Spies Against Armageddon

by Dan Raviv

  Ordered to spearhead the Israeli response to the Munich massacre, Harari handpicked a team of operatives, both men and women, and established a command post in Paris. He personally adopted several false identities. Harari and Mossad officer Avraham Gehmer, whose cover job was as first secretary of the Israeli embassy in Paris, were in charge of the planning.

  From this modest beginning would emerge one of the most notorious yet admired units in the worldwide business of espionage: an élite squad to become known as Kidon, the Hebrew word for “Bayonet.” It would handle the extreme end of special operations, including but not limited to assassinations, kidnappings, and sabotage.

  Kidon members would be recruited from special forces units of the military, mainly from Sayeret Matkal. Kidon would administratively be part of Caesarea-Metsada. But if the “action teams” of Caesarea were a kind of Mossad within the Mossad, Kidon could be considered a separate, self-sustaining planet on its own. (See Chapter 22.)

  In launching the post-Munich campaign, Harari ignored the PLO’s attempt to distance itself from violence by using the cover identity of Black September. He and Zamir decided to go after key Palestinians who were managing the PLO’s terrorist activities in Europe. That was surely in the spirit of what Golda Meir intended.

  The first assassination, in October 1972, was that of Adel Wael Zwaiter, a Palestinian intellectual in Rome who worked as a translator for the Libyan embassy but was a senior coordinator of the PLO/Black September infrastructure. Zwaiter, according to the Mossad’s information, was involved in a failed plot to blow up an El Al airliner.

  Harari’s team shot him more than a dozen times inside his apartment building in the Italian capital.

  Within nine months, Harari’s men and women took the lives of six Palestinians in Rome, Paris, Cyprus, and Athens. Among them was the PLO’s Mahmoud Hamshari in Paris.

  Some might ask: only six? A legend grew that the Israeli hit team eliminated dozens of PLO men, as though the Munich tragedy led to a bloodbath. Stories spread about innovative bombs set off by pressure switches and high-pitch tones transmitted through phone lines, while shadowy gunmen expertly aimed silencers at the heads of Palestinian foes. Yet in Europe, in that time frame, there were only six.

  While Israeli intelligence continued with assassinations, another form of warfare was introduced. The Mossad was sending letter bombs to PLO officials in Beirut. One was killed, and another scarred for life.

  The PLO/Black September could see that something new was going on. Some of its top men were being killed. The PLO fought back, mailing letter bombs to Israeli diplomats in Europe. An attaché in Israel’s embassy in London was killed by one blast. The battle on European turf became a two-way affair, later dubbed “the war of the spooks.”

  On January 26, 1973, Israeli businessman Hanan Yishai was shot dead as he stood in a doorway on Madrid’s main boulevard. After his death, it was revealed that his real name was Baruch Cohen, and that he had come to Spain on a mission for Israeli intelligence. Like Zadok Ofir in Brussels, Cohen was a Shin Bet case officer—on loan to the Mossad—running a network of Palestinian agents.

  One of his Arab operatives was a double agent, whose ultimate loyalty turned out to be to the PLO. Cohen became the first and only Israeli intelligence operative in Europe killed by a Palestinian.

  Some members of Cohen’s family claimed later that his death could have been prevented. In violation of security precautions, his photograph had been published—ironically, in an official army album celebrating the 1967 victory—and the snapshot showed Baruch Cohen in military uniform with his best friend, Zadok Ofir, also in uniform. Arab intelligence services collect such clippings, and it is considered vital that Israeli operatives never show their faces. Even though Cohen concealed his identity when operating his Palestinian network, that photograph may have given him away.

  The war raged on and morphed into new shapes. In April 1973, the PLO attacked an Israeli civilian plane in Nicosia, Cyprus, and the nearby home of the Israeli ambassador.

  The Jewish state seemed to be retaliating the very next night—although the timing was probably pure coincidence, as this was a major operation on territory much more treacherous than Rome or Paris. The Israelis would now take the battle to PLO headquarters in Lebanon, an enemy country. They had concluded that liquidating Palestinian operatives and coordinators in Europe was not sufficient. Leading the way into the lion’s den, this time, would be army commandos. The Mossad would play a support role.

  The assassins were members of Sayeret Matkal, wearing civilian clothes. At least one of them, the future prime minister Ehud Barak, wore a wig and was dressed as a woman. In the middle of bustling Beirut, using vehicles and routes provided by the Mossad, the well-trained soldiers killed two organizers of PLO violence in their apartments and also shot dead the group’s spokesman. The intelligence about where they lived, and that they would be home, was perfect. So was the entry and exit plan by way of a Lebanese beach.

  After a few years, Israel did not bother to deny this invasion of a neighboring country, and its code name Aviv Ne’urim (Spring of Youth) appears on official Israeli military websites as a notable and laudable event.

  When Palestinian terrorists and activists were liquidated, relatives of dead Israelis were informed that a blow had been struck in tribute to their loved ones. The families, however, generally derived little joy from the fact that Arabs also had fatherless children now attending funerals.

  Baruch Cohen’s widow Nurit revealed: “Occasionally service officers would come to visit me and ask, ‘Have you read in the newspaper that this-and-that guy has been killed or this-and-that guy has been blown up?’ What could I say, that it consoled me?”

  All of these glorious missions of the Mossad and the military would come to a sharp, if temporary, halt—only nine months after the start of the post-Munich campaign—because of a startling failure in a town called Lillehammer.

  At the beginning of July 1973, Mike Harari brought members of his “project”—some, chosen for their experience in meting out death, others only for their expertise in Scandinavia—to that small skiing town in northern Norway. The Israelis were assembling for their most important mission in the post-Munich campaign of killing, because the victim was to be the operations chief of the Black September front organization: Ali Hassan Salameh, who had been nicknamed “the Red Prince.”

  They had been hearing about Salameh for a few years, as a talented terror operator who was very close to Yasser Arafat, and the Mossad believed he was one of the masterminds of the attack on the Israelis at the Munich Olympics.

  This clever and highly violent Palestinian was not busying himself only with the shadowy, but ultimately bogus, Black September. In reality, he was the commander of Force 17, the PLO unit responsible for the protection of Arafat. The 17 was simply its telephone extension number at PLO headquarters.

  The Israelis saw the connection as conclusive proof that Arafat himself was ordering attacks on athletes in Munich, tourists waiting for flights to Israel, and other civilians in many locations. But the PLO chief would usually distance himself from distasteful operations, providing himself with plausible deniability while depending on Salameh and others to do the dirty work.

  Salameh knew that he was in danger and took precautions—often surrounded by bodyguards—but he also was addicted to the bright lights of wealth and glamour. Believing he deserved nothing but the best, in 1978 he married a gorgeous Lebanese Christian, Georgina Rizk, who in Miami Beach had been crowned Miss Universe. The year before their wedding, they vacationed in the United States: at Disney World and in Hawaii.

  A Palestinian guerrilla leader, living it up in America? The CIA reportedly arranged safe passage to Mickey Mouse and the luaus, and even paid for the trip. That was because the Agency was wooing Salameh to be a fully employed agent.

  He was the PLO’s secret contact man for talks with the CIA—as early as 1969, in the years before the PLO foreswore terrorism and e
arned official recognition from Washington. Salameh arranged a guarantee that American diplomats would not be attacked.

  It is not clear when Israeli intelligence became aware of the CIA’s special link with Salameh, but the Israelis had their own accounts to settle with the Red Prince and were not going to let his American connection stop them.

  He was, however, often very difficult to locate. A breakthrough came in July 1973, when Mossad informants in northern Europe felt certain that they had spotted Salameh. Harari’s gunslingers headed to Norway with great enthusiasm.

  Within days, they were joined by Zamir. The head of the Mossad himself, adhering to the Israeli military tradition of a commander taking risks at the front with his soldiers, would supervise this significant assassination. This Palestinian was not just one more target. Zamir had personally seen the death and destruction caused by Salameh’s colleagues at Munich the previous September. Killing him would be a significant win in the shadowy post-Munich war.

  Equipped with photos of Salameh, the support members of Harari’s team tailed the man they had pinpointed for several hours. At least three assassins then were delivered by car. They pumped around a dozen bullets into the man, by the side of a road where he and a woman had been walking.

  The gunmen drove off toward pre-set escape routes out of Norway, and before long the rest of the Israeli team was hiding in safe houses in Oslo. Lillehammer had just had its first murder in 40 years.

  Only the next day did the Israeli agents discover that they had made a terrible mistake. They had killed the wrong man, a Moroccan waiter named Ahmed Bouchiki, who was married to a Norwegian—the pregnant woman with whom he had been strolling. It would take more than 20 years for Israel to pay compensation to her and her child, though still without admitting legal responsibility.

  A junior member of the Mossad team had been right, it turned out. While watching the man reputed to be Salameh, Marianne Gladnikoff had told other members of Harari’s squad that the man’s face seemed different from Salameh’s. They would not listen to her. To them, she was merely a Shin Bet secretary who had been added to Harari’s team only because of her Swedish passport and Scandinavian language skills.

  The Israelis might have gotten away with murder—keeping their error an absolute secret—had it not been for the stupid behavior of the Israeli support agents, the men and women who did the surveillance and some of the planning. They made every conceivable mistake and left police a clear trail at every step. They drove around Lillehammer in cars they themselves had rented, rather than using go-betweens who would never know the true nature of the murder mission. In trailing Bouchiki, they had been as graceful as a herd of elephants in a china shop. They did not observe the rules of compartmentalization, but instead knew who and where everyone was.

  The unfortunate waiter’s neighbors reported a license-plate number to the police, and two of the Israeli operatives were arrested as they returned their rented car to Oslo’s airport. Traveling as Gladnikoff and Dan Ert, they both admitted they were working for Israel and provided the address of an apartment used by the Mossad. The police found two more members of the hit team there.

  Norwegian investigators were amazed at the amateurism displayed by the espionage agency considered to be the world’s best. The Israelis fell into the hands of the police, one after another, like overripe fruit off a tree. Harari himself managed to flee, but Gehmer and five other Mossad operatives were arrested.

  Zamir, the head of the Mossad, luckily had arranged his own escape route. An occasional helper in Norway, a sayan, had approached a Jewish textiles manufacturer—a survivor of Nazi death camps who had strong sentiments toward Israel—to ask if his yacht could be borrowed. The rich man was given to understand that he should not ask many questions, as this loan would be for the good of the Jewish state of Israel.

  By saying yes, the yacht owner was also a sayan. Israeli intelligence already had a well established pattern of gently establishing relationships with people who could be helpful in almost every nation on the planet. Most were Jewish, but many were not. Some were wealthy, and many were not.

  The rich helpers might have private airplanes, boats, and country houses that could be borrowed for clandestine meetings. Yet, a high income was not a prerequisite for renting cars, leaving an apartment door unlocked, or providing some useful information.

  The sayanim (helpers) unknowingly were part of an outer perimeter, in case of problems or a need for standby escape routes. The Mossad, as a rule, took care not to ask local Jews to spy on anyone—just to make arrangements.

  Zamir wisely chose to avoid Norway’s airports and, after making his way to a port, he was whisked to nearby Sweden on the new sayan’s yacht.

  Those left behind said far too much to Norwegian police interrogators. For the first time, some of the modus operandi of the post-Munich assassinations was thus exposed. One of the Mossad men was carrying a key to an apartment in Paris, where the French secret service found keys to even more safe houses used by Israeli operatives. Evidence was found that connected the Israelis with the unsolved killings of Palestinians in several countries.

  The most talkative of those captured was Ert, a Danish-born veteran of many Mossad missions whose apparently genuine Hebrew name was Dan Aerbel. As soon as the Norwegians placed him alone in a dark room, he began to tell them everything. The interrogators were barely able to conceal their amazement when Ert/Aerbel blurted out that he suffered from claustrophobia, a definite handicap for a secret agent. In return for being moved to a larger cell, he was willing to confess.

  Another Israeli arrested in Norway was Sylvia Raphael, but she was far more professional than Ert/Aerbel. She did not break. She stuck to her cover story: that her name was Patricia Roxborough and she was a news photographer with a Canadian passport.

  In fact, Raphael was using forged travel documents and had been doing so for a long time.

  She was born in 1937 in Cape Town, South Africa, to a Christian mother and a Jewish father. She fell in love with Israel while in her 20s. She volunteered at a kibbutz named Ramat HaKovesh, and being pretty, smart, and easily suited to a terrific cover story, she was spotted by Israeli intelligence. In the early 1960s, the military intelligence unit specializing in penetration of Arab countries hired and trained her.

  Her personal instructor was Gehmer, who would be arrested in Lillehammer with her. Ten years prior to that, he sent her to Canada to build up professional qualifications as a cover. Later, the entire Aman unit was transferred to the Mossad as part of the new Caesarea operations department.

  Fully trained as a combatant, she repeatedly used the Roxborough cover as a way to reach any place where journalists might go. She conducted espionage in Egypt, and even reportedly in Palestinian refugee camps where Arafat was putting together his PLO.

  Her case in Norway had a happy ending, at least, because she fell in love with Annaeus Schjodt, her Norwegian defense attorney, and married him after her release from 11 months in prison. Their romance was first noticed by an eight-year-old, the daughter of Israeli ambassador Eliezer Palmor. Raphael was permitted to stay at his house in Oslo during holiday breaks from her cell—generously approved by Norway’s government—for Passover and for Rosh HaShana. During a dinner, the girl ran to her mother to report that Sylvia and her lawyer were “secretly touching” under the table, so “they must be in love.” Their cover was blown.

  The couple became celebrities in Oslo and was invited to social events, where many Norwegians wanted to chat amiably with a Mossad assassin. It was as though Israel had produced yet another champagne spy.

  In the 1980s, the Mossad uncovered a PLO plot to assassinate Roxborough/Raphael. The Tevel department, in charge of foreign liaisons, sent a detailed message to the Norwegian secret service—because clandestine relations were back to normal within a few years after the mistaken murder. The Norwegian government, a great supporter of the Palestinian cause, privately warned Arafat that if Raphael were killed, then he wo
uld be held responsible.

  Five of the Mossad operatives had to spend time in a Norwegian prison, with terms ranging from two to five-and-a-half years. Yet, the sentences were reduced for all of them.

  Raphael did not return to the Mossad, at least not in life. She and her husband lived in Norway for a while and then in South Africa, where she died of leukemia in 2005 at age 67. The Mossad arranged to bring her body to Israel for a hero’s funeral at her kibbutz, surrounded by the scent of citrus flowers from nearby groves. Clandestine colleagues attended the moving ceremony, and her own words are carved on her gravestone: “I love my country wholeheartedly.”

  In an unprecedented move, the Mossad agreed to open parts of its secret archives to publicize Raphael’s heroic service. One of her trainers in espionage tradecraft, Motti Kfir, was permitted to take part in writing a biography titled Sylvia.

  The Mossad was lucky that Norway did not press very hard in its investigation of the complicated Lillehammer case, clearly preferring not to add public humiliation to Israel’s embarrassment. Despite incriminating information that emerged at the trials in Norway, the French and Italian security services also displayed a great deal of solidarity with the Mossad. They ignored the PLO’s demands to renew investigations into the violent deaths of Palestinians in those countries.

  This was, of course, not simply the result of dumb luck. The seeds sown by the Tevel department were bearing fruit. Western secret services respected the Jewish state’s willingness to show the world an alternative to appeasement and submission in the war against terrorism. Most European governments thus did not look intensively into things they would rather not know.

  This was small consolation for Israel. The Mossad could not be satisfied until it finally caught up with Salameh. Yet, there was a six-year halt in counter-terrorism killings. Lillehammer made it seem that the danger of exposure was too great, and assassinations not worthwhile.