Punishment Worse Than the Crime
TEL AVIV — On Wednesday, Mordechai Vanunu, Israel's most famous prisoner, is due to be released from prison. But he will not be a free man. For some Israeli security officials, his 18 years behind bars isn't sufficient punishment. As a result, Vanunu, who was convicted of treason and espionage, will not be allowed to leave the country to unite with an American couple, Nick and Mary Eoloff of Minnesota, who adopted him as their son six years ago. He will be kept under surveillance for six months.
What Vanunu, a junior nuclear technician, did was unheard of in Israel. In 1986, the loyal Israeli citizen talked to the Sunday Times of London about the one and only subject no one dared to publicize then as now -- Israel's nuclear weapons. Before Vanunu's disclosure, the world's governments and intelligence agencies had confidently assumed that Israel did have the bomb. But his stunning insider account provided the fine details of how, when and where Israel had produced its nuclear weapons, including information about materials, processes and quantities. Based on Vanunu's revelations, the British newspaper and outside experts concluded that Israel had enough plutonium to manufacture as many as 200 warheads, including neutron and thermonuclear bombs.
No less important, Vanunu exposed the weakness of Israeli security agencies, the guardians of the country's nuclear secrets. He managed to smuggle his camera inside the secret nuclear facility outside the town of Dimona, where he worked. During long and boring night shifts in the center's control room, he shot two rolls of film, 65 exposures in all. After he was fired in the summer of 1985, Vanunu, 31, left Israel with the film in his pocket.
When Vanunu's story appeared in the British newspaper, Shimon Peres, then Israel's prime minister, ordered the Mossad, Israel's espionage agency, to track Vanunu down and bring him back to Israel. There were people in the Mossad who urged that the "nuclear traitor," as they dubbed him, be assassinated. But Peres and his Cabinet instructed the spymasters to bring Vanunu back to Israel so he could face trial. A young, female Mossad operative from Orlando, Fla., code-named "Cindy" (her real name is Cheryl Hanin-Bentov), found Vanunu in London and lured him to an apartment in Rome with the promise of sexual favors. When Vanunu arrived, her male colleagues abducted him.
