By Ron Kampeas
Associated Press Writer
Wednesday, Sept. 6, 2000; 3:36 p.m. EDT

JERUSALEM –– Israel's most shadowy security service is reportedly seeking a little light.

The Shin Bet – its once awe-inspiring reputation battered by reports of duplicity, excessive brutality and incompetence – is setting up a spokesman's office for the first time in its history, Israel's Haaretz daily reported Wednesday.

No one would confirm the report – the Shin Bet has no spokesman, after all – but a former agency director said the idea has been around for a while.

"Much of the distortion, much of the harm that was caused the Shin Bet and its employees would have been avoided" had it hired a spokesman, Yaakov Perry told Israel radio.

Other intelligence agencies are more accessible to reporters: the army spokesman handles calls for military intelligence, and the foreign ministry occasionally comments on the activities of the Mossad, Israel's external spy agency.

But reporters seeking comment on Shin Bet internal security activities are directed to the prime minister's office, and officials there unfailingly refuse comment, as they did Wednesday.

Shin Bet director Avi Dichter wants to name a spokesman from within the agency's ranks and to hire a media adviser from outside, Haaretz reported. In addition to answering journalists' questions, the two would initiate ideas that would "market" the Shin Bet.

That's a radical change for the agency charged with security in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, a service so secret that in the 1950s, the mainstream press did not even acknowledge its existence.

Haolam Hazeh, a radical opposition magazine and then the only periodical that dared report the agency's activities, referred to it only as "the apparatus of darkness."

The Shin Bet – the Hebrew initials for Security Service – developed a reputation as a force to be reckoned with, infiltrating and identifying violent opposition groups almost from the state's inception.

That began to unravel in 1984, when its agents killed two Palestinians who had tried to hijack a bus. Shin Bet agents said the two were killed in crossfire. When a newspaper photo showed one of the Palestinians in good health minutes after he was arrested, agency officials forged documents in a plot to frame military intelligence for the killings.

During the 1987-93 Palestinian uprising, Shin Bet agents earned a reputation as exceedingly brutal. Last year, the Supreme Court ordered the agency to stop using "physical pressure" in interrogations, a practice human rights groups have described as torture.

In 1995, Shin Bet agents assigned to protect Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin failed to prevent a Jewish ultranationalist known for his hatred of Rabin from shooting the prime minister to death at close range.

An Israeli journalist known for his portraits of Palestinian victims of Shin Bet torture said the appointment of a spokesman was long overdue.

"It would help me a lot," said Gideon Levy. "On many occasions, I would have liked (to report) the other side – I'm sure that in many cases they would have had responses, and they may even have persuaded me."