Israeli intelligence agent and spymaster, who directed the espionage activities of American spy Jonathan Jay Pollard.
Born in Palestine of Russian parents who had emigrated there in 1922, as a young boy Eitan saw a spy movie with his mother, after which he told her, "I want to be a spy like Mata Hari." Eitan joined the Haganah (Jewish defense force) at age 12 and went on to enter the Palmach, its elite commando component. During and after World War II, before the state of Israel was established in 1948, he carried out clandestine operations to help refugees enter Palestine illegally after the British mandate authorities imposed an almost total ban on Jewish immigration to appease the Arab community. This work included blowing up a British radar station on Mount Carmel. He earned his nickname "Rafi the Smelly" because he had to wade through sewers to reach the radar site.
He was wounded on May 15, 1948, Israel's first full day of statehood. He then served with Army intelligence during the War of Independence (1948-1949). When the war was over Eitan went into cattle farming, but after six months he entered the intelligence service (later named Mossad) and subsequently the domestic security service (Shin Bet), becoming chief of operations for the latter in the late 1950s. Among his successes, Eitan discovered in 1958 that Lt. Col. Israel Beer, aide to Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, was a Soviet spy.
In May 1960, Eitan performed his most daring exploit, as a member of the Mossad-Shin Bet team that captured Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Argentina and brought him to Israel to stand trial. This feat made Eitan a national hero. Eichmann was tried, found guilty, and hanged.)
Eitan transferred to the Mossad in 1963, such shifts being normal in the Israeli intelligence services. While with the Mossad he participated in the hunt for German rocket scientists and engineers who were working on Egyptian weapon projects. At the same time, Eitan claims that he established the first Israeli connections with Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser. Eitan was also said to be the head of the Israeli vengeance squad that tracked down and killed the Palestine Liberation Organization's Black September terrorists who murdered 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.
In 1972 Eitan left the Mossad because he was passed over for the position of director. He undertook several business ventures, including raising tropical fish, but was unsuccessful and reentered the government in 1978 when Prime Minister Menahem Begin appointed him his adviser on terrorism. In that position he organized and directed several anti-terrorist operations. In addition, in 1981 he was named head of the Defense Ministry's Lakam—Lishka LeKishrei Mada (Liaison Bureau for Scientific Affairs). Lakam was the cover for a clandestine, technical intelligence agency that was independent of the Army's AMAN and other Israeli intelligence agencies. Thus, Eitan simultaneously held two intelligence positions, reporting independently to the Prime Minister on terrorist issues and to the Minister of Defense for Lakam's expanding activities.
In 1984, when Jonathan Pollard, working at the Anti-Terrorism Alert Center of the U.S. Naval Investigative Service, offered to sell secrets to the Israeli government, he was put in contact with Lakam. Eitan met with Jonathan Pollard and his fiancé, Anne Henderson, in Paris in Nov. 1984. The Israelis wined and dined their new agent (and bought a $10,000 ring for Anne). In 1985 the American spies again met with Eitan in Israel. Part of Eitan's interest in Pollard may have been the opportunity to demonstrate the superiority of his Lakam over the Mossad.
After the Pollard espionage story broke when the American spy and his wife were arrested on Nov. 21, 1985, the U.S. Department of Justice claimed that Eitan had masterminded the Pollard affair. As a result of the Pollard debacle, Lakam was disbanded in 1986 and Eitan was appointed head of Israel's state-owned chemical company.
Despite the Pollard affair, Eitan is widely regarded as an intelligence hero in Israel, even by many of his critics.
