ROTTEN SAFETY NET

By Johanna McGeary/Jerusalem

EVEN AS SHIMON PERES STEPPED smoothly into the role of Israel's Prime Minister, bringing a welcome sense of normality to a traumatized nation, he found a supremely embarrassing mess awaiting him: the stained reputation of the vaunted domestic security service, known as the Shin Bet, which answers directly to the Prime Minister. Already shaken by the security lapses that allowed the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, Shin Bet faces new allegations that one of the young religious zealots arrested for involvement in the murder was actually an informer on the service's own payroll. According to Israeli intelligence sources, the informer never told Shin Bet if he had heard the accused assassin, Yigal Amir, threaten to kill Rabin. A state commission of inquiry is delving into the service's failure to protect Israel's leader from homegrown fanaticism, but regardless of the findings, the stature and morale of the Shin Bet have already been shattered.

Since Nov. 19, a procession of ranking Shin Bet officials have testified in secret before the Shamgar Commission, named for the retired Supreme Court justice who heads it. The assassin penetrated security to shoot Rabin at point-blank range, so close, one witness said, that "Rabin felt the gun before he felt the bullet." The Israeli press has been filled with leaks disclosing testimony of incompetence and bungling. But it was the revelation that Shin Bet had a mole inside the extremist movement that most grievously wounded the agency. Although the government refuses to confirm the charge and Avishai Raviv, the leader of the extremist Eyal movement and alleged informer, himself denies it, details of his clandestine employment have been flooding the Israeli press. Sources say the 28-year-old Raviv was on Shin Bet's payroll for nearly eight years, during which he was allowed to promote zealous antigovernment views and form Eyal. The security service turned a blind eye to the rabble rousing in exchange for information about far-right activities. At the Shamgar hearings, news accounts say, Shin Bet officials acknowledged that last August they asked Raviv to check out Amir. Raviv reported back that Amir talked about killing Arabs but made no mention of the Prime Minister as a possible target.

If Shin Bet's spy--reportedly rated by his handlers as a good operative--was not truly blind and deaf to the plans, why did the security service fail to act? This key, and so far unanswered, question has spawned a host of conspiracy theories. Right-wing circles are calling Raviv an agent provocateur who purposefully incited anti-Rabin fanaticism. An alternate, even wilder theory holds that Shin Bet actually plotted a faked assassination attempt in order to smear opponents of the peace process. Under this scenario agents supposedly gave Amir a gun loaded with blanks, but his brother betrayed the Shin Bet by substituting real bullets.

Left-wing conspiracists charge that rightist sympathizers inside the Shin Bet allowed Raviv to incite and Amir to act. The security service, says an Israeli analyst, "is almost on the floor," and the Shamgar Commission's report is expected to be devastating. Peres will then step in, sources say, to replace Shin Bet's leaders and rebuild the security service from the top down. ^1