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Lekem, short for Lishkat Kishrei Mada (Bureau of Scientific Relations), was an Israeli intelligence agency. It collected scientific and technical intelligence abroad from both open and covert sources. It was disbanded in 1986 following the arrest of Jonathan Pollard for espionage on behalf of Israel. Pollard was a United States Navy intelligence employee in the Naval Anti-Terrorist Alert Center in Washington, D.C. He was paid for delivering large amounts of classified documents to Lekem agents at the Israeli embassy. Pollard was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment.
The Israeli government asserted that the operation was an unauthorized deviation from its policy of not conducting espionage against the United States before an admission in 1998 of Israeli responsibility. In 1987 the Israeli government set up a commission to investigate the affair, which found it would be in Israel's interest to take responsibility for the case.
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