Thread by @AliAdair22

🧵5.1 THREAD—Why Did Jeffrey Epstein Get Such a Lenient Sentence?

*⃣ Part 5—Robert Maxwell vs. Mordechai Vanunu

A few years before the 1991 Soviet coup d'état attempt, Robert Maxwell was involved in another international incident.

🌍5.2 This international incident involved globally recognized peace activist and whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu.

🇮🇱Israel considers him a traitor.

5.3 The story of how Vanunu, a former nuclear technician, was able to facilitate the publication of clandestine photographs that he took at the Israeli Negev Nuclear Research Center in the Negev Desert south of Dimona is both elaborate and compelling.

🖼️Photo: Mordechai Vanunu

5.4 In the book “Robert Maxwell, Israel’s Superspy” by Gordon Thomas & Martin Dillon, they present 3 important definitions specific to Israel’s intelligence agency called Mossad.

5.5 These three definitions are central to Robert Maxwell’s story: "kidon," "sayan" and "katsa."

The terms are also important to define Maxwell's role in the organization.

#EpsteinScandal

5.6 "Kidon" is defined as an elite group of Israel’s intelligence agency Mossad whose prime function is “cold and efficient killing.”

5.7 Furthermore, the kidon teams "had witnessed some of Israel’s leading forensic pathologists at work so as better to understand how to make an assassination appear to be an accident.

5.8 The Mossad kidon teams learned how a pinprick or small blemish on a victim’s skin could be a giveaway. For hours they would watch the pathologists at Tel Aviv’s Institute of Forensic Medicine cutting and dissecting.

📕Via "Robert Maxwell, Israel's Superspy"

5.9 Kidon would then question carefully. How had a pathologist decided a corpse had been murdered? What more could have been done to disguise the fact? What was the significance of some small clue a pathologist had discovered that had led him to a final conclusion?”

📕"Superspy"

5.10 Sayanium—or "sayan"—is another term for "helper." The authors claim that there are tens of thousands of these “helpers,” all carefully recruited, those that would help Israel and protect it from its enemies when called upon.

📕Via "Robert Maxwell, Israel's Superspy"

5.11 As an example, a local car rental agency owner would provide vehicles for intelligence officers, ask no questions. Or a doctor would provide medical care with again, no questions.

Sayans could be reimbursed for expenses, but frequently did not claim them.

📕Via "Superspy"

5.12 Sayans frequently work with kidon teams which frequently worked in teams of 12 members, but probably would not know details about the mission that was taking place.

📕Via "Robert Maxwell, Israel's Superspy"

5.13 Lastly, a "katsa" is a field agent and together they form Mossad’s intelligence capability in the field—with some stationed overseas.

5.14 The authors, Gordon Thomas and Martin Dillon, assert that Robert Maxwell was not a mere "katsa" or a "sayan," but "the single most important asset Mossad had ever employed." In other words, a "superspy."

📕Via "Robert Maxwell, Israel's Superspy"

🖼️Photo: Getty Images

5.15 Maxwell was an unequivocal proponent of Israel all his life, despite not being particularly religious. (For more on Maxwell's background, see Part 2.)

https://twitter.com/AliAdair22/status/1154404245967396864?s=20

5.16 Shortly before Maxwell’s death, Pulitzer Prize & multiple Polk award winning writer Seymour Hersh, published a book entitled “The Sampson Option” about Israel’s nuclear weapons program and its effect on Israel-American relations.

5.17 In the book, Seymour Hersh claimed that Maxwell had close ties to the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad and used his power as a newspaper publisher to deliberately publish pro-Israel propaganda.

🖼️ Photo: Institute for Policy Studies

5.18 In addition, Hersh also “outed” Nick Davies, the foreign editor at The Daily Mirror (Maxwell’s employee), alleging Davies had ties with Israeli spies and arms dealers and was involved with the buying and selling of missiles, Kalashnikov rifles and military aircraft to Iran.

5.19 Accordingly, former Mossad case officer and author Victor Ostrovsky reiterates Hersh’s claim, adding details about how Maxwell would buy publications so that Israel could control the flow of information.

5.20 “…Mossad would help Maxwell purchase the newspapers by lending him money and causing labor disputes and other problems, making the target purchases more vulnerable.

📕Via "Other Side of Deception"

🖼️Photo: Les Stone/Sygma via @NYMag

5.21 Later the tactics changed; they would target in advance a paper that he was to purchase and start it on a collision course with bankruptcy using all available strategies, starting with workforce agitation and ending with pullback of funds from the paper through bankers...

5.22...and advertisers sympathetic to the Mossad. Then, once a target was softened, they’d send Maxwell in for the kill.”

📕Via "Other Side of Deception"

5.23 Maxwell and Davies participated in a significant piece of Israeli history when they encountered Mordechai Vanunu, who had quit his job and fled to Australia with photographs of the inside of the nuclear reactor.

5.24 While in Sydney, Vanunu “coincidentally” met and befriended Oscar Guerrero, known locally and in England for peddling false stories. But this time it was different; he was telling the truth.

Vanunu told Guerrero his story.

5.25 Guerrero had recently been dismissed by the Sydney Morning Herald with other preposterous stories he was peddling, so he avoided that paper and contacted The Sunday Times in London.

5.26 The Sunday Times sent reporter Peter Hounam to Sydney to pursue the story and to check out the details. The Sunday Times flew Vanunu back to London to continue investigating the story and to have Vanunu’s photographs verified by their experts.

5.27 According to Peter Hounam’s book, "The Woman from Mossad: The Story of Mordechai Vanunu and the Israeli Nuclear Program," after making a lot of inquiries, the team from The Sunday Times figured out that Oscar Guerrero was a conman and confronted him...

5.28...calling him [Guerrero] a “liar and a cheat.”

Guerrero tried to flee the office clutching his briefcase and “we did at that stage try to prevent him from leaving.”

5.29 When The Sunday Times flew Vanunu to London, Guerrero believed he was losing control of the story and followed them to London after asking for advice from a member of the Australian Security and Intelligence Service (ASIS)...

5.30...who—in turn—informed a Mossad katsa, an Israeli field agent. Information also came out that Vanunu had stopped in Nepal and had visited the Soviet Embassy in Kathmandu.

In any case, Vanunu was under suspicion and placed under surveillance when he arrived in London.

5.31 According to Hounam, “a violent tussle” erupted with reporters trying to pry Guerrero’s briefcase away. His suit was torn, he was very upset and he decided to get revenge and bring the story to The Sunday Times’ rival the Sunday Mirror.

5.32 Meanwhile, The Sunday Times staff was also trying to wrangle Vanunu, who was frequently changing hotels and had met whom he thought was an innocent Jewish American girl, a tourist named “Cindy,” traveling by herself, a tourist who spoke critically of Israel to Vanunu.

5.33 Robert Maxwell owned the Sunday Mirror.

Maxwell assigned the story to a group of reporters, led by the newspaper’s editor Michael Malloy, who checked out Guerrero and decided he was a conman.

5.34 Malloy dictated a story about Guerrero and his antics under his staff’s names which caused “heated debates” with the Sunday Mirror’s reporting team, led by Tony Frost.

5.35 Frost thought the real story was about the photographs and that they should be “splashed” across the front of the newspaper with an accompanying article debating their authenticity. Malloy wanted none of the photographs published.

5.36 However, Maxwell was way ahead of the game and immediately sent the pictures to the Israeli Embassy in London with two of his employees: Frost and Mark Souster.

5.37 Many on the Sunday Mirror staff were afraid of what bringing the photographs to the Embassy would mean for Vanunu’s safety.

5.38 But some on the staff, including John C. Parker, Malloy’s senior deputy, who left the paper in 1988 to publish a best-selling biography of the Duke of Windsor, realized that the orders had come from Maxwell himself.

5.39 John C. Parker: “The Sunday Mirror had the biggest story in the world at that time and it collapsed because of the line they took. It was a classic exercise by the Israelis in disinformation.”

5.40 Frost was later fired because of this incident and a senior news editor, Peter J. Miller asserted that the coverage of the Vanunu story had been influenced by Maxwell, who allegedly told them to obfuscate the authenticity of the Israeli nuclear weapons story.

5.41 “The line we were instructed to take cost the Sunday Mirror a world-beating exclusive.”

Miller was also fired in 1990 by Maxwell.

5.42 Not realizing they had already been notified by Maxwell, Davies immediately called his Israeli contact, Ari Ben-Menashe, who posed as a “hot” journalist.

🖼️Photo: Ben Rushton/Fairfax Media via Getty Images (1992, cropped)

5.43 Guerrero showed Ben-Menashe the photographs and reluctantly handed over several photographs which Ben-Menashe immediately couriered to Tel Aviv. This “propelled a major disinformation effort by Israel” according to Hersh.

5.44 Israel had to verify the pictures as well and then try to bury the story.

5.45 After the photos were on their way to Israel, Davies set up a meeting with his boss, Maxwell, and Ben-Menashe, but Maxwell had already tipped off Mossad. Maxwell said, “I know what has to happen. I have already spoken to your bosses.”

5.46 Leading the disinformation campaign was a story the Sunday Mirror ran the following Sunday on September 28, 1986 with the headline “Strange Case of Israel and the Nuclear Conman.”

5.47 Instead of publishing the photographs and first-hand accounts of Mordechai Vanunu, the Sunday Mirror obfuscated the facts and concentrated on the “conman,” Oscar Guerrero, helping Israel cover up the Vanunu’s story.

5.48 In the Sunday Mirror headline, the “conman” they were referring to was Oscar Guerrero, but the article was misleading.

They also printed pictures of Vanunu, calling him “the mole” which blew his cover in London.

5.49 Hounam recounted the points of the Sunday Mirror article, starting with its beginning: “An astonishing claim that Israel has built its first neutron bombs has been made to the Sunday Mirror…

🖼️Photo: Peter Hounam from his book "Operation Cyanide," published by Vision.

5.50...if the claim is true it could worsen the already tense Middle East situation, where the crisis on the Israeli-Lebanon border flared again this week.”

5.51 But there was more disinformation, according to investigative reporter and author Hersh. Israeli officials were quoted as saying that Vanunu had been fired from the nuclear facility near Dimona for “attempting to copy documents.” He was laid off.

🖼️Photo: Mordechai Vanunu

5.52 Israeli officials also released propaganda, denying that any scientists were working in nuclear research in Israel and attacking the credibility of Vanunu’s 60+ photographs.

🖼️Photo: Mordechai Vanunu

5.53 Meanwhile, The Sunday Times had Vanunu hidden in different hotels while they were putting the story together.

When the team discovered that Vanunu had been spending a lot of time with “Cindy,” they became worried and suspicious.

5.54 Hounam and his colleagues begged Vanunu to be more careful—Hounam even invited Vanunu and “Cindy” over for dinner so that they could evaluate her.

5.55 But Hounam was busy and had to travel to the United States to get more information verified for the subsequent stories and Vanunu kept making excuses so he could spend more time with “Cindy.”

5.56 Vanunu stubbornly ignored The Times' staffers as well as signs he saw himself and so he eventually became the victim of an Israeli “honey-trap.”

5.57 Hounam found out later that “Cindy” had told Vanunu that she couldn’t feel any passion for him while he was “tense and worried about becoming a whistleblower.”

5.58 "Cindy" said that could change if they traveled to her sister’s apartment on the outskirts of Rome, but she offered no sex until then.

5.59 Five days before the first story was published, The Sunday Times team knew that Vanunu had been abducted. This ruined The Sunday Times’ plans for a press conference with Vanunu as the main attraction, but they decided to go to press anyway.

5.60 However, The Sunday Times didn’t report that Vanunu was missing and hadn’t been seen at his hotel since September 30.

🗞️In fact, The Sunday Times did not publish this fact until the 2nd story was printed on October 12, 1986.

5.61 Hounam did not learn about the specific details of Vanunu's abduction until a few months later.

“Cindy” had purchased a business-class seat to Rome for herself on British Airways Flight 504 and offered to pay for Vanunu’s ticket as well.

5.62 When Vanunu arrived in Rome, a dark-haired woman (supposedly “Cindy’s sister) opened the door and Vanunu was pinned on the ground by two men, while the woman drugged him with a hyperdermic syringe.

5.63 Vanunu was transferred to a speedboat, then an Israeli navy ship disguised as an old cargo vessel.

“Cindy” was in fact an Israeli spy and her real name was Cheryl Bentov AKA Cheryl Hanin and had grown up in Orlando, Florida.

5.64 In 2004, The St. Petersburg Times [now the Tampa Bay Times] wrote an article about her living in a 4,000 square foot house in Alaqua, #Florida at times working as a real estate agent.

Her father had no idea that she had worked for Mossad.

5.65 After spending a high school semester in Israel, Cheryl Hanin became captivated by the country and joined the Israeli army after graduating in 1978. She married Ofer Bentov, a major in Israeli military intelligence.

5.66 Hounam was quoted in the St. Petersburg Times article: “He [Vanunu] trusted her, she deliberately placed him in a position where his defenses were down. He was lonely, and she and her Mossad team took advantage of that. I have nothing but contempt for what she did.”

5.67 The Vanunu case might have been the end of her career because her identity was revealed when Hounam tracked her down after Vanunu’s arrest as well as other reporters subsequently, but Hounam has his doubts, “I think she is probably still doing some stuff for the Mossad…

5.68 Hounam (cont'd):...because once you train someone to do a job like this, you don’t want to lose them…The only satisfaction I’ve had in 18 years is being able to track her down and expose her identity, which means her future career was damaged.

5.69 Hounam (cont'd):...Indeed, she was not able to travel to the [United Kingdom] again in case the British authorities might have tried to arrest her.”

5.70 During his ordeal, Vanunu woke up on a ship and eventually ended up at Mossad’s headquarters in Tel Aviv.

A man walked in and tossed over a copy of The Sunday Times with the pictures of the Dimona reactor.

“See the damage you have done,” the man said.

5.71 Vanunu was actually delighted when he saw the story because he knew that all his efforts had not been done in vain.

🖼️Photo: Oded Balilty/AP

5.72 He signed “confessions” admitting to being the whistleblower, arguing that he had a duty to expose the weapons to the Israeli public since it threatened their peace.

Nevertheless, Vanunu was ordered to stand trial.

5.73 The Sunday Times printed the series of articles starting on October 5, 1986 with subsequent stories on October 12th, November 16th, November 23rd & December 28th, 1986.

5.74 These reports revealed that Israel not only had the atom bomb, but that the country had become a major nuclear power.

5.75 Unfortunately for The Sunday Times, after the Prime Minister of Israel, Shimon Peres heard of their story, he called together the Editor’s Committee, an international committee of the leaders of prominent newspapers.

🖼️Photo: David Shankbone

5.76 In light of this information which was going to be published by The Sunday Times, he asked the Editor's Committee to minimize the coverage of the story because Israel’s national security would be jeopardized.

5.77 Accordingly, the New York Times printed a very small blurb of Israel’s newfound nuclear capabilities on page A7 on October 6, 1986.

📰Other papers in the U.S. also downplayed the story.

5.78 In December of 1986, although Israeli officials tried to hide Vanunu as he was being transported to court, he was able to stick his palm on the car window with the message “Vanunu M was hi-jacked in Rome. ITL. 30.9.86 21.00. Came to Rome by fly BA504.”

5.79 From this fragment of information, Hounam was able to piece together the story of Vanunu’s kidnapping.

5.80 Vanunu was tried in Israel and convicted of treason and espionage, then sent to prison where in his words he suffered “cruel and barbaric treatment.”

He was released in 2004.

5.81 Vanunu was sent back to prison 2007 and 2010 for violating stringent parole regulations, but is currently still living in Israel.

🖼️Photo: AP

5.82 In total, Vanunu spent 18 years in prison: and more than 11 of those years were in solitary confinement.

🌎🌍🌏He is internationally recognized as a whistleblower and has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize every year since 1987.

🖼️Photo: Miriam Alster/Flash90

5.83 🇮🇱 Israel still considers him a traitor.

5.84 Several years after The Sunday Times printed the story about Israel building atomic weapons, news came out that Seymour Hersh’s book, The Sampson Option, was going to detail the escapades around the Vanunu affair.

5.85 Robert Maxwell went on the offensive.

Maxwell, Davies and The Daily Mirror together sued Hersh and his publisher Faber and Faber for libel.

5.86 When Hersh arrived in London, the Observer noted that the libel suits were issued on behalf of Maxwell and Davies separately, leaving Maxwell the option of pulling out of Davies’ lawsuit.

5.87 In the book, Hersh alleged that Davies had exposed Vanunu to the Israelis because Davies was a spy for Mossad.

Hersh also alleged that Davies was peddling arms to Iran out of his London house with his Israeli partner, Ari Ben-Menashe.

5.88 Although Davies vehemently denied the allegations, Hersh had hundreds of telexes and other documents backing up his allegations.

5.89 But there was more to the story because Davies had for years been a source to Britain’s MI6 & had leaked secrets about Maxwell—including Maxwell’s involvement with international criminals such as Cyrus Hashemi (an Iranian arms dealer linked to the Iran-Contra affair) and...

5.90...the release of American hostages from Iran which became know as the “October Surprise” controversy—to the intelligence agency (more on this in Part 6).

📕Via "Robert Maxwell, Israel's Superspy"

5.91 However, at the same time, British newspapers were afraid to print the allegations because of Maxwell’s lawsuit.

But on October 21, 1991, the issue was brought up in Parliament enabling newspapers to write about it.

5.92 At a press conference called by Faber & Faber, Seymour Hersh’s publisher in London on October 24, 1991, Seymour Hersh attended with Matthew Evans, chairman of Hersh’s British publisher, Faber & Faber and the firm’s lawyer, David Hooper where Hersh declared...

5.93 🗣️Seymour Hersh: “What I’ve written is true and I stand by it.”

5.94 George Galloway, one of two MPs who made motions enabling the media to write about this issue was allowed the first question.

5.95 Galloway said that Hersh’s allegations came “from one of the world’s most prestigious journalists and in a book published by one of the most prestigious publishing houses. If you are telling me today that you stand by your story, then I stand by my motion.”

5.96 Hersh replied, “then stand by your motion.”

Hersh continued, “I did not approach this as an ingenue. I approached this as someone who has an awful lot to lose if I did not check my story properly.”

5.97 Referencing British libel laws which are stricter than they are in the United States, Hersh continued: “I can assure you that I understand the British libel laws and the inherent problems…Nobody went into this lightly. I have a body of evidence to support what is said.”

5.98 What Hersh wrote about Nick Davies (left) is “simply correct and that’s all there is to it.”

(Note: there are two British journalists named Nick Davies. The other one (right), worked mainly for The Guardian, retired in 2016 and is not involved in any way with arms dealing.

5.99 In addition to being an investigative journalist, Nick Davies ↗️ is also a writer & documentary maker. He has won journalism awards including the British Press Award "Reporter of the Year" in 2000. He also uncovered the News of the World phone hacking affair in July 2011.)

5.100 After Maxwell’s death in November 1991, Hersh took it a step further as his spokesperson alleged that Nick Davies had been “instrumental” in betraying Vanunu to Israeli agents and had consulted with them about wiretapping Hounam.

5.101 Maxwell’s lawyers “were intent” on serving Hersh with libel writs right in front of the television cameras, however, Hooper talked them into presenting them in a “less flamboyant manner” after the press conference was over.

5.102 Davies also claimed the accusations from Hersh were “a complete and total lie.”

5.103 Then, Paul McGeough of the Sydney Morning Herald explained: "In the best Fleet Street tradition the Mirror has spent the last week howling down gleeful competitors who dared to pursue the allegations by the U.S. journalist and author Seymour Hersh."

5.104 But after the contentious press conference on October 24, more evidence came out daily and Davies was fired by Maxwell for gross misconduct on the night of October 29, 1991.

5.105 In addition to The Observer article on October 27, 1991, the Daily Mail "christened" the scandal "Mirrorgate" & published a picture of Davies with the wife of one of the arms traders and a picture of Davies at the American home of American arms dealer Clarence Ben Kaufman.

5.106 Hersh had documented this meeting in Ohio. There was correspondence indicating that Ben-Menashe and Davies were in a partnership in a company called Ora (the name of Ben-Menashe's ex-wife) and the address used was Davies' address.

5.107 Earlier Davies had insisted "I have never been to Ohio and I have never had anything to do with arms companies."

But these details confirmed Hersh's claims—& the allegation that Davies had a passport under an alias "Peter Austin" — forced Davies to finally tell the truth.

5.108 "Oh that Ohio," Davies remarked after the new evidence was made public.

5.109 Hersh then filed three libel suits himself for libel and slander against Maxwell, Davies and the Mirror Group newspapers.

5.110 The Observer article (headline posted in 5.93) points out that documents the paper obtained support author Seymour Hersh’s claims linking Nick Davies to a partnership with former Israeli intelligence officer Ari Ben-Menashe in a business that was...

5.111...buying & selling weapons including missiles, Kalashnikov rifles and military aircraft.

In spite of the Maxwell's lawsuit, Seymour Hersh’s book was published in Britain in 1991.

5.112 One of Hersh’s main sources was Ari Ben-Menashe, an Iranian-born Israeli businessman & employee of Israel’s Military Intelligence Directorate 1977-87 (the central intelligence body of the Israeli Defense Forces), an arms dealer who also claimed to be...

5.113 Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir’s foreign intelligence advisor 1987-89. Menashe emigrated to Israel when he was a teenager, but spoke three languages: Persian (or Farsi), Arabic & English.

🖼️Photo: Allen McInnis / Postmedia News Files

5.114 His Iranian background also provided important connections, including Iranian school friends who worked in the government.

5.115 Hersh also used Nick Davies' second wife, Janet Fielding, an Australian actress known for her role in the BBC science fiction television series Doctor Who, as a source.

5.116 Fielding was married to Davis 1982-91 (but said she left him in 1985 while she was talking to Hersh). She affirmed that Davis was selling arms in partnership with Ben-Menashe during the time he was employed as the foreign editor at the Daily Mirror.

🖼️Photo: Daily Mail

5.117 Fielding told Hersh that she became "appalled" by her then-husband's choice of a side job: "Nick would try to tell me stuff [about the arms sales] and I said I didn't want to know. I left him because of it."

5.118 Ben-Menashe was arrested in 1989 in the U.S. for selling three Lockheed C-130 Hercules transport aircraft to Iran. He was acquitted after almost a year in prison because the jury accepted that he was acting on behalf of Israel.

5.119 However, Israel did not support him and Ben-Menashe was fearful the Israelis would charge him with revealing government secrets.

He moved to Australia in 1992 and then Montreal, Canada.

5.120 Even so, Ben-Menashe talked to journalists and also claimed he had a role in the 1980 Presidential election “October surprise” allegation (preventing Iranian hostages from being released before the election, ensuring a win by Republican Ronald Reagan) and...

5.121...the Iran-Contra affair—which appear to be linked by the players involved: namely Earl Brian, Ronald Reagan’s Director of California’s Department of Health Care Services (when Reagan was Governor) and Reagan’s Attorney General Ed Meese.

5.122 There are still those that believe Ben-Menashe’s October Surprise revelations, but the House published a report in 1993 which found Ben-Menashe’s findings not credible and some refer to it as a “conspiracy theory.” (More on this in Part 6).

5.123 According to Nick Davies, Maxwell’s security team was bugging and following him and he confronted Maxwell’s Security Chief John Pole, who Davies said denied it, but was lying.

Maxwell also denied it to Davies, saying “I’m your friend.”

5.124 The clandestine tapings proved to be true because in 2007, a BBC movie was made about Robert Maxwell’s life and the production uncovered tapes stored in a suitcase by John Pole.

5.125 However, nothing substantial from the tapes emerged in the news other than a conversation with Basil Brookes, his Finance Director about the wording of Brookes’ resignation statement hours before his death.

In a twist of fate, Brookes stayed in his job after Maxwell died.

5.126 Hersh alleged that Davies consulted with Israeli agents in 1986 about wiretapping a rival reporter for The Sunday Times working on a story about Israeli’s nuclear program.

Hersh had been told that Maxwell had been in direct contact with the wiretappers.

5.127 The Sunday Times reporter was Peter Hounam and his story was about Mordechai Vanunu, AKA John Crossman, a nuclear technician who is regarded in the U.S. as a whistleblower, mentioned earlier.

5.128 In other words, Hersh was alleging that Maxwell & Davies gave Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, details about Mordechai Vanunu’s whereabouts. With that information, Mossad agents were allegedly able to bring him back to Israel to be put on trial for treason & espionage.

5.129 In 1994—well after Maxwell’s death--Hersh won the libel cases and was awarded damages and issued an apology.

5.130 In 2004, journalist Peter Hounam was arrested in Tel Aviv, held for 24 hours and questioned "regarding espionage," while working on a documentary for the BBC on Mordechai Vanunu.

5.131 Despite protests from journalists & human rights groups, Hounam was expelled from Israel after his release.

Hounam said he was held "in a dungeon with excrement on the walls."

5.132 Hounam, who was 60 years old at the time said, "they accused me of spying on nuclear secrets and aggravated espionage. It is laughable."

5.133 As a condition of him being allowed into Israel to film, Hounam was forbidden from even meeting Vanunu and had instead arranged for an Israeli nuclear activist, Yael Lotan, to conduct the interview, and an Israeli cameraman to record it.

vimeo.com/76901546

5.134 However, an Israeli official noted that Hounam was present during the interview and could be heard directing Lotan. Israel officials had seized the BBC tape at the airport from another journalist.

5.135 "The Shabak...have carried out a very shoddy investigation, and they should be ashamed of themselves," Hounam stated in 2004.

Hounam's 1986 articles revealed that Israel had built up to 200 nuclear bombs at Dimona since the late 1960s.

5.136 But although the Mordechai Vanunu case was monumental, there was another scandal—arguably much more controversial—that Robert Maxwell was involved in, and that was the INSLAW case. More on the INSLAW case in Part 6.

5.137 Photo: Mordechai Vanunu and his wife, Norwegian Professor Kristin Joachimsen. The couple were married in 2014.

🖼️Photo: Facebook via The Times of Israel

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