Spies Against Armageddon

by Dan Raviv

  The unit had a valuable injection of fresh blood in the mid-1950s thanks to the success of “Jewish intelligence” projects: the arrival of bilingual Arabic- and English-speaking radio operators who had worked in the formerly British Iraqi railroad company. Those new immigrants were recruited to work in the unit as “listeners.”

  Amit and Yariv wanted to modernize and build a formidable central collection unit. It would be equipped with sophisticated sensors, listening devices, antennas, and cameras. Decades later, the seeds sown by the two generals would bear massive fruits. Unit 8200 would turn into an intelligence empire. It would have outposts—including radio dishes and antenna farms that tourists sometimes notice—in Israel’s north, south, and east, on high terrain where the equipment looks out over the borders. The Unit is headquartered north of Tel Aviv, next to the Mossad’s compound.

  The main concerns of the unit are sigint and what intelligence jargon dubs “elint” (electronic intelligence). In everyday language, that means listening in to telephone, fax, radio, and other communications; deciphering coded messages; and using large reception dishes to detect telemetry from military maneuvers, such as missile launches.

  Dozens of high-tech companies, both in Israel and in California’s Silicon Valley, owe their existence to Israeli military veterans who were in 8200. They learned their craft in that intelligence unit, whether in the mandatory three years of national service or during a longer stint, and then many used their experience to create companies.

  In the late 1950s and early ’60s, however, the beginning of what would become Israel’s ears and eyes was modest.

  Amit knew that without creativity and the human touch the equipment would be worth nothing: just wires, switches, and future scrap metal and plastic. To operate all that was acquired, Aman and the Mossad needed Israel’s best talents: the crème de la crème—mathematicians, programmers, code breakers, polyglots, and brave soldiers.

  This kind of thinking led to the birth of an élite fighting unit, Sayeret Matkal. Sayeret is the word for reconnaissance, and Matkal is the Hebrew acronym for the military’s General Staff. This unit, with a rarely mentioned numerical designator, 269, was created solely to serve the intelligence community. It was put under the direct command of the chief of staff and the head of Aman.

  Before Sayeret Matkal was formed, the idea of highly trained, armed, and usually uniformed soldiers in “a shadow unit of ghosts” was bouncing around in the mid-1950s. The founder—a notable and practical dreamer—was Lieutenant Colonel Avraham Arnan, who was inspired by reading about Britain’s glamorous Special Air Service (SAS). He kept pressing for creation of a unit that could be sent consistently into enemy territories to carry out top-secret intelligence gathering.

  Sayeret Matkal uses a Hebrew motto that is basically identical to SAS’s: “Who Dares Wins.” Four words characterize the spirit of the Israeli unit: disguise, deception, cunning, and courage. Its fighters are trained in a variety of methods and know how to track quarries through deserts as nomadic Bedouin do. These Israeli soldiers are experts at using all sorts of weapons, including knives, as well as explosives and night vision equipment. They are exceptional specimens of physical fitness, training often with long runs or marches while carrying heavy equipment.

  The unit happened to be established a year after the formation of Israel’s first helicopter squadron. These flying machines gave Sayeret Matkal its favorite mode of transportation. Sayeret soldiers pioneered the military advantage of being ferried by helicopter under the dark cloak of night. Israeli infiltration teams could stay especially deep, and for a long time, inside hostile Arab countries.

  As secret as the unit was supposed to be—just like Britain’s SAS—Sayeret Matkal could not completely avoid making headlines. When, for example, its men rescued hostages from a hijacked airplane on the ground at Tel Aviv’s international airport in 1972, the commandos garnered public recognition and a sky-high reputation.

  Yet, their first and foremost mission was to sneak behind enemy lines and plant bugging devices.

  From 1962 to 1972, when Generals Amit and Yariv led Aman, the Sayeret proved to be a potent addition to Israel’s special forces capabilities. Many future combatants in the Mossad’s operations units would come from the ranks of Sayeret Matkal.

  Israeli intelligence was developing into a three-dimensional shadowy powerhouse. In the skies above, the Israeli Air Force acquired new types of aircraft from the United States and came up with innovations to prepare for battle. On land, Sayeret Matkal infiltration teams greatly expanded Aman’s monitoring capabilities. Mossad agents, also on the ground but in highly unexpected locales, gathered information about Arab military capabilities.

  The triple threat was a synchronized effort that transformed Arab armies and political leadership into an open book for Israeli intelligence.

  This admirable blend of technology and human creativity reached its zenith in 1965, when the secret agencies filled an important gap in Israel’s military knowledge base. As often occurs, success stemmed from a charismatic senior leader putting his fondest wish into words—for his wish literally becomes someone’s command.

  It was General Ezer Weizman, head of the air force and a future president of Israel, who told Amit: “If you get me a MiG-21, I promise we will easily defeat all of our neighbors’ armies. All of them.”

  Russian aircraft factories had started churning out that fighter plane in 1959, and the Soviet Union exported many of them to its Communist puppet states and friendly countries. Israel and the rest of the West had never been able to take a close look at it, however. The CIA and the militaries of many American allies yearned to examine the latest example of Soviet technology, capable of flying at twice the speed of sound. The MiG-21 was a potent threat.

  Amit’s military intelligence planners considered a wide array of ideas for getting their hands on a MiG-21. One proposal, apparently hatched by someone who watched too many action movies, would have had a helicopter-borne Sayeret Matkal unit infiltrate an Egyptian airbase in the Sinai Peninsula. A smart Israeli pilot, perhaps one who reads Russian, would travel with the commandos. They would steal the MiG fighter jet, and he would fly it to Israel.

  Another plan would have had an Israeli pilot pose as a South American purchasing agent, who would travel to Communist Poland and claim an interest in buying planes. He would ask for the aerial equivalent of a test drive, then would fly away in the MiG-21.

  Eventually, a practical scheme was designed. The Mossad station in Tehran was ordered to find a pilot in neighboring Iraq who might be ready to defect. With a MiG-21.

  The prevailing opinion was that, while difficult, this avenue offered Israel its best chance of success. Aman and the Mossad had already amassed a tremendous amount of information on the air forces of Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Iraq. Israeli intelligence dossiers recorded every scrap of information on the enemy pilots, organized and stored by Aman using Amit’s new computers.

  The information was so comprehensive that those in charge of the files felt as if they personally knew hundreds of Arab pilots. One was an Egyptian captain, Abbas Hilmi, but they had no reason to think that he would surprise them one day. Yet Hilmi did just that, in January 1964, and even Israeli air defenses did not notice his low-altitude flight to a base southeast of Tel Aviv. He was defecting with his Russian-made airplane, but Aman was disappointed to see that it was an uninteresting Yak-11.

  The motives behind his defection were also far from inspiring. Hilmi had been having an affair with his Egyptian commander’s wife, and he was fleeing for his own safety.

  The Israelis did give him a warm welcome, however, and for propaganda purposes—or as the Israelis privately termed it, psychological warfare—they had Hilmi speak in public about how Egypt was massacring fellow Arabs in Yemen’s civil war.

  The Egyptian turncoat was offered a new identity and a good job in Israel, but he was unable to acclimatize himself to life in the Jewish state. Rejecting strong advice f
rom his intelligence handlers in Tel Aviv, Hilmi decided to move to South America. The Mossad furnished him with yet another set of false identity documents and gave him a large sum of cash to begin a new life in Argentina.

  He made some fatal errors in Buenos Aires, however, drinking and talking too much while socializing with Egyptian expatriates. He was found dead in his apartment, and it was unclear whether he fell victim to the long arm of Egyptian secret police or to a drinking pal who saw Hilmi as a traitor.

  Disappointed by Hilmi and his Yak, Israeli intelligence leaders pushed harder to get their hands on a MiG-21. The long search for a high-level Arab pilot continued, with Iraq still looking like fertile ground. Finally, a potential candidate was singled out. Years later, an Israeli journalist, influenced by James Bond movies, invented a sexy code name for the operation: “007.” Officially, it was codenamed “Diamond.”

  The selected MiG provider was Munir Redfa, a member of a wealthy Maronite Christian family in Iraq, where non-Muslims generally suffered discrimination. Trained by the Soviets, he was a pilot in a squadron of MiG-21s.

  The Israelis—thanks to newspaper clippings, Iraqi communications they intercepted, and agents on the ground in Baghdad—had an almost complete picture of Redfa’s life. They learned that he had been upset about his air force’s bombing and strafing raids on Kurdish villages in the north, as part of the suppression of that minority. The Mossad developed a psychological profile of the man, and that report suggested several conversational gambits and lines of approach.

  Additional Mossad operatives flew into Tehran, and from there they crossed into Iraq. Contact was established with Redfa, and any concerns that the pilot might be resistant to Israelis—or report the contact to Iraqi security—were quickly assuaged. Redfa agreed to use his upcoming vacation to fly to Athens.

  He honored his commitment by making a rendezvous with Mossad case officers in the Greek capital. Once in, Redfa was in all the way, and he accepted their invitation to fly on to Israel. They gave him a false passport, and the Iraqi—officially an enemy of the Jewish state—was a passenger on an El Al flight to Tel Aviv.

  In Israel, he was taken on a tour of an air force base. That was where he met senior officers of the Mossad, Aman, and the air force to finalize a defection deal. He agreed to fly a MiG-21 to Israel. A navigational route was designed. Code words for radio communication were agreed.

  There was one major obstacle, however. Redfa would, of course, receive a lifetime pension, but he made an additional thorny demand: that Israel extract his family, so they could be together. The Mossad felt it had no choice, and the pledge was made.

  Redfa returned to Iraq via Athens. The Mossad’s Tehran station needed a few months to arrange a smooth and invisible exit for Redfa’s wife and children. They were flown to Israel, bearing false names and documents.

  Redfa’s next step turned out to be relatively easy. During a routine exercise in August 1966, he steered his Soviet-made airplane away from the other Iraqi pilots, and Redfa just kept on going, heading West.

  He flew over Jordan and into the narrow airspace of Israel. He descended, made a smooth landing, and received a hero’s welcome at an Israeli airbase. Within a few hours, Redfa had radically changed his own life, while altering also the strategic balance of the Middle East.

  This was the first time a sophisticated Soviet warplane had reached the West. Decades later, the air forces of the United States and its NATO allies remained impressed by the feat accomplished by Israeli intelligence that day. Among Western military people, the acquisition of a MiG in full working order was one of the key events in building the Mossad’s image into unassailable mythology.

  Among intelligence people—in the West, the East, or straddling the two great power camps—Israel was now respected as a master of humint methods. Operation Diamond was truly a gem.

  While plotting the successful acquisition, or theft, of the airplane from Iraq, Amit had to cope with the disastrous end of wonderful successes in both Syria and Egypt. The Mossad’s two most senior agents in the two most important Arab capitals were both lost in a five-week period in 1965: Eli Cohen in Damascus, and Wolfgang Lotz in Cairo.

  Until they were captured, Cohen and Lotz supplied Israeli intelligence with information from the very heart of the Arab political and military power centers. Highly capable men, trained and talented in the art of lying, they penetrated the highest ranks of the leadership in their respective espionage posts. Cohen became a personal confidant of Syria’s president, while Lotz befriended senior officers in Egypt’s army.

  They were sent there on long-term, deep-cover missions. As difficult it might be to imagine, the Mossad would continue—for many decades—to find patriotic, brave Israelis who were willing to give up their personal lives so as to bury themselves in enemy countries as spies.

  The chief role for Cohen, Lotz, and their still anonymous successors is to serve as “warning agents”: to report with urgency and clarity if the target country intended to go to war against Israel.

  Cohen and Lotz found ways to achieve high social status in Damascus and Cairo, respectively—no easy task for foreigners. That gave a window into the top echelons of the two capitals.

  Their stories have been told and re-told, their places in the pantheon of Israeli intelligence cemented. Yet, they also committed one of the most heinous sins in espionage: over-activity. They were both so good, and so effective, that their handlers in Tel Aviv could not resist swamping them with demands for more work and more data.

  Eliyahu (Eli) Cohen was born in Alexandria, Egypt, in 1924. He clandestinely helped other Egyptian Jews move to Israel and then took part in the ill-fated Israeli espionage network that was smashed by the Egyptian authorities in 1954. He, like the others, was arrested; but the police found no evidence in his apartment, so he was freed.

  He stayed in Egypt until just after the 1956 Suez war. Only then did he move to Israel, where he happily joined Aman. Being fluent in Arabic, French, and Hebrew, he was a translator for military intelligence. He declined offers to be transferred into Unit 131, stained by its failures in Egypt but still in charge of espionage in Israel’s neighboring Arab countries.

  The intelligence community let Cohen go on with his life—which included a wife, children, and his comfortable and safe desk job—until border tensions with Syria erupted in May 1960. Now, the espionage team at Unit 188 (a renamed and better run 131) urgently required a spy in Damascus and had an ambitious plan for preparing and planting an undercover Israeli there. Cohen was the man for the job.

  Even with a sense of immediate need, his training took over half a year. A small but significant part was a vigorous course in Quran studies in Israel so as to be conversant with “fellow Muslims” when he got into Syria.

  In February 1961, he arrived in the “base” country, Argentina—by now a favorite, if out-of-the-way choice for building a spy’s cover story—carrying the passport of a European country. It bore what was, for him, a temporary name.

  Three and a half months later, a Unit 188 courier arrived in Buenos Aires and handed Eli Cohen his new identity as Kamel Amin Taabeth, a Syrian businessman born in Lebanon. Taabeth had been invented by Aman, and his avatar as a rich man would make this a high-budget operation for Israel’s frugal military. For a year, Cohen blended in with the many Arab entrepreneurs in South America, and he was dazzlingly successful at meeting rich and influential members of the Syrian community abroad.

  At the start of 1962, he was ready to move to the “target” country. First came a flight to Lebanon, and then a long taxi ride across the border into Syria—with a sophisticated, high-speed radio transmitter hidden in his luggage. Cohen/Taabeth was also carrying genuine letters of introduction, penned by Syrians in South America. These were the fruits of his smooth socializing labors.

  In Damascus, he was instantly the fascinating new man in town, having been recommended by everyone who was anyone in Buenos Aires. Before long, one of his best friends fro
m Argentina, Major Amin al-Hafez, became the president of Syria.

  While running an import-export business, Cohen/Taabeth cultivated his political contacts. He arranged lavish parties at his home, with pretty women—some of them paid to be intimately entertaining for his powerful new friends. This was expensive. The Israeli spy had to have plenty of cash, as well as nerves of steel. But it paid off.

  He was regularly invited to military facilities, and he drove with senior officers all along Syria’s Golan Heights, looking down at the vulnerable farms and roadways of Israel down below. Cohen made a point, of course, of memorizing the location of all the Syrian bunkers and artillery pieces. He was able to describe troop deployments along the border in detail, and he focused on the tank traps that could prevent Israeli forces from climbing the heights if war were to break out. He also furnished a list of all the Syrian pilots and accurate sketches of the weapons mounted on their warplanes.

  The data he sent to Tel Aviv, mainly by tapping Morse Code dots and dashes on his telegraph key, covered all areas of life in Syria. Israeli intelligence was able to get a remarkably complete picture of an enemy country that had seemed impenetrable.

  Ironically, one of the communications officers who handled the coded messages to and from Damascus was Cohen’s own brother Maurice. For years, each brother did not know that the other was working for Israeli intelligence. Eli had told Maurice that he was traveling abroad procuring computer parts for the Defense Ministry.

  The true clandestine mission, meantime, was transferred from Aman to the Mossad: part of Amit’s move to the Mossad.

  If Cohen and his Israeli controllers had only been more cautious, his chances of survival would have been much better. In November 1964, he was on leave in Israel—shedding his Taabeth identity, and trying to be a normal husband and father at home—awaiting the birth of his third child. He always pined for his family and had taken to sending them indirect greetings through his Israeli handlers, without revealing where he was.