- JERUSALEM -- Mordechai Vanunu,
Israel's nuclear weapons whistleblower, has revealed that he challenged
a female Mossad agent over her true identity before falling for her charms
and accompanying her to Rome, where he was abducted.
-
- In his first interview since his release after serving
an 18-year jail term for espionage and treason, to be broadcast by the
BBC tonight, Mr Vanunu says he had suspicions about the blonde agent, known
as "Cindy", soon after he met her in an apparently chance encounter
in Leicester Square.
-
- He claims that he confronted the agent, whose real name
is Cheryl Hanin and now lives in the United States, over whether she was
working for the Israeli spy agency, but was taken in by her feigned ignorance
of Mossad.
-
- Mr Vanunu, now 50, worked as a technician at the Dimona
nuclear complex, and provoked an international furore when he gave details
of Israel's secret weapons programme to The Sunday Times in 1986. Before
his story was published, he disappeared, having flown with "Cindy"
to Italy where he was kidnapped by Mossad and smuggled to Israel to face
trial.
-
- Last week Israeli security officials provoked outrage
when they arrested Peter Hounam, The Sunday Times journalist who broke
the original story, in Jerusalem. They confiscated copies of the interview,
but the team producing the film managed to slip a duplicate tape out of
the country.
-
- On the film, Mr Vanunu says that after he arrived in
London he cautioned himself to "be careful". But within three
weeks he met "Cindy", who was posing as an American tourist,
and was seduced.
-
- He said: "It was the honey pot trap. She was standing
in a place to buy cigarettes and I saw her and talked to her. I asked if
she was a Mossad spy. She said, 'No, no, no. What is Mossad?"'
-
- He says that he went with her to Rome because he thought
Mossad agents were looking for him in London. "Her job was simple:
to bring me to the place where they could kidnap me. She was not interested
in what I said and did."
-
- The ease with which his suspicions about "Cindy"
were allayed confirms fears of newspaper executives at the time that Mr
Vanunu was, as one put it, "desperate to get laid".
-
- Ivan Fallon, the then deputy editor of The Sunday Times,
wrote in the Independent on Sunday last month: "It soon became apparent
that sexually he was still a virgin at 31 and desperate to change that
status . . . The bright lights of London's West End and Soho held him in
thrall."
-
- Israeli security officials claim that Mr Vanunu is often
"imagining things", and describe him as "embittered and
vengeful" since his release. The interview with Mr Vanunu was conducted
in Jerusalem by an Israeli so as to bypass restrictions imposed following
his release. He said he has no regrets about divulging details of Israel's
nuclear capability, believing he was saving the country from a "new
holocaust".
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