Israel missile-defence chief fired

Yair Ramati, the head of Israel’s Missile Defence Organisation (Homa) was sacked at the weekend on the grounds that he had violated security policy by having copies of highly-classified files on his personal computer.

I cannot help but wonder if we will ever learn the full story on this incident. Here in the UK, most facilities involved in defence-related work forbid employees to bring cameras, recording devices, computers, or any form of recordable media into the plant.

(It is a rule that I have frequently but unwittingly violated in the past. When trying to open a ‘freebie’ pen that normally lives in my briefcase as a ‘spare’ in case my ‘proper’ pen runs out of ink, I discovered that it has a built-in USB stick of whose presence I was totally unaware!)

So assuming similar rules in Israel, I wonder just how Ramati’s PC managed to get into an office where highly-classified info was available. Did security guards never check their boss’s briefcase on the grounds that he was too important a man to worry with pedantic rules?

While severe breaches of security regulations inevitably carry heavy penalties, I cannot help thinking that Israel has over-reacted in this case. They have lost the services of one of their most talented missile experts, the man widely credited as being responsible for the success of the Arrow programme. To my mind, fixing the security system might have been a better solution than firing the man.