LAKAM

LAKAM (Hebrew acronym for Science Liaison Bureau) was an Israeli Ministry of Defense intelligence agency, previously known as the Office of Special Tasks. It was set up to gather and exchange technology and intelligence with foreign military industries. Under its founding director Binyamin Blumberg, LAKAM agents operated worldwide, collecting technical information and setting up front companies in Europe and Latin America to purchase high-tech equipment from the United States that U.S. export controls would otherwise deny to Israel.¹²

Leadership and Operations

In the early 1980s, LAKAM was widely known by its Hebrew acronym. Rafael Eitan, a crony of Ariel Sharon, was appointed its new head, succeeding Binyamin Blumberg. LAKAM operations in the United States produced a steady stream of routinely transferred scientific and technical documents, including KH-11 imagery and reporting and assessments from U.S. embassies and intelligence operatives inside Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt. Some of this material was marked JUMBO, indicating it was not to be discussed with American counterparts.²

U.S. Spy Network Operations

Rafi's operation to build a spy network in the United States to obtain information about Palestinian terrorists was funded from LAKAM's budget. Iris, a LAKAM representative in Washington, D.C., served as a conduit for intelligence reports between Robert McFarlane, Jonathan Pollard, and Rafi.¹

Political Control and Funding

LAKAM was later controlled by Rafi after Shimon Peres became prime minister in 1984, and its huge slush fund, which had once financed Labor projects, was then controlled by Eitan.¹

PROMIS Software Operation

According to Gordon Thomas's account in Gideon's Spies (1999), drawing on Israeli intelligence sources, LAKAM's director Rafael Eitan personally arranged to obtain a copy of the PROMIS software from the U.S. Department of Justice through back-channel contacts in the early 1980s. Eitan reportedly met with INSLAW founder Bill Hamilton while posing as a representative of the Israeli Ministry of Justice interested in PROMIS as a case management tool. After obtaining the software, Eitan assembled a team of former LAKAM programmers who reconstructed PROMIS and embedded a surveillance trapdoor - described as a $5,000 microchip - that allowed covert remote monitoring of database queries made by any user of the modified software. Eitan's reported statement on receiving PROMIS was: "We can use that program...it could be the most important intelligence tool that Israel has ever had."³

The modified software was then distributed internationally for use by foreign law enforcement and intelligence agencies, channeled through Robert Maxwell and his Israeli computer company Degem. Total sales through this network, according to the allegations reviewed by Special Counsel Nicholas Bua, exceeded $500 million. The Bua Report (1993) found no credible evidence to support any of these allegations, concluding that only public-domain versions of PROMIS had ever been distributed to foreign entities.⁴

LAKAM was formally dissolved following the 1985 exposure of the Jonathan Pollard espionage case, after which its functions were redistributed to other Israeli intelligence services. Eitan, who had also run Pollard as an asset, left Israeli government service.²