In the following years, Marwan made a series of fabulous business deals. He invested his money well, and soon bought a part of the Chelsea Football Club, while competing with Mohamed Al-Fayed, the father of Princess Diana’s boyfriend Dodi, for the purchase of the upscale Harrods department store in London. He stuck to his hedonistic lifestyle, was always well dressed, and a string of love affairs trailed in his wake. Some CIA agents, who came to see him once in his New York hotel, had to wait outside until his current paramour dressed and cleared out of his suite.
In the eighties, Marwan’s name was linked to several arms-running deals for Khaddafi’s regime in Libya and the terrorists in Lebanon. An American journalist reported that he invited a CIA agent to his home, led him to the terrace, and pointed to a shiny Rolls-Royce parked outside. “This is a present from Khaddafi,” he said.
The story about Marwan’s terrorist connection seems to be pure fabrication. Marwan wouldn’t have dealt with terrorists and risked a confrontation with the Mossad that could expose his past as an Israeli agent, sentencing him to certain death. If Marwan had delved into shady deals with Libya or the terrorists, it could have been only in full cooperation with the Mossad.
But years passed by, and in 2002, a book titled A History of Israel came out in London. The book was written by the Israeli scholar Ahron Bregman, and mentioned the spy who had warned Israel of the forthcoming Yom Kippur War. Bregman called the spy “the son-in-law.” This was a hint that the spy was close to an important personality; and the Angel was Nasser’s son-in-law. Bregman wrote that the man had been a double agent, who provided Israel with false information.
The book did not reveal Marwan’s name, but it did rouse his anger. He reacted in an interview in the Egyptian Al-Ahram newspaper, in which he mocked Bregman’s research and called it “a stupid detective story.”
Bregman, offended, decided to defend his honor, and in an interview with Al-Ahram openly stated that “the son-in-law” was indeed Ashraf Marwan. This was a grave accusation, but it lacked any proof. It did not have any impact—till the day when Eli Zeira declared that the double agent who “fooled” Israel was, indeed, Ashraf Marwan.
Such a thing had never happened in Israel before. The identity of former spies was not revealed, in many cases, even after their death. And Ashraf Marwan was alive, vulnerable, an easy prey for the killers of the Egyptian Mukhabarat. Zvi Zamir came back from thirty years of retirement and tried to establish contact with Marwan, but the Angel refused to speak with him. “He didn’t want to,” Zamir dolefully said, “because he felt I didn’t protect him. I did all I could to protect him, but I did not succeed.”
Following Zeira’s revelations, Zamir broke his self-imposed silence and harshly attacked the former Aman chief. He accused him of revealing state secrets. Zeira hit back, claiming that the former ramsad was protecting a man who was nothing but a double agent.
Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman, who watched a live television broadcast of an official ceremony in Egypt, saw President Hosni Mubarak warmly shaking the hand of Marwan, who accompanied him in laying a wreath on Nasser’s tomb. After the broadcast, Bergman wrote that Marwan had been a double agent. As for President Mubarak, he flew to the succor of Marwan and firmly rejected the rumors of his being an Israeli spy.
Israel was engulfed in a flood of accusations and counteraccusations. The Mossad and Aman established two boards of inquiry that reached the same conclusion: Marwan was not a double agent and did not cause any harm to Israel. Zeira did not give up and sued Zamir in a court of law. The former justice Theodore Or, who had been appointed arbitrator by the court, firmly ruled that Zamir’s version was the true one.
Zeira and his supporters apparently chose to ignore the fact that Marwan had been one of the leading figures of the Egyptian government, the son-in-law of Nasser and close adviser of Sadat. The leaders of Egypt did not want to admit that one of their own had been a traitor and a Zionist spy. Such an admission would have shocked the Egyptian public opinion and shaken the Egyptians’ trust in their leaders. So they chose a different approach: to laud and praise Marwan in public, but seal his fate in secret.
In early June 2007, Justice Or published his findings. On June 12, an Israeli court officially confirmed Zamir’s account on Marwan’s role in the service of the Mossad. Two weeks later, on June 27, Marwan’s body was found on a sidewalk, under his terrace.
Israeli observers accused the Egyptian secret service of the murder. Many accused Zeira, claiming that by his reckless behavior he had caused Marwan’s death. On the other hand, in a hardly surprising statement, Marwan’s widow accused the Mossad of murdering her husband. Eyewitnesses said that they had seen men with Middle Eastern features standing with Marwan on his terrace, minutes before his death.
The Scotland Yard closed and reopened the case, and finally stated that it was unable to find the perpetrators. The Angel’s murderers still remain free.
Chapter Fifteen
A Honey Trap for the Atom Spy
Except for carrying a sign that read I AM A SPY, Mordechai Vanunu seemed to have done all he could to expose his secret life.
He was a technician at the Dimona atomic reactor, the most secret and secure installation in Israel. The foreign press, as well as many governments, was convinced that Israel was building nuclear weapons in that top-secret facility. Anybody who applied for a job at Dimona had to go through a long, rigorous process of filling out forms, submitting to interrogations, undergoing background checks by the Shabak and other security specialists, until—at the end of the exhausting procedure—they were cleared to enter the secret compound. The intensive surveillance and close scrutiny continued throughout one’s employment at Dimona.
Vanunu applied for a job at Dimona after he saw an ad in a daily newspaper. He filled out a form at the “nuclear research facility” office in nearby Beersheba, was subjected to a routine security investigation, and got the job without any problems.
How was this possible? He was a left-wing radical, his friends were Arab members of the Communist, anti-Zionist Rakah Party; he participated in protests at their side, was photographed in extreme pro-Palestinian rallies, carried signs, made speeches, and gave interviews to the media.
He also hosted Rakah militants in his small Beersheba apartment, and asked to join their university cell, exclusively composed of young Arab radicals, openly hostile to the State of Israel. In Ben-Gurion University, where he was registered as a student, he was known for his extreme views.
He was a gifted but unstable young man. Before he became a Rakah supporter, he had been a right-wing extremist and an admirer of the racist Rabbi Kahane. He later supported the extreme right-wing party Hatechiya (Revival), voted for the Likud, and finally landed in the extreme left. He claimed that the controversial 1982 Lebanon War had made him change his political opinions. A loner, with almost no friends, he firmly believed that he was discriminated against because of his Moroccan origins. That conviction grew when he failed the admission tests for the Air Force Academy, and was posted to the Engineer Corps. After his discharge from the IDF, he started engineering studies in Tel Aviv, changed his mind and moved to Beersheba, where he started studying economics, changed his mind again and switched to philosophy. He became a vegetarian, then a vegan.
His classmates were impressed by his lust for money. He boasted that he did not have to work, just to invest smartly in the stock market. In his diary, he gave the stock market “top priority,” before philosophy and English. He drove a red Audi, made some money as a nude model, and, at a student party, pulled down his drawers to win a prize.
His way of life was his own business, of course, but his political activity as a Rakah sympathizer and a Palestinian supporter should have sounded a thousand alarms. Instead, he was called to a meeting with Shabak officials, who told him to stop these activities and asked him to sign a document stating that he had been warned. He did not sign and did not stop.
The Shabak described Vanunu’s activ
ities in a routine report to the director of security in the Ministry of Defense. The director conveyed the report to the director of security at the Dimona reactor, who filed it in one of his folders, and that was it. No action was taken, and no surveillance of Vanunu was initiated. A remarkable oversight. A whole chain of people—Shabak officials at local and national levels and the directors of security at the ministry and Dimona—had failed to do their duty.
Vanunu continued his political activities and was not bothered anymore.
He was an “operator” at Institute 2, the most secret department in the Dimona compound. Out of the 2,700 employees at Dimona, only 150 were allowed entrance into Institute 2. Vanunu had two badges: 9567-8 for entering the Dimona facility, and 320 for entering Institute 2.
From the outside, the institute looked like a modest two-story building that could be a storage facility or a marginal utility unit. But people with inquisitive minds would notice an elevator cabin on the flat roof, and wonder why a two-story house needed an elevator. The key to this mystery was the real secret of Institute 2: the elevator was needed to go not up but down, to the six underground floors that were artfully concealed. Vanunu was in charge of the night shift and knew the building well. The first floor was divided between several offices and a cafeteria. A few gates on the ground floor were used for the transfer of uranium rods used in the reactor; on the same floor were some more offices and some assembly labs. On the first underground floor were pipes and valves. On the second, the central control room and a sort of terrace, called “Golda’s balcony.” Important visitors with maximum clearance could watch the production hall beneath from that balcony. On underground floor three, technicians worked on the uranium rods that were lowered from above. On level four was a large underground space, rising to the height of three floors for the production plant and the separation facility, where the plutonium produced in the reactor was removed from the uranium rods. The fifth floor housed the metallurgic department and the lab where the components of the bombs were produced; and on the sixth underground floor, chemical waste was loaded into special containers.
Vanunu knew that during the normal operation of the nuclear reactor, the chain reaction produced plutonium that accumulated on the uranium rods. After being “shaved” from the rods, it was used on levels four and five, and in the assembly of Israel’s atomic weapons.
One day, for no particular reason, Vanunu took a camera to Institute 2. He brought it in his bag, stuck among the books that he would take later to class at Ben-Gurion University. If he was asked by the security screeners why he had brought a camera to Dimona, he intended to say that he had taken it to the beach and forgotten it in his bag. But nobody checked his bag, nobody asked questions, and he stored the camera in his personal locker. During the lunch and evening breaks, when nobody was in the building, Vanunu would wander in the underground floors; photograph the labs, the equipment, and the halls; draw detailed sketches; enter the empty offices; and peruse documents in open safes. Nobody saw him and nobody suspected him. The security guards seemed to have evaporated into thin air. Vanunu’s superiors had no idea about his dangerous hobby, and evaluated him as a quiet, serious, and diligent technician.
At the end of 1985, Vanunu was fired after nine years in Dimona. His dismissal was not connected to his political activities but was part of budgetary cuts at Dimona. He was let go like many others. He received a 150 percent severance package and eight months’ wages as an “adaptation grant.” Yet, again, he was angry and frustrated. He decided to go abroad for a long trip—and perhaps never return, if he could find a new home, like 12 million Jews who lived outside Israel. He sold his apartment and his car and liquidated his bank accounts.
The thirty-one-year-old Vanunu shouldered his backpack and set off on his trip. He had gone on long trips before—once to Europe and once to the United States. Now he headed for the Far East. In his bag he carried the two films he had shot at Dimona.
His first stop was Greece, then Russia, Thailand, and Nepal. In Kathmandu, he met an Israeli girl and courted her bashfully. He introduced himself as “Mordy” and openly admitted that he was a left-wing pacifist, and perhaps he would not return to Israel. He visited a Buddhist temple and toyed with the idea of becoming a Buddhist himself.
After Kathmandu, Vanunu traveled the Far East and finally landed in Australia. For a few months, he worked at odd jobs in Sydney, but most of the time he was lonely and miserable. One evening, he strolled through one of the most disreputable neighborhoods of the city, a haven for prostitutes, petty thieves, and drug dealers. From the darkness, in front of him, emerged the spire of the St. George church, a known refuge of tormented souls—desperate people, criminals, homeless wanderers, poor and oppressed men and women. He walked in and met the Anglican priest John McKnight. The good priest immediately realized that Vanunu was looking for a home and a family. He established a close and warm contact with his shy, insecure guest. In the next weeks, the two of them had long and sincere conversations, and finally—on August 17, 1986—Vanunu was baptized Christian, and chose a new name: John Crossman.
It was a huge transition for an observant Jew, born in Marrakesh, who had spent his youth in the Talmudic schools and yeshivas of Beersheba. True, his religious zeal had waned years ago, but his conversion was more a product of his instability and confusion than of his disappointment with Judaism. If he had not walked into St. George church and met Father John, he might have converted to Buddhism or some other religion. But by turning his back on Judaism, he also turned his back on Israel. His aversion to his country gradually became one of the major motives for his future actions.
During a social meeting at the church, Vanunu told his new friends about his work in Israel, described the Dimona reactor, and offered to make a slide show with the photographs he had taken. They gazed at him vacantly; they had no idea what he was talking about. But there was one man in his audience who became intrigued by his words: Oscar Guerrero, a Colombian wanderer and an occasional journalist. The two of them had painted the church fence, and had lived in the same apartment for a while. Guerrero realized the importance of the photos and fired up Vanunu’s imagination with promises of fortune and glory.
Vanunu badly wanted money, but he also thought he could use the promised glory to promote peace between Jews and Arabs. This was not his original plan: peacemaking had not been the reason why he left Israel and carried the two rolls of film around the world for many months. But making peace and saving the world from Israel’s atomic bomb became an allegedly noble motive for his actions. His private war against the Israeli nuclear project gained steam as the days went by, and turned into a major reason for publishing the Dimona photographs. But Vanunu also understood that if he did so, it would be his end as an Israeli. He would never be able to return to Israel, where he would be branded as a traitor and enemy of the state.
Still, the temptation was great. Vanunu and Guerrero went together to a photo lab in Sydney. They developed the pictures he took of Institute 2, and tried to peddle them to the local offices of American magazines and Australian television stations, but in vain. They were regarded as either oddballs or swindlers trying to make an easy dollar. Nobody believed that the shy, ascetic young man held Israel’s most guarded secret in his hands.
Finally Guerrero flew to Spain and England, and this time he struck gold. The editors of the London Sunday Times, who heard his story, realized the dramatic potential of an article on Israel’s nuclear reactor, based on exclusive photographs and drawings. Yet they had to be extremely cautious. Not long ago they had been badly hurt by buying “Hitler’s diaries,” which turned out to be a second-rate hoax. Therefore, they asked to thoroughly examine the material that Guerrero had brought over.
In the meantime, an official of Australian television got in touch with the Israeli embassy in Canberra and inquired if the strange man who had offered them the photos of the Dimona reactor was indeed an Israeli citizen. The story came to the attention of an Isra
eli journalist, who reported it to his newspaper in Tel Aviv.
Like a thunderbolt, a stunning blow shook Israel’s secret services: a former operator at Institute 2 in Dimona was trying to sell Israel’s most vital secret. “The system failed, we did not get to him in time,” helplessly admitted Haim Carmon, then director of security at the Ministry of Defense.
The news was rushed to “The Prime Ministers’ Club”—Prime Minister Peres and former prime ministers Rabin and Shamir—who were members of the National Unity government. They decided to find Vanunu at once and bring him to Israel. Some of their aides suggested killing Vanunu instead of bringing him back, but that idea was dismissed. The prime minister picked up the phone and called the ramsad.
Since 1982, the Mossad had had a new director: Nahum Admoni. After almost twenty years of generals parachuted from the IDF to the helm of the Mossad, the organization finally had a new chief, one who had worked his way up from the inside. Nahum Admoni, born in Jerusalem, was a veteran of the Shai and of Aman. He had been Yitzhak Hofi’s deputy, and reached the coveted post of ramsad after Hofi retired in 1982. He was to spend seven years as ramsad, but these were not to be the best years of the intelligence community. Between 1982 and 1989, several incidents embarrassed the Mossad: the Pollard Affair, which erupted when a Jewish civilian intelligence analyst was arrested in Washington for spying for a secret Israeli intelligence unit; the Iran-Contra affair, in which Israel was involved; arrests of several Mossad agents in foreign countries because of careless blunders; but the worst damage to Israel was certainly caused by Mordechai Vanunu. As soon as Peres called him, Admoni launched an operation for capturing Vanunu. The Mossad computer spewed out the operation’s code name: “Kaniuk.”
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