Spies Against Armageddon

by Dan Raviv

  “Russians were infiltrating Israel’s army”: Stephen Green, Taking Sides: America’s Secret Relations with a Militant Israel (William Morrow, 1984), p. 19, quoting a memorandum from acting Secretary of State Robert Lovett to Secretary of Defense James Forrestal; also Martin, Wilderness, p. 20.

  Israel started feeding data about Soviet life, and allowed the CIA to use Israeli intelligence assets: in Martin, p. 21; and Eshed, p. 163.

  “Shiloah persuaded the prime minister” to cooperate with the United States on intelligence: in Harel, Security and Democracy, pp. 381-2.

  Amos Manor’s quotations are from his interview in March 2006 with one of the authors.

  Chapter 4

  Victor Grayevsky, who had become an Israeli radio journalist and executive, spoke with one of the authors a year before his death at age 82 in 2007. See Yossi Melman, “Trade Secrets,” in Ha’aretz, March 10, 2006.

  Manor, former head of Shin Bet who forged the intelligence alliance with the United States, spoke with one of the authors in March 2006. Manor died in August 2007 at age 88.

  “Israel’s great friend in Washington helped to maintain the smoke screen …” Angleton’s apparent role in 1956 was reported by the British newspaper, The Guardian, on May 13, 1987.

  Nir Baruch, the Israeli spy in Cuba who helped the CIA, told his story to one of the authors on condition that it not be published until he died. See Yossi Melman in Ha’aretz on March 3, 2011, after Baruch passed away at age 88.

  “Angleton had one major responsibility,” running the CIA’s connection with Israel in a “compartmented fashion”: ex-CIA director William Colby, quoted in John Ranelagh, The Agency: The Rise and Decline of the CIA (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1986), pp. 560-3.

  On King Abdullah and continued clandestine relations between Jordan and Israel, see Yossi Melman and Dan Raviv, Behind the Uprising (Greenwood Press, 1989).

  On Hosni Zaim of Syria being on Western intelligence payrolls: Avi Shlaim, Collusion Across the Jordan (Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 423; Copeland, Game Player, pp. 93-101. The Israeli connection was revealed at a Tel Aviv University seminar in April 1989.

  “Israeli military advisers trained Kurdish guerrillas”: Future Mossad directors Zvi Zamir and Nahum Admoni both made undercover trips to the Kurds, and Aryeh (Lova) Eliav revealed his activities in his Hebrew book, Rings of Testimony (Am Oved, 1984), pp. 156-164.

  Ben-Gurion’s secret trip to Turkey and “engine problems that forced an emergency landing”: Samuel Segev, The Iranian Triangle: The Secret Relations Between Israel-Iran-USA (Maariv Books, 1981), p. 88.

  “…the Mossad trained Turkish secret agents in counterintelligence techniques and the use of technical devices”: Yossi Melman, The CIA Report on the Intelligence Services of Israel (Erez, 1982), pp. 59-60, quoting a classified report dated 1976 and found by Iranian militants in the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979.

  On Israeli operatives persuading Iran to let the CIA build a listening post, see Meir Doron and Joseph Gelman, Confidential: The Life of Secret Agent Turned Hollywood Tycoon Arnon Milchan, (Gefen Books, 2011), pp. 68-70.

  Chapter 5

  The gathering of French, British, and Israeli leaders around a table in a French mansion in 1956 is based on an interview by one of the authors with Asher Ben-Natan in December 1988; also, on an article by Mordecai Bar-On, then an aide to Moshe Dayan, in Yediot Aharonot, October 24, 1986.

  Isser Harel “had to take a back seat” on war plans: article in Ma’ariv, October 24, 1986, as the 30th anniversary of the Sinai/Suez war approached.

  On the nuclear research reactor delivered by the United States at Nahal Sorek, see Green, Taking Sides, pp. 149-150.

  “Bourgès-Maunoury... signed top secret documents”: Many details from Shimon Peres’s point of view are in Matti Golan, Peres (Schocken Books, 1982), p. 54.

  After resignations from the atomic energy commission, “… they were pleased that fewer people would now have the privilege of knowing what Israel was doing”: Peter Pringle and James Spiegelman, The Nuclear Barons: The Inside Story of How They Created our Nuclear Nightmare (Michael Joseph, 1982), pp. 295-6; and Golan, Road to Peace, p. 51.

  “He knew how to keep a secret …”: Shimon Peres, who in 2007 would become Israel’s president, gave his assessment of Binyamin Blumberg to one of the authors in April 2005. See Yossi Melman, Ha’aretz, April 22, 2005.

  “The spy-priest sent a highly critical cable” to Paris after visiting the Negev: Golan, Road to Peace, pp. 57-58.

  On Blumberg and “what did he have to keep an eye on at the Defense Ministry?”: Baruch Nir was interviewed by one of the authors in June 2005.

  “Lakam was established behind my back and without my knowledge”: Harel was quoted in the newspaper Yediot Aharonot, May 29, 1987.

  Dimona was “not a textile factory, a distillation facility, or a metallurgical laboratory”: See Avner Cohen, Israel and the Bomb (Columbia University Press, 1998), p. 85.

  America’s defense secretary saying “the plant is not for peaceful purposes” is in Cohen, ibid., p. 89. A chapter in Cohen’s book, “The Dimona Visits (1964-1967),” is the most thorough account of U.S. government inspection attempts, pp. 175-194.

  On David Ben-Gurion’s revelation of an atomic reactor in December 1960, see Amos Perlmutter, Michael Handel, and Uri Bar-Joseph, Two Minutes Over Baghdad (Vallentine Mitchell and Co., 1982), p. 26. Also, The New York Times, “Ben-Gurion Explains Project” and “Israel Assured U.S. on Reactors,” December 22, 1960.

  Avner Cohen wrote about the delicate verbal dance between Ben-Gurion and John F. Kennedy in Israel and the Bomb and again in The Worst-Kept Secret: Israel’s Bargain with the Bomb (Columbia University Press, 2010); and also in his article in 1995, “Stumbling Into Opacity: The Untold Ben Gurion-Kennedy Dimona Exchange (1961-1963).”

  Ben-Gurion spoke of the need to “build up a deterrent force” several times—for instance, in a meeting with newspaper editors in the summer of 1963, according to Zaki Shalom, Ben-Gurion’s Political Struggles, 1963-1967: A Lion in Winter, p. 41.

  On Peres’s promise to Kennedy not to “be the first” to introduce nuclear weapons into the region, see “Let the World Worry,” by Yossi Melman in Ha’aretz, December 13, 2006.

  Details of Israel’s deception efforts aimed at American nuclear inspectors were revealed to the authors in September 1992 by Abba Eban, the former foreign minister who died in 2002.

  John Hadden, former CIA station chief in Tel Aviv, reminisced about nuclear secrets, alcohol, and Mrs. Ben-Gurion when interviewed in 1991 by Dan Raviv and Yossi Melman for Friends In Deed: Inside the U.S.-Israel Alliance, pp. 121-131.

  Retired U.S. government officials revealed to one of the authors, in Washington in 2011, that Yitzhak Rabin—as Israel’s ambassador to the United States—produced a new formula in late 1968 that until there is a nuclear test, Israel will not be considered to possess nuclear weapons. See Avner Cohen, Israel and the Bomb, pp. 317-8, who reveals that Rabin’s notion came up in talks with Paul Warnke, a Defense Department official in the outgoing Lyndon Johnson administration. Warnke was trying to persuade Israel to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Israel always refused to do so.

  Richard Nixon’s administration, which took office in late January 1969, accepted Israel as an undeclared nuclear power, “if Israel kept its nuclear profile low.” U.S. inspectors’ visits to Dimona stopped. See Cohen, ibid., pp. 323 and 334-7.

  Chapter 6

  Levi Levi’s confirmation that in Kazakhstan he had contacts with the Soviet NKVD, a predecessor of the KGB, and more information about Levi were in Polish documents—declassified after the fall of the former Communist government—shared with the authors in October 2010 by Leszek Gluchowski, a Polish-Canadian historian.

  On the role of sayanim (helpers), one book claims they must all be Jewish. See Victor Ostrovsky and Claire Hoy, By Way of Deception: The Making and Unmaking of a Mossad Officer (St. Martin’s Press, 1990), pp. 86-7. Ostrovsky, w
ho asserts he was an officer compelled to leave the Mossad after being unfairly blamed for an error, was—according to Israeli officials—only a cadet at the agency’s academy. While they denied many highly critical statements in his book, Israel’s government did see it as potentially damaging and unwisely tried to prevent its publication in the United States. The controversy helped make it a best seller. As for a “list” of 7,000 sayanim worldwide, Ostrovsky and Hoy wrote: “One thing you know for sure is that even if a Jewish person knows it is the Mossad, he might not agree to work with you—but he won’t turn you in.”

  Ex-Israeli operative Avri El-Ad in his book, Decline of Honor, pp. 267-8, told of the message tapped out by Motke Kedar: “Don’t let them drag you down.”

  The refusal to grant Kedar a new hearing was reported by Hadashot, November 14, 1986; and by Yediot Aharonot, February, 4, 1990. Those newspapers also quoted Yehoshafat Harkabi, the former Aman chief, who said recruits for spy missions are “not uncomplicated.”

  Isser Harel’s boast that judges and courts decided the fate of aberrant agents, and “no traitor was ever executed,” is in his book, Security and Democracy, pp. 270-3; and in the Jerusalem Post magazine, January 20, 1989.

  Harel’s feeling that creation of an operations unit was like a “birth” was related during a rare interview with Harel, conducted by author Yossi Melman in Harel’s house in Tzahala on December 12, 2002, two months before Harel’s death at age 91.

  Aharon Cohen’s espionage against Israel, and his trial, are reported by Michael Bar-Zohar, Isser Harel and Israel’s Security Service, pp. 106-8, 148.

  For more on Yair Racheli’s account of “the Comb” method of surveillance for counterespionage, see “Parallel Underworlds” by Yossi Melman in Ha’aretz, May 16, 2003.

  On Harel blaming the FBI for failing to share all information about Kurt Sitta, see Harel, Soviet Espionage, pp. 169-175; also Ma’ariv, November 14, 1986.

  For Israel Be’er’s claim, until his dying day, that he was innocent of espionage: Harel, Soviet Espionage, pp. 131-6.

  A recent and thorough book on the Israeli mission to kidnap the notorious Nazi war criminal in Argentina was Hunting Eichmann by Neal Bascomb (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010).

  Indications that hunting for Nazis was not a high priority for Harel before Eichmann was located include two memos between Shin Bet and the Mossad in 1952, each suggesting that the other organization should deal with hunting for Eichmann. One said, “We have found that we do not have the means to devote suitable attention to dealing with the matter.” They were revealed when the Mossad took the rare step, in early 2012, of putting relics from the capture of Eichmann—including the false passport in the name Ze’ev Zichroni—on display at Beit HaTfutsot (The Diaspora Museum) in Ramat-Aviv. A Mossad archivist said the exhibit had been inside the agency’s headquarters. See Ha’aretz, in Hebrew on April 12, and in English on April 15, 2012, at Haaretz.com.

  Simon Wiesenthal’s employment by the Mossad was revealed by historian Tom Segev in Simon Wiesenthal: The Life and Legends (Knopf Doubleday, 2010), pp. 9 and 182.

  Moshe Tavor, one of the Israelis who kidnapped Eichmann, was interviewed by Saguy Green in Yediot Aharonot, “The Safecracker of the Mossad,” April 18, 2006, only three weeks before Tavor’s death at age 89.

  Harel published his version of the Eichmann kidnapping in 1975, The House on Garibaldi Street (re-released by Frank Cass Publishers, 1997).

  On the surprise and joy in Israel’s parliament when the capture of Eichmann was announced: Ze’ev Schiff and Eitan Haber, Israel, Army, and Defense: A Dictionary (Zmora Bitan Modan, 1976), pp. 36-7; Dennis Eisenberg, Uri Dan, and Eli Landau, The Mossad: Inside Stories (New American Library, 1978), pp. 177-198 and 212-227; and Stewart Steven, The Spymasters of Israel (Ballantine Books, 1980), pp. 130-9.

  Although Eichmann is the only person put to death by Israel’s judicial system, there was the somewhat legal execution of Captain Meir Toubianski, shot on the orders of military intelligence chief Isser Beeri in 1948.

  “I believe that he has no idea where Mengele is,” Zvi Malchin said to Harel, according to Malchin himself—writing in Hebrew in 1987 as Peter Mann with co-author Uri Dan; and then in English with Harry Stein, Eichmann in My Hands (Warner Books, 1990).

  Harel said that Mengele moved to Paraguay, then Brazil: Reuters, “Israeli Who Captured Eichmann,” April 6, 1989.

  “Don’t touch Mossinson,” the request from Ben-Gurion to Francisco Franco of Spain: according to Yigal Mossinson, interviewed by the authors, December 6, 1988.

  Among those telling of the successful boyhunt for Yossele Schumacher: Stewart Steven, Spymasters, pp. 141-151; and Eisenberg, Dan, and Landau, The Mossad, pp. 36-53.

  One of the Israeli journalists recruited by Harel to write about the dangers of German scientists in Egypt was Samuel (Shmuel) Segev, interviewed about this mission by one of the authors on October 21, 1988. The mission was also chronicled in Bar-Zohar, Isser Harel, p. 240.

  Amos Manor, nominal chief of Shin Bet, spoke to one of the authors in March 2006 about the advice he gave to a stubborn Harel when Harel had his final falling-out with Ben-Gurion.

  Chapter 7

  “It was a command.” David Ben-Gurion giving the Mossad directorship to Meir Amit is told by Eitan Haber, War Will Break Out Today: Memoirs of Brigadier General Israel Lior, Aide-de-Camp to Prime Ministers Levi Eshkol and Golda Meir (published in Hebrew by Edanim/Yediot Aharonot, 1988), p. 62.

  Isser Harel being forced to testify to an inquiry about the campaign against German scientists was written in Hebrew by Yair Kotler, Joe Returns to the Limelight (Modan, 1988), pp. 40, 61, 66-8; also Eitan Haber, ibid., p. 62; and Yediot Aharonot, October 16, 1987, which quotes Harel himself.

  Yitzhak Shamir resigned: Kotler, Joe Returns, p. 61; Steven, Spymasters of Israel, pp. 186-187.

  “A woman could not gather information in the Arab world,” an attitude that changed in the next 20 years, was said to one of the authors in 1988 by a long-time Mossad male operative, who wished to remain anonymous.

  On using prostitutes for sexual blackmail missions, the late Hesi Carmel, a Mossad operative who became a French journalist and author, spoke with one of the authors in June 2001.

  On the Mossad’s virtual monopoly over foreign intelligence collection, with some military exceptions for Aman: Melman, The CIA Report, pp. 41-56; and Walter Laqueur, A World of Secrets: The Use and Limits of Intelligence (Basic Books, 1985), p. 220.

  “It was more effective and less complicated to kill” a Nazi war criminal such as Herbert Cukurs, Meir Amit told one of the authors in an interview in August 2007. Amit died in July 2009 at age 88.

  In telling of some of the successes by the Keshet operations department, later renamed Neviot, Mossad veterans did not wish to reveal precisely where the legendary Yaacov Barda and others were active against Arab targets.

  On planting misleading stories in the press as Mossad “psychological warfare,” senior Mossad veteran David Kimche was interviewed by one of the authors in June 2007. He died in March 2010 at age 82.

  A more complete account of the secret meetings between Israeli officials and King Hussein of Jordan can be found in Yossi Melman and Dan Raviv, Behind the Uprising (Greenwood Press, 1989).

  On the unsolved disappearance and murder of a Moroccan dissident, with Mossad operatives involved: “The Murder of Mehdi Ben Barka,” Time magazine, December 29, 1975. Also: Steven, Spymasters, pp. 240-252. In the Israeli press, Monitin magazine in June 1987 and Yediot Aharonot on October 16 and 19, 1987, had some details.

  Chapter 8

  Former Aman and Mossad director Meir Amit spoke with one of the authors in January 2009, six months before his death.

  Otto Skorzeny’s role as an organizer of Odessa, an organization of former SS officers, and its “rat lines” that smuggled Nazis to South America, is recounted in many books and is neatly summarized in Michael Benson, Inside Secret Societies (Kensington Publishing, 2005), p. 132.
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  The negative view of Israeli intelligence by the late CIA Arabist, Archie Roosevelt Jr., is cited by Stephen Dorril, MI6: Inside the Covert World of Her Majesty’s Secret Intelligence Service (Touchstone, 2002), p. 654.

  Ex-Mossad chief Meir Amit told how the Israelis found and recruited Skorzeny in a public lecture in April 1997 in Tel Aviv, and in an interview with one of the authors in May 1997. Rafi Eitan and Avraham Ahituv also shared their versions with one of the authors in May 2006. See also Michael Bar-Zohar and Nissim Mishal, The Mossad (in Hebrew, Miskal/Yediot Aharonot, 2010), pp. 108-9.

  Amit spoke about his 1966 meeting in Paris with Egypt’s Colonel Khalil, in the interview with one of the authors in May 1997.

  The motto of Sayeret Matkal is “Ha-me’iz M’natze’ach” (The Darer Wins). Two books in Hebrew detail some of the history of the élite military unit: Avner Shur, Border Crosser (Kinneret/Zmora-Bitan/Dvir, 2008), and Moshe Zonder, The Elite Unit of Israel (Keter, 2000).

  The risky proposals to steal a MiG-21 warplane from Egypt or from Poland—what became Operation Diamond—were related to one of the authors by Amit in 1997. Also: Gad Shimron, The Mossad and the Myth (Keter Publishing, 2011), pp. 144-6.

  Books in the past said there was a female Israeli, sent to Iraq as part of Operation Diamond, to help persuade the pilot Munir Redfa to defect; however, well-informed sources recently told the authors that no Mossad woman was involved.

  The story of Abbas Hilmi, the Egyptian pilot who defected to Israel, and his untimely end in Argentina was related to one of the authors by an Israeli intelligence veteran of Aman’s Unit 154, which handled Hilmi’s interrogation.

  The Israeli spy Eli Cohen was transmitting too much intelligence from Damascus for his own safety: Samuel Segev, Alone in Damascus: The Life and Death of Eli Cohen (Keter, 1986), pp. 23 and 60; and Steven, Spymasters of Israel, pp. 202-4.

  The public campaign by Cohen’s family to have his body handed over to Israel by Syria’s government can be seen at www.EliCohen.org.