Reuven Yerdor

Reuven Yerdor, also known as Rudi, was an accomplished linguist and a senior officer in Israel's Detachment 515 (later redesignated Detachment 8200), which is in charge of signals intelligence and code-breaking. He had cracked a Soviet code, for which he later received Israel's highest defense medal. By early 1982, Yerdor had been promoted to brigadier general and was in charge of Unit 8200, the Israeli communications intelligence service.¹

Yerdor worked closely with his counterparts in the American NSA, traveling to Washington, D.C. every three months for liaison meetings. His official title was deputy chief of staff for military intelligence in the Israel. Over the 1981–82 New Year's holiday, Yerdor was summoned by Yehoshua Saguy, the head of Aman (military intelligence), and given two packets of documents to evaluate: one with highly technical American intelligence describing a Soviet military system in the hands of the Arabs, and the other with daily and weekly summaries of worldwide NSA intercepts.¹

In February 1982, Israel learned that the Soviets had decided to upgrade the Syrian air defense command with SA-5 missiles. Yerdor was told that there was very little intelligence available on the system, but two days later, he received full U.S. intelligence on the SA-5, which made it clear it was not as good as feared. In mid-May 1982, three weeks before the invasion of Lebanon, Yerdor's office received an astonishing assortment of invaluable American technical data about the air defense systems in Syria, including detailed information on side-looking radar, electronic maps, and precise frequency of operations for Syria's SA-6, SA-8, and advanced SA-3 surface-to-air missile systems.¹

Yerdor had little respect for Rafael Eitan and worried about the long-range implications of Israeli intelligence activities in the United States, its best ally. He was convinced Eitan was driven by personal ambition and a need to settle old scores with Yitzhak Hofi, the head of Mossad, and Avraham Shalom, Shin Beth's director. He also believed that Eitan had recruited two or more Americans, and was dismayed by the fact that Jonathan Pollard's material, marked JUMBO, was not supposed to be discussed with American counterparts.¹

Ari Ben-Menashe was aware of Yerdor's distress about the spying, noting that Yerdor was "bitching about the fact that Eitan was compromising Israel's relations with the United States."¹