Mossad

by Michael Bar-Zohar

  Khrushchev’s speech shredded Victor’s last illusions about Communism. And he realized that he held in his hands an explosive device that could shake the Soviet camp to its foundations. He decided to return the red brochure to Lucia. But on his way to her, he had second thoughts, and his feet carried him elsewhere—to the Israeli embassy. He walked in confidently, and the wall of Polish policemen and secret service agents parted and let him pass. A few minutes later, he was in the office of Yaacov Barmor, officially a first secretary of the embassy, but in reality, the Shabak representative in Poland.

  Grayevski handed him the red brochure. The Israeli perused it and his jaw dropped. Will you wait a few minutes, he asked, grabbed the brochure, and left the room. He came back an hour later. Grayevski realized that Barmor had photocopied it, but asked no questions. He picked it up, concealed it under his coat, and left. He reached Lucia’s office on time, and she put it in the safe. Nobody bothered him or asked him about his impromptu visit to the Israeli embassy.

  On Friday, April 13, 1956, in the early afternoon, Zelig Katz entered the office of the director of Shabak, Amos Manor. Katz was Manor’s personal assistant. Shabak headquarters were located in an old Arab building in Jaffa, not far from the picturesque flea market. Manor asked Katz the routine Friday question: “Any material from Eastern Europe?” Friday was the day when the diplomatic pouch brought reports from Shabak agents behind the Iron Curtain.

  Zelig nonchalantly quipped that a few minutes ago he had received from Warsaw “some speech of Khrushchev at the Congress . . .” Manor jumped from his seat. “What?” he roared. “Bring it at once!”

  Manor, a tall, handsome young man, had immigrated to Israel only a few years earlier. Born Arthur Mendelovitch in Romania, to a well-to-do family, he was sent to Auschwitz, where his entire family—parents, sister, and two brothers—were murdered. He survived, weighing barely eighty pounds when the camp was liberated. Back in Bucharest, he worked for Aliya Beth, helping smuggle Jewish refugees into British-controlled Palestine. He used the war name of Amos, and several other names, to cover his tracks. When his turn came to leave for Israel, in 1949, the Romanian authorities wouldn’t let him go. He managed to escape with a forged Czech passport in the name of Otto Stanek. His friends started calling him “the man with the thousand names”; in Israel, he became Amos Manor.

  He rose quickly in the secret services. Isser was fascinated by him. Manor was his opposite. Isser small, Manor big. Isser tough and gruff, Amos suave and urbane. Isser played no sport, while Manor was a swimmer, and played soccer, tennis, volleyball. Isser spoke Russian and Yiddish, Manor spoke seven languages. Isser was a devoted Labor Party member, Amos didn’t care about politics. Isser dressed modestly, Amos was fashionable, European-looking. But besides all that, he was intelligent and resourceful. Isser recruited him to the Shabak in 1949; barely four years later, he was appointed director by Ben-Gurion on Isser’s recommendation. He also was put in charge of the Israeli intelligence community’s secret relations with the CIA.

  On that rainy Friday, Manor threw himself into the sheaf of photocopied papers. He had no problems reading it—one of his seven languages was Russian. Reading the pages, he realized the huge importance of Khrushchev’s speech. He jumped into his car and rushed to Ben-Gurion’s house.

  “You must read this,” he told the prime minister. Ben-Gurion, who also knew Russian, read the speech. The following morning, a Sabbath, he summoned Manor urgently. “This is a historic document,” he said, “and it all but proves that in the future Russia will become a democratic nation.”

  Isser got the speech on April 15, and right away saw that it could be a bonanza for Israel. In it was the means to upgrade the Mossad’s ties with the CIA, first established in 1947. In 1951, when visiting the United States, Ben-Gurion had called on General Walter Bedell Smith, whom he had met in Europe at the end of World War II. Bedell Smith was the director of the CIA (and about to be replaced by Allen Dulles, an OSS veteran and brother of a future secretary of state). Bedell Smith agreed, hesitantly, to establish limited cooperation between the CIA and the Mossad. The main element of such cooperation was the debriefing by the Israelis of Soviet and Eastern bloc emigrants. Many were engineers, technicians, and even army officers who had worked in Soviet or Warsaw Pact installations and were able to supply detailed information about the capacities of the Communist bloc’s armies. This information was regularly conveyed and it impressed the Americans; the CIA appointed as liaison with Israel a legendary figure—James Jesus Angleton, the head of CIA counterintelligence. Angleton visited Israel and came to know the heads of its services. He established a friendly rapport with Amos Manor and even spent a few nights in his tiny two-room apartment over bottles of scotch.

  But this time Isser and Amos offered far more than emigrants’ debriefings. They decided to hand over Khruschev’s speech to the Americans—not via the CIA man in Tel Aviv, but directly, in Washington. Manor dispatched a copy of the speech with a special courier to Izzi Dorot, the Mossad representative in the United States, who rushed to Langley and handed it to Angleton. On April 17, Angleton brought the speech to Allen Dulles, and later that day it was on President Eisenhower’s desk.

  The American intelligence experts were stunned. Israel’s tiny spy services had obtained what the giant, sophisticated services of the United States, Britain, and France couldn’t get. Skeptical, CIA senior staff had the document examined by experts, who unanimously concluded it was genuine. Based on that, the CIA leaked it to the New York Times, which published it on its front page on June 5, 1956. Its publication caused an earthquake of sorts in the Communist world, and prompted millions to turn their backs on the Soviet Union. Some historians hold that the spontaneous uprisings against the Soviets in Poland and Hungary, in the fall of 1956, were motivated by Khrushchev’s revelations.

  The intelligence coup led to a major breakthrough in the Mossad’s relations with its American counterpart, and the modest brochure that sweet Lucia had shown to her handsome Victor had surrounded the Israeli Mossad with a legendary aura.

  Back in Warsaw, no one suspected Victor Grayevski of having smuggled Khrushchev’s speech to the United States. In January 1957, Victor emigrated to Israel. Grateful Amos Manor helped him get a job in the East European Department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Shortly afterward, he was also hired as an editor and reporter in the Polish section of Kol Israel, the state-owned radio network.

  But soon he also got a third job. Shortly after coming to Israel, he’d met a few Soviet diplomats at an ulpan, a special school where immigrants and foreigners were taught the Hebrew language. One of the Russian diplomats happened to meet him in a foreign ministry’s hallway, and was impressed by the important position held by this new immigrant. Soon afterward, a KGB agent popped up “by chance” at Grayevski’s side on a Tel Aviv street. He conversed with Grayevski and reminded him of his past in Poland, as an anti-Nazi and a Communist. Then he made him an offer: become a KGB agent in Israel. Grayevski promised to think about it, then made a beeline for Mossad headquarters. “What should I do?” he asked.

  The Mossad people were delighted. “Wonderful,” they said, “go ahead and accept!” They would turn Grayevski into a double agent who would feed the Russians false information.

  So began a new and long career for Victor. For many years he supplied the Russians with information concocted and doctored by the Mossad. His KGB handlers would meet him in the forests around Jerusalem and Ramleh, in Russian churches and monasteries in Jaffa, Jerusalem, and Tiberias, during “chance” encounters in crowded restaurants and at diplomatic receptions. Not once, in the fourteen years that Grayevski spent as a double agent, did the Soviets suspect that he was the one using them. They complimented him over and over for the excellent materials that he provided; in KGB headquarters in Moscow, rumor had it that the Soviet Union had an agent embedded deep in Israeli governing circles.

  Through all those years, the Soviets trusted Grayevski and never quest
ioned his credibility. The exception was in 1967, when they ignored him and his conclusions; ironically, this was the only time when he delivered fully accurate information. During the “waiting period” in 1967 before the Six-Day War, Egypt’s president, Gamal Abdel Nasser, erroneously believed that Israel intended to attack Syria in May. So he massed his troops in Sinai, expelled the UN peacekeepers, closed the Red Sea straits to Israeli ships, and threatened Israel with annihilation. Israel had had no intention to attack and was eager to prevent a war with Egypt. Prime Minister Eshkol then asked the Mossad to inform the Soviets that if Egypt didn’t cancel its aggressive measures, Israel would have to go to war; he hoped that the Soviet Union, which had a huge influence on Egypt, would stop Nasser. Grayevski conveyed to the KGB a document detailing Israel’s true intentions. But the USSR made a wrong assessment of the situation; Moscow ignored Grayevski’s report and encouraged Nasser in his belligerence.

  The result was that Israel, in a preemptive attack, destroyed the armies of Egypt, Syria, and Jordan and conquered much of their territory. And the Soviet Union, too, was a great loser; its weapons were proved inferior, it reneged on its promises and failed to support its badly beaten allies.

  Nevertheless, the long-lasting affair between Grayevski and the KGB reached its peak that year. He was summoned to a meeting with his Soviet handler in a forest in central Israel. The KGB agent solemnly informed him that the Soviet government wanted to thank him for his devoted services and had decided to award him its highest distinction, the Lenin Medal!

  The Russian apologized for not being able to pin the medal on Grayevski’s lapel in Israel, but assured him that the medal was being kept for him in Moscow, and he would receive it whenever he got there. Grayevski preferred to stay in Israel.

  And in 1971 he retired from the spy game.

  But he was not forgotten. In 2007, he was invited to Shabak headquarters, where he was welcomed by a select group that included present and past directors of Shabak and Mossad, as well as many of his friends, colleagues, and relatives. The Shabak director at the time, Yuval Diskin, presented him with a prestigious award for his distinguished service—and Grayevski became the only secret agent to be decorated twice: by his own country, which he had served with devotion all his life, and by his country’s foe, whom he had misled and deceived, regardless of the risks.

  A reporter called him “the man who began the end of the Soviet Empire,” but Grayevski didn’t feel that way. “I am not a hero, and I didn’t make history,” he said. “The one who made history was Khrushchev. I just met history for a couple of hours, and then our ways parted.”

  He died at the age of eighty-one. And somewhere in the Kremlin, in a little box padded with red velvet, his medal, engraved with the profile of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, perhaps still awaits him.

  Chapter Six

  “Bring Eichmann Dead or Alive!”

  And what’s your name?” the girl asked.

  “Nicolas,” the smiling suitor said. “But all my friends call me Nick. Nick Eichmann.”

  THE BLIND JEW’S DAUGHTER

  In the late fall of 1957, Isser Harel received a strange message from Frankfurt, Germany. It said that Dr. Fritz Bauer, attorney general of Hesse, requests to convey some secret information to the Mossad. Isser knew of Bauer, a much-respected figure in Germany. A tall, charismatic man with a pugnacious jaw, he was known for aggressively pursuing Nazi criminals. His leonine mane of white hair gave him a vague resemblance to David Ben-Gurion. Bauer, too, was Jewish, and a born fighter. In 1933, with Hitler’s ascension to power, he was thrown into a concentration camp. But the horrid experience did not break his spirit. He later escaped to Denmark and then to Sweden. At the end of the war he decided to devote his life to the pursuit and punishment of Nazi criminals. And he was outspoken about his disappointment with West Germany’s authorities, who did little to uproot Nazism.

  In November 1957, Isser sent Shaul Darom, an Israeli security officer, to meet with Bauer. He arrived in Frankfurt and had a long conversation with the attorney general. A few days later, Darom walked into Isser’s office in Tel Aviv. “Dr. Bauer told me,” Darom said, “that Eichmann is alive, and he is hiding in Argentina.”

  Isser started. Like millions of Jews, he knew SS Colonel Adolf Eichmann as the embodiment of Nazi horror. The Obersturmbannführer Eichmann had personally directed “the final solution”—the systematic annihilation of European Jewry. He had devoted his life to the meticulous massacre of 6 million Jews. He had disappeared after the war, and nobody knew where he was; he was said to be living in Syria, Egypt, Kuwait, South America . . .

  Darom recounted in detail his conversation with Bauer. A few months earlier, Bauer had received a letter from Argentina, sent by a German émigré, half-Jewish, who had suffered under the Nazis during the war. He had read newspaper reports about Bauer’s relentless pursuit of Nazi criminals and knew that on top of that list of wanted men was Adolf Eichmann. When his pretty daughter, Sylvia, told him she was dating a young man, Nick Eichmann, he was stunned. He thought that young Nick must be related to the missing mass murderer. He wrote to Bauer that he could lead his agents to Eichmann’s hideout; Eichmann was said to live in Buenos Aires under a false identity.

  Bauer already knew that Eichmann had escaped from Germany after the war. His wife, Vera, and his three sons had stayed on in Austria, but a few years later they vanished. Eventually, Bauer found out that they had emigrated to Argentina, where Vera had remarried. Bauer was convinced that she had joined Eichmann and her second marriage was fictitious. “Her second husband” had to be Eichmann himself, who had been waiting for her.

  Bauer feared that if he asked the German government to request Eichmann’s extradition from Argentina, he’d lose him. He didn’t trust the German judicial branch, still full of former Nazis. He also suspected a few employees at the Buenos Aires German embassy. Bauer feared that even before an official extradition demand was handed to the Argentineans, somebody at the embassy or in Germany would warn Eichmann and he’d vanish again.

  Bauer spoke frankly with Shaul Darom. He wanted the Mossad to find out if this man in Buenos Aires was indeed Eichmann; and, if so, Israel should demand his extradition or launch a covert operation and abduct Eichmann.

  “I am speaking to you after many days and nights of soul-searching,” Bauer admitted. “Only one man in Germany knows about my decision to give you this information, minister-president of Hesse Georg August Zinn (a Social-Democrat and a future president of Germany’s federal council, the Bundesrat).”

  Shaul Darom, now back in Israel, put on Isser’s desk a single sheet of paper, revealing Eichmann’s hideout. Isser’s eyes focused on one sentence: “4261 Calle Chacabuco, Olivos, Buenos Aires.”

  In early January 1958, a young man strolled down Calle Chacabuco. This was Emmanuel (Emma) Talmor, a member of Mossad special operations. Isser had sent him to check the accuracy of Bauer’s message. Emma didn’t like what he saw. Olivos was a poor neighborhood, inhabited mostly by laborers. On both sides of the unpaved Calle Chacabuco stood decrepit shacks, including number 4261. In its tiny courtyard Talmor noticed a fat, shabby woman.

  “I don’t believe that that could be Eichmann’s house,” Talmor said to Isser in his Tel Aviv office a few days later. “I’m certain that Eichmann transferred a ton of money to Argentina, like all the Nazi big shots, who prepared their escapes long before the Reich fell. I can’t believe he lives in such a hovel and such a slum. Nor can that fat woman in the courtyard be Vera Eichmann.”

  Talmor’s objections didn’t convince the ramsad. Isser wanted to continue investigating, but he needed to contact Bauer’s source. He got in touch with Bauer, who immediately revealed the name and address of his informant: Lothar Hermann. He had now moved to another town, Coronel Suarez, about three hundred miles from Buenos Aires. Bauer sent Isser a letter of introduction, asking Hermann to do everything to assist the bearer of the letter.

  And in February 1958, an overseas visitor cam
e to Coronel Suarez—Efraim Hoffstetter, head of investigation of the Tel Aviv police; he happened to be in Argentina for an Interpol conference and agreed to cooperate with Isser. But, being cautious, when he knocked on the door at Libertad Avenue, he introduced himself as a German, Karl Huppert. In the living room he saw a blind man, plainly dressed, his hands resting on a massive wooden table. As Hoffstetter walked in, the blind man heard his footsteps and turned toward him, groping for his hand. This was Lothar Hermann.

  “I am a friend of Fritz Bauer,” Hoffstetter said. He hinted that he was connected with Germany’s secret service.

  Hermann told him he was Jewish and had been a policeman until the Nazis took power. His parents had been murdered and he had been sent to Dachau, where he had lost his sight; he later emigrated to Argentina with his German wife. When he stumbled upon the name of Eichmann, he had contacted Bauer. His only motive, he claimed, was to help punish the Nazi criminals who had massacred his family.

  “You see,” he said, touching the arm of his lovely daughter, Sylvia, who had entered. “She is the one who found Eichmann for you.”

  The girl blushed and hesitantly told Hoffstetter her story.

  Until a year and a half ago, she said, her family had lived in the Olivos neighborhood in Buenos Aires. There she’d met Nick Eichmann, a nice young man with whom she had had a few dates. She didn’t tell him that she was of Jewish origin, since the Hermanns were known as an Aryan family. But Nick didn’t mince his words. He had once remarked to her that the Germans should have finished the job and annihilated all the Jews. And on another occasion he mentioned that his father had served as an officer in the Wehrmacht during World War II and had fulfilled his duty to the Fatherland.