from his post long before. Instead, Horev said, he and others persuaded Carmon to accept the rank of deputy director general of the Defense Ministry with a bombastic title referring to responsibility for three departments: external relations, defense aid and internal security.
Carmon was seemingly Horev's superior in this capacity, but in practice Horev refused to accept this and began gradually to entrench his status as chief security officer of the Defense Ministry. A few years ago, he requested that the head of the Shin Bet transfer to him the authority to appoint security officers, by means of statutory regulations that would have effectively made his office the fourth official intelligence branch in Israel, together with the Mossad, Military Intelligence and the Shin Bet. Only the determined opposition of the attorney general, Elyakim Rubinstein, prevented this development.
As for the political level, it showed little interest in the failure. The prime minister at the time, Shimon Peres, prided himself on the Mossad's success in capturing Vanunu and bringing him to Israel. "I was informed that everything that had to be examined was examined and that all the conclusions were drawn and the lessons gleaned," Peres told Haaretz, through his press officer, in response.
The making of a chief security officer
Chaim Carmon, a Holocaust survivor, immigrated to this country in 1946, worked in the diamond industry and joined Shai, the information service of the Haganah, the pre-state defense force. In the War of Independence he served as a sapper in the Kiryati Brigade. After his discharge, he joined the Shin Bet. For a few years he was the bodyguard of the prime minister, David Ben-Gurion. In 1953, when Ben-Gurion resigned and moved to Kibbutz Sde Boker, in the Negev, Carmon returned to the investigations unit at Shin Bet headquarters near the flea market in Jaffa.
In 1954, a disagreement erupted over which body would be responsible for internal security in the Defense Ministry: the field security section of Military Intelligence, or the Shin Bet. The Shin Bet got the nod and Avraham Niv was appointed security officer of the Defense Ministry, with Carmon named as his aide. A year later, Niv resigned and Carmon became the ministry's security officer.
Carmon held the post for nearly 10 years, which turned out to be an era of exciting events. With the backing of the prime minister and defense minister, David Ben-Gurion, his protege, Shimon Peres - first as director general of the Defense Ministry and then as the deputy minister - turned the ministry into something like a state within a state. In this period, to the chagrin of the foreign minister, Golda Meir, secret ties were forged that were translated into arms sales and purchases of security equipment from Germany. The defense industries - Israel Aircraft Industries, Israel Military Industries and Rafael (Israel Arms Development Authority) - enjoyed tremendous momentum, and clandestine talks in Paris evolved into a joint plan, with the French and the British, to attack Egypt in October 1956, and a year later produced agreements with France for the purchase of a nuclear reactor, including know-how, equipment and technology.
Carmon, by virtue of his position, took part in all these events and was responsible for keeping the secrets. He was professionally answerable to the protective security branch of the Shin Bet, headed by Binyamin Blumberg. At the order of Shimon Peres, who wanted, among other aims, to "compartmentalize" Isser Harel, the head of the Mossad, and not make him privy to the secret of the reactor at Dimona, a special unit was established in the Defense Ministry to guard that reactor as well as the research reactor that was built at the same time in Nahal Sorek. The unit went through a number of incarnations and names, being known variously as "Special Projects" and the "Office of Special Assignments" and later as Lakam, an acronym for "Science Liaison Bureau."
The unit's mission was to safeguard the construction of the two reactors, in 1960-61, and afterward to protect them, ensure that the secrets didn't leak out, check the reliability of the staff, and be involved in the purchase of the equipment and the materials (including uranium) for their activation.
During the split in the ruling Mapai party (the precursor of Labor) in the 1960s and the subsequent establishment of the Rafi party by Ben-Gurion and his supporters, Peres and Moshe Dayan, Carmon, who to this day sees himself as a "Ben-Gurionist," joined the breakaway group. This is probably why he was sent into "exile" as part of the Defense Ministry mission to the United States. When he returned to Israel, he once more held positions in the ministry's protection and security system. Following the Yom Kippur War and in the wake of structural changes in the ministry, he became head of security not only in the ministry but throughout the defense establishment, and thus was born the Hebrew acronym "Malab" (chief of security in the Defense Ministry).
Carmon's superior, Blumberg, who never gave an interview and whose photograph never appeared in the press, actually wore three hats: He held the status of the head of a branch in the Shin Bet, but was also the chief security officer of the Defense Ministry and, in particular, was head of Lakam. At the end of the 1970s, following the Likud's rise to power, the defense minister, Ezer Weizman, and his deputy, Mordechai Zippori, decided to get rid of Blumberg. Rumors reached them that Blumberg was closely connected with the Labor Party establishment, that there were suspicions of financial irregularities as a result of transactions related to purchase of materials and equipment for the Dimona reactor and for the defense industries, and that money had been transferred to secret funds, which might also be used for political purposes.
Blumberg preempted them. He went to the prime minister, Menachem Begin, and asked for his intercession. Begin ruled that Blumberg would stay. However, two years later, after Ariel Sharon became defense minister, Blumberg was forced out. He was succeeded by Rafi Eitan as head of Lakam. Eitan, too, held two positions. Since 1978 he had been the prime minister's adviser on the war against terrorism and was answerable to Begin. As head of Lakam, he was answerable to the defense minister. Eitan was forced to resign in the wake of the eruption in November 1985 of the Jonathan Pollard affair (an intelligence officer in the U.S. Navy, Pollard was run as a spy by Lakam for a year and a half).
Eitan's dual role gave Chaim Carmon more room for maneuver, and his position as chief security officer of the Defense Ministry, combined with his seniority, made Carmon one of the strongest, most influential and most feared officials in the defense establishment. His status was further enhanced by the relations of trust he cultivated with the head of the Shin Bet at the time, Avraham Shalom. The two knew each other from the period in which Carmon worked for the Shin Bet's protection unit, whose staff were occasionally integrated into missions of the operations unit headed by Shalom. The two were on excellent terms and Carmon often took part, by virtue of his position, in meetings of the heads of branches and directors of units in the Shin Bet.
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Netanyahu provisionally supports Gaza plan
By Mazal Mualem, Aluf Benn, Haaretz Correspondents
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's associates Sunday expressed satisfaction with statements by Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, after he offered provisional support for the prime minister's disengagement plan.
Netanyahu was speaking at a meeting of Likud ministers and deputy ministers that Sharon convened.
Sharon's associates claimed that the conditions set by Netanyahu in exchange for his support of the disengagement plan, could be met. By contrast, a number of Likud ministers continue to oppose Sharon's separation plan. These include: Uzi Landau, Limor Livnat, Yisrael Katz, Tzachi Hanegbi, Limor Livnat, Dan Naveh, Natan Sharansky and Meir Sheetrit.
"Now that the train has already left the station there is no choice but to support the prime minister and present him with demands and conditions" for the withdrawal, Netanyahu told his Likud colleagues. "The public doesn't want to feel it has been suckered. It wants something in exchange for concessions.
Netanyahu conditioned his support for the separation plan on a U.S. announcement rejecting a right of return to Israel for Palestinian refugees. He said his support for Sharon's plan depended on the completion of the separation fence around West Bank settlement blocs. Netanyahu also demanded that security arrangements be formulated for the day after Israel leaves the Gaza Strip.
Netanyahu's statements did not surprise the prime minister. In fact, senior Likud politicians claimed Sunday that the conditions set forth by Netanyahu had been coordinated in advance with Sharon's office.
Likud Minister without portfolio Uzi Landau told reporters Sunday that Netanyahu's provisional support for Sharon's plan disappointed him. "I wanted to see him [Netanyahu] leading a movement" in opposition to the plan, Landau said. By Landau's count, Sharon's plan lacks support of a majority of cabinet members at this stage.
Agriculture and Rural Development Minister Yisrael Katz said after the meeting: "I have to say that this [Netanyahu's] approach is unacceptable in my view you can't say that the only thing left to do is to limit the damage."
Opening Sunday's Likud meeting, Sharon outlined the withdrawal alternative which he believes is Israel's best option - a pull-out from the entire Gaza Strip, apart from the Philadelphi road on the Egyptian border near Rafah, and a limited dismantling of some West Bank settlements.
Expounding on his conditions at Sunday's Likud meeting, Netanyahu said all border crossings - air, sea, and land - should remain under Israeli control until a final status is worked out with the Palestinians. He insisted the separation fence must wrap around the settlement town of Ariel, Route 443, Ma'aleh Adumim, Gush Etzion and other settlement blocs. Until the fence protects these areas, Netanyahu said, "Israel should not withdraw from one centimeter of the Gaza Strip."
When Netanyahu spoke about "not rewarding terror," Industry and Trade Minister Ehud Olmert interrupted. "You always bring up that nonsense," Olmert declared, challenging Netanyahu. "I want to remind you that after the Western Wall Tunnel events [in 1996] you traveled to Washington, embraced Arafat, and said you had found a friend."
Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom will meet on Monday in Washington with top U.S. officials and hear their response to the separation plan.
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Analysis / Netanyahu's `yes, but' approach
By Yossi Verter
Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's "yes and no" speech yesterday at the Likud Party meeting came as no surprise to cabinet ministers who oppose Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's separation plan. During the 13 months of the government's operation, Netanyahu has studiously refrained from taking any move that could be interpreted as a challenge to Sharon's policy directives.
In fact a kind of unholy alliance has taken hold between the two men - Sharon has provided absolute support for Netanyahu's economic policies, and the finance minister has displayed silent loyalty to Sharon on the diplomatic-political track. And this alliance has become perhaps the sturdiest pillar of stability for the Sharon government.
It will take more than a Gaza pullout to force Netanyahu to risk a full frontal clash with Sharon. After all, the Gaza pullout is backed by a strong public majority, and also by a majority of Likud members.
Should Sharon return from his trip to the U.S. with Bush administration consent to conditions imposed on the Gaza pullout, Netanyahu will publicize this linkage as a personal triumph. He will claim it was only his tough talk with the Americans that saved Israel from an unconditional flight from Gaza.
On the other hand, should Sharon come back from the U.S. empty-handed, it will be seen as Sharon's failure alone.
So, as things are now stacked up, Netanyahu reaps a double profit. One the one hand, he gets credit for being loyal to Sharon. On the other hand, Sharon's status is likely to take a beating in various public sectors, and somebody stands to gain from it.
It can be assumed that deep in his heart Netanyahu will not mourn should Sharon ram through the government approval for a Gaza withdrawal, or even a withdrawal from Gaza and some West Bank areas. During his term as finance minister, Netanyahu has learned a thing or two about the connection between the peace process and economic prosperity.
Yesterday, none of Netanyahu's Likud colleagues had a single good thing to say about him. Opponents of the separation plan who expected Netanyahu to voice categorical criticism of the Gaza withdrawal policy were deeply disappointed by the finance minister: none of them yesterday embraced the conditions which Netanyahu claimed must be fulfilled before the plan is to be supported. Proponents of the separation plan, particularly Ehud Olmert, didn't waste the opportunity to mock Netanyahu. That's what happens to those who tiptoe through the rain - they get wet.
Netanyahu believes his plan to supplement Sharon's policy will win supporters. He believes that only his program can stop Likud from splitting at the seams.
Eyes in Likud will now turn to Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom, who would seem to have nowhere to position himself. Olmert has come out firmly for the withdrawal plan. Netanyahu has found his supplementary formula. What is left for Shalom to do? Oppose the plan? He can't plausibly oppose the separation plan because it is Sharon's major diplomatic initiative, and he is foreign minister.
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Tennenbaum's lawyer says latest remand will be the last
By Yossi Melman
The Petah Tikva Magistrate's Court yesterday extended Elhanan Tennenbaum's yesterday for seven days, until next Sunday. Tennenbaum's attorney, Roi Blecher, said this was the last time he would agree to keeping Tennenbaum in custody. Tennenbaum's lawyers said the same thing when his remand was extended last week.
Tennenbaum, a businessman and Israel Defense Forces reserve colonel who was released by Hezbollah in January in a prisoner exchange deal with Israel, is being held in the Neurim police facility in Netanya. From there, he is brought for daily questioning to the police's international investigations unit in Petah Tikva, where police are trying to determine the circumstances of his capture.
Police representative Yaron Aram said at yesterday's remand hearing that Tennenbaum's request to be questioned under hypnosis is being considered, so that his memory will be refreshed regarding details he says he does not remember. Aram said police were discussing the issue with the Health Ministry. The final decision rests with the head of the international investigations unit. Earlier, police sources said they doubted the request, which they called a public relations move, would be honored.
Police investigators said Tennenbaum isn't telling them the entire truth regarding affairs to which he is linked, including accusations of fraud from 1994.
Police say they have proof that could confirm suspicions that Tennenbaum is hiding from them information on his criminal activity. Police don't believe that Tennenbaum was not involved in drug dealing before his trip to Dubai, during which he said he planned to seek advice on how to smuggle drugs to Israeli ports.
According to an agreement Tennenbaum signed, the attorney general can try him if he is found to have lied about any crimes, whether or not they are related to security issues.
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Researchers say Tiberias basilica may have housed Sanhedrin
By Eli Ashkenazi
Antiquities Authority excavations in Tiberias may have uncovered the site of a structure used by the Sanhedrin, researchers believe. The excavations began in March in the central part of the city and in recent days have moved eastward toward route 90. The main finding in the new excavation area is a basilica structure.
Excavation director Prof. Yizhar Hirschfeld from Hebrew University of Jerusalem says the basilica, which was built during the third century C.E., could have been used by the Sanhedrin, which at the time was called Beit Hava'ad. Identical structures, such as one at Beit Sha'arim, were also used for judicial purposes. In Tiberias the site could have also be used for writing the Jerusalem Talmud, researchers believe.
Supporting theory
Prof. Aharon Oppenheimer, a historian from Tel Aviv University whose field of expertise is the Talmud-Mishna period, recently visited the Tiberias excavation and supports the theory that the basilica was the home of the Sanhedrin.
Archaeologists have in recent days also discovered a mosaic at the entry to the large bath house of Tiberias. Green and yellow hues in the work come from glass mosaic tiles; vines bearing fruit are drawn on the mosaic. Another mosaic discovered in the bath house during the 1950s was not preserved - it had pictures of animals (lions and elephants).
The archaeological team has also started to document dozens of stone doors, which were lined up along roads in the city. One theory holds that they were doors of family burial caves (doors were used for similar purposes at Beit Sha'arim).
Prof. Hirschfeld believes the caves were destroyed in a major earthquake in 363 C.E., and the stones remained as decorated pillars.
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Saudi reformers recoup after blow
Saudi authorities released five of a dozen detained activists, after they agreed to cease political activities.
By Faiza Saleh Ambah | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
JIDDAH, SAUDI ARABIA - Activists in Saudi Arabia are trying to continue on the path of political reform despite last week's detention of their top leaders, criticism from the government, and being labeled "a true enemy" by the country's highest religious authority.
Since the detentions, many Saudis who previously spoke freely have been reluctant to go on the record, fearing they, too, could be targeted by the authorities. But they have continued to meet in small groups and have gathered signatures for a petition in support of the detainees.
Of the dozen activists detained, at least five have been released after they signed a statement promising to not sign petitions calling for reform or talk to the media. Online newspaper Elaph said the remaining leaders were refusing to cooperate without legal representation, and that they would not be released until they signed a similar statement.
Some reformists see the detentions as a necessary crossroads for the reform movement and the Saudi leadership. "Now we must organize, organize, organize. Nothing comes without sacrifice. Rights are not handed out; they are taken," activist Sami Angawi says.
"The government has been in charge for 70 years and has done a good job. Now it's time for the people to participate. Everyone wants [the royal family] Al Saud to remain in power - they keep the country stable. But what we need now is not democracy but freedom - freedom to gather, to express ourselves, to discuss issues, and then advise the government," says Mr. Angawi, a member of the Council for the National Dialogue, a forum initiated by the government to encourage different sectors of society to communicate.
Several senior princes recently asked the detainees to slow down the speed and adjust the scope of their demands - and to present a unified front at a time when the country is wrestling with terrorism, activists say.
Saudi authorities have been waging a fierce battle against extremists linked to Al Qaeda since last May's suicide bombing at a housing compound in Riyadh. Despite dozens of arrests, shootouts, and discoveries of huge caches of weapons, the extremists hit again in November. More than 20 suspected Al Qaeda members are still on the run in Saudi Arabia. Just last week two suspected Al Qaeda members strapped with explosive-laden belts - on their way to carry out a suicide mission - were shot dead in downtown Riyadh by security forces.
At a Friday press conference with US Secretary of State Colin Powell in the capital, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal accused the detainees of seeking "dissension when the whole country was looking for unity and a clear vision, especially at a time when it is facing a terrorist threat."
Mr. Powell said he expressed concern over the detentions to the Saudi authorities during his stopover in Riyadh.
Writer Najeeb al-Khineizi, one of the released detainees, says the detention of the reformist leaders creates a void that could hurt the country.
"Silencing these moderate voices is not to the benefit of the authorities. Without this avenue, people will find different ways to express themselves, because change is inevitable," says Mr. Khineizi, who was banned from writing in Saudi newspapers a year ago. "We are not looking for radical solutions, but step-by-step movement. Stagnation is deadly to reform."
Khineizi says he was picked up by Saudi security at a coffe shop last Tuesday, and was released Thursday after he signed a statement under duress.
The government-controlled Saudi press, which has been freer and more critical over the past two years during the reform initiative, remained silent about the arrests, publishing only official statements.
Sunday's al-Hayat newspaper published an interview with grand mufti Abdul-Aziz al-Sheik condemning the detainees. "Those who cast doubt on the nation's leadership ... are the true enemies even if they call for reform," the paper quoted Mr. Sheik as saying.
On Saturday, Saudi Arabia's National Human Rights Association, set up earlier this month by the government, issued a statement saying it was looking into the matter of the detainees. The head of the association, Abdullah al-Obeid, told the Okaz daily that Saudi authorities "are entitled by law to arrest anyone for questioning."
Lawyer Abdul-Aziz al-Qassim, who helped write several of the petitions, says the arrests should have been expected and would not hurt the reform movement. "A lot of change was going on in a short period of time," he says. "People were sending petitions and talking out in the open and meeting in public, and this was not common before."
Qassim says he expects the reformers to continue to work toward change. Yet, now that they know where the red lines are, they would operate "at a slower pace and in a more quiet manner."
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Saudis round up reformers
Petitioners arrested this week after stating intention to form a human rights group.
By Faiza Saleh Ambah | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
JEDDAH, SAUDI ARABIA - Saudi authorities continued with a third day of detentions Wednesday with the arrest of lawyer Abdul-Rahman al-Lahem, as defiant activists called for the release of all those arrested.
The sudden and sweeping detention of democratic activists comes at a time when Saudi Arabia has taken steps towards political reforms, allowing a freer and more critical press, announcing the first municipal elections in October, and setting up a human rights organization earlier this month.
"It's an extraordinary step backward in respect to the several moves forward they've taken," says a senior US government official.
"This is a surprise. These men [who were detained] had met with Crown Prince Abdullah and [Interior Minister] Prince Nayef and had open and pleasant discussions about reforms," says writer and activist Turki al-Hamad.
After the Sept. 11 attacks, Saudi Arabia has come under pressure from the United States to implement democratic reforms, which Washington sees as a deterrent to extremism and intolerance. The first widespread detentions since political freedoms became a pressing topic in Saudi Arabia following the Sept. 11 attacks are a blow to the country's reform movement, analysts say.
The arrests are an attempt by the government to put a brake on the country's burgeoning reform movement and to show that they control it, says Saudi writer Tawfiq al-Saif.
"This is a message from the authorities that says, 'no one can impose demands on us.' We decide ourselves on the pace and scope of the reforms, and no one else should interfere," says Mr. Saif.
The trigger for the arrests, he says, was a letter sent several weeks ago to the Saudi crown prince informing him of the group's intention to set up an independent human rights organization.
The group had defied a ban on public gatherings and decided at a meeting of more than 30 Saudis at a Riyadh hotel last month that it was time to stop talking, says Saif, who was in close touch with them. "We had written many petitions and it was decided that we should move into the next phase of taking action," he says.
The sweep of arrests started Monday night in the port city of Jiddah, followed by arrests Tuesday in the capital, Riyadh, and the Eastern Province. Those arrested include several university professors, a lawyer, a poet, and a number of writers who were picked up from either their homes or their workplaces, according to family members.
A statement by the Interior Ministry late Monday confirmed the arrests but did not give details. The men were "detained for questioning regarding petitions they issued which do not serve the country's unity and the cohesion of society based on Islamic law," the statement said.
Reformists in Saudi Arabia have been increasingly active over the past year, sending five petitions to the government demanding wide-ranging political and economic reforms. In a petition signed in December, 116 people sought the transformation of Saudi Arabia into a constitutional monarchy. Last month more than 800 people, including more than 100 women, asked for an elected parliament and a greater role for women.
Political parties and political gatherings are not allowed in Saudi Arabia, and women are not allowed to work alongside men, travel without permission of a male guardian, drive a car, or appear in public unveiled.
Activists also want more transparency and accountability from the royal family, whose members control the country's purse strings and hold major government posts.
The efforts in Saudi Arabia take place against the backdrop of the recently launched US "Greater Middle East Initiative." Washington is calling for major economic and political reforms. But it has met with resistance from Arab leaders in the region. Thursday, US Secretary of State Colin Powell is scheduled to visit Kuwait, and told Reuters that he's looking forward to "a dialogue over...the issues of reform in Kuwait, the Arab world and the Middle East." Kuwait's Prime Minister Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah said on Tuesday that he backed political reforms in the Middle East but any changes should be homegrown and not dictated from outside.
Mr. Tayeb, Mr. Faleh, and Hamid, who have been spearheading the movement calling for faster and greater reforms, have all been previously detained for their political activism - but this was the first time the government has moved against them in recent years.
Mr. Lahem was called in for questioning after he appeared on Al Jazeera satellite television and criticized as illegal the arrest of some of the country's top political activists, he told the Monitor by cellphone on his way to the Saudi security offices.
There were reports of the release of four activists Wednesday, but the reformist leaders, lawyer and publisher Mohammad Saeed Tayeb and academics Matrouk al-Faleh and Abdullah al-Hamed were still behind bars at press time. The exact number of detainees could not be verified, but reformists say that a total of 11 people have been arrested.
Meanwhile activists were gathering signatures for a petition to the country's newly formed, government-appointed human rights group asking for their intervention. They also requested a meeting with the country's defacto ruler, Crown Prince Abdullah, and Prince Nayef, to ask for the release of the detainees, says Saudi writer Abdullah al-Sharif, who is involved with the petition and the request for the royal audience.
"If the human rights group is serious, they have to prove themselves now," says Mr. Sharif.
An officer at the Interior Ministry called Tayeb Monday night and told him he was wanted for questioning before sending a car several minutes later, his wife Faiga Badr says. Tayeb "called me at two in the morning and told me to be strong and he asked me to pack a small bag for him with his medicine and clothes," Mrs. Badr says. "Tuesday he called and asked me to send him lunch. I haven't heard from him since," she says.
* Staff writer Faye Bowers contributed to this report from Washington.
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