Shimon Levinson

Shimon Levinson was born in 1933 in Jerusalem

Shimon Levinson was born in Jerusalem on 31 January 1933, to a religious Zionist family. His father was active in the Haganah. He studied at the Tachkemoni school.

He joined the IDF in 1950 and served on the Israel-Jordan Armistice Committee. He later headed a documentation section in Military Intelligence. After leaving the army he briefly ran the Government Coins and Medals Corporation.

He joined the Shin Bet in 1963 and moved to the Mossad in 1965. He later commanded the IDF liaison unit to the UN and headed a Mossad station in Ethiopia. He served as IDF liaison colonel to the UN from 1973 until he retired in 1978.

While working for a UN anti-drug agency in Thailand, he offered to spy for the KGB in April 1983 because of money troubles. In May 1985 he became Chief Security Officer of the Prime Minister's Office and passed classified information to his handlers.

He was arrested in May 1991 and confessed. In 1993 he was sentenced to 12 years in prison and demoted. He was released in 1999 and moved to Thailand in 2003, where he works as an agricultural adviser.