Abraham Marcus (Marek) Klingberg (born in Warsaw, Poland in 1918 into a Hasidic, rabbinical family) is the highest ranking Soviet spy ever caught in Israel. The case of Klingberg is regarded one of the most destructive spy scandals in 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 attack on the USSR (June 22, 1941) he volunteered for the Red Army, and served as a medical officer until he was wounded. He was then assigned to Perm in the Urals, where he began his epidemiological work. In 1943, he attended the postgraduate course in epidemiology in Moscow at the Central Institute for Advanced Medical Training and finished it with distinction. Toward the end of December 1943, the first parts of Byelorussia were liberated and Klingberg became Chief Epidemiologist of the Byelorussian Republic. At the end of the war, immediately after the liberation of Poland, Klingberg returned to his homeland. There he found out that his parents and his only brother were exterminated on 19 August 1942 in the Treblinka death camp. In Warsaw he served as Acting Chief Epidemiologist at the Polish Ministry of Health.
In 1948 he immigrated to Israel. He served in the Medical Corps of the Israel Defense Forces, and in March 1950 he advanced to the rank of Lt.Colonel. He served as Head of the Department of Preventive Medicine and afterwards he founded and chaired the Central Research Laboratories for Military Medicine. In 1957 he joined 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 Professor of Epidemiology and Head of the Department of Preventive and Social Medicine in the Sackler Faculty of Medicine of Tel-Aviv University from 1978 to 1983. He was President of the European Teratology Society (1980–1982); and a co-founder and Chairman (1979–1981) of the International Clearinghouse for Birth Defects Monitoring Systems (ICBDMS). He also served as President of the International Steering Committee for the Seveso Accident (Italy) from 1976 to 1984. In 1981 he co-founded the International Federation of Teratology Societies and in 1982 at the congress of the International Epidemiological Association that was held in Edinburgh, Scotland, he was elected to its Council.
Klingberg came in contact with the Soviet intelligence for the first time at the end of 1950, and after that he started his espionage activity. Israel's foreign and domestic intelligence agencies, Mossad and Shin Bet, began to suspect Klingberg of espionage in the 1960s, but shadowing brought no results. At one point, the scientist also successfully passed a lie detector test.
In January 1983 Shin Bet officers informed Klingberg they wanted to send him to Singapore where a chemical plant allegedly blew up. After leaving home with his suitcase, he was taken not to the airport but to an apartment in some undisclosed location where he was interrogated harshly. After ten days, Klingberg confessed. He claimed that he had provided information to the Soviet Union only for ideological reasons. He was tried in camera and sentenced to 20-year prison term. For the first 10 years of his 20-year sentence he was held in solitary confinement, in a high security prison, under a false name and fabricated profession. Shortly after the trial, Klingberg found out that a Soviet agent who had gone over to the other side and had turned double-agent had given him away to the Shin Bet and had brought about his arrest.
In 1988/89, Israeli attorney Amnon Zichroni, representing the State of Israel, worked out a deal in which the Soviet Union would exchange Klingberg for Ron Arad, an Israeli fighter pilot believed to be captured in Lebanon. The deal fell through.
In 1997, Amnesty International appealed to the Israeli government to release Klingberg on medical grounds. Because of his failing health (he suffered from several strokes), he was released to house arrest in October 1998. A camera was installed in his apartment, which was hooked up to the offices of MALMAB (Ministry of Defense Security Authority) at the Kirya, Tel Aviv. His telephones was wiretapped, with his knowledge. Special guards who were working for the MALMAB were assigned to him, and Klingberg had to pay their salaries. Klingberg also signed a commitment not to speak about his work.
On 18 January 2003 he was released. He immediately left for Paris to live near his daughter Sylvia Klingberg and his grandson Ian Brossat.
Klingberg published his memoirs, Hameragel Ha'akharon ("The Last Spy"), written together with his lawyer, Michael Sfard in 2007. At the time of Klingberg’s arrest he served as Series Editor: Contributions to Epidemiology and Biostatistics. S. KARGER – Basel-Paris-London-New York, and as Co-Chief Editor: Public Health Reviews (an International Quarterly. International Scientific Publications, Tel Aviv, Israel.)
Klingberg spent his sabbaticals at the Henry Phipps Institute, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA (1962 to 1964); at the National Institute for Public Health, Oslo, Norway (1972); at the Department of Medical Statistics and Epidemiology, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK (1973); at the Department of Social and Community Medicine, University of Oxford and became a Visiting Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford (1978).
In the 1950s Klingberg was awarded the “Order of the Red Banner of Labour” in recognition of his service to the USSR.