by Dan Raviv
The general was killed, but his guests were unharmed.
No less impressive was the precision of the information gathered about Suleiman’s party: what time it would start, and where he would be sitting.
The mission, thus accomplished, was to send a message to his master, the president: Don’t mess with us. Another objective was getting rid of a powerful official who worked on Syria’s very special relations with both Hezbollah and Iran.
Chapter Twenty-five
Into the Future
There always seemed to be an immediate challenge or crisis for Israel’s intelligence agencies, and none seemed more important than the multi-pronged covert offensive aimed at sabotaging—or at least retarding—Iran’s nuclear program.
Israeli leaders monitored the issue extremely closely, knowing that they might feel compelled to unleash their country’s military muscle to combat the Islamic Republic’s nuclear capability. Thanks to significant delays, for which former Mossad director Meir Dagan claimed credit, the fateful year for a decision was changed from 2010 to 2011 and then to 2012, and likely beyond that.
Yet, even as Dagan was replaced at the end of 2010, after eight highly active years, by his deputy Tamir Pardo, there was a need to look ahead to the next, seemingly inevitable crises.
Reviewing the past, it becomes clear that Israeli intelligence always has had its eye on the future. It consistently has tried to be on the cutting edge in utilizing human and technological resources. The Mossad, Aman, and Shin Bet pride themselves on being innovative; and they hope and believe that they are ahead of their peers—the other espionage and security agencies, large and small, worldwide.
Israel’s was one of the first intelligence communities to introduce computers, as early as the 1950s, long before other governments used them for any function at all.
Israel was the first nation to take advantage of drones, for pilotless intelligence gathering and for striking enemies.
Israel was the sixth country to join the nuclear club, although doggedly refusing to confirm that fact, and one of only a handful of nations to launch satellites.
Israel is a leading country in the new virtual battlefield of cyberwarfare. Increasingly and by necessity, spy agencies are expanding from the physical world to the digital world.
Cyberspace has largely been a blessing for Israel and its intelligence agencies. It is becoming less relevant that the Jewish state is so physically tiny, because in technology it is the giant of the Middle East.
Vastly increased reliance on computers elevated Aman’s role within the community, since the conduct of cyber-activities is in that military agency’s hands. Aman has immersed itself in a new dimension where bloodless wars are waged. Many objectives can now be fought over, without soldiers or machinery ever clashing face to face.
Three forms of cyber-activity are useful, relevant, and exploited by the military: intelligence gathering, offensive steps, and defensive moves.
For collecting information and for operations, cyber-based methods are not eliminating human intelligence, an area at which the Israelis have excelled. Technology, however, is now invaluable in helping humint—offering a wealth of useful shortcuts. Almost every human activity today is linked with computers, is recorded by them, and leaves tracks on a network that can be found and penetrated by cyber-espionage.
It would be foolish for anyone using a computer in any manner to think that privacy and secrecy exist anymore. If Israeli intelligence agencies believe that some needed data resides in the computer networks of almost any foreign government, military, company, or individual, Israel’s ability to ferret out the data and to undetectably procure it is far above average.
Smart use of cyberspace obviates the need for old-fashioned shots in the dark, including fishing expeditions for information in the real world that burn up travel budgets and put operatives at risk. Like other intelligence communities, Israel’s became expert at break-ins; yet those, in a physical sense, are less important in our era of networked computers and the internet.
Information is much more available, and data more obtainable than ever. Israeli software and hardware developers, including many who learned their skills in the military’s Unit 8200, invented much of the networking equipment used around the world. They know all the “back door” entrances, and they are adept at cracking all types of computer code.
Intelligence agencies can also use chat rooms, social networks, e-mail exchanges, and other websites to identify important information very far from home, and to dig deeper to learn more—all from a safe distance.
A katsa, or case officer, might find it necessary to establish personal contact a few times with agents employed abroad. Psychological factors are still strong, and the reasons that a foreigner is supplying secrets about his or her own country need to be understood. Yet, for routine and follow-up meetings, there is less need for an Israeli to enter enemy lands—the “target” countries—or to bring their agents to the neutral “base” countries.
Compared with ages past, there is far less need to arrange a clandestine rendezvous with an agent, with laborious coding and decoding of messages by hand. Elaborate signals, such as “dead letter drops” for leaving packages and messages under false rocks in the woods, have become relics of the past displayed in spy museums.
Because the internet leaves a lot of room to the imagination, there are new opportunities for “false-flag” recruitment. You can introduce yourself as something entirely different than you are. It used to be that if an Israeli operative were pretending to be Belgian, for example, he would have to be someone selected to credibly pass himself off as a Belgian. On the internet, such disguises are relatively simple.
United States intelligence agencies have also learned that technology in the hands of terrorists can be turned against them. Anytime an enemy of America or Israel uses a telephone—and especially a smartphone, with its mobile connection to the internet—an intelligence agency has a very good chance of detecting where he is and intercepting his messages. Not surprisingly, al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups gave up using telephones and depend only on couriers who carry messages in medieval style.
Israel has developed offensive capabilities that could be unleashed against enemy nations that have modern infrastructure. The United States is very advanced in this category of warfare, but the fact is that large and small countries—America and Israel, for instance—can be nearly equal in their power to stage cyber-attacks that could cripple a foe.
It is possible for most any nation with terrific technology experts to shut down electricity, water supplies, and the aviation system of the enemy without endangering a single one of its own soldiers. Specialists can take destructive action, while sitting comfortably at control panels and in situation rooms thousands of miles away.
A modern nation could theoretically be brought to a halt, if one country decides to bring chaos to another’s society.
Intelligence agencies have also developed the ability to feed false information into the enemy’s computer-based systems. Planting the Stuxnet worm in Iran’s nuclear computers was just one example of the limitless possibilities in offensive cyberwar. Israel was also able to blind the Syrian anti-aircraft defense system, when the nuclear reactor in Syria was destroyed in 2007.
However, these weapons are double-edged swords. The more a country is technologically advanced—certainly including Israel—the more it is vulnerable, because it inevitably has much of its own vital information in computer networks that might be pierced.
Israel and its intelligence agencies devote increasing resources to defending themselves from cyber-assaults. They invent and activate virus detectors and firewalls, and—of course—they make sure not to connect the public websites of the Mossad and many other sensitive institutions to the important intranets used by agency employees.
The problem is that a country must defend not only its real military and strategic installations, but also its entire virtual home front. Traffic
lights are controlled by computers, as are sewers, hospitals, and myriad other civilian systems. Cyberwar turns every individual in the country into someone who could be hit by the enemy and could suffer.
There is also the somewhat troubling fact that the enemy need not be a state. Terrorist groups can hack into databases with various levels of skill—from the rudimentary to the surprisingly complex. Some hackers often change their locations and their modes of entry into computer networks. Israel, to defend its infrastructure and hit back, may have to go through the frustration of punching at a moving target.
The future for Israel and its intelligence community may be full of double-edged swords. Almost anything that Israel has acquired or developed, its enemies are also aiming to get.
The one thing that the opponents cannot match—at least, not so far—are Israel’s humint assets. Analysts at Aman and the Mossad know the neighboring countries very well; and many Israelis speak a wide variety of languages, often thanks to the origins of their own parents and grandparents.
Meantime, the espionage and security agencies of Israel’s enemies seem to focus nervously on pleasing their masters; and that often means telling an authoritarian ruler precisely what he wants to hear. Be they Iranians, Lebanese radicals, Egyptians, or other Arabs, the rival security services consistently have failed to understand Israeli society. In simple terms, hardly any of them ever met a Jew.
They mainly come from dictatorships and cannot imagine the workings of a society that is open and democratic. They tend to judge Israel’s every move according to their own core values and experiences.
That has given Israel a genuine qualitative edge over the years. But Israeli society is changing. It is becoming less educated on average, less productive, more introverted, less attuned to the world’s opinions, and increasingly torn by tensions between rich and poor.
The secret agencies, it is true, are peopled by exceptional individuals. Yet, Israel’s intelligence community has always been a reflection of the entire nation. It cannot be better than the society in which it resides.
In fact, coming from a free and open country, Israelis find it quite challenging to assess the intentions of the surrounding dictatorships. The ideal piece of intelligence would be knowledge of exactly what is going on between the ears of only one man—the leader. Despite all of Israel’s technological advances, no machine can read minds and intentions.
When longtime Arab rulers were toppled in the pro-freedom uprisings of 2011, Israel was taken by surprise. Intelligence analysts contended—when looking at their largest neighbor, Egypt—that they predicted the possibility of an anti-Israel, Islamic regime in Cairo; but only after the eventual death of President Hosni Mubarak. He had been, practically, an ally for Israel and certainly for the United States. Israeli strategists wished that he could still be around, but changing the course of history is beyond the capabilities of even the best espionage agencies.
Israel’s analysts did all they could to keep up with a rapidly changing set of Arab governments, and intelligence professionals shunned simplistic questions, such as, “Is it good for us?” Yet top politicians wanted to know how their country would be impacted by popular movements, hope mixed with violence, and a demand for freedom in Arab lands that could lead to an honest desire for peace. Events could also lead to hatred of Israel being stirred up by new leaders.
Israelis genuinely felt threatened by Iran’s radicalism and its growing power. When leaders in Jerusalem warned that they would not tolerate a nuclear-armed Iran, they emphasized that they could not take the risk that the mullahs might one day use the world’s most potent weapons. The Mossad and Aman could not claim to know what today’s Supreme Leader, or tomorrow’s, might do.
Iran’s nuclear program, combined with its support of terrorism, is currently at the heart of Israel’s most urgent concerns; but crisis management has become part of life for Israelis. This is certainly not their first crisis, and it will not be their last.
As usual, there are many options for attempting to resolve it. Elected officials, military chiefs, and, indeed, the people of Israel naturally want to have the best possible information—and they have enjoyed the fruits of a very impressive intelligence community. Now, the leaders must decide. Israel should not expect the secret agencies to be more than they have proved to be: an excellent example of what a small nation with meager resources can do by using them to the utmost. The community’s history has demonstrated both the maximal achievements and the inescapable limitations of intelligence.
Endnotes
Chapter 1
Meir Dagan, just before leaving the Mossad in December 2010, invited 30 journalists to the agency’s guest house at Glilot and briefed them on his views. It was intended to be off-the-record, but within hours lengthy reports were in the media. After that, he appeared in several public forums in Israel and made statements that were controversial and disliked by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak. Details of his views also emerged at the Saban Forum of the Brookings Institution in December 2011 in Washington, DC.
On the Shah of Iran’s nuclear ambitions, see Yossi Melman and Meir Javedanfar, The Nuclear Sphinx of Tehran (Carroll & Graf, 2007), Chapter 5, “The Grandfather of Iran’s Bomb.”
Mohammed ElBaradei, former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, offers his perspectives in his memoir, The Age of Deception: Nuclear Diplomacy in Treacherous Times (Metropolitan Books, 2011).
On various plans hatched by the CIA and Israeli intelligence to stop Iran’s nuclear program, including a plot to supply flawed bomb-design blueprints to Iran, see James Risen, State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration (Free Press, 2006).
An article reporting cooperation by Israel and U.S. intelligence in producing and testing the Stuxnet virus appeared in The New York Times on January 15, 2011. A virus analyst at the California-based networking security firm Symantec spoke to one of the authors in April 2012 about Stuxnet and its computer-code cousin Duqu.
Commenting on the huge explosion at an Iranian missile base in December 2011, Israel’s deputy prime minister in charge of strategic affairs, a former IDF chief of staff, Moshe (Boogie) Yaalon, claimed that the base was developing a 10,000-kilometer-range missile meant to threaten the United States. He spoke at briefings for journalists and experts in New York in January 2012.
Dagan’s meeting with Nicholas Burns, a U.S. undersecretary of state, in August 2007 was summarized in a State Department cable that was apparently authentic, released by Wikileaks in November 2010. Dagan is quoted as outlining his five-part plan for destabilizing Iran and persuading that country to stop its nuclear weapons program.
Dagan gave his first interview to American television when he spoke to the CBS News program 60 Minutes, aired on March 11, 2012. He publicly predicted that an Israeli air assault on Iran would prompt Iranians to support their Islamic regime, while on a panel at a Jerusalem Post conference in New York on April 29, 2012.
President Barack Obama and Netanyahu declared their views on Iran’s nuclear program in speeches to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s annual policy conference in Washington on March 4 and 5, 2012, respectively.
Obama said that he was “not bluffing” when interviewed by Jeffrey Goldberg, national correspondent of The Atlantic, as reported at TheAtlantic.com on March 2, 2012.
Chapter 2
Moshe Tziper, the son of the allegedly disloyal Avner Israel, spoke with one of the authors in June 2011.
Rafael Eitan, “Mr. Kidnap,” was interviewed in 2011 by one of the authors about the operation to find “a Bulgarian needle in an Italian haystack.”
Amos Manor, former Shin Bet director, spoke of being “ashamed” of Avner Israel’s death, interviewed by one of the authors; see Ha’aretz of March 9, 2006, by Yossi Melman.
The final days of the pre-state Shai were described by Hagai Eshed, One-Man Mossad: Reuven Shiloah, Father of Israeli Intelligence (in Hebrew by Ed
anim/Yediot Aharonot, 1988), p. 120.
Isser Harel’s agents did police-type work and opened “thousands of letters,” according to Tom Segev, 1949: The First Israelis (Domino Press, 1984), pp. 292, 294.
Some of Avri El-Ad’s activities were written about by El-Ad himself in Decline of Honor (Regency Books, 1976), pp. 60-2; see also Aviezer Golan, Operation Susannah (Harper and Row, 1978).
While El-Ad was secretly sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment, no Israeli official accepted responsibility for ordering the sabotage campaign in Egypt. Israelis called it The Rotten Business, or the Lavon Affair, and all the potential decisionmakers—IDF chief of staff Moshe Dayan, Aman chief Benyamin Gibli, and Defense Minister Pinhas Lavon—denied any knowledge.
The story of Ze’ev Avni was recounted in Moshe Zak, Israel and the Soviet Union: A Forty-Year Dialogue (Maariv Book Guild, 1988), pp. 301-2; and by El-Ad, Decline of Honor, pp. 282-4.
Chapter 3
The most complete account of ex-Chicago White Sox player Moe Berg’s secret second career is in Nicholas Dawidoff, The Catcher Was a Spy: The Mysterious Life of Moe Berg (Vintage, 1995).
Reuven Shiloah’s June 1951 visit to Washington is described by Eshed in One-Man Mossad, pp. 164-5.
James J. Angleton’s background, including his suspicious nature, is in David C. Martin, Wilderness of Mirrors (Harper and Row, 1980), pp. 10-12.
“Jim saw in Israel a true ally …” Teddy Kollek, who procured arms and then many friendships for Israel in the United States, and later was the long-time mayor of Jerusalem, is quoted in Martin, Wilderness, p. 20.
The story of Elyashiv Ben-Horin and his recruitment efforts in Washington is in Dan Raviv and Yossi Melman, Friends In Deed: Inside the U.S.-Israel Alliance (Hyperion, 1994), pp. 63-4.