Prior to his release two weeks later, he was being taken to headquarters to be fingerprinted and photographed. He knew that if that were to happen, he was doomed. They would then be able to identify him as Zaki Haviv, and this time it would not be a two-week sentence. He walked with his two guards along Baghdad’s streets to the headquarters, at some distance. En route they passed through the crowded Shurja souk, an exotic market crammed with tiny dark shops, merchants screaming the praise of their wares, and narrow, crooked alleys. At what he hoped was the right moment, Ben-Porat pushed his guards aside, dove into the crowd, and vanished. The cops didn’t even try to chase him. After all, he was due to be released in less than an hour, so why bother?
But when they reported the incident, all hell broke loose. They had let Zaki Haviv, the most wanted man in Iraq, go! The opposition press found out and attacked the government’s ineptitude with screaming headlines. “Where is Haviv?” asked a newspaper, and answered: “Haviv—in Tel Aviv!”
Back in Tel Aviv, Ben-Porat’s superiors meticulously prepared his escape from Iraq. While he hid at a friend’s house, the daring plan was put into action. At that time, a mammoth airlift was under way, bringing the entire Jewish community from Iraq to Israel, via Cyprus. About 100,000 Jews were fleeing Iraq, with big planes taking off almost every night.
On the night of June 12, Ben-Porat put on his best clothes and hailed a cab. His friends had drenched him with arrack—the local liquor—and, reeking of alcohol, he collapsed on the backseat of the taxi and feigned sleep. The driver helped his drunken fare out and into a back street near Baghdad airport, and left. Once alone, Ben-Porat hurried to the airport fence—he knew exactly where it had been cut—and slipped inside. On the tarmac, a plane had just finished loading its emigrants and was taxiing on the runway. Suddenly the pilot aimed his lights at the control tower, momentarily blinding the air controllers. The plane gathered speed, its rear door slid back, ten feet aboveground, and a dangling rope appeared. Coming out of the dark, Ben-Porat darted toward the plane, grabbed the rope, and was hauled into the aircraft, which immediately took off. Neither ground crews nor passengers noticed this escape, which seemed taken straight from an action movie.
As the plane passed over the city, its lights flashed on and off three times. “God be praised,” murmured a few men gathered on a rooftop. Their friend was safe and on his way.
A few hours later, Haviv, indeed, was in Tel Aviv.
He married his sweetheart, and in the years that followed turned to politics, became a member of parliament, a cabinet minister, and today is a venerated leader of the Iraqi Jews in Israel.
Those left behind were not so fortunate. Scores of Jews were arrested, beaten, and tortured. Taggar and twenty-one others were tried for subversion. Two prominent Baghdad Jews, Shalom Salach and Joseph Batzri, were accused of possessing explosives and weapons and sentenced to death.
Shortly before his trial was to start, Taggar was awakened in the middle of the night, his cell full of policemen. “You are going to be hanged tonight,” the chief investigator announced.
“But you can’t hang a man without trial!” Taggar protested.
“Can’t we? We know all about you already, you’re an Israeli officer, you’re a spy—we don’t need anything more.”
A bearded rabbi entered and sat beside Taggar, reading him Psalms. At three thirty in the morning, the officers took Taggar to the execution chamber. He walked between them, stunned. Only weeks ago he had been visiting his family in Jerusalem, then on his way here he had enjoyed the pleasures of Paris and Rome. And now he was going to dangle from the end of a rope.
The Iraqis made him sign several forms—bureaucracy at work, even at such a time—then the hangman took away his rings and watch. Taggar demanded that his body be sent to Israel. The hangman made him stand over a trapdoor and tied sandbags to his feet. He was forced to turn his back to the hangman, who placed the noose on his neck and grabbed the handle controlling the trapdoor. Taggar rejected the black hood that they tried to pull over his head. The hangman now looked at his commanding officer, standing with several others in front of the man who was going to die. Taggar thought of his family, of his native Jerusalem, of the life he could have had. Will my neck be broken? he wondered, and felt an all-consuming dread taking hold of his entire being.
And then, all of a sudden, the officers left. Taggar was pulled back from the trapdoor. The scowling hangman removed the sandbags from his feet and the noose from his neck, muttering that he had lost his pay for tonight. Taggar realized, amazed, that he was not going to die! Everything, down to the smallest detail, had been a ruse. They had hoped to break him and make him reveal more details about his accomplices. But now, as he trudged back to his cell, still alive, Taggar was certain he wouldn’t die in an Iraqi prison. His friends would get him out of there.
When the trial ended, he was sentenced to death, but his sentence was immediately commuted to life in prison. Batzri and Salach were hanged. They spent their last night on earth with Taggar, who tried to cheer them up.
Then began for “Yudke” a Via Dolorosa that he somehow managed to survive. In the company of murderers, political prisoners, and sadistic jailers in several Iraqi prisons, he nevertheless believed that he wouldn’t die in captivity. One day he would be free!
He had to wait nine years. In 1958, General Abdul Karim Kassem seized power in a coup and murdered the Iraqi prime minister and the royal family. Two years later, though, some of his closest aides concocted a plot to murder him (which they would do a few years later). The Mossad learned of the plot, and the ramsad immediately established contact with Kassem’s loyalists, and struck a deal: he would give them the names of the conspirators—for the freedom of Yehuda Taggar.
Taggar was in his dark, gloomy cell, when his jailers came with a change of khaki clothes. “Put that on!” they ordered. “You are going to Baghdad.”
A police car took the stupefied Taggar to the royal palace. Several soldiers escorted him to a huge office. Behind an ornate desk sat a familiar figure—President Kassem himself. Taggar suddenly realized: they were setting him free! Kassem took his time studying the face of the Israeli. “Tell me,” he finally said, “if war were declared between Iraq and Israel, would you fight against us?”
“When I am back in my own country,” Taggar answered, “I will do all I can to bring about understanding and peace between Israel and the Arab States. But if war should break out, I will fight for Israel, just as you have fought many times for your country.”
Kassem must have liked this answer. He stood up. “When you get home,” he said, “tell your people that Iraq is an independent state now. We are not the lackeys of imperialism anymore.”
From the palace, a car took Taggar to the airport. He still couldn’t believe what was happening. They put him on a plane to Beirut, then a flight to Nicosia, Cyprus, and finally he landed in Israel. At the airport, his friends and colleagues were waiting. They expected to meet a broken man, a human wreck—but the man who descended from the plane was the same vigorous, extroverted, smiling fellow whom they had last seen more than nine years ago. How did you make it, they asked. How did you hang on to your sanity, your optimism? “I knew you’d get me out of there,” Yudke said simply.
By bringing Taggar home, the heads of the Mossad had adhered to another of the principles forged at its inception: spare no effort, no means, and no sacrifices, to bring our people back home.
In Israel, Taggar married, started a family, and after a brilliant diplomatic career abroad became a university professor.
Reuven Shiloah was in no way involved in the Baghdad tragedy. And yet, at the end of 1952, he resigned. He was replaced by a star, newly emerged in the shadow world of Israel’s secret services.
Little Isser.
Chapter Four
A Soviet Mole and a Body at Sea
Ze’ev Avni yearned to become a Mossad agent.
As he arrived, one rainy day in April 1956, at Mossad
headquarters, he was wishing with all his heart to come out of there as an employee of the Mossad. For years he had been trying to become one of the selected few, and this had been his most important goal in life.
Born Wolf Goldstein in Riga, Latvia, he had grown up in Switzerland, served in the Swiss Army during World War II, and immigrated to Israel in 1948. He had changed his name to the Hebrew Ze’ev Avni, and after a couple of years of living and working at kibbutz Hazorea, he had joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and was posted in Brussels. Personable, well-read, fluent in several languages, he had charmed his superiors with his manners and diligence as well as with his willingness to volunteer for any chore, especially those connected with the Mossad. Whenever a diplomat was needed for a secret courier job, for an urgent trip to another city, for delivering classified documents to a Mossad undercover unit anywhere in Europe—Avni was the first to volunteer. His frequent cooperation with the Mossad informally made him one of their guys in Europe; and that collaboration became more intense when he was transferred to Israel’s embassy in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. In several letters to the ramsad, Isser Harel, Avni suggested establishing a Mossad station in Belgrade. Harel refused: the Mossad had no need for a station in Yugoslavia—but Avni didn’t give up. In April 1956, he came back to Israel on a private visit and asked to see the ramsad. His demand was granted, and that day he was to meet Isser Harel for the first time.
Tense and nervous, he entered Harel’s office in an old house in the former German colony in Tel Aviv. Harel had been appointed ramsad less than four years earlier, but was already a legend. People admired and feared this short, enigmatic man; true and false stories about him wafted through the dim Mossad corridors. Avni had heard bits and pieces about Harel, who had been nicknamed “Little Isser”—to tell him apart from the notorious “Big Isser.” Avni feared this encounter, given the rumors about Little Isser’s stubbornness, his brusque manners, and fantastic intuition.
But the short, lean, and balding man in khakis and a short-sleeved shirt who received Avni in his monastic office was soft-spoken and kind. He admitted to being impressed by Avni’s demeanor and political savvy. He asked Avni for the reason of his visit to Israel right now, and Avni explained that his daughter from his first marriage had demanded that he come to see her.
“How old is your daughter?” Isser asked, smiling.
“Eight.”
“Eight?” Isser looked surprised. He seemed to find it odd that a diplomat would rush home from abroad just because his little daughter had summoned him. Avni then went into a detailed explanation about his complex relationship with his first wife, his child, and his current wife. Isser grew impatient, cut him short, and told him that there would be no Mossad station in Belgrade. As for Avni’s future, he said, “We’ll see after you complete your tour of duty in Yugoslavia.” Avni felt crushed.
However, before he left, Isser offered to meet with him again, in a couple of days, “but not in this building, too many people come in and out. You’ll meet me in my secret downtown office, my driver will take you there.”
There was still hope, Avni thought. If not—why would Isser want to see him again?
A few days later, Avni walked into a nondescript apartment in central Tel Aviv. He had no reason to fear Isser anymore; after all, he had been friendly at their first meeting.
Isser was waiting for him and led him into a big room: bare walls, a desk, a couple of chairs, shuttered windows. Avni sat down and Isser suddenly metamorphosed into a raging bull. His face contorted; he banged his fists on the desk and roared: “You are a Soviet agent! Confess! Confess!” And again: “Confess!” He kept hammering his clenched fists on his desk, and shouting: “I know the Soviets sent you! I know you’re a spy! Confess!”
Avni, thunderstruck, froze. He felt unable to say a word.
“Confess! If you cooperate with me, I’ll try to help you, but if not . . .”
Avni’s heart pounded madly in his chest. He was covered in cold sweat and his tongue felt like lead. He was certain that his last moment had come and Isser would have him killed.
He finally gathered up the strength to utter a few words.
“I confess,” he mumbled, “I work for the Russians.”
Isser opened a concealed door, and in walked two of his best agents and a police officer. The officer arrested Avni, and he was taken away, to an interrogation facility. Then, step by step, he revealed his identity and his true aim. A fervent Communist since his teens, he had been recruited by the Soviet GRU (the Red Army espionage service) while still living in Switzerland, and had spied for the Soviet Union during World War II. Shortly after, he had been advised to immigrate to Israel and wait. He was to become a long-term mole. For many years, he had expected a message from Moscow, but the Russian master spies had waited to contact him only when he had been posted to Brussels. There, he delivered to them important information about Israel’s deals with the F.N. arms industry in Belgium, had supplied them with the Israeli foreign ministry codes, and even revealed to them the names of two German ex-Nazis who were spying for Israel in Egypt. To the surprise of their handlers, the two Germans had been hastily expelled from Egypt. But that had not been enough for Avni’s Russian case officers. They wanted their man to infiltrate the Mossad. And that’s what Avni tried so hard to do, until the moment when Isser shouted: “Confess!”
And when he confessed, he didn’t know what was most shocking: he could have walked out of Isser’s trap a free man! The ramsad hadn’t the slightest shred of evidence against him, only suspicions, not even a hint of proof that Avni was a spy. True, long ago, somebody had mentioned to Isser that Avni had been expelled from his kibbutz because of his Communist views. But a Soviet spy?
Isser had acted on intuition alone. Avni’s relentless efforts to join the Mossad; the seemingly strange visit to his daughter; his attempts to convince Isser to establish a Mossad station in Belgrade . . . All these minor occurrences merged in Isser’s sharp mind and led him to an unlikely conclusion: a mole, a traitor, had almost penetrated Israel’s sanctum sanctorum.
At his trial, Avni made a full confession and was sentenced to fourteen years in prison. He was paroled after nine, became a model citizen and a psychologist. Isser told his biographer that Avni was the most dangerous spy ever caught in Israel but also “the most charming,” and spoke warmly of him as “the gentleman spy.”
Avni himself told us that over the years some of the high-ranking police officers and Shabak (rough equivalent of the American FBI) interrogators had become his good friends.
Operation Pygmalion, as the Avni affair was called, for many years was one of the closest-guarded secrets of the Mossad. But for the few who were in the know, it was one more proof of Isser’s amazing instincts.
But who was Little Isser? Taciturn, shy, stubborn as a mule, he purportedly had been born in the ancient fortress town of Dvinsk, in Imperial Russia; it was said that when he immigrated to Israel at eighteen, he was carrying in his knapsack a loaf of bread, inside of which he had baked a revolver. Little Isser first settled in kibbutz Shefayim, where he married a joyful horsewoman, Rivka. Tough, stubborn, and assertive, he left the kibbutz for unknown reasons with a wife, a child, and only the shirt on his back. During World War II, he joined the Haganah and soon became head of the Shai’s Jewish Department, which tracked traitors and dissidents. The “dissidents” were members of the Irgun and the Stern group—two clandestine right-wing organizations that contested the authority and the politics of David Ben-Gurion and of the organized Jewish community. After the demise of “Big Isser,” Little Isser became head of the Internal Security Service, the Shabak.
The Mossad had barely started functioning when Ben-Gurion, in a sudden move, accepted Reuven Shiloah’s resignation and appointed Isser head of the Mossad. The official reason for the change was a traffic accident that was said to have incapacitated Shiloah, but the Mossad gossip was that Isser had bullied Shiloah out, after convincing Ben-Gurion that the ramsad was
erudite and a nice guy but unable to lead tough agents and carry out secret operations.
Under Isser, the intelligence community acquired what became its definitive shape. It was composed of five services: the Mossad, the Shabak, the Aman (military intelligence), the special branch of the police, and the research division of the foreign ministry. Of these, only Mossad, Aman, and Shabak were important; the other two were not as highly regarded. The directors of the five services and their deputies formed the “Heads of Services Committee.” Isser was appointed its chairman. Ben-Gurion also created a special title for him: memunneh—chief executive in charge of the security services. When he first appointed Little Isser to this new position, Ben-Gurion remarked: “Of course you’ll continue to direct the Shabak, even though you now have Mossad.” Isser selected a new Shabak director, though the overall control of both Mossad and Shabak remained in his hands.
Thus, Little Isser became Israel’s intelligence tsar.
The Pygmalion affair was but one of several key operations Isser directed in the first years of Israel’s existence, mostly against Soviet spies, many of whom were captured, jailed, or expelled.
But not all spies worked for the Soviets—and not every spy story had a happy ending.
One afternoon in early December 1954, a lone cargo aircraft kept circling over the Eastern Mediterranean. When its pilots had made sure there were no seagoing vessels in the area, one of the aircraft doors opened and a big object was dropped into the sea—a body.
The plane turned back and, an hour later, landed in Israel, marking the end of Operation Engineer (not its real name), an operation that remained ultra-confidential for more than fifty years.
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