The Chameleon Conspiracy dg-3

by Haggai Harmon

  “What about help in our operation, including getting access to enemy computers?”

  “We’ve developed new tools to assist in covert-surveillance operations. One example is Tempest, a surveillance technology that captures data displayed on computer monitors by collecting electromagnetic emissions from the internal electron beams that create the images.” Had he avoided answering my question on computer hacking?

  “So much has changed since I last had contact with the NSA,” said Nicole.

  He smiled. “We’ve additional developments: Fluent and Oasis. Fluent does computer searches of documents written in various languages. Our analysts put in queries in English, just as if they were using any Internet search engine. Those results that come up in any foreign languages are translated.” He paused. “Oasis picks up audio from television and radio broadcasts, and keeps them as text. The software is very sophisticated. It can identify the gender of the speaker, and if that audio has already been previously captured, our analysts can obtain a digital transcript of the data and compare. Oasis is limited to English, but the CIA is adapting it to understand additional languages.”

  “What about recordings from the past?” That’s what I wanted to know.

  “We occasionally have that, if what you’re looking for was already captured for other purposes,” he answered.

  “It all sounds like omnipotence,” I said.

  “Hell no, far from it,” he said. “Sure, we’re the largest intelligence service in the world. We employ more mathematicians than anyone else, and we’ve got the strongest team of code makers and code breakers ever assembled. But the volume of information generated every day exceeds the capacity of our technologies to process it. Not to mention the encryption technologies that can give you a look at what turns out to be gibberish, without any possibility of breaking the code. We know, for example, that Osama bin Laden and other terrorists are using steganography: hiding data within a benign-looking file, such as a picture of a sunset in the South Pacific. Can you imagine the computing power necessary to detect it? And I’m not even talking about breaking it, which is even more complex.

  “But why go that far? Even simple tricks can slow us down, and sometimes even derail us. That happens when messages are ciphered in a simple method that substitutes letters for other letters. Let’s go to an even lower level of sophistication, to elementary school games, and create messages that substitute the word football for bomb and baseball for American president. Do you set the software to alert us each time it recognizes these words? We would drown under the sheer volume.”

  “I see,” said Nicole.

  “So you see why there’s no assurance that any of these systems will be fail-safe and provide the kind of intelligence that you want.”

  I nodded. “I get it. Knowing those caveats, all I need to do is provide you with key words?”

  “It’s not that simple, but essentially, yes. Once a key word included in the Echelon dictionary is captured, it flags the entire message. After decryption, our analysts forward the data to the client intelligence agency that requested the intercept of the key word. We pass the signals through SILKWORTH, our supercomputer system where voice recognition, optical character recognition, and other analytical tools dissect the prey. Although five billion messages pass through the system every day, we actually transcribe and record only very few text messages and phone calls. Only those messages that produce keyword ‘hits’ are tagged for future analysis.”

  “Can I give you the key words now?”

  “No. We must first start an IDP, an intercept deployment plan. I’ll also need your agency’s formal request. I was asked to give you only a presentation. But tell me more about the case.”

  I ran quickly by him the leads we had. The run was long, but the list of solid leads disturbingly short. We had a dozen aliases that the Chameleon had used.

  “We don’t know for sure if it’s one person, or eleven, or twelve. So far Ward has been my prime target. He could be in the U.S., Australia…or back in Iran, although I’d be surprised if he were there.”

  “Why?

  “I hardly think he could adapt or would want to adapt to living in Iran again after living in the great satanic country for more than twenty years. No matter what the Iranians have to say about it, it still beats Tehran. So maybe he decided to be a sleeper for a few more years and live comfortably, hoping his handlers in Iran would forget about him. I thought I found him in Sydney, but there are conflicting reports about whether the person I saw there was indeed the person who assumed Ward’s identity.”

  “You’ll hear from us soon after we get the formalities in place,” Dr. Feldman promised.

  After we returned to Paris, I called Benny using his Belgian telephone number.

  “Thank you for calling Marnix van der Guilder Trading Company,” said the announcement. “Please press the extension number of the person with whom you wish to speak, or leave a message after the beep.” I pressed Benny’s code for this month, 8*890447**3#, heard a series of beeps, and recognized the familiar sound of an Israeli phone ringtone.

  “Bonjour, comment est-ce que je peux vous aider?” -How can I help you?-I heard Benny’s secretary ask in French. Whenever a forwarded call from Europe came in, although a complex code was necessary, the first voice identification was in French to hedge the remote chance that the code was correctly put in, but the caller didn’t know the call would end up in Mossad headquarters just north of Tel Aviv.

  “Hi Dina,” I said in Hebrew. “It’s Dan Gordon. Benny back yet?”

  “No. Still traveling,” she answered, switching to Hebrew. “OK, please ask him to call my U.S. mobile-phone number.” “Sure.”

  I went to get one of those crunchy baguette sandwiches, my diet ruiner for a week, and as I was about to take a bite, my mobile phone rang.

  Damn. It had better be important.

  “Dan?” I heard Benny’s familiar voice. “What did I catch you doing?”

  I stared down at the sandwich longingly. “Nothing but a baguette sandwich. Anyway, are you still around? I need to talk to you.”

  “Yes, I’m in Paris too. What’s on your mind?”

  “Can we meet?”

  “Sure. How about you come to the George V hotel and meet me in the lobby at six p.m.”

  I took a cab to 31 avenue George V and entered La Galerie, a high-ceilinged lobby decorated with Flemish tapestries and excellent nineteenth-century paintings and furniture. A pianist was playing a quiet Chopin nocturne, while elegant waiters in the adjacent courtyard were serving tourists who had deep personal pockets or expense accounts not scrutinized by frugal bean counters.

  “What happened? The office discovered the lost treasures of the Count of Monte Cristo? We never used to stay in these hotels.” I looked around. A typical room probably cost more than $1,000 a night.

  Benny glanced at me above his eyeglasses, which had slipped halfway down his nose. “Of course not. I just like these first-class places. Here money doesn’t buy you friends, but it can get you a better class of rivals.”

  I felt that something was different with Benny, his cynical quip notwithstanding.

  “What happened?” I asked, looking at his gloomy face. “Nothing,” his mouth said, but his expression gave a different answer.

  “Is it something at home? Are Batya and the kids all right?”

  “Yes, thank god, they’re fine.”

  “Then what is it?” I persisted. I’ve known Benny for long enough to know that only a serious problem would affect his usual easygoing demeanor. “Something at work?” I tried again.

  He nodded. “Things aren’t the way they used to be.”

  “That’s too general,” I said. “Something must have hit you hard. What is it?”

  “Changes,” he said summarily. “Dagan is shaking up the house with the prime minister’s backing.” He was talking about the Mossad head.

  “Isn’t it time?” I asked. “Routine is the biggest enemy, right?�
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  “Well, Dagan has every right to install changes,” said Benny, but his tone belied the statement. He sighed.

  “Look around you. The old historic rivalry between states that require foreign intelligence service is decreasing, and, as a result, so is the need for classic intelligence gathering on enemies. We’ve had to redefine who the enemy is-and where he is.”

  “And the effect of that change on Mossad?” I said, pushing him to get to the point. I knew all that.

  “Dagan says he wants to turn Mossad into a more operational body. Redefine Tsiach.” The acronym stood for Tsiyun yediot hiyuniot, indicating the vital information priorities historically determined by Aman, Israeli’s military intelligence. Benny said Dagan wanted to take advantage of Israel’s known, and many more unknown, successes in recruiting human assets and informers and concentrate on three major targets: Arab and Palestinian terrorism, Islamic fundamentalism, and intelligence gathering on hostile forces’ armament with nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons.

  “So you are getting de-emphasized,” I said succinctly.

  “Probably,” said Benny with a sigh. “But I’m not the issue here. It’s the importance of Tevel that’s being questioned.” By Tevel Benny was referring to the Mossad’s former name for the now-renamed foreign-relations wing, responsible for liaison with foreign services among other clandestine activities.

  “Is he breaking it up?” I found that hard to believe, given the wing’s tremendous achievements, even though most of them were unknown to the public. Dagan was thought to scorn introspection, but encourage originality.

  Benny shook his head. “No, but he made structural changes. The bud get’s been reduced and the resources for the research division and Tevel have been limited. Now we’re divided into two ‘directorates,’ as he’s calling them. The ‘operational’ one is responsible for all operational wings, divisions, departments, and units, such as Tsomet, Neviot, Tevel, Kesaria, Intelligence, and technological units. The other one is the ‘general staff/headquarters,’ which runs everything else-strategic planning, human resources, internal security, logistics, communications, computers, counterintelligence, and so forth.”

  I remembered that Kesaria, after the old Roman city known in English as Caesarea, was in charge of operations and included an assassinations unit. Kidon was Hebrew for bayonet. Kesaria handles the “combatants,” a euphemism for Israeli spies, Mossad employees who assume different identities to penetrate hostile Arab countries. Tsomet, from the Hebrew word for junction, was the main intelligence-gathering division, engaging “case officers”-KATSA, in its Hebrew acronym. It also controlled and handled non-Israeli agents on the Mossad payroll as “independent contractors.” Neviot’s agents infiltrated buildings and communication centers to install video and other digital listening and monitoring devices.

  “Neviot,” I said absentmindedly.

  Benny brought me back from my silent reminiscing. “It needs a shake-up too, I suppose,” he said. “You remember what happened in ninety-eight.”

  “Remind me.”

  “I can’t believe you don’t remember. On February 19, an agent from Neviot was caught in Switzerland trying to install surveillance equipment in an apartment building. It was in Bern, a building that contained the home office of a Hezbollah supporter. Anyway, the operation was botched when the neighbors got suspicious-strangers carrying suitcases into the building, et cetera. Some of our men got away, but one was caught and tried. Israel had to apologize. It was a complete humiliation, but if that wasn’t bad enough, nine months later there was another fiasco. Two agents were caught spying on a military base in Cyprus where Russian-made S-300 missiles were to be deployed. The Cyprus government accused Israel of spying for the Turks, their archenemies, since the missiles were deployed aiming at Turkey. The Cypriots accused the Turks of spying on their defense plan. The Turks, according to the Cyprus government, wanted to know how Cyprus would defend itself in case the Turks decided to resolve the Cyprus problems between the local Turks and Greeks by walking onto the scene with their tanks and artillery.”

  “Yeah, I read about it in the paper. I was long out of the Mossad. But that’s ancient history. What does it have to do with what you’re talking about now?”

  “He wants to avoid debacles like that. That means changing things around-and that’s where it hurts.”

  “Does anything personally impact you?”

  “It affects everybody. But it’s all under the surface, because no one knows what’s going to happen. There’s an atmosphere of suspicion-who’ll be promoted and who’ll be passed over, whose department will be downsized. That’s unhealthy in any organization, and particularly for us. Complete confidence and trust among the employees are an absolute must, because human lives are at stake. For us, internal rifts could be devastating.”

  “What’s happened so far?”

  “Several heads of divisions and units, and at least as many department heads resigned, and many line personnel.”

  “And you oppose it?”

  “I think it’s OK to make the changes and make Mossad more operational. But cutting our bud get or ignoring our activities isn’t helping that goal.”

  “I hope you’re not planning to resign as well,” I said. I knew Mossad was Benny’s heart and soul.

  “I haven’t made any plans yet, but…I heard Dagan was saying that our unit doing political research is redundant. He thinks through the narrow prism of operational needs, and concluded that our foreign-relations wing isn’t vital in supporting operations, and the political-research unit’s role is secondary at best. He wants to downgrade us to a division and limit our intelligence-gathering activities.”

  “I’m sure he knows about your reputation and the benefits you bring from your close relationship with other intelligence organizations. Anyway, he must have his reasons.”

  “I hope so,” said Benny. “You have to hope reality and good sense will prevail.” A glimmer of his usual optimism was returning. “All he has to do is to go to the next prime-ministerial meeting on Israel’s national security, and have to listen to Aman’s military intelligence without having his own estimate, based on his own intelligence gathering. He’ll be tacitly yielding to Aman seniority.” Benny smiled. “In these meetings, Mossad, Aman, and SHABACH, the internal security service, present their opinions. Believe me, after the first session as a passive listener, he’ll change his mind. There are no shortcuts here.”

  “To be the devil’s advocate,” I said, “even given the fact that your wing is the very best in what you’re doing, what’s wrong with increasing operational capabilities?”

  “Dan, the intelligence-gathering world from human sources isn’t limited to James Bond-like operations. You know that as well as I do. There is all the tedious work of identifying sources and recruiting them, with or without their knowledge. True, break-ins and eliminating rivals are vital elements of ‘operations,’ but only relatively small ones. We’re less interested in Jordan and Egypt since the peace agreements. We’ve got enemies far from our borders, hosted by governments that ask no questions. To confront all that, you really need carefully planned operations.”

  “But Benny, don’t you think you’d be better off using local intelligence services? Let’s take for example friendly nations like Thailand or India, which are engaged in a daily battle against terrorists surreptitiously using their territories. You can send five case officers there, or even ten. They don’t speak the local languages and have no local authority. So not only do they have to identify terrorists plotting against Israel, but at the same time they need to protect their backs from the wrath of the local governments that don’t particularly like agents of foreign countries infringing on their sovereignty and playing cops and robbers on their land. Wouldn’t it be simpler to cooperate with the domestic intelligence services and send just one or two case officers for liaison, and to inspect and taste the fruit that they’re picking off their own trees and offering us?”

/>   “Dan, that’s my quibble with Dagan. The marketplace for terrorist-related intelligence is becoming crowded. Now we compete for the same information with the big guys. Why do you think I looked to the U.S. to join forces in Giverny? In order to survive in the newly created marketplace we need goods to trade with. Either we develop them independently or hook up with the bigger folks to broaden our capabilities.”

  Now the coin had dropped into the slot. I realized that there was another reason why Benny was seeking pointed cooperation in combating terror financing between his wing at Mossad and the CIA. A successful cooperation could give Benny a winning card in his efforts to keep his wing’s central role, not to mention his own job.

  “Dan, we must continue to regard as important the gathering of intelligence from sources you can identify, verify, and communicate with. That means operational capability. But maintaining our close contacts with foreign intelligence services is just as important, because of the volume. No operation brings us as much as a good contact with a foreign intelligence service.

  “But your foreign-liaison activities buy secondhand or recycled intelligence that’s always neutered to disguise its source. Foreign services trade or sell you stuff without a ‘certificate of origin or authenticity.’ You don’t know the value of it. Foreign intelligence services aren’t going to tell you how they obtained the information and from whom. It could be sanitized to protect sources-or worse, it could be disinformation. Anyway, the traded information is not of operational nature, but in the form of disseminated intelligence reports identified as such.

  “That’s one of the reasons Dagan wants raw intelligence harvested by our agents, not purchased in the marketplace,” said Benny. “Therefore, we treat the information we receive through barter accordingly. Most of the time we use it as a lead, and nothing else. We never make a recommendation, or worse, plan an operation, based solely on that type of information. You know what happens in the end. Such an operation will take twice the time, will cost twice than what your plan said it would and, in the best-case scenario, will yield half of what we need. But,” he concluded with a sigh, “these are my troubles, not yours. You said you wanted something?”