Pensioners Party chief not the retiring type

Rafi Eitan is not just the chairman of the Pensioners Party but, with a monthly pension of more than NIS 20,000 from serving as department head in the Shin Bet security service and the Mossad espionage agency, he may be the wealthiest pensioner to vote for his party.

But Eitan does not live off his pension; he is also a successful businessman. During the past 35 years, since he retired from the intelligence services, he has been involved in a variety of business deals. He has traded in West Bank land (in the 1970s), imported dolphins to Eilat, negotiated chemical and oil deals in international markets, and in recent years has maintained business ties in agriculture with Cuba.

When Ariel Sharon became defense minister in 1981, he appointed Eitan head of a covert department dedicated to scientific and technological espionage. The department was also asked to obtain materials for a nuclear reactor.

Eitan asked Sharon for permission to augment the unit's authority, wanting to prove that he is capable of establishing an intelligence organization to challenge the Mossad.

He ordered the recruitment of Jonathan Pollard, a U.S. Navy Intelligence worker, who offered to supply Israel with information. Eitan met, instructed and debriefed Pollard before assignments. Pollard was arrested in 1985 and has been in jail since.

The Israeli government has since apologized, stating that the operation involving Pollard was unauthorized. Eitan resigned, but has always rightly maintained that all of his superiors, including PMs Ytzhak Shamir and Shimon Peres, and defense ministers Moshe Arens and Ytzhak Rabin, knew of and approved the spy's activity in the U.S.

Sharon, then minister of industry and commerce, came to Eitan's defense. He arranged a comfortable private sector position for Eitan.

'Stinker' to Shin BetThe 80-year-old Eitan fought in the Palmach pre-state army, where he won the nickname "Stinker" after falling into a pit of sewage while on a mission. After the War of Independence he joined the Shin Bet and within a few years, became head of the operations department. He is considered a sophisticated and efficient operations man.

The Shin Bet's operations department in the 1950s and early 1960s focused primarily on monitoring the actions of diplomats from the communist bloc and on exposing spies, and members of that department were occasionally loaned to the Mossad. One of the most important operations in which Eitan was involved was the 1960 capture of Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann in Argentina.

Later on, Eitan was in charge of the Mossad's operations department in Europe, but was forced out of the agency in the early 1970s by its chief at the time.

Eitan went into business until Ariel Sharon, a good friend of his, brought him back into civil service by giving him assignments in intelligence. Sharon persuaded then-prime minister Menachem Begin to appoint Eitan as an adviser on combating terror. While in that position,Eitan said at a Knesset debate that Israel could expect 100 years of terror, a comment that angered many.