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  MOSSAD

  THE GREATEST MISSIONS

  OF THE ISRAELI SECRET SERVICE

  MICHAEL BAR-ZOHAR AND NISSIM MISHAL

  Dedications

  For heroes unsung

  For battles untold

  For books unwritten

  For secrets unspoken

  And for a dream of peace

  never abandoned, never forgotten

  —Michael Bar-Zohar

  To Amy Korman

  For her advice, her inspiration, and her being my pillar of support

  —Nissim Mishal

  Contents

  Dedications

  Introduction - Alone, in the Lion’s Den

  Chapter One - King of Shadows

  Chapter Two - Funerals in Tehran

  Chapter Three - A Hanging in Baghdad

  Chapter Four - A Soviet Mole and a Body at Sea

  Chapter Five - “Oh, That? It’s Khrushchev’s Speech . . .”

  Chapter Six - “Bring Eichmann Dead or Alive!”

  Chapter Seven - Where Is Yossele?

  Chapter Eight - A Nazi Hero at the Service of the Mossad

  Chapter Nine - Our Man in Damascus

  Chapter Ten - “I Want a MiG-21!”

  Chapter Eleven - Those Who’ll Never Forget

  Chapter Twelve - The Quest for the Red Prince

  Chapter Thirteen - The Syrian Virgins

  Chapter Fourteen - “Today We’ll Be at War!”

  Chapter Fifteen - A Honey Trap for the Atom Spy

  Photo Section

  Chapter Sixteen - Saddam’s Supergun

  Chapter Seventeen - Fiasco in Amman

  Chapter Eighteen - From North Korea with Love

  Chapter Nineteen - Love and Death in the Afternoon

  Chapter Twenty - The Cameras Were Rolling

  Chapter Twenty-one - From the Land of the Queen of Sheba

  Epilogue - War with Iran?

  Acknowledgments

  Bibliography and Sources

  Index

  About the Authors

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Introduction

  Alone, in the Lion’s Den

  On November 12, 2011, a tremendous explosion destroyed a secret missile base close to Tehran, killing seventeen Revolutionary Guards and reducing dozens of missiles to a heap of charred iron. General Hassan Tehrani Moghaddam, the “father” of the Shehab long-range missiles, and the man in charge of Iran’s missile program, was killed in the explosion. But the secret target of the bombing was not Moghaddam. It was a solid-fuel rocket engine, able to carry a nuclear missile more than six thousand miles across the globe, from Iran’s underground silos to the U.S. mainland.

  The new missile planned by Iran’s leaders was to bring America’s major cities to their knees and transform Iran into a dominant world power. The November explosion delayed the project by several months.

  Even though the target of the new long-range missile was America, the explosions that destroyed the Iranian base were probably set by the Israeli Secret Service, the Mossad. Since its inception more than sixty years ago, the Mossad has served fearlessly and secretly against the dangers threatening Israel and the West. And more so than ever before, the Mossad’s intelligence gathering and operations affect American security abroad and at home.

  Right now, according to foreign sources, the Mossad is challenging the blunt, explicit promise of the Iranian leadership to obliterate Israel from the map. Waging a stubborn shadow war against Iran by sabotaging nuclear facilities, assassinating scientists, supplying plants with faulty equipment and raw materials via bogus companies, organizing desertions of high-ranking military officers and major figures in nuclear research, introducing ferocious viruses into Iran’s computer systems, the Mossad allegedly is fighting the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran, and what that would mean for the United States and the rest of the world. While the Mossad has delayed the Iranian nuclear bomb by several years, their covert battle is reaching its peak, before last-resort measures—a military strike—are employed.

  In the fight against terrorism, the Mossad has been capturing and eliminating scores of major terrorists in their strongholds in Beirut, Damascus, Baghdad, and Tunis, and in their battle stations in Paris, Rome, Athens, and Cyprus since the 1970s. On February 12, 2008, according to the Western media, Mossad agents ambushed and killed Imad Mughniyeh, the military leader of the Hezbollah, in Damascus. Mughniyeh was a sworn enemy of Israel, but he was also number one on the FBI’s Most Wanted list. He had planned and executed the massacre of 241 U.S. Marines in Beirut. He had left behind a bloody trail strewn with hundreds of Americans, Israelis, French, and Argentineans. Right now, Islamic Jihad and Al Qaeda leaders are being hunted throughout the Middle East.

  And yet, when the Mossad warned the West that the Arab Spring could turn into an Arab Winter, no one seemed to listen. Throughout 2011, the West celebrated what they believed was the dawning of a new era of democracy, freedom, and human rights in the Middle East. Hoping to obtain the approval of the Egyptians, the West pressured President Mubarak, its best ally in the Arab world, to step down. But the first crowds that swept Tahrir Square in Cairo burned the American flag; then they stormed the Israeli embassy, demanded the end of the peace treaty with Israel, and arrested American NGO activists. Free elections in Egypt have brought the Muslim Brotherhood to power, and today, Egypt wavers on the brink of anarchy and economic catastrophe. A fundamentalist Islamic regime is taking root in Tunisia, with Libya likely to follow. Yemen is in turmoil. In Syria, President Assad is massacring his own people. The moderate nations like Morocco, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the Emirates of the Persian Gulf feel betrayed by their Western allies. And the hopes for human rights, women’s rights, and democratic laws and rule that inspired these landmark revolutions have been swept away by fanatic religious parties, better organized and better connected with the masses.

  This Arab Winter has turned the Middle East into a time bomb, threatening the Israeli people and its allies in the Western world. As history unfolds, the Mossad’s tasks will become riskier but also more vital to the West. The Mossad appears to be the best defense against the Iranian nuclear threat, against terrorism, against whatever may evolve from the mayhem in the Middle East. Most important, the Mossad is the last salvo short of open war.

  The unnamed warriors of the Mossad are its lifeblood, men and women who risk their lives, live away from their families under assumed identities, carry out daring operations in enemy countries where the slightest mistake can bring their arrest, torture, or death. During the Cold War, the worst fate for a secret agent captured in the West or the Communist bloc was to be exchanged for another agent on some cold, foggy bridge in Berlin. Russian or American, British or East German, the agent always knew he was not alone, there was always someone who would bring him back from the cold. But for the lonely warriors of the Mossad, there are no exchanges and foggy bridges; they pay with their lives for their audacity.

  In this book, we bring to light the greatest missions and the most courageous heroes of the Mossad, as well as the mistakes and failures that more than once tarnished the agency’s image and shook its very foundations. These missions shaped Israel’s fate and, in many ways, the fate of the world. And yet, for the Mossad agents, what they all share is a deep, idealistic love of their country, a total devotion to its existence and survival, a readiness to assume the most dramatic risks and face the ultimate dangers. For the sake of Israel.

  Chapter One

  King of Shadows

  In the late summer of 1971, a fierce storm was lashing the Mediterranean coast, and tall waves battered the shores of Gaza. The local Arab fishermen prudently stayed ashore; this was not a day to brave the treacherous sea. They watched with asto
nishment as a ramshackle boat suddenly emerged from the roaring waves and landed heavily on the wet sand. A few Palestinians, their clothes and keffiyehs rumpled and soaked, jumped out and waded ashore. Their unshaven faces showed the fatigue of a long journey at sea; but they had no time to rest, they were running for their lives. From the angry seas, an Israeli torpedo boat emerged, pursuing them at full speed, carrying soldiers in full battle attire. As it approached the shore, the soldiers jumped into the shallow waters and opened fire on the fleeing Palestinians. A couple of Gazan youngsters, playing on the beach, ran toward the Palestinians and led them to the safety of a nearby orchard; the Israeli soldiers lost track of them but continued to search the beach.

  Late that night, a young Palestinian man carrying a Kalashnikov snuck into the orchard to investigate. He found the fugitives huddled together in a remote corner. “Who are you, brothers?” he asked.

  “Members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine,” came the answer. “From the Tyre refugee camp, in Lebanon.”

  “Marhaba, welcome,” the youth said.

  “You know of Abu-Seif, our commander? He sent us to meet with the Popular Front commanders in Beth Lahia (a terrorist stronghold in the south of the Gaza strip). We have money and weapons, and we want to coordinate our operations.”

  “I’ll help you with that,” the young man said.

  The following morning, several armed terrorists escorted the newcomers to an isolated house inside the Jabalia refugee camp. They were led into a large room and invited to sit at a table. Soon after, the Popular Front commanders they hoped to meet walked in. They exchanged warm greetings with their Lebanese brothers, and sat, facing them.

  “Can we start?” asked a stocky, balding young man wearing a red keffiyeh, apparently the leader of the Lebanese group. “Is everybody here?”

  “Everybody.”

  The Lebanese raised his hand and looked at his watch. It was a prearranged signal. Suddenly, the “Lebanese envoys” drew their handguns and opened fire. In less than a minute, the Beth Lahia terrorists were dead. The “Lebanese” ran out of the house, made their way through the crooked alleys of the Jabalia camp and Gaza’s crowded streets and soon crossed into Israeli territory. That evening, the man with the red keffiyeh, Captain Meir Dagan, commander of the Israeli Defense Forces’ (IDF) secret Rimon commando unit, reported to General Ariel (Arik) Sharon that Operation Chameleon had been a success. All the leaders of the Popular Front in Beth Lahia, a lethal terrorist group, had been killed.

  Dagan was only twenty-six, but already a legendary fighter. He had planned the entire operation: posing as Lebanese terrorists; sailing in an old vessel from Ashdod, a port in Israel; the long night of hiding; the meeting with the terrorist leaders; and the escape route after the hit. He had even organized the fake pursuit by the Israeli torpedo boat. Dagan was the ultimate guerrilla, bold and creative, not someone who stuck to the rules of engagement. Yitzhak Rabin once said: “Meir has the unique capacity to invent antiterrorist operations that look like movie thrillers.”

  Future Mossad chief Danny Yatom remembered Dagan as a stocky youngster with a mane of brown hair, who had applied to join the most prestigious Israeli commando unit, Sayeret Matkal, and amazed everybody with his knife-throwing skills. With his huge commando knife, he could hit dead-on any target he chose. Although he was an excellent marksman, he failed the Sayeret Matkal tests and initially had to content himself with the silver wings of a paratrooper.

  In the early seventies, he was sent to the Gaza strip, which had been conquered by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War and had since become a hornet’s nest of deadly terrorist activity. The Palestinian terrorists murdered Israelis daily in the Gaza strip and in Israel with bombs, explosives, and firearms; the IDF had all but lost their control over the violent refugee camps. On January 2, 1971, when the sweet Arroyo children, the five-year-old Avigail and the eight-year-old Mark, were blown to pieces when a terrorist threw a hand grenade into their car, General Ariel (Arik) Sharon decided he had to put an end to the bloody massacre. He recruited a few old friends from his battle-scarred youth, along with several talented younger soldiers. Dagan was one, a round-faced, short, sturdy officer who walked with a limp—he stepped on a land mine in the Six-Day War. While recuperating in the Soroka Hospital in Beer-Sheva, he had fallen in love with his nurse, Bina. They married when he recovered.

  Sharon’s unit officially did not exist. Its mission was to destroy the terrorist organizations in Gaza using risky and unconventional methods. Dagan used to wander occupied Gaza with a cane, a Doberman, several pistols, revolvers, and submachine guns. Some claimed to have seen him disguised as an Arab, leisurely riding a donkey in the treacherous Gaza alleys. His infirmity didn’t cool his determination to carry out the most dangerous operations. His views were simple. There are enemies, bad Arabs who want to kill us, so we have to kill them first.

  Within the unit, Dagan created “Rimon,” the first undercover Israeli commando unit, which operated in Arab disguise deep in enemy strongholds. In order to move freely in Arab crowds and reach their targets undetected, they had to operate in disguise. They quickly became known as “Arik’s hit team” and rumors had it that they often killed captured terrorists in cold blood. Sometimes, it was said, they escorted a terrorist to a dark alley, and told him: “You’ve got two minutes to escape”; when he tried, they shot him dead. Sometimes they would leave behind a dagger or a gun, and when the terrorist reached for it, he would be killed on the spot. Journalists wrote that, every morning, Dagan would go out to the fields, use one hand for peeing and the other for shooting at an empty Coke can. Dagan dismissed such reports. “There are myths that stick to all of us,” he said, “but some of what’s written is simply false.”

  The tiny unit of Israeli commandos were fighting a tough, cruel war, risking their lives daily. Almost every night Dagan’s people donned women’s or fishermen’s disguises and went in search of known terrorists. In mid-January 1971, posing as Arab terrorists in the north of the Strip, they lured Fatah members into an ambush, and in the gunfight that erupted, the Fatah terrorists were killed. On January 29, 1971, this time in uniform, Dagan and his men traveled in two jeeps to the outskirts of the Jabalia camp (a Palestinian refugee camp). Their paths crossed with a taxi, and Dagan recognized, among its passengers, a notorious terrorist, Abu Nimer. He ordered the jeeps to stop and his soldiers surrounded the cab. Dagan approached, and at that moment Abu Nimer stepped out, brandishing a hand grenade. Staring at Dagan, he pulled its pin. “Grenade!” Dagan shouted, but instead of scrambling for cover, he jumped on the man, pinned him, and tore the grenade from his hand. For that action he was awarded the Medal of Courage. It’s been claimed that after tossing away the grenade, Dagan killed Abu Nimer with his bare hands.

  Years later, in a rare interview with Israeli journalist Ron Leshem, Dagan said: “Rimon wasn’t a hit team . . . It was not the Wild West, where everybody was trigger-happy. We never harmed women and children . . . We attacked people who were violent murderers. We hit them and deterred others. To protect civilians, the state needs sometimes to do things that are contrary to democratic behavior. It is true that in units like ours the outer limits can become blurred. That’s why you must be sure that your people are of the best quality. The dirtiest actions should be carried out by the most honest men.

  Democratic or not—Sharon, Dagan, and their colleagues largely annihilated terrorism in Gaza, and for years the area became quiet and peaceful. But some maintain that Sharon half-jokingly said of his loyal aide: “Meir’s specialty is to separate the head of an Arab from his body.”

  Yet very few knew the real Dagan. He was born Meir Huberman in 1945 in a train car, on the outskirts of Herson, in the Ukraine, while his family was escaping from Siberia to Poland. Most of his family had perished in the Holocaust. Meir immigrated to Israel with his parents and grew up in a poor neighborhood in Lod, an old Arab town about fifteen miles south of Tel Aviv. Many knew him as an indomitable f
ighter; few were aware of his secret passions: an avid reader of history books, a vegetarian, he loved classical music and pursued painting and sculpting as hobbies.

  He was a man haunted from an early age by the terrible suffering of his family and the Jews during the Holocaust. He dedicated his life to the defense of the newborn State of Israel. As he climbed the army hierarchy, the first thing he did in every new office he was assigned to was to hang on the wall a large photo of an old Jew, wrapped in his prayer shawl, kneeling in front of two SS officers, one holding a bat and the other a gun. “This old man is my grandfather,” Dagan would tell visitors. “I look at the picture, and I know that we must be strong and defend ourselves so that the Holocaust never happens again.”

  The old man, indeed, was Dagan’s grandfather, Ber Ehrlich Slushni, who was murdered in Lukov a few seconds after the photograph was taken.

  During the Yom Kippur War, in 1973, Dagan was among the first Israelis to cross the Suez Canal in a reconnaissance unit. In the 1982 Lebanon War, he entered Beirut at the head of his armored brigade. He soon became the commander of the South Lebanon security zone, and there the adventurous guerrilla fighter reemerged from the starched colonel’s uniform. He resurrected the principles of secrecy, camouflage, and deception of his Gaza days. His soldiers came up with a new name for their secretive chief. They called him “King of Shadows.” Life in Lebanon, with its secret alliances, betrayals, cruelty, phantom wars, was a place after his own heart. “Even before my tank brigade entered Beirut,” he said, “I knew this city well.” And after the Lebanon war ended, he did not give up his secret adventures. In 1984 he was officially reprimanded by Chief of Staff Moshe Levy for hanging out, dressed as an Arab, by the Bahamdoun terrorist headquarters.

  During the Intifada (the Palestinian rebellion of 1987–1993), when he was transferred to the West Bank as an adviser to Chief of Staff Ehud Barak, Dagan resumed his old habits and even convinced Barak to join him. The two of them donned sweat suits, as befit true Palestinians, found a baby-blue Mercedes with local plates, and went for a ride in the treacherous Nablus Kasbah. On their return, they scared and then astonished the Military Headquarters sentries, once the latter recognized who was sitting in the front seat.