Gideon's Spies: The Secret History of the Mossad

NOTES ON SOURCES

I have had access at a sufficiently high level within the Israeli intelligence community to have made this an authoritative account. As with my previous books, I came to the subject of Mossad with no baggage. I have used information its members provided in the way any writer does when dealing with an intelligence service: checked it, checked it, checked it.

Some eighty hours of taped recollections were made, including repeated interviews with persons connected directly or indirectly with Mossad. Others were with persons Mossad had tried to kill. They included Leila Khaled, who came to notoriety during the spate of aircraft hijackings by the PLO in the 1970s, and Abu Al-Abbas, who masterminded the hijacking of the Achille Lauro in which a crippled American Jewish passenger was hurled over the side of the cruise liner to his death. I met them in May 1996 in Gaza City, where they had been permitted to visit Israel as part of its rapprochement with the PLO. I also spoke to Yasser Arafat, himself once a prime target for Mossad assassination.

I was introduced to the business of writing on intelligence matters in 1960 when I worked with Chapman Pincher, then Britain’s foremost writer on the subject. We were both employed by the Daily Express in London. A number of our stories — notably the Burgess and Maclean debacle for British intelligence — helped to change the perception of how such matters should be reported. It is a position I have tried to maintain with such books as Journey into Madness, Pontiff, and Chaos Under Heaven. The Black Book of the CIA, Secrets & Lies, and Secret Wars; the latter title published by the publisher of this book.

I have reported on the secret intelligence wars being waged against Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan, areas in which Mossad remains directly involved. I have also written extensively on Mossad’s relationship with the Vatican. My own contacts with the Holy See were useful in conducting further background interviews for this book.

In 1989 I was in China at the height of the student unrest. Once more I witnessed the machinations of intelligence agencies and detected the hand of Mossad over its concern that China’s exporting of weapons to both Iran and Iraq could pose a serious threat to Israel. I went on to write about the role of Mossad in the Persian Iraqi War and in the aftermath of Soviet Communism.

In August 1994 I received a call from Zvi Spielmann. Spielmann is something of a legend in Israel: he fought with distinction in its War of Independence and went on to create Israel’s United Film Studios. He has produced a raft of films, many of them Hollywood coproductions. Spielmann asked if I would write and present a documentary on Mossad. He assured me I would have a completely free hand, that the only restriction on the information I obtained would be the questions I asked to obtain it; the more I asked, the more I would learn.

I discovered that, apart from Victor Ostrovsky’s books, and the work of Ari Ben-Menashe, there was precious little to read about Mossad in the way of hard information. This was in marked contrast to the CIA, which has some two hundred books devoted to its work. The British Secret Intelligence Service has close to fifty, and similar numbers are in print for the KGB and the German and French intelligence agencies. But a check on their contents showed where there were gaps in the secret wars they had waged. It became clear that Mossad could fill many of these.

On trips to Israel, some on behalf of Britain’s Channel 4, the process of interviewing was like any other. The time frame of the story my interviewees had to tell initially encompassed a strange period, somewhere between recent history and fading memory. Gradually, as we came to know each other and their accounts moved closer to the present time, they became more specific, better able to remember the minutiae — who said what, when, and where.

It became clear that even those who had helped found Mossad had vivid recollections of a period that was part of their living history — and that had never been recounted from their perspective. Most important, they could relate those earlier times to the present day. For example, when they identified Mossad’s role in the closing days of the shah of Iran, they translated it as the root of the current scourge of Islamic fundamentalism. When they revealed Mossad’s involvement with South Africa, they were able to juxtapose it with that country’s situation today. Time and again they showed how the past was part of Israel’s present; how Mossad had bridged the gap between then and now.

They showed that legends attributed to Mossad paled into insignificance when placed against what really had happened. I remember Rafael Eitan chuckling and saying, “Almost every published fact about the capture of Eichmann is pure bullshit. I know because I personally am the man who captured him.”

In many ways Eitan and his colleagues turned myths into a compelling reality. They asked I should do no less.

Listening to Eitan, his achievements seemed to be as inexhaustible as his energy. He had fought a great secret war. A man of endless vision, all he asked was to live long enough to see the day when Israel would truly be at peace. In October 2008, Eitan told a German magazine that Iran’s President Ahmadinejad should be kidnapped and brought to trial at the Hague War Crimes Tribunal. Eitan was then the head of the Pensioners Party in the Israeli Knesset.

I learned quickly that there were distinct and acrimonious camps among my interviewees. There were the “Isser Harel” people and the “Meir Amit” people, and the contempt each had for the other was undimmed by the years. I sensed there will never be a mellowing on either side.

This led to an additional problem: weighing the emphasis to be put on their information. My interviewees are also in a race with time. Men like Meir Amit are in the twilight of their lives. It was to his credit that he was willing to endure lengthy interviews and repetitive questions. He granted his last one shortly after he had returned from Vietnam, where he had gone to learn firsthand about how the Vietcong had often outsmarted U.S. intelligence in the Vietnam War.

One of the most fascinating interviews was with Uri Saguy. He sat in Zvi Spielmann’s office and spoke candidly on such diverse subjects as the need for Israel to come to an accommodation with Syria and the problem he sometimes had with “tasking” Mossad when he had been Israel’s overall intelligence supremo.

David Kimche rarely let down his guard, insisting on seeing all questions beforehand. Nevertheless, he did impart important insights regarding his personal attitude toward people and events. My enduring memory of him was watching him feed his dog while elegantly destroying the credibility of those who did not measure up to his own standards.

Yaakov Cohen opened his home — and his heart and mind to me. We sat for many hours in the kibbutz where he now lives as he remembered what he had said and felt at the time. As an example, he alone could recall the fear and remorse he had experienced when killing his first man. His reaction was in marked contrast to Rafi Eitan’s feelings about killing.

Yoel Ben Porat had the mentality of the lawyer’s lawyer, dealing only with the facts and slow to conjecture. In many cases he was able to fill in gaps that had been left open by history. Reuven Merhav was a font of information about Mossad’s position in the framework of Israeli politics.

Among the Israeli journalists I spoke with, two need special mention. Alex Doron was ready to sound off about Israeli intelligence in a way that was candid and refreshing. His support was valuable. On the other hand, Ran Edelist, who had been engaged as a researcher by Channel 4 for the TV film I was to present on Mossad, often paced an office in Zvi Spielmann’s studio complex, insisting it would not be “proper” to give “full details” in many cases. At times he seemed more concerned with what should not be in the program than with what should. In some of the interviews he attended, he frequently interrupted interviewees to caution them to “be careful.” Thankfully, few took his advice. Independently of Ran Edelist, I met with other Israeli intelligence operatives who were able to be open on the understanding they would not be directly quoted.

They invited me to their homes; I met their families and came to know something of their private lives; it was a reminder that spies do not live in one dimension. I still remember completing a long interview with a former katsa who provided an account of how he had killed. Suddenly he looked around at the comfortable living room with its views of a biblical landscape and sighed deeply and said, “This world is not this world.”

The words have stayed with me. I think that what he meant was that, compared to his former work, beneath ordinary rhythms and appearances of life, a darkness and menace had never left him. I found that with several of the others with whom I spoke.

It was a sobering reminder that the world of intelligence is, as Saint Paul glimpsed heaven, all too often indeed “seen through a glass, darkly.”

PRIMARY INTERVIEWEES

Meir Amit Edward Kimbel Haim Cohen David Kimche Nadia Cohen Otto Kormek Yaakov Cohen Henry McConnachie William Casey Ariel Merari William Colby Reuven Merhav Rafael Eitan Danny Nagier Zvi Spielmann Yoel Ben Porat Isser Harel Uri Saguy Emery Kabongo Simon Wiesenthal

Daily Express, London Los Angeles Times Daily Mail, London Jerusalem Post Daily Telegraph, London Sunday Times, London New York Times

Palmach Archive, Israel The Press Association Library, London Public Record Office, London The Library, Trinity College, Dublin National Archive, Washington The Secret Archives, Vatican City State The New York Public Library The Archive, Glilot, Israel