Reuven Yardor

Reuven Yardor was born in 1938

Reuven Yardor was born in 1938 as Reuven Lederman. As a child he was active in the Lehi youth movement and put up leaflets in his neighborhood, Yad Eliyahu. At 15 he joined the first class of the military boarding school next to the Hebrew Reali School in Haifa.

He joined the infantry and then moved to the Armored Corps, planning a career as a field officer. The army sent him to study at the Hebrew University, where he met Yoel Ben-Porat in the classes of Professor Meir Jacob Kister. Ben-Porat pushed to bring him into Unit 515, the early form of Unit 8200, and Israel Tal agreed to lend him to the unit.

The loan became a permanent posting after the Six-Day War. Yardor worked on codebreaking under Shaul Shamai, and after Shamai died in 1972 he became head of the codebreaking branch. He was deputy commander of Unit 8200 from 1976 and its commander from 1980.

Before leaving the IDF he served as deputy head of the Planning Directorate of the General Staff. After he left the army in 1986, he headed the Tomer project to build a Voice of America relay station in the Arava. He led it until it was canceled in 1993, and he later still served in the reserves in the Intelligence Directorate.