Former head of the Shin Bet, MK Yaakov Perry (Yesh Atid), in the early 1990s failed polygraph tests to determine whether he had passed to interior minister Aryeh Deri (Shas) information about his being wiretapped during an embezzlement investigation against Deri which eventually landed him in prison, according to Channel 2’s investigative show Uvda, which was broadcast on Wednesday.
Despite his failure to pass two polygraph tests, and his marginal score on two more, no one has taken any action against Perry at the time – even following several reports on that episode which found Perry’s behavior at the time to have been “problematic.”
The conspiracy to keep Perry’s betrayal a secret apparently involved Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, State Attorney Dorit Beinisch, Attorney General Michael Ben Yair, and the Israel Police, but one can only speculate as to their motives. It should be noted that Deri was chair of the Shas Knesset faction and a pivotal part of the Rabin government effort to push the Oslo accords.
The episode began in 1991, when a state witness in Deri’s corruption trial, Yaakov Shmuelevich, met with Moshe Weinberg, a close associate of the minister, himself suspected of bribery. From the recorded conversation one could conclude that Weinberg was familiar with wiretapping procedures and knew whom the police was listening to. He explained to Shmuelevich that the police cannot carry out the wiretapping themselves, but must do it through the Shin Bet, which assigns tap lines as it sees fit.
This, Weinberg said, had been told to Deri’s associates from a Shin Bet staffer.
Police held on to that recording and did not act on it in order not to divert the Deri investigation off course. Only four years later did they turn over the tape to the AG, who appointed an investigating committee to find the mole. Every single employee of the Shin Bet had to pass a polygraph test, and Perry, by then no longer part of the agency, admitted having conversations with the interior minister about his investigation, but insisted he never warned him about wiretaps.
Perry failed two polygraph tests that found him lying, then, in two additional tests, the results showed “tendencies towards making false statements.”
Perry has denied all the above charges, including saying that he had only undergone one polygraph test which was inconclusive.