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Just recently finished reading "By Way of Deception: The
Making and Unmaking of a Mossad Officer". While credibility
of the book is debatable, I'm posting some of its most intriguing passages I've
found.
* They had a man with a
British passport living in Djakarta, for example, working under cover. That
meant the Indonesian government knew he was with the Mossad. He had an escape
route ready, and a gold coin belt if he needed it, among other security
measures. His main task was to facilitate arms sales in the region. They also
had a man in Japan, one in India, one in Africa, and occasionally, people in Sri
Lanka, and in Malaysia.
* At the same time, Yaar and company were supplying the warring Tamils with anti-PT boat equipment to use in fighting the government forces. The Israelis also trained elite forces for both sides, without either side knowing about the other, and helped Sri Lanka cheat the World Bank and other investors out of millions of dollars to pay for all the arms they were buying from them.
* But Israel doesn't have a station in Damascus. They don't understand that the Mossad regards the whole world outside Israel as a target, including Europe and the United States. Most of the Arab countries don't manufacture their own weapons. Most don't have high-level military colleges, for example. If you want to recruit a Syrian diplomat, you don't have to do that in Damascus. You can do it in Paris. If you want data on an Arab missile, you get that in Paris or London or the United States where it is made. You can get less information on Saudi Arabia from the Saudis themselves than you can from the Americans.
* We would allow so many Iraqi and Iranian ships to pass, but anything beyond that and we'd make sure the other side was notified and the ship targeted. That way we could keep the war hot. And if they were busy fighting each other, they couldn't fight us.
* One of my assignments, in mid-July 1984, was to escort a group of Indian nuclear scientists who were worried about the threat of the Islamic bomb (Pakistan's bomb) and had come on a secret mission to Israel to meet with Israeli nuclear experts and exchange information.
* Many Sri Lankan Tamils, escaping the bloodshed, have sought refuge there, and the Sri Lankan government has accused Indian officials of arming and training the Tamils. They should be accusing the Mossad. The Tamils were training at the commando naval base, learning penetration techniques, mining landings, communications, and how to sabotage ships similar to the Devora.
* It was initially disguised as a textile factory, then a "pumping station," until the CIA obtained photographic evidence from a U-2 flight in December 1960 that it housed a nuclear reactor. There was also a much smaller reactor called KAMG (the abbreviation for Kure Gamy Le Machkar, or Nuclear Research Facility) in Nahal Sorek, inside an air-force base just south of Tel Aviv. I visited both plants. After its secret got out in 1960, David Ben-Gurion formally announced Israel's "peaceful" atomic project, though much of it remains anything but peaceful.
* On July 21, 1973, the Mossad killed the innocent waiter. Three people went to jail. One of them, David Arbel, talked a lot, and the "Lillehammer affair" became perhaps the biggest scandal and embarrassment in Mossad history.
* At that time, the head of Italian intelligence was very close to the Mossad. In fact, the Italian, carrying a concealed camera, used to travel to Arab countries and photograph Arab military installations for the Mossad.
* The best bet, then, was Chile. As it happened, that country had just placed a request with Israel for training a domestic security service — something in which Israel's special expertise is well known. Israel may not brag openly about it, but it has trained such diverse units as Iran's dreaded Savak, security forces in Colombia, Argentina, West Germany, South Africa, and in several other African countries, including former Ugandan dictator Idi Amin's secret police. Israel also trained the secret police of recently deposed Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega. In fact, Noriega, who trained personally in Israel, always wore the Israeli paratrooper wings on the right side of his military uniform (they are normally worn on the left). And just to show how nondiscriminatory the Mossad is, it trained both sides in the bloody ongoing civil unrest in Sri Lanka: the Tamils and the Sinhalese, as well as the Indians who were sent in to restore order.
* He was forwarding a request from "Purple A," the code name for the Danish Civil Security Service(DCSS), for a check to be run on a list of about 40 people with Arabic names and/or backgrounds applying for visas either to visit Denmark or to move there. What the Danish public does not know — and only a few Danish government officials do know — is that the Mossad routinely checks all these applications on Denmark's behalf, putting a checkmark next to the name on a copy of the Danish visa application if there is no problem with the applicant. When there is a problem, they either tell the Danes or, if it's to Israel's advantage, hold back the application for further study. The relationship between the Mossad and Danish intelligence is so intimate as to be indecent. But it's not the Mossad's virtue that is compromised by the arrangement; it's Denmark's. And that's because the Danish are under the mistaken impression that because they saved a lot of Jews in World War II, the Israelis are grateful and they can trust the Mossad.
* At the same time, Yaar and company were supplying the warring Tamils with anti-PT boat equipment to use in fighting the government forces. The Israelis also trained elite forces for both sides, without either side knowing about the other, and helped Sri Lanka cheat the World Bank and other investors out of millions of dollars to pay for all the arms they were buying from them.
* But Israel doesn't have a station in Damascus. They don't understand that the Mossad regards the whole world outside Israel as a target, including Europe and the United States. Most of the Arab countries don't manufacture their own weapons. Most don't have high-level military colleges, for example. If you want to recruit a Syrian diplomat, you don't have to do that in Damascus. You can do it in Paris. If you want data on an Arab missile, you get that in Paris or London or the United States where it is made. You can get less information on Saudi Arabia from the Saudis themselves than you can from the Americans.
* We would allow so many Iraqi and Iranian ships to pass, but anything beyond that and we'd make sure the other side was notified and the ship targeted. That way we could keep the war hot. And if they were busy fighting each other, they couldn't fight us.
* One of my assignments, in mid-July 1984, was to escort a group of Indian nuclear scientists who were worried about the threat of the Islamic bomb (Pakistan's bomb) and had come on a secret mission to Israel to meet with Israeli nuclear experts and exchange information.
* Many Sri Lankan Tamils, escaping the bloodshed, have sought refuge there, and the Sri Lankan government has accused Indian officials of arming and training the Tamils. They should be accusing the Mossad. The Tamils were training at the commando naval base, learning penetration techniques, mining landings, communications, and how to sabotage ships similar to the Devora.
* It was initially disguised as a textile factory, then a "pumping station," until the CIA obtained photographic evidence from a U-2 flight in December 1960 that it housed a nuclear reactor. There was also a much smaller reactor called KAMG (the abbreviation for Kure Gamy Le Machkar, or Nuclear Research Facility) in Nahal Sorek, inside an air-force base just south of Tel Aviv. I visited both plants. After its secret got out in 1960, David Ben-Gurion formally announced Israel's "peaceful" atomic project, though much of it remains anything but peaceful.
* On July 21, 1973, the Mossad killed the innocent waiter. Three people went to jail. One of them, David Arbel, talked a lot, and the "Lillehammer affair" became perhaps the biggest scandal and embarrassment in Mossad history.
* At that time, the head of Italian intelligence was very close to the Mossad. In fact, the Italian, carrying a concealed camera, used to travel to Arab countries and photograph Arab military installations for the Mossad.
* The best bet, then, was Chile. As it happened, that country had just placed a request with Israel for training a domestic security service — something in which Israel's special expertise is well known. Israel may not brag openly about it, but it has trained such diverse units as Iran's dreaded Savak, security forces in Colombia, Argentina, West Germany, South Africa, and in several other African countries, including former Ugandan dictator Idi Amin's secret police. Israel also trained the secret police of recently deposed Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega. In fact, Noriega, who trained personally in Israel, always wore the Israeli paratrooper wings on the right side of his military uniform (they are normally worn on the left). And just to show how nondiscriminatory the Mossad is, it trained both sides in the bloody ongoing civil unrest in Sri Lanka: the Tamils and the Sinhalese, as well as the Indians who were sent in to restore order.
* He was forwarding a request from "Purple A," the code name for the Danish Civil Security Service(DCSS), for a check to be run on a list of about 40 people with Arabic names and/or backgrounds applying for visas either to visit Denmark or to move there. What the Danish public does not know — and only a few Danish government officials do know — is that the Mossad routinely checks all these applications on Denmark's behalf, putting a checkmark next to the name on a copy of the Danish visa application if there is no problem with the applicant. When there is a problem, they either tell the Danes or, if it's to Israel's advantage, hold back the application for further study. The relationship between the Mossad and Danish intelligence is so intimate as to be indecent. But it's not the Mossad's virtue that is compromised by the arrangement; it's Denmark's. And that's because the Danish are under the mistaken impression that because they saved a lot of Jews in World War II, the Israelis are grateful and they can trust the Mossad.
* For the Mossad, the most important player in all of this was a man named Durak Kasim, Arafat's driver and personal bodyguard and member of Force 17. Kasim had been recruited as a Mossad agent in 1977 when he was studying philosophy in England. A greedy man, he was reporting to them almost daily, sending messages through a burst radio communications system, receiving $2,000 a report. He also telephoned information and mailed it periodically, and once even showed up at the "submarine" — the Mossad's underground station in Beirut — a reckless thing to do, and a rude shock to his operator that Kasim would know the address. During the siege of Beirut, Kasim was actually with Arafat, reporting to the Mossad from inside PLO headquarters. Kasim was Arafat's closest personal aide. He was the one who helped find boys for Arafat. Certainly homosexuality is against Islamic beliefs, but given the way of life, it's not that uncommon. It's not as badly regarded as it is in the West. The Mossad didn't actually have any proof to support the claim that Arafat liked teenage boys. They had no photos, nothing. It could have been just another way to discredit Arafat; they did that with many other Arab leaders, saying how they lived the good life by skimming off the system. But they couldn't say that about Arafat. He actually lives a humble life, with his people. During the siege of Beirut he had many opportunities to escape but he didn't leave until he got his people out, so the Mossad can't claim that he operates out of self-interest, either. Perhaps they used the story about him liking teenage boys as a substitute.
* When Jonathan J. Pollard, 31, and his wife, Anne Henderson-Pollard, 25, were arrested in late November 1985, after a failed attempt to gain asylum at the Israeli embassy in Washington, the predictable political fall-out focused attention for a time on an embarrassing and explosive question: does the Mossad actively operate in the United States? Officially, the Mossad says no, no, a thousand times no. Absolutely not. Indeed, Mossad katsas are forbidden even to carry phony U.S. passports or use U.S. covers in their work, so delicate is the situation between the state of Israel and its largest and most influential supporter.
* In the midst of all this, the Mossad had made its first contact with the opium growers in Thailand. The Americans were trying to force farmers to stop producing opium and grow coffee instead. The Mossad's idea was to get in there, help them grow coffee, but at the same time help them export opium as a means of raising money for Mossad operations.
* With the exception of Canada and most of the United States, Jewish communities outside Israel have frames, trained and armed, ready to defend themselves if needed.
* For the Israeli soldiers, their stay in Lebanon wasn't all war; they'd found a convenient way to make love at the same time in a village just outside Beirut. The place was noteworthy for two things: its beautiful women, and their absent husbands.
* Perhaps the best illustration of the prevailing mood of the right wing in Israel is the celebrated case of Rabbi Moshe Levinger, leader of the far-right Jewish Settlers' Movement. In June 1990, he was sentenced to six months in jail for negligence: he had shot and killed an Arab.
Uprooted Palestinian
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