accomplished its tasks on the eve of and during the Sinai Campaign
fostered greater expenditure on MI and the allocation of additional
budgets for intelligence collection and research.SITTA, KURT (1910–?).Born in the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia
to a non-Jewish German family, Sitta studied in Prague and soon
emerged as a genius in mathematics and physics. During World War
II he was interned in the Buchenwald concentration camp by the
Gestapo because of his Jewish wife. At Buchenwald Sitta met Com-
munist inmates who after the war became senior officials in Czecho-
slovakian intelligence. They recruited Sitta as a sleeper agent.
After the war, Sitta studied and worked at the universities of Edin-
burgh and Manchester in Great Britain (1946–1948) and then was ap-
pointed professor at Syracuse University in Syracuse, New York. How-
ever, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) reached the conclusion
that Sitta was a Communist. After being interrogated by the FBI, Sitta
moved to Brazil. In 1953 he was invited to lecture at the Technion—
Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa—where he was appointed to
chair the faculty of physics. His academic success soon became known
to Czechoslovakian intelligence, which regarded this as an excellent
opportunity for moving him from the sleeping mode to active spying
against Israel.
In this capacity Sitta showed deep and special interest in nuclear
physics, especially the work of Professor David Ernst Bergman, among
the founders of the Israeli nuclear weapons program. Between 1955
and 1960 Sitta frequently met the Czechoslovakian intelligence officer
at the Czech embassy in Tel Aviv. However, the Israeli Security
Agency(ISA) was well aware of their frequent meetings, and on the
night of 16 June 1960 ISA agents arrested Sitta at his villa in Haifa.
This was two days before the Israeli experimental nuclear reactor in
Nahal Soreq was to become operational. On 7 February 1961 Sitta was
convicted of espionage and imprisoned for five years. The maximum
penalty for the charge in question was life imprisonment. Kurt Sitta
died in the early 1990s.SIX-DAY WAR (1967).The situation that developed into the Six-Day
War of June 1967 came as a complete surprise to Israeli intelligence.
The establishment of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in
1964 had increased tensions in the region, with Arab cross-border in-264 • SITTA, KURT06-102 (04) Q-Z.qxd 3/24/06 7:26 AM Page 264