re: #293 thedopefishlives

My suspicion is that this guy was operating as somewhat of a lone wolf. “Oh, hey, I want to make myself look important, why don’t I just nab some information that my former employers might want and sneak it over to them.” That doesn’t make him an Israeli spy, it makes him an idiot who tried to sell secrets to the Israelis. Now if it turns out Israel actually paid him to conduct espionage, that’s a different matter altogether; but considering the reasonably good working relationship our countries have, I doubt they’d torpedo that for some high-level military secrets they probably already have anyway.

Knew a fellow who was an ASW guy (a scope dope, as they were called). Told me a story about a fellow in his unit who walked off with a set of manuals and such for some new Buck Rogers magnetometer system for tracking Soviet subs - still in development, so he was testing the thing.

Anywho, traitor squid shows up at Soviet consulate in San Fran and never gets past the gate. Guard at the gate picked up the phone and called the FBI as soon as this guy said why he was there. “I’ve got something that you might be interested in” was enough for cagey old Ivan there.

Evidently, that sorta thing happened with some frequency - a jackass would just show up at a Soviet consul’s office with some nugget or other of intel, never get past the gate, and then get to tell his story to J. Edgar’s boys. Evidently the Soviets never trusted anybody who showed up like that - always assumed it was a trick, that the intel was old or bad, and, frankly, not worth the kinda heat it would be likely to bring down on them.