Gideon's Spies: The Secret History of the Mossad

CHAPTER 13 AFRICAN CONNECTIONS

A few blocks from Nairobi’s venerable Norfolk Hotel, the Oasis Club had long been a favorite among Kenya’s business community. They could drink all night in its gloomy interior and take a bar girl to one of the rooms out back after checking her current medical certificate confirmed she was free of venereal disease.

Since 1964, the club had also received other visitors, Chinese in safari suits, slab-faced Russians, and men whose nationality could have been of any country around the Mediterranean basin. They were not there for the cold beer or what the club advertised as “the hottest girls in all-Africa.” These men worked for intelligence services fighting to gain a foothold in central Africa, where once only Britain’s MI6 had secretly operated. The newcomers represented the Chinese Secret Intelligence Service (CSIS), the Soviet KGB, and Mossad. Each service had its own agenda, playing one off against the other. No one had become better at this than Mossad.

All told, there were a dozen katsas scattered along the equator, operating from Dar es Salaam on the Indian Ocean to Freetown on the shore of the Atlantic. Possessing an impressive number of false passports, young and superbly fit, the operatives, as well as all their normal skills, had acquired the basics of field medicine and surgery to enable them to survive in the bush, where predatory lions and leopards roamed, as well as hostile tribesmen.

Mossad’s African adventure had begun shortly after Fidel Castro came to power in Cuba in 1959 and started to export his revolution. His first success began when his surrogate, John Okello, a self-styled “field marshal,” was plucked out of the jungle by a Castro recruiter, given a short course in guerrilla warfare in Havana, and told to go and seize the small island of Zanzibar off the East African coast. His sheer height and bulk — he was three hundred pounds — terrified the island’s small police force into submission. Okello’s ragtag army stamped their brutal authority on a population whose only weapons were the primitive tools they used to harvest the spices that made Zanzibar world famous. The island became Castro’s launchpad for penetrating the African mainland. There was a Chinese ethnic population in the port of Dar es Salaam, and their reports home about what was happening came to the notice of the Beijing government. Realizing the opportunity the embryonic revolution offered for China to gain a greater hold on the continent, the CSIS was ordered to establish itself in the region and to provide all possible support for the revolutionaries.

Meantime, Castro had set up a full-scale operation to Cubanize the now burgeoning black liberation movement. The focus was the port of Casablanca on the West African coast. Shiploads of Cuban weapons arrived and on the return voyages to Havana the boats were filled with guerrilla trainees from all over central Africa. Soon the CSIS was helping to select them.

The prospect of thousands of trained and well-armed revolutionaries being within a few hours’ striking distance of Israel was alarming to its politicians and intelligence services. But to provoke this guerrilla army when they had offered no direct threat could lead to a confrontation Israel did not want. With its hands already full fighting off the threat from Arab terrorists, to become embroiled in direct action against black revolutionaries was to be avoided. Meir Amit ordered his katsas in Africa to keep a close watch but not to become actively involved.

The arrival of the KGB on the scene changed all that. The Russians brought an offer would-be terrorists could not refuse: the opportunity to be trained at the Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow. There they would receive the wisdom of the KGB’s best instructors in guerrilla tactics and how to exploit them under the guise of helping the dispossessed, powerless, and unelectable in democratic states. To help sell the idea, the KGB brought along some of the most successful graduates of Patrice Lumumba: Arab terrorists.

Meir Amit reinforced his African katsas with kidons. His new orders were to disrupt by all means possible the relations between the Russians and their African hosts and between the KGB and the CSIS; to kill Arab activists when the opportunity arose; and to foster relations with black African revolutionaries by promising them that Israel would assist their movements to progress beyond guerrilla tactics and allow their organizations to achieve political legitimacy. All Israel wanted in return was a guarantee it would not be attacked by these movements.

The Oasis Club had become part of the battle for the hearts and minds of African revolutionaries. The nights were filled with long discussions of how, without publicity, terrorism was a weapon firing only blanks, and of the need to never lose sight of the ultimate goal: freedom and independence. Within the club’s stifling atmosphere plots were hatched, deals made, targets identified for execution or destruction. Some victims would be ambushed driving on a dirt road, others killed in their beds. One day it would be a KGB agent, the next a CSIS spy. Each side blamed the other for what Mossad had done.

Back at the Oasis, the nights would continue as before, with new plans being made around the bamboo tables, with the rain rolling off the hills and beating on the tin roof. There was no need to whisper, but old habits died hard.

Meir Amit had briefed his agents on all he had learned of the CSIS. The service had a tradition of espionage extending back over 2,500 years. For centuries it had been a creature of the ruling emperor spying on his subjects. But with the arrival of first Mao and then Deng Xiaoping, China’s intelligence gathering, like so much else in the country, had taken a new direction. The CSIS began to expand its networks across the Pacific into the United States, Europe, the Middle East, and finally Africa.

These networks were used for more than espionage purposes: they were major routes for drug running and money laundering. With about half the world’s opium grown on the doorstep of the People’s Republic, in the Golden Triangle — Thailand, Laos, and Myanmar — the CSIS worked alongside Triad gangs to smuggle drugs into the West. Given Hong Kong’s position as one of the world’s major centers for money laundering, the CSIS had a perfect cover for concealing China’s profits from drug trafficking. That money helped to finance its operations in Africa. Those were, since 1964, ultimately under the control of the CSIS’s director general, Qiao Shi. A tall, stooped man with a taste for French cognac and Cuban cigars, he was a chief with hundreds of spies and a budget for bribery and blackmail rivaled only by that of the KGB. The labor camps of central China were filled with those who had dared challenge Qiao. Mossad’s psycho-profile described a man whose entire career consisted of adroit, low-key moves.

CSIS activities in Africa were under the local command of Colonel Kao Ling, already a legendary figure in the service, having made his reputation in Nepal and India with his subversive tactics. Based in Zanzibar, Kao Ling had a lavish lifestyle and a succession of nubile young African women as mistresses. He moved across central Africa like a predator, disappearing for weeks at a time. His visits to Nairobi became occasions for wild parties at the Oasis. Sweet-smelling smoke from bundles of joss sticks filled the club. Delicacies imported directly from China were served. The African whores were dressed up in cheongsams; there were indoor fireworks and cabarets flown in from Hong Kong.

Guerrillas who had returned from Cuba were feted before disappearing into the African bush to wage war. One of them had a party trick of drinking a glass of the human blood he drained from executed enemies he had killed.

Meantime, Kao Ling was expanding his operations not only across the width of Africa, but also northward toward Ethiopia, South Yemen, and Egypt. He provided its terrorists with substantial sums of money to launch attacks on Israel. The CSIS regarded Israel as a pawn in the hands of Washington and a legitimate target for what Kao Ling called “my freedom fighters.”

Meir Amit decided Mossad should go head-to-head against the CSIS. First it wrecked a Chinese plot to overthrow the pro-West Hastings Banda regime in Malawi. Next it informed the Kenyan authorities about the full extent of the Chinese network in its midst. Later the Nairobi government would show its gratitude by granting overfly rights for Israeli air force planes to carry out their mission to Entebbe. The Oasis Club was closed down and its Chinese patrons put on planes out of the country, loudly protesting they were only businessmen. They were lucky; several CSIS operatives would remain permanently in Africa, killed by Mossad katsas and left out on the savannas for lions and leopards to consume.

The more the Chinese tried to fight back in other African countries, the more ruthless Mossad became. Kidons stalked CSIS operatives wherever they set up shop. In Ghana, a CSIS agent was shot dead as he left a discotheque with his girlfriend. In Mali another died in a car bomb; in Zanzibar, still the jewel in the CSIS crown, a fire consumed an apartment block where CSIS staff lived. On one of his field trips, Kao Ling himself narrowly escaped death when some instinct made him switch cars in Brazzaville in the Congo. The other vehicle exploded minutes later, killing its driver. In Zambia, a CSIS agent was left bound to a tree for lions to consume.

When Kwame Nkrumah, the pro-Chinese ruler of Ghana, was on a state visit to Beijing, Mossad orchestrated the uprising that led to both Nkrumah’s overthrow and the destruction of the CSIS infrastructure in the country.

For three years Mossad waged its deadly war of attrition against the CSIS over the length and breadth of Africa. There was no mercy on either side. When a CSIS hit team ambushed a Mossad katsa in the Congo, they fed him to crocodiles, filming his last moments in the water and sending the footage to the local Mossad station chief. He retaliated by personally firing a rocket into the building from where the CSIS operated. Three Chinese were killed.

Finally, through an intermediary, President Mobutu of Zaire, the CSIS let Mossad know it had no wish to fight anymore; rather, they shared a common interest in stemming Russian influence on the continent. The approach perfectly suited Mossad’s policy toward all superpowers, articulated in Meir Amit’s dictum: “Dividing them helps Israel to survive.”

While the CSIS and Mossad had battled each other, the KGB had taken further steps to take over Castro’s plans to Cubanize Africa. KGB chiefs and the politburo had met in the Kremlin and agreed that Russia would underwrite the entire Cuban economy. The terms were enough to ensure that a nation of seven million people became in hock to the Soviet Union. In return, Castro agreed to accept that Moscow’s brand of Communism rather than Beijing’s was the correct one for Africa. He also agreed to receive five thousand advisers who would “instruct” Cuba’s own security service, the DGI, on how to operate “correctly” in Africa.

The KGB began to work alongside Cubans throughout black Africa. Within six months every act of terrorism in Africa was controlled by the Russians. From the Middle Eastern camps it had set up to train terrorists, the KGB brought the very best to Africa to wage war against the apartheid regime of South Africa. Terrorists from Europe, Latin America, and Asia were also soon providing their expertise in Angola, Mozambique, and countries bordering South Africa.

According to Meir Amit, “Matters were really heating up below the equator.” He realized it could only be a matter of time before these battle-hardened mercenaries would turn their attention to Israel. The offer from the CSIS to collaborate against a common enemy, the KGB and its terrorists, was one the Mossad chief gratefully accepted. The Chinese began to provide details about Arab movements in and out of Africa. Some were killed by the usual Mossad methods of car bombs or explosives placed in hotel rooms. On one occasion, Mossad placed a bomb in the toilet of a mercenary suffering from “Congo stomach,” a particularly unpleasant form of dysentery. The lower half of his body was blown to pieces when he pulled the flush in a Khartoum hotel.

Mossad kept its side of the bargain, tipping off the CSIS that Moscow intended to offer a massive financial aid package to one of the poorest countries on earth, Somalia. Beijing promptly doubled the offer. Next Mossad helped China in Sudan, where Moscow had established a bridgehead through President Nimeri’s military government. But when the dictator refused to become completely dependent on the Russians, the KGB planned a coup. Mossad informed the CSIS, who told Nimeri. He expelled all Russian diplomats and suspended Soviet Bloc aid schemes.

Having set the two bastions of Communism at each other’s throat while at the same time, as Meir Amit later put it, “working our way into the African woodwork,” Mossad turned its attention to the one intelligence service in Africa it had come to look upon as a friend: the Bureau of State Security, BOSS, the most feared arm of South Africa’s security apparatus. BOSS matched Mossad in blackmail, sabotage, forgery, kidnapping, prisoner interrogation, psychological warfare, and assassinations. Like Mossad, BOSS had a free hand in how it dealt with its opponents. The two services quickly became bedfellows. Often operating in tandem, they moved through Africa, enjoined by a secret “understanding” between Israel’s prime minister, Golda Meir, and the Pretoria regime.

The first result had been the export of uranium ore to Dimona. The shipments were carried on commercial El Al flights from Johannesburg to Tel Aviv, and listed on manifests as agricultural machinery. South African scientists traveled to Dimona and were the only outsiders who knew the true purpose of the facility. When South Africa tested a crude nuclear device on a remote island in the Indian Ocean, Israeli scientists were present to monitor the blast. In 1972, Ezer Weizman, then a senior official in the Israeli defense ministry, met Prime Minister P. W. Botha in Pretoria to ratify a further “understanding.” If either country was attacked and required military assistance, the other would come to its aid. Israel supplied the South African army with substantial quantities of U.S.-manufactured arms and in return was granted permission to test the first nuclear devices produced by Dimona at the site in the Indian Ocean.

By then, Mossad had deepened its own relationship with BOSS. While never able to wean the bureau’s agents from their brutish methods of interrogation, Mossad instructors introduced them to a range of other methods that had worked in Lebanon and elsewhere: sleep deprivation; hooding; forcing a suspect to stand at a wall for long periods; squeezing genitals; a variety of mental torture ranging from threats to mock executions. Mossad katsas traveled with BOSS units into neighboring black African countries on sabotage missions. Kidons showed the South Africans how to carry out killings that left no embarrassing trails. When Mossad offered to locate African National Congress (ANC) leaders living in exile in Britain and Europe for BOSS to kill, the bureau welcomed the idea. The Pretoria government finally vetoed the proposal, fearing it would lose what support it had among die-hard Conservative politicians in London.

Both Mossad and BOSS were driven by an obsessive belief that Africa was lurching leftward toward a revolution that would eventually engulf both their countries. To avoid that happening, any method was permissible. Feeding off each other’s fears, both services gave no quarter and shared a self-perpetuating concept that only they knew how to deal with the enemy. Between them, BOSS and Mossad became the two most feared foreign intelligence services in Africa.

This alliance did not sit well with Washington. The CIA feared it could affect its own efforts to maintain a hold on the black continent. The decolonization of Africa in the early 1960s had produced a new interest in Africa within the Agency — and a huge increase in its clandestine activities. An African division was formed, and by 1963, CIA stations had been established in every African nation.

One of the first to serve in Africa was Bill Buckley, later to be kidnapped and murdered by Hezbollah terrorists in Beirut. Buckley would recall, shortly before his capture, “These were really crazy times in Africa with everybody jockeying for position. We were late to the party, and the Mossad looked at us as if we were gate-crashers.”

In Washington, the State Department made discreet but determined efforts to reduce Israeli influence in Africa. It leaked details of how several hundred Jews from South Africa had flown north to help Israel during the Suez War. Twenty black African nations broke off diplomatic relations with Jerusalem. Among them was Nigeria. The severance could have been a severe blow to Israel: Nigeria provided over 60 percent of Israel’s oil supplies in return for arms that had originally been supplied by the United States to Israel. Despite the diplomatic breach, Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir agreed to continue secretly arming Nigeria in return for the continued flow of oil. To Buckley it was a “prime example of realpolitik.” Another was how Mossad set about shoring up its longtime partner BOSS. In the aftermath of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, Mossad found a substantial quantity of documents revealing close links between the PLO and the ANC, long BOSS’s bête noire. The incriminating material was turned over to the bureau, enabling its agents to arrest and torture hundreds of ANC members.

The eighties were halcyon days for Mossad’s great African safari. As well as playing off the Chinese against the Russians, it made matters difficult for the CIA, MI6, and other European intelligence agencies operating on the continent. Whenever one threatened Mossad’s own position, Mossad exposed its activities. In Kenya an MI6 agent was blown. In Zaire, a French network was wrecked. In Tanzania a German intelligence operation was hurriedly aborted after being uncovered by Mossad through a tip to a local reporter.

When terrorist leader Abu Nidal — who had masterminded the assassination of Israel’s ambassador to Britain, Shlomo Argov, on June 3, 1982, outside London’s Dorchester Hotel — tried to seek shelter in Sudan, Mossad promised the regime Israel would pay one million U.S. dollars for his capture, dead or alive. In the end Nidal fled to the safety of Baghdad.

In a dozen countries, Mossad exploited newfound African nationalism. Among agents who had served in several of those countries was Yaakov Cohen, who would recall: “We gave them an intelligence capability to remain on top of the opposition. In countries like Nigeria, tribal rivalries had led to civil war. Our policy was to work with anyone who would work with us. That enabled us to know everything that was happening in a country. The slightest mood change which could affect Israel was reported back.”

Before going to Africa, Cohen had distinguished himself in undercover missions in Egypt and elsewhere. As part of his disguise, Mossad had changed Cohen’s physical appearance by arranging for a plastic surgeon to alter his distinctive ethnic feature — his nose. When he returned from the hospital, his own wife barely recognized Cohen and his new nose.

On New Year’s Day, 1984, Nahum Admoni’s daily intelligence summary contained news of a coup d’état in Nigeria. A military cabal led by Major General Muhammad Buhari had seized power. Prime Minister Shamir’s first question was to ask what effect this would have on Israel’s oil supplies. No one knew. Throughout the day, urgent efforts were unsuccessfully made to establish contact with the new regime.

On his second day in office, Buhari issued a list of former members of the government accused of a variety of crimes. At its top was Umaru Dikko, the ousted transport minister, charged with embezzling several million U.S. dollars in oil profits from the government treasury. Dikko had fled the country and, despite strenuous efforts to find him, had vanished.

Admoni saw his opening. Traveling on a Canadian passport — another Mossad travel document of choice for undercover missions — he flew to the Nigerian capital, Lagos. Buhari received him late at night. The general listened as Admoni delivered an offer that had the full approval of Rabin. In return for a guarantee of no interruption in oil supplies, Mossad would find Dikko and return him to Nigeria. Buhari had a question: Would Mossad also be able to locate where Dikko had hidden the embezzled money? Admoni said the cash was almost certainly in numbered Swiss bank accounts and would be virtually impossible to trace unless Dikko volunteered to reveal its whereabouts. Buhari smiled for the first time. Once Dikko was back in Nigeria, there would be no problem getting him to talk. Buhari had a final question: Would Mossad agree to work with Nigeria’s own security service and, once Dikko was found, take no credit for his capture? Admoni agreed. There were no kudos to be gained for Mossad in an operation that should be simple enough.

Rafi Eitan’s “survivor spies” were mobilized throughout Europe. Katsas were sent to trawl from Spain to Sweden. Sayanim in a dozen countries were alerted: doctors were told to be on the lookout in case Dikko needed medical attention or even consulted a plastic surgeon to change his appearance; hotel concierges at Dikko’s old playgrounds in St.-Moritz and Monte Carlo watched for him. Clerks at car rental agencies from Madrid to Munich were instructed to report if he hired a car; airline agents were asked to call in if he bought a ticket. Sayanim working for all the credit card companies were asked to watch if he used his cards. Waiters memorized Dikko’s description, tailors his measurements, and shirtmakers his collar size. Shoemakers from Rome to Paris were given details of Dikko’s size-twelve fitting for the customized shoes he wore. In London, Robert Maxwell was asked to probe his high-level contacts among African diplomats in London for any whisper of where Dikko had gone. Like everyone else, he drew a blank.

Nevertheless, Admoni decided that Dikko was hiding out in London — the city had become a haven for Nigerian opponents of the new regime — and he moved his ablest katsas to the city. With them came agents from Nigerian security led by Major Muhammad Yusufu. They rented an apartment in the city’s Cromwell Road. The katsas chose hotels catering to tourists from Africa.

Working separately, the two groups moved among London’s sizable Nigerian community. Yusufu’s men posed as refugees from the new regime, the katsas as sympathetic to black Africans’ aspirations to overthrow the regime in South Africa. Gradually they narrowed down the search to West London, to the area around Hyde Park where many wealthy Nigerians lived in exile. They began to comb electoral registers freely available in the area’s town halls. Each time they drew a blank.

Then, seven months to the day after Dikko had fled from Lagos, he surfaced. On June 30, 1984, a katsa driving down Queensway, a busy thoroughfare off Bayswater Road, spotted a man who fitted the description of Umaru Dikko. He looked older and thinner but there was no mistaking the broad face and the coal black eyes that did not give the katsa’s car a second glance.

Spotting a parking place, the katsa set off on foot to tail Dikko to a house in nearby Dorchester Terrace. Admoni was immediately informed. He ordered the only step to be taken for the moment was full-time surveillance of the house. For the first three days of July 1984, two operatives maintained continuous surveillance on Dikko. Meantime the Nigerians used their embassy as a base to prepare a kidnap operation closely modeled on the one Rafi Eitan had used to snatch Adolf Eichmann.

Unusually, a key role had been assigned to an outsider, a much respected doctor, Levi-Arie Shapiro, a consultant anesthetist and director of the intensive care unit at Hasharon Hospital in Tel Aviv. He had been recruited by Alexander Barak, a katsa who had appealed to the doctor’s patriotism. The doctor agreed to travel to London and spend the thousand dollars Barak had given him to pay for medical equipment, which included anesthetics and an endotracheal tube. He would receive further instructions in London. Shapiro refused to accept a fee for his services, saying he was proud to serve Israel. Another katsa, Felix Abithol, had arrived in London on a flight from Amsterdam on July 2. He checked into the Russell Square Hotel. His first instruction to the head of the Nigerian team, Major Yusufu, was to rent a transit van. One of Yusufu’s men chose one that was a bright canary yellow color. That may well have been the moment the plan started to unravel.

Late in the evening of July 3, a Nigerian Airways 707 freighter landed at Stansted Airport, thirty miles northeast of London. It had flown from Lagos empty. The pilot informed the airport authorities he had come to collect diplomatic baggage from the London embassy. Traveling with the aircrew were several Nigerian security men who openly identified themselves and said they were there to protect the baggage. Their presence was reported to Scotland Yard’s Special Branch. There had been several claims in the past month that the Lagos military regime was threatening exiles in London. The security men were told they must not leave the airport. Apart from visits to the terminal coffee shop, they remained on board the aircraft.

Around midmorning the next day, the canary yellow van drove out of a garage in Notting Hill Gate that had been rented by one of the Nigerians. At the wheel was Yusufu. In the back squatted Dr. Shapiro beside a crate. Crouching with him were Barak and Abithol. At noon out at Stansted, the 707 captain filed a departure time for Lagos of three o’clock that afternoon. The flight manifest listed the cargo as two crates of “documentation” for the Ministry of External Affairs in Lagos. The paperwork claimed diplomatic immunity for both containers.

Shortly before noon, the van drove through traffic and parked outside the house in Dorchester Terrace. Soon afterward, Umaru Dikko emerged on his way to meet a friend for lunch at a nearby restaurant. Watching from a window was his private secretary, Elizabeth Hayes. As she turned away, the back door of the van burst open and “two dark-skinned men grabbed Mr. Dikko and forced him into the back of the van. He just managed to scream something before they jumped in after him and the van was driven away at high speed.”

Recovering, the secretary dialed emergency—999. Within minutes police were on the scene, closely followed by Commander William Hucklesby of Scotland Yard’s Anti-Terrorist Squad. He suspected what had happened. Every port and airport was alerted. For Hucklesby, the situation had its own special difficulties. If Dikko had been kidnapped by the Nigerian regime, that could present tricky political questions. The Foreign Office was alerted, as was Downing Street. Hucklesby was ordered to take what action he thought appropriate.

Shortly before 3:00 P.M. the van arrived at Stansted’s freight terminal. Yusufu waved a Nigerian diplomatic passport at airport customs officers. They watched the two crates being loaded on board the aircraft. One of the officers, Charles Morrow, would recall: “There was something about one of the containers that was just not right. Then I heard noise coming from one. I thought, sod this. Diplomatic immunity or not, I needed to see inside.”

The cases were taken off the plane and brought to a hangar despite Yusufu’s furious protest that they were protected by diplomatic privilege. In the first crate, Umaru Dikko was discovered tied and unconscious from an anesthetic. Sitting beside him was Dr. Shapiro, a syringe in his hand ready to increase Dikko’s drug intake. There was an endotracheal tube in Dikko’s throat to stop him from choking on his own vomit. In the other container crouched Barak and Abithol.

At their trial, both agents stuck stoically to the fiction that they were mercenaries acting on behalf of a group of Nigerian businessmen who wanted to return Dikko to face trial. One of Britain’s most eminent and expensive lawyers, George Carmen, QC, had been retained for their defense. In his closing speech he told the court, “Perhaps the most plausible explanation is that the Israeli intelligence service was never far removed from the entire operation.”

The prosecution offered no evidence to implicate Mossad. It was left to the judge to do so in his summing-up. He told the jury, “The finger of involvement almost certainly points to Mossad.”

Barak received a fourteen-year sentence, Dr. Shapiro and Abithol ten years apiece. Yusufu was given twelve years’ imprisonment. All were subsequently released after remission for good conduct and quietly deported to Israel. As it had for others before them who had served Mossad well, the service made sure they would remain out of the limelight and not have to answer such troubling questions as to whether Dr. Shapiro, who had so flagrantly broken his Hippocratic oath, still practiced medicine — and for whom.

Nahum Admoni was told by MI5 that if there was a further lapse, Mossad would be treated as an unfriendly service. By then the Mossad chief was planning yet another operation designed to remind Britain of who the real enemies were — and at the same time gain sympathy for Israel.