mostly in reserve service, but he periodically rejoined the regular army.
As both a reserve and a regular officer, he was a member of the Israel-
Jordan mixed armistice commission until the 1967 Six-Day War.
Thereafter this committee ceased to operate. From 1968 Levinson was
stationed for three years in East Africa as a member of Tevel wing of
the Mossad, seconded from the IDF. Upon returning to Israel and to
the IDF, he was appointed liaison officer to the United Nations mission
in the Middle East. In 1978 Levinson was asked by the chief of the
General Staff, Rafael Eitan, to finally end his military career, and he
complied.
In civilian life, Levinson was unemployed for long periods. Occa-
sionally he found a job in the Israeli aviation industry and for a short
period he worked for the Israeli Security Agency(ISA). In 1980 he
got a job managing a UN antidrug agency in the Far East, with an of-
fice in Bangkok, but he soon left this position. He apparently suffered
depression. In spring 1983, at his own initiative, he approached the
Soviet embassy in Bangkok, offering his services to spy against Is-
rael. On 12 May 1983 he arrived in Moscow and his Israeli passport
was stamped by the visitors section. At that time, Israelis rarely vis-
ited the Soviet Union because the two countries did not have diplo-
matic relations. This fact alone placed him under suspicion of espi-
onage. By the time of his return to Israel, he had been recruited as a
spy by the KGB. Through his contacts with many former senior IDF
officers, he landed a job as chief security officer in the Israeli Prime
Minister’s Office. In this post, he had contacts with Israel’s top secret
intelligence organization, Nativ, which focused on the Soviet Union
and the Eastern Bloc countries.
Levinson felt that he was not paid enough for his services to the
KGB, and in 1989 he unilaterally disconnected the contact with his
Soviet handlers. Yet for some reason he made another visit to
Moscow, where he was rebuked by his former KGB handlers for sev-
ering relations. Soon he resigned from his post in the Prime Minis-
ter’s Office and returned to Bangkok to enter private business. He
thought that his job as a spy was behind him.
The ISA, which had secretly investigated Levinson, decided to
draw him to Israel for arrest and trial, without arousing his suspicion.
At the initiative of the ISA, an Israeli government company contacted
Levinson in Bangkok with an offer of an attractive business contract;158 • LEVINSON, SHIMON06-102 (03) H-P.qxd 3/24/06 7:24 AM Page 158