The old woman was speechless. Finally, she managed, “In Syria? How? Did he cross the border by mistake?” When Maurice explained to her what Elie was doing in Damascus, the poor woman collapsed.
Nadia stood among her three children, astounded. Even though she had suspected all along that her husband didn’t reveal everything to her, she never had guessed what his real line of work was. Elie’s colleagues tried to calm her down. “You’re flying to Paris right away,” one of them told her. “We shall hire the best lawyers. We’ll do everything possible to save him.” Meir Amit personally took charge of the efforts to rescue Cohen.
On January 31, one of France’s greatest lawyers, Jacques Mercier, came to Damascus. Officially, he had been hired by the Cohen family; actually, it was the State of Israel that covered his expenses and his fees. He came to Syria on a mission impossible. “From my first day in Damascus,” he said later, “I realized that Elie Cohen’s fate was sealed. He would hang. Now all I could do was try to gain time and work out a deal that could save his life.”
At first Mercier tried to prevent a trial. He met with the regime’s leaders and asked to be allowed to see Cohen in order to make him sign Mercier’s appointment as his attorney.
His demand was flatly rejected.
Yet Mercier found out very soon that he had some allies in certain governing circles who treated the world public opinion with respect. They wanted a trial where the rights of the accused would be protected. They were supported—for a totally different reason—by the “hawks” in the military establishment, sworn enemies of Hafez, who wanted to expose the president’s close ties with Tabet in open court. Such a trial, they thought, would make public the corruption of the regime and undermine its position.
But this approach was bitterly opposed by another group—all those who had maintained close ties with Tabet. They knew that a public trial could send them to the gallows as well. That faction had one single goal: to prevent a public trial at all costs and eliminate Cohen as soon as possible.
The trial finally took place before a special military court, behind closed doors, in front of an empty room; only some portions, duly selected, were broadcast on the state television. There were no prosecuting and no defending attorneys. When Elie Cohen asked the court for a defense attorney, the presiding judge exploded: “You don’t need a defender. All the corrupt press is on your side, and all the enemies of the revolution are your defenders.” The presiding judge assumed the functions of interrogator, prosecutor, and judge. But the worst of it was that the presiding judge was Brigadier General Salah Dali, formerly Tabet’s good friend. Another close, even intimate, friend of Tabet, Colonel Salim Hatum, was among the judges. In order to disprove any rumors of his ties with Cohen, he asked him: “Do you know Salim Hatum?” And the accused, like an actor who follows a detailed script, turned to the empty courtroom, then looked Hatum in the eye, and answered: “No, I don’t see him in this room.”
That portion was shown on television. “All of Damascus was laughing at this episode,” Mercier said. “That was not a trial. That was a tragicomedy, a circus.”
The television cameras showed Elie Cohen’s codefendants: El-Ard, Al-Din, Seif, a few prostitutes. But who were the other women? Senior officers’ wives? “Secretaries”? Friends of Tabet and of the Ba’ath leaders? And what were the secrets that Cohen had communicated to his Israeli handlers? He was accused of espionage, but throughout the trial not one word was said about the things he did and the contents of his transmissions. The only thing the cameras couldn’t hide was the nervous tremor of a muscle in Cohen’s left cheek, and a repeated sharp tilting of his head. These were results of his torture by electrodes attached to his body and head.
Israel followed the trial in silence. Every evening, Elie’s family met by the television set the Mossad had loaned them. The children, Nadia, the brothers, were softly crying at the sight of Elie’s face on the screen. His mother, on an impulse, kissed the screen and pressed to Elie’s face the small Star of David she was wearing on a chain. Sophie called: “This is my daddy! He is a hero!” Nadia wept in silence.
In Damascus, Mercier would wake up in the middle of the night, bathed in cold sweat and haunted by horrible nightmares. His inutility depressed him deeply. On March 31, the military court published its verdict: Elie Cohen, Majeed Sheikh El-Ard, and Lieutenant Zaher Al-Din were sentenced to death.
Mercier launched a new effort. In April and May of 1965, he visited Damascus three times. He brought substantial offers from Israel. The first one was a deal: Israel was ready to deliver to Syria medicines and heavy agricultural equipment, estimated worth millions of dollars, for the life of Cohen. The Syrians rejected the offer. Israel then made another offer: to send back to Syria the eleven Syrian spies that had been captured and jailed in Israel. The Syrians rejected that offer, too, but hinted that a presidential pardon wasn’t out of the question.
On May 1, El-Ard’s sentence was commuted to life in prison. On May 8, Elie Cohen’s sentence was officially published. The Mossad braced for a last effort. In Paris, Nadia Cohen presented an appeal for clemency at the Syrian embassy. Other appeals came from all over the world. They were signed by world-famous figures like Pope Paul VI and British philosopher Bertrand Russell; statesmen like France’s Edgar Faure and Antoine Pinay, Belgium’s Queen Mother Elisabeth and politician Camille Huysmans, and Canadian John Diefenbaker; Italian cardinals and ministers; twenty-two members of British Parliament; the Human Rights League; the International Red Cross . . . If Elie had heard about them, he would have remembered the similar appeals that tried in vain to save his friends’ lives in Cairo eleven years before.
On May 18, in the middle of the night, Elie Cohen was awakened by his jailers. They dressed him in a long white gown and took him to the Damascus marketplace. They let him write a letter to his family and exchange a few words with the Damascus rabbi, Nissim Andabo. Syrian soldiers then fastened to his chest a huge poster where his sentence was written in large Arabic letters, the television and newspaper cameras focused on the lone man who went up the stairs to the gallows between two rows of armed soldiers.
The hangman was waiting, and quickly fastened the noose around Elie’s neck. He made the condemned man stand on a low stool.
Elie faced the crowd, silent, resigned, but not defeated. The crowd held its breath. They distinctly heard the thump when the stool was pulled out from under his feet; men and women yelled with delight watching the death throes of the Israeli spy.
Large crowds of Damascenes, mysteriously awakened in the wee hours, passed by the gallows, for the next six hours, to view the body. In Israel, the heavy veil of silence was removed in a single moment. In a few hours, Elie Cohen became a national hero. Hundreds of thousands participated in his family’s grief. Schools, streets, and parks were named after him. Articles and books described his feats. Nadia did not marry again.
Even today, forty-six years after Elie Cohen’s death, Syria refuses to return his body for burial in Israel. Elie Cohen is considered one of the Mossad heroes. But there are many who point an accusing finger at the Mossad. His family and various writers contend that the Mossad used Elie with extreme recklessness by having him transmit his reports daily, sometimes twice a day; the Mossad even ordered Elie to transmit regularly the debates of the Syrian parliament, even though their importance was almost nil. A pointless task that made Elie run unnecessary risks.
Elie Cohen was a great spy; and his end was the end of all great spies.
Their overconfidence, and the exaggerated demands of their handlers, led them to their deaths.
Chapter Ten
“I Want a MiG-21!”
Meir Amit, Isser Harel’s successor, was a special kind of man. He was firm, decisive, sometimes blunt and querulous, but he was also warm, charming, a soldiers’ soldier and a man of many friends. Moshe Dayan told us once: “He was the only friend I ever had.”
Meir Amit’s life story symbolized the change in the Mossad’s leade
rship. Isser Harel was born in Russia, and belonged to the pioneering generation, while Meir Amit, a Sabra (born in Israel), was the first of a long line of Israeli generals; he had fought in Israel’s wars and joined the Mossad after many years in uniform. Isser’s generation was unobtrusive, closemouthed, shrouded in a shadow of anonymity, conspiracy, and concealment. Meir Amit was an army man, with lots of friends and colleagues who knew what he was doing. Life in the shadows was not for him. And while Little Isser had charisma and mysteriousness on his side, Amit and his successors had the brutal directness and authority that rank and uniform gave them.
Born in Tiberias, raised in Jerusalem, and, finally, a member of kibbutz Alonim, Meir had spent most of his life in uniform. A member of the Haganah since the age of sixteen, a battalion commander when the IDF was created, he had been wounded in Israel’s Independence War, and had later made a brilliant army career. Commander of the elite Golani Brigade, chief of operations during the Sinai campaign, chief of the Southern, then the Central Command, he was certainly on his way to becoming chief of staff, but an ill-fated parachute jump immobilized him for a year in a hospital bed. Partly recovered, after a long convalescence and studies at Columbia University, he was appointed chief of Aman. And there Ben-Gurion found him that dramatic afternoon in April 1963, when he needed a replacement for Little Isser.
Meir’s first steps in the Mossad were not easy. Many of Isser Harel’s colleagues, like Yaacov Caroz, couldn’t stand his abrupt manners and his self-confidence. Some resigned right away, others took their time. Under Amit’s leadership, a change of the guard began. But the internal turmoil against the new ramsad was nothing compared to what Little Isser did to him.
In the late spring of 1963, Ben-Gurion resigned from office and was replaced as prime minister and minister of defense by his close aide, Levi Eshkol. Eshkol launched several initiatives that infuriated his predecessor. One of them was appointing Little Isser as his adviser on matters of intelligence. Little Isser was bitter and disappointed after his departure from the Mossad. And when he heard that Meir Amit had done the Moroccans an unusual favor, he went straight for the jugular.
Meir Amit’s Mossad had established very close relations with the Moroccan kingdom.
The Moroccan rapprochement had started during Isser’s tenure. The first connections with the Moroccans had been made by Yaacov Caroz and Rafi Eitan. In the winter of 1963, Isser told Eitan, in the strictest confidence: “Hassan II, the king of Morocco, fears that Egypt’s president Nasser plots to assassinate him because of his pro-Western policy. Hassan wants the Mossad to take care of his personal security.”
The story seemed improbable. An Arab king turns to the Israeli secret service for help? The always practical Rafi Eitan and another agent, David Shomron, flew right away to Rabat, the Moroccan capital, with false passports; they were whisked through a secret entrance into the king’s palace. There they met the formidable General Oufkir, the king’s minister of interior, whose name alone made people tremble. He was known for his cruelty, used torture against the king’s enemies, and was responsible for the unexplained disappearances of many opponents of the regime. Nevertheless, he was the king’s most valued adviser on intelligence matters, and any agreement between Israel and Morocco needed his approval. He came to Eitan with his deputy, Colonel Dlimi.
Right there, Eitan and Oufkir reached an agreement: the Mossad and the Moroccan secret service would establish close ties and permanent offices in both countries; the Mossad would train the Moroccan secret services and Morocco would give the Mossad agents a foolproof cover throughout the world; a special body would be created for the shared gathering of intelligence; the Mossad would also train the special unit in charge of the king’s security. The agreement was sealed by a visit to the king; Eitan gauchely bowed and kissed his hand—and the Mossad got its first ally in the Arab world.
Two weeks later Oufkir was in Israel. The general, used to sumptuous palaces and posh hotels, spent his long visit in Eitan’s tiny three-room apartment in a modest Tel Aviv neighborhood. Eitan did manage to get Philip, the legendary Mossad chef, to cook for his Moroccan guest. Oufkir left and came again; the relations of the two services kept improving. In 1965 Oufkir asked Meir Amit for a special favor.
The major opposition leader and the king’s most dangerous enemy was a Moroccan called Mehdi Ben-Barka. After being accused of plotting against the king, he had been exiled, but kept directing subversive activities from his hideouts. Sentenced to death in absentia, he knew that his life was in danger; he operated with extreme caution and Oufkir’s men had failed to find him. Could the Mossad help?
Amit’s men helped indeed. Under a clever pretext, they established contact with Ben-Barka in Switzerland and convinced him to come to Paris for an important meeting. At the door of the famous Left Bank restaurant Brasserie Lipp, he was arrested by two French police officers, who—it turned out later—were on Oufkir’s payroll. Ben-Barka was delivered to Oufkir and vanished, but a witness testified that he had seen Oufkir stab him to death. Meir Amit himself informed Prime Minister Eshkol: “The man is dead.”
In France, Ben-Barka’s disappearance caused an unprecedented political scandal. President de Gaulle was beside himself with rage, and when he heard of Israel’s role in the abduction, he didn’t spare it in his fury. Isser Harel was stunned. How could the Mossad participate in such an affair? How could Amit play a role in such a criminal, immoral operation—and jeopardize Israel’s close alliance with France? He asked Eshkol to fire Amit immediately. Eshkol hesitated, but then appointed two boards of inquiry, which found no grounds for any measure against Amit. After all, Amit had lured Ben-Barka to Paris, but had not taken part in his abduction and assassination. Little Isser then resigned and demanded the immediate resignation of both Eshkol and Amit. He tried to launch a campaign in the press, but the military censorship strictly forbade any mention of the affair.
Isser kept doggedly fighting Amit, but the ramsad was already engaged in another operation that was utterly crucial to Israel’s defense: a secret alliance with the Kurds in Iraq.
“At the end of 1965,” Amit wrote in his memoirs, “our dream started to become a reality. The unbelievable happened. An official Israeli delegation settled in the camp of the Mullah Mustafa Barzani (the leader of the Kurdish rebels in Northern Iraq).”
The arrival of Mossad officers in Kurdistan was considered a tremendous victory for Israeli intelligence. For the first time a contact was established with one of the three components of the Iraqi nation—the Kurds, who were waging a stubborn, endless war against the Baghdad government. (The other two components were the Shiite and Sunni Muslims.) The rebels, led by Barzani, controlled a large area inside Iraq. If the Mossad succeeded in turning the Kurdish rebels into a strong military force, the Iraqi leaders would be compelled to focus their efforts on their internal problems and their capacity for fighting Israel would be diminished. The alliance with the Kurds could become a real boon for Israel.
The first two Mossad agents spent three months in Kurdistan. Barzani welcomed them in his inner circle, took them with him wherever he went, and revealed to them all his secrets. That first encounter laid the foundation for a close cooperation that was to last for many years. Barzani and the Kurdish military chiefs visited Israel; Meir Amit and his aides came to Kurdistan; Israel supplied the Kurds with weapons and defended their interests in international forums.
Beni Ze’evi, the senior Israeli agent who first visited Kurdistan, had left his wife, Galila, in London; she was expecting a child. Beni’s son, Nadav, was born while his father followed Barzani in the jagged mountains of Kurdistan. A coded telegram reached Ze’evi. It was signed by “Rimon”—Meir Amit’s code name—and read: “The mother and child are in excellent health. Mazal tov!”
When Barzani heard of the baby’s birth, he took four stones and marked a lot with them. “This is my gift to your son,” he said to Ze’evi. “When he grows up, he can come to our country and claim his piece of
land.”
And while his relations with the Kurds were developing, Meir Amit started planning another great Mossad operation, code-named “Yahalom” (Diamond), the operation he was perhaps most proud of.
During the year preceding Amit’s death, we met him several times in his Ramat-Gan home. “The story started in one of my meetings with General Ezer Weizman, who was then chief of the air force,” he began. “We used to have breakfast together every two or three weeks. In one of these meetings, I asked Ezer what I could do for him as ramsad. He said right away: ‘Meir, I want a MiG-21.’ ”
“I told him: ‘Have you gone mad? There is not even one such plane in the Western world.’ ” The MiG-21 was the most sophisticated Soviet fighter plane at that time; the Russians supplied many of those aircraft to the Arab states.
But Ezer stood his ground: “We need a MiG-21, and you should not spare any effort in getting us one.”
Amit decided to entrust the operation to Rehavia Vardi, a veteran operations officer who had already tried in the past to get a MiG-21 in Egypt or Syria. “We spent many months working on this operation,” Vardi said years later. “Our main problem was how to transform the idea into an operation.”
Vardi sent out the feelers throughout the Arab world. After long weeks, he got a report from Yaacov Nimrodi, Israel’s military attaché in Iran. Nimrodi wrote about an Iraqi Jew, Yossef Shemesh, who claimed he knew a pilot that could bring a MiG-21 to Israel. Shemesh, single, smart, a womanizer and a bon vivant, had an uncanny ability to befriend people and make them trust him. “He was a smooth operator and could be very persuasive,” Nimrodi said. “He recruited the pilot in the most professional fashion. He worked on him for a year. Only he could do that, nobody else.” Nimrodi decided to test Shemesh. He sent him to perform a few secondary espionage operations. Shemesh passed the test with flying colors, obtaining excellent intelligence. Then Nimrodi gave him the green light to launch his operation.
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