Marcus Klingberg

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Abraham Marcus Klingberg was born in 1918 and is the highest ranking Soviet spy ever caught in Israel. Together with Mordechai Vanunu, the case of Klingberg is regarded as the most destructive spy scandal of the history of the State of Israel.

At the beginning of World War II, fearing the Nazis, Klingberg escaped from Poland to the USSR. There, he finished his medical studies . On the first day of the German invasion to USSR (22.6.1941) he volunteered for the Red Army where he served as a medical officer.

In 1948 he immigrated to Israel. He served in the Medical Corps of the I.D.F., and in 1950 he advanced to the rank of Lt.Colonel. In 1957 he joined one of Israel's most sensitive institutions: the top-secret Israel Institute for Biological Research (IIBR) in Ness Ziona (south of Tel Aviv), where he served as Deputy Scientific Director (until 1972). He also served as Head of the Department of Epidemiology until 1978. Klingberg was also Professor of Epidemiology and Head of the Department of Preventive and Social Medicine in the Medical Faculty of Tel-Aviv University from 1978 to 1983. He, among other activities, served as President of the European Teratology Society (1980-1982) and as the President of the International Steering Committee for the Seveso Disaster (Italy) from 1976 to 1984.

Klingberg contacted the USSR for the first time in 1957, and soon after that he started his espionage activity. Israel's foreign and domestic intelligence agencies, Mossad and Shin Bet, started suspecting Klingberg of espionage, but shadowing brought no results. At one point, the scientist also successfully passed the lie detector test.

In January 1983 Shin Bet officers informed Klingberg they wanted to send him to Singapore where a chemical plant blew up. In several days, the man left home with a suitcase, but he was delivered not to an airport but to some apartment for interrogations. Within ten days, Shin Bet investigators browbeat Klingberg and finally wrung a confession from him, in which he told about his relations with the USSR in detail. In his words, he was not paid for the information he provided, he served the Soviet union for ideological reasones. He was charged with passing secrets to the Soviet Union. He was given a sentence of 20 years in prison. Information about his arrest and conviction was kept secret for a decade.

In 1989, Israeli attorney Amnon Zichroni representing the Israeli Authorities, received permission to negotiate an agreement in which East Germany and the Soviet Union would exchange Klingberg for Ron Arad, an Israeli fighter pilot believed to be captured in Lebanon. The deal fell through, and there are different opinions about the reasons for that failure.

During the Jonathan Pollard investigation, a Soviet defector in US hands revealed that in addition to the two Soviet spies serving prison terms in Israel (Kalmanovitch and Klingberg), there was a third who had not been caught. He was well placed in the Defense Ministry, and still "active."

In 1997, Amnesty International wrote a "Medical letter writing action" asking the Israeli government to either release or transfer Klingberg to a less stressful environment. Because of his failing health (he suffered from several CVA's), he was released to house arrest in 1998. A camera was installed in his apartment, which was hooked up to the MALMAB offices in Kirya, Tel Aviv. His telephones were wiretapped, with his knowledge. Special guards who were working for the MALMAB were atached to him,and Klingberg had to pay by himself their salaries. Klingberg also signed a commitment not to speak about his work.

After his release in 2003 he left for Paris, where his daughter Sylvia and grandson Ian live.