PROFITS OF WAR INSIDE THE SECRET U.S.-ISRAELI ARMS NETWORK Ari Ben-Menashe TrineDay Oregon {Reprint Edition} Profits of War: Inside the Secret U.S. Israeli Arms Network Copyright © 1992, 2015 Ari Ben-Menashe. All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper or broadcast. Published by: Trine Day LLC PO Box 577 Walterville, OR 97489 1-800-556-2012 www.TrineDay.com publisher@TrineDay.net Library of Congress Control Number: 2015937537 Ben-Menashe, Ari Profits of War–1st ed. p. cm. Includes index and references. Epub (ISBN-13) 978-1-63424-050-5 Mobi (ISBN-13) 978-1-63424-051-2 Print (ISBN-13) 978-1-63424-049-9 1. Arms transfers -- Israel. 2. United States -- Military policy. 3. Military assistance, Israeli. 4. Arms transfers. 5. Military policy. 6. Israel. 7. United States. I. Ben-Menashe, Ari. II. Title Originally published by Sheridan Square Press, Inc. (ISBN: 1-879823-01-2) First Edition {Reprint Edition} 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the USA Distribution to the Trade by: Independent Publishers Group (IPG) 814 North Franklin Street Chicago, Illinois 60610 312.337.0747 www.ipgbook.com This book is dedicated to Ellen Ray, who changed my life. Acknowledgments WRITING INTELLIGENCE REPORTS does not make one an author. This book would not have been possible without the heroic efforts of Richard Shears and Isabelle Gidley, who listened to me recount my experiences for months on end, painstakingly turning my recollections into a book. Nor could it have been possible without the meticulous craftsmanship, writing, and editing of Zachary Sklar, who, almost singlehandedly, turned that first version into the book you are about to read. Twelve years as an intelligence officer also does not prepare one for the Byzantine world of publishing. I am most indebted to John Young, my agent, and Patrick Gallagher and Paul Donovan of Allen & Unwin Australia, who together had faith in this project at its inception. Then, I especially needed the counsel, friendship, and courage of Ellen Ray, Bill Schaap, and Danny Mintz of Sheridan Square Press in New York, who brought this book to fruition. Of course, had I not been acquitted of the charges leveled against me by the U.S. government, my memoirs would be a futile dream. For this I will always be grateful to Thomas F.X. Dunn, who not only successfully defended me but also continued to encourage my efforts to tell my story. I must also thank the journalists, researchers, friends, and family who had enough respect for me to listen to what I had to say and maintain my faith that it would, ultimately, be made public. My mother, Khatoun, my brother-in-law Michael, and Marian Gail were extremely supportive. Robert Parry, Gary Sick, and Phil Linsalata heard me out – and assisted me – when I needed it most. In Australia, Grant Vandenberg, Jan Roberts, and Mark Corcoran were also very helpful. Finally, I want to thank those of my former colleagues in Israeli intelligence – who must remain unnamed – who have renewed contact with me over these last few years, despite personal dangers to themselves and their careers. Ari Ben-Menashe Sundown, New York July 1992 Table of Contents cover Title page Copyright page Dedication Acknowledgments Introduction BOOK ONE — Dollar Machine 1) Youth 2) Codebreaker 3) Love in the Time of Revolution 4) Groundwork 5) The Agreement 6) The Man with the Suitcase 7) The First Billion 8) The Ora Group 9) Promis 10) The East Bloc 11) The Second Channel 12) Coverup BOOK TWO — Blood Money 13) Nuclear Nation 14) The Revolutionary 15) The Judge 16) Never Again 17) “Agricultural Project” 18) Coup D’Etat 19) Mission to Colombo 20) Means of War Afterword Appendices Index Introduction EARLY ONE MORNING in the spring of 1990, I lay on my bunk in the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York, unable to sleep, my mind restless. I stared at the ceiling of my tiny cell, and the fluorescent lights stared back, unblinking. I glanced over at the depressing furnishings – a sink, a toilet, two metal cabinets. This was federal prison – my home for the time being. It wasn’t terribly violent – no murders, no gang rapes. My neighbors on the high-status white tier, as opposed to the black and Hispanic tiers, were mostly white-collar criminals. John Gotti, the Mafia don, had been here for a short time, but had been released on bail. (He won that case, but he was to return later.) Adnan Kashoggi spent a few nights in residence. And Joe Doherty, the Irish revolutionary, was present all the time I was. The conditions weren’t that awful either – nothing like what I had been subjected to at El Reno in Oklahoma while being transported across the country. No overcrowding, no debilitating noise, no guard brutality as in many state and city jails. MCC was more like a third-class, flea-bag hotel – with one important exception. You weren’t free to leave. Below me, on the lower bunk, my cellmate, Nick Lante, later convicted of conspiracy to sell heroin in the “pizza connection” case, snored. How in the world had I ended up here? Living with this guy? In this place? What had gone wrong? The events of the last few months flashed through my mind. In the fall of 1989 I had been on top of the world – a healthy 37-year old Israeli citizen, married with a delightful young daughter, a prestigious job in the Prime Minister’s Office, a considerable amount of money in the bank, and a two-week vacation in Australia awaiting me. Then one day I was arrested and tossed into jail in Los Angeles on phony charges of illegally trying to sell three C-130 transport planes to Iran. I’d been expecting something to happen for a while – in Australia, Israel, the U.S., anywhere, anytime. I didn’t know exactly what, but ever since my friend Amiram Nir had died in a mysterious “plane crash” in late November 1988, two years after his involvement in the Iran-Contra affair had been revealed, I’d been worried. So this was it – an arms-dealing rap. Actually I felt a measure of relief. At least it wasn’t death. Nobody was likely to kill me in jail in the custody of the U.S. government. But then the reality began to sink in, and I felt deeply hurt. I’d been set up, betrayed, by the American and Israeli governments. The Americans I could understand. I knew a lot about the CIA’s arms deals with Iran and Iraq; in fact part of my job had been to threaten to go public with that information if the CIA didn’t halt chemical weapons sales to Saddam Hussein. Naturally, the Americans were not pleased. But the Israelis, my own people, my own government that I’d served for all my adult working life – that was hard to swallow. I’d started working for the government as a codebreaker on the Iranian desk in Signals Intelligence during my three years of compulsory military service, 1974 to 1977. Then, as a civilian, I’d put in ten years with Israel’s military intelligence, in the prestigious External Relations Department; from 1980 I also served on the Joint Committee for Iran-Israel Relations. Finally, I had spent two years as a roving troubleshooter for Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, working directly out of his office, with the title of special intelligence consultant. It was secret missions for Israel that had resulted in my being jailed. When word of Shamir’s communications with the PLO leaked out and embarrassed the government, someone had to be sacrificed. I was the one. That’s how I had ended up at Metropolitan Correctional Center, in this metal bunkbed, staring at the fluorescent lights, unable to sleep. I had believed that my work was part of the effort to ensure the survival of the State of Israel and the Jewish people. But here I was in prison, my future in peril, and nobody was coming forward to help me. When I was needed by my employers, I was always there. When I needed them, they turned their backs on me. Shamir, for whom I had felt great respect, and who had known my father since the 1940s, had had a hand in setting me up. And then two lawyers representing the Israeli government had visited me in prison and asked me to make a deal – plead guilty, keep silent, go live in obscurity somewhere. I’d refused, and now that government was publicly denying that I’d ever worked for it. I had expected this official government response. But from those I’d worked with and considered my friends I had also expected some support. There were ways it could have been done without their risking their own lives or careers. But no one did anything. No one would even acknowledge they knew me. My own wife told me on the telephone from Israel that there was nothing she could do for me. She refused to come to New York. My sisters wouldn’t talk to me, out of fear. Everyone except my mother had abandoned me – and she was being hassled and threatened by the Israeli government. I never had felt so alone. My choices seemed pretty clear: I could do what the Israeli government lawyers had offered to arrange – keep silent, plead guilty, get a deal from the judge, be totally discredited, accept a lot of money from the Israeli government, and go off to live in the boonies somewhere. I could plead not guilty, but not say much about what had really gone on, and see what might develop as my trial approached. I could go public with my story, talk to journalists, plead not guilty, go to trial and tell the truth as my defense – that I had sold billions of dollars’ worth of weapons to Iran, but that I had been acting on behalf of my government in everything I had done, usually with the full knowledge and cooperation of the U.S. government as well. I mulled the options. The first seemed the easiest. I could conceivably return to my country, try to save my marriage, at least see my daughter, perhaps get a decent job, and have enough money to live comfortably. But I would be pleading guilty to something I hadn’t done, and my reputation would be destroyed forever. Worse still, the memory of what had happened to Amiram Nir stuck in my mind. I, too, would probably be killed a couple of years down the road, just to make sure I’d remain silent. The second option offered no answers and not much hope. Besides, I was sick of living with uncertainty. As for the third choice, I had, of course, signed the Official Secrets Act in Israel, which forbade me from revealing anything publicly about my work. But since I’d been set up and left out in the cold, I no longer felt constrained to play by the rules of my former masters. All bets were off. If I did talk, however, it meant that I would never be able to return to Israel. I would lose my wife and daughter forever. My passport might be revoked, and I would have a hard time getting a job. Still, this seemed the most pragmatic choice because it was least likely to lead to my death. It’s always more difficult to kill someone who has a high profile. When you’re making allegations the government doesn’t want anyone to believe, killing you only makes people believe them more. Equally important, I was furious. I’m not the kind of person who can take betrayal lying down. I prefer to fight back. Finally, I felt the story I had to tell could be of service, that people needed to know what had actually happened, unbeknownst to them or the press, over the last decade – how Israel and the U.S. had prevented peace in the Middle East, how the American government was still supplying chemical weapons to Saddam Hussein, how Ronald Reagan and George Bush had swapped arms with the Iranians for a delay in the release of the hostages to win the 1980 election, and much more. I asked myself, “Is anyone going to believe me? Will the American and Israeli governments deny everything and brand me a nut, totally discrediting me?” That was a distinct possibility. But I remembered Watergate and how there had been denial after denial – until the truth came pouring out. On that quiet spring morning, I chose the third option. I did not plead guilty, and I eventually won my case in court. I talked to journalists. And now I have written this book about my career in Israeli intelligence. It is not a pretty story, and I am no longer proud of my part in it. It is a tale of the 1980s – of big money, insatiable greed, and unfathomable corruption. It is a tale of government by cabal – how a handful of people in a few intelligence agencies determined the policies of their governments, secretly ran enormous operations without public accountability, abused power and public trust, lied, manipulated the media, and deceived the public. Last but not least, it is a tale of war – armies, weapons, hundreds of thousands of deaths – war run not by generals on the battlefield but by comfortable men in air-conditioned offices who are indifferent to human suffering. This book is both a memoir and an exposé. It is also, in part, an act of atonement. I only hope that my story will in some small way contribute to the difficult process of righting the terrible wrongs of the 1980s and help remove from power those who were responsible. BOOK ONE DOLLAR MACHINE 1 Youth PERHAPS IT WAS written that political chaos would follow me through life. I was born into it in Tehran, Iran, in 1951. My parents, affluent Iraqi Jews, had been married in Baghdad in 1945, but settled in Tehran the same year. Briefly, in late 1950 and early 1951, they visited Israel to explore the possibility of moving there. On that trip, in Jerusalem, I was conceived. But my parents, for the time being, decided to return to Iran, a country deeply divided against itself. Shortly after their return, the Majlis – the Parliament – passed an act nationalizing oil. The British Anglo-Iranian Oil Company withdrew, and Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh found himself in charge of a nation that was in an uproar, with fierce rows among the country’s leaders and rioting in the streets. Even within the Jewish community in Iran there were divisions. The Iraqi Jews, who had a highly developed sense of Western and European culture and Jewish awareness, would not mix with the Iranian Jews, who regarded themselves as Iranians who happened to have another religion. Those Iranian Jews who emigrated to Israel were generally financial refugees without emotional connection to their new home. They certainly didn’t leave Iran because of oppression. There was little anti-Semitism in Iran, and still isn’t, even under the new regime. Historically, it was Cyrus the Great, the Persian king, who granted the Jews freedom, and, later, Islam recognized Judaism and the Prophets of Judaism. Even though Reza Shah Pahlavi, the father of the last Shah, sided with the Nazis during the Second World War, he never adopted Hitler’s anti-Semitic ways, and most Iranians harbored none of the hatred of Jews that existed in Europe. The Iraqi-Jewish community living in Tehran was closely knit, with its own social club, synagogue, and school. Nevertheless, most of the city’s Iraqi-Jewish children attended the American Community School, where the first language taught was English, followed by French and Farsi, or Persian. At home, Arabic was spoken because of the parents’ background, so I, in keeping with many other sons and daughters of Iraqi Jews, was brought up with four languages. (Later I also learned Hebrew and Spanish.) As for my sense of identity, I never felt Iranian even though I was born in Iran. I was Jewish. Like all the boys in the Iraqi-Jewish community, I was taught to pray in Hebrew toward the bar mitzvah at the age of 13. After finishing high school, most Iraqi-Jewish children would be sent to university in the United States. Although proud to be Jewish, their parents saw no future in sending their sons and daughters to Israel, which they regarded as a nation of poor refugees and Hasidic Jews from Eastern Europe. The U.S. Embassy was well aware of the status of Iraqi Jews and readily granted visas for the teenagers, who often stayed on in America, married, and settled down. My father Gourdji, though, was something of an oddball in all this. He had received a French education in the Alliance School in Baghdad, and before entrenching himself in Iran, he had traveled the world extensively, spending time in India, France, Palestine, and the Soviet Union. In Palestine, during 1940, he hooked up with a group of Jewish terrorists who called themselves LEHI – a Hebrew acronym for Fighters for the Liberation of Israel. Although the organization had a reputation as right-wing, many of its members were formerly part of the communist movement. They were better known as the Stern Gang, after their leader David Stern, who was virulently anti-British. Stern’s successor, Yitzhak Shamir, who later became prime minister of Israel, was equally anti-British and was even willing to negotiate with the Nazis for Jewish lives. He offered to fight alongside German troops against the British if the Germans would allow the Jews who were interned in European concentration camps to emigrate to Palestine. As expected, the British and U.S. governments and the Jewish labor movement, whose leader, David Ben-Gurion, was comfortably ensconced in New York, did everything in their power to thwart such a plan, and the Stern people were persecuted and hunted down, even by other Jews in Palestine. Shamir and his colleagues from the Stern Gang are anti-American to this day, because they believe that the slaughter of six million Jews in Europe could have been prevented with a bit of American cooperation. Most of the people affiliated with the Stern Gang were not welcome to stay in the State of Israel after it was established because the Labor coalition government that took over looked askance at them. Shamir himself was an exception, becoming a prominent figure in the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency. Prime Minister Ben-Gurion said of him, “If a terrorist, let him be my terrorist.” My father, finding Israel less than welcoming, set up shop in Iran. He joined his brother in the import-export business. From the Soviet Union, for example, he imported furs and leather. Later, during the 1950s, he acquired the Mercedes Benz/Bosch car and spare-parts franchise for Iran. But my father always yearned to pull up roots and go to live in Israel whenever the political climate changed. For my part, I loved to listen to my father talk about his travels and his philosophies. Sometimes we’d go up to the walk-on roof of our three-story house in the northern suburbs of Tehran for long discussions. At other times, we’d find a shady spot in the yard. And while I was taught languages, math, geography, and history at the American School, it was from my father that I really learned about life. He enjoyed talking about his experiences in the Soviet Union. While my three sisters and I grew up surrounded by the American propaganda that was flooding Iran in the 1950s and 1960s, which portrayed the Soviet Union as an evil place, my father would say, “It’s really just another way of life. In the Soviet Union you don’t see indigent people in the streets. Everybody has a bare minimum to live, and they get their basic needs from the state. If they don’t have any business initiative, they won’t find themselves living in dire poverty or close to starvation. Growing up with a bare minimum is better than starving.” This was his way of explaining the differences between East and West to growing children. His was an unusual philosophy then in an affluent, capitalist, American-oriented society. My father expressed his views openly, and there was no doubt why he was never fully accepted by others in the Iraqi-Jewish community. Despite my father’s socialist sympathies, the Labor coalition in power in Israel was not acceptable to him. This was not because of ideology, but because he saw these so-called socialists as “peasants” whose main aim was to enrich themselves – bringing economic chaos while making it clear that Middle Eastern Jews, regardless of their education, would always be second-class citizens in Israel. Furthermore, the Labor coalition “socialists” were, ironically, intertwined with the capitalist United States. My father supported the Gahal (today known as the Likud Party), a merger of Menachem Begin’s Herut Party and the Israel Liberal Party. Although they saw themselves as a conservative party because of their strong emphasis on Jewish identity, they also supported progressive social programs. Their leaders, Begin and Yitzhak Shamir, became folk heroes to the party loyalists. I would compare the Gahal – and today’s Likud Party – to the Peronists in Argentina: rightwing populists. The Labor coalition, which later became the Labor Party, was in favor of close relations with South Africa and of cutting relations with the Soviet Union altogether; on the other hand, the Likud tried to open up relations with the Soviet Union and tone down the ties with South Africa. Because of what I learned from my father, I was fascinated during my school years in Tehran with the concept of world revolution – not as a violent uprising but as a redistribution of wealth. From my youthful philosophical perspective, centrally controlled economies and ways of life were a necessary first step in educating the masses and preparing them for a more open society. * * * By July of 1966, when I was 14, I was feeling increasingly foreign in Iran, with my Iraqi-Jewish background and my American schooling. Like most adolescents, I was searching for my identity, a place I could feel at home. Under the influence of my father and sharing the vision of an Israeli state, I decided I wanted to live in Israel. So my mother – a pragmatic and street-smart woman – took me and my sisters Claris, Evon, and Stella, to Israel, where Stella and I were enrolled at the American International School in Kfar Smaryahu, north of Tel Aviv. My two oldest sisters went to college. Five years later, my parents moved from Tehran to Israel, lock, stock, and barrel. I had the best of both worlds. Most of the pupils at the school were white Americans or the children of foreign diplomats stationed in Israel. There weren’t too many Jewish resident children attending the school, and while sometimes I felt something of a misfit, we all got along well. When I left at the end of each day, I would mix with Israeli kids in Ramat Gan, the Tel Aviv suburb where we were living. Once in a while I’d go to a party, take a girlfriend to the cinema, or just go for a long walk, some three or four kilometers, to the sea. After their graduation from high school at the age of 18, my Israeli friends were drafted into the army. My American pals left for the U.S. to attend university. I, meanwhile, found myself in a peculiar situation once again. Because I still had an Iranian passport, I could not be drafted. So I joined a kibbutz. I was a religious Jew at the time, hardly orthodox but at least keeping kosher and observing the sabbath. I was the only one on this socialist kibbutz who wore a yarmulke. Even though I did not identify with their way of life, I wanted to experience the East European ethos, and rub shoulders with the avant garde. Curiously, it was a move that set me on the road to a life enmeshed in political intrigue. Half of each day at Kibbutz Mishmar Hasharon was spent studying Hebrew, the rest doing volunteer work in the fish ponds, engaged in the extremely difficult task of sorting out male and female trout. Sometimes I would work through the night in the bakery, preparing for the early morning sale of bread. My roommates that year, 1969, were two non-Jewish volunteers in their 30s. One was an Australian member of the Church of God, Michael Dennis Rohan, the other an American Baptist named Arthur. They were in the kibbutz because they had had visions of Christ ordering them to come to the Holy Land. The kibbutz was an economical way of doing the Lord’s work. As long as they went about certain daily tasks, they didn’t have to pay anything for their keep. Rohan, a tall slim man with thinning brown hair, had a vision that he was to be the king of Israel who would prepare the way for the return of Christ. Arthur’s vision was slightly different; he saw Christ’s return as imminent and knew that the Jews had to be saved from themselves. God had sent them His only son 2,000 years earlier, and they had not accepted Him. It was a crazy situation. There I was keeping an eye out for any girls I might be able to lure into my bed – life in a kibbutz is not all work and prayer – while sharing a room with two Westerners who were following a different kind of heavenly calling. Not that Rohan was not human. He fell for a very attractive Hebrew teacher who came into the kibbutz daily. He sent her his photograph with a note that he would be king of Israel one day and he’d like her to be his queen. She ignored him. At night Rohan, dressed in his khaki work clothes, talked to me about the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. For Moslems this was the holiest place after Mecca and Medina. On the mount is El Aqsa Mosque which has been built over a rock imprinted with a footstep said to be that of the Prophet Mohammed, who ascended to heaven from that spot. “To rebuild the temple, this mosque has to be destroyed,” Rohan told me. “In order for Jesus to come back, the Third Temple has to be built, but this can only be done by getting rid of the mosque.” The Second Temple had been destroyed by the Romans. Rohan started receiving visits from two men wearing yarmulkes, who, he explained, were from the Jewish Defense League, a New York-based extreme rightwing organization associated with Rabbi Meir Kahane. Rohan never said how he got involved with them. A month after I met him, Rohan packed his bags to leave for Jerusalem. “I’m going to prepare the way for the second coming of Christ,” he said. Then he astonished me by donning a suit and tie. With a wave of his bony hand, he set out on the Lord’s work. Two weeks later I learned that Rohan had meant all he had said. The news was dominated by a report that the El Aqsa Mosque had been burned in an arson attack. Moslems around the world were outraged and were calling for a jihad, a holy war, against Israel. Some Arab newspapers claimed that Israeli military helicopters had firebombed the mosque, but I guessed something far different – which was soon to be confirmed. Rohan was waiting for me in my room, again dressed in his smart suit. “I’ve just got back from Jerusalem,” he said. “If you’d permit me, I’d like to stay here for the weekend.” His bed was still free. I made no mention of the news at that stage. “Dennis, I have no problem,” I said, “but you realize that if you stay longer than a few days, you’ll have to register.” That evening, joined by Arthur, we started talking again, and this time I mentioned the burning of the mosque. “Is this a sign that the Third Temple is going to be built?” I asked. “Yes,” he said. “Did you have anything to do with it?” “It was God’s work, but through my hands.” “Dennis, you realize the whole world is looking for who did it. What are you going to do about it?” “I’m going to turn myself in.” I didn’t know whether to trust him to do that or not. But I knew that action had to be taken. Israel was being blamed for what he had done. He asked to be left to have a good sleep that night, promising he wouldn’t leave. Arthur said, “Dennis, I’ll be praying all night for your soul.” At breakfast the next morning, I asked Rohan if he had any matches. “Sure I do,” he said. “I used them for a good cause.” After breakfast, with Rohan’s permission, I went to a pay phone and called the police emergency 100 number, identified myself to an officer, and told her that the most wanted man in Israel was in my room at the kibbutz. When I said he was an Australian, she told me she had had a lot of crank phone calls and her patience was running out, but she listened to me carefully. Forty-five minutes after the call, the kibbutz was invaded by heavily armed Israel Police Border Guards, the police paramilitary unit, in their green uniforms. They surrounded the block in which our room was located. Then three officers in civilian clothes knocked on the door. Dennis was treated kindly, handcuffed, and led away to be charged with grand arson of a holy site. I traveled later to Jerusalem with Arthur, the two of us just scruffy young guys from the kibbutz, and the Israeli police put us up at the King David Hotel, the best in town. We were interrogated about Rohan for hours, and when I mentioned the Jewish Defense League, my interrogators jumped. They said it was vital I not say anything about Rohan, particularly his connections with the JDL. “There should be no traces of Jewish hands in this,” said one of the senior officers. Rohan never had a trial. He pleaded guilty at a public hearing and was sent for psychiatric observation, and was later declared by the court to be mentally ill. He was committed to a psychiatric hospital south of Haifa. Three months later, Rohan turned up at my flat in Ramat Gan, where I was then living. “I escaped,” he said. “But don’t worry. I only came to say hello. I’m going back later.” This time he gave me more details, explaining he had carried out the deed in coordination with the JDL. But he believed his lawyer, Yitzhak Tunic, who was later to be appointed as the state comptroller – the ombudsman – had “sold him down the river” because he was afraid Rohan might mention the JDL if he took the witness stand. My own subpoena had been canceled because there were worries that I might also mention the JDL. “Is it Russia,” he asked, “where a man of God is put away and accused of being crazy?” All this made me think: Is there any justice in the world? In some respects, the Israeli court system was one of the fairest in the world, yet “for reasons of State interests” this case had been suppressed. Rohan had been prepared to admit the crime and was willing to go to jail for ten years or more for what he believed in, but he wanted a platform to talk about his motives. The Israeli legal system was not going to allow that to happen. Rohan gave himself up to the authorities after chatting with me. Three months later he was deported to Australia. In 1972 while studying political science and modern history at Bar Ilan University, along with working toward a teacher’s license, I became pals with another student, Adel Mohammad Atamna. An Israeli citizen, he was a Palestinian from an Arab village, Kfar Kara’a, located inside the pre-1967 Israeli border. At the time, I was renting a small apartment in Qiryat Uno, not far from the university, and Adel had been renting a flat close by because his village was two hours’ drive from Tel Aviv. One day, he invited me to his home, set in a traditional Arab village, which itself lay within a Westernized society. It amazed me how he was able to live in both worlds. Our friendship developed further when his Jewish landlady got cold feet about having an Arab on her property and threw him out. When I found out why he was looking so miserable, I decided to give my apartment to him while I stayed at my parents’ house. He started calling me his brother. One day in late 1972, he said, “I’ve found you a job. How would you like to teach English in our village high school?” I loved the idea. There was an abundance of Jewish English teachers, but none wanted to teach in an Arab village. Although I had not yet obtained my degree or my teaching license, I was able to get a temporary permit. So I started teaching teenage boys and girls three times a week, traveling the two hours each way by bus. One day, out of the blue, I received a letter from the Prime Minister’s Office. In essence, it said: Dear Sir, We have a very interesting position to offer you with a lot of future prospects. We would like you to come for an interview in Tel Aviv. An address and a date were specified. If I couldn’t make it, I was told to phone and ask for Kohava. At the time I was dating a woman three years my senior who had just finished serving in the army and was working for the SHABAK – the secret police-style internal security service. When I showed her the letter, she smiled. “This is from the Mossad or the SHABAK,” she said. “This is a SHABAK interview address. They’re going to offer you a great job, I’d say.” The address turned out to be a regular apartment building. I walked up to the third floor and knocked on the door. A young man answered. He led me into a room and asked me to sit and wait for ten minutes. I found out later that I was under observation throughout that period. A man in his early 50s called me into a larger room and, when I was seated, said right away: “Whatever I’m going to tell you right now is governed by the Official Secrets Act. You are not permitted to divulge this conversation or even that it took place or where we met. Please sign this statement which holds you to secrecy.” He handed me a piece of paper, which I signed. “We have been looking at your background, your file,” he said. “Who are you? What file?” “The El Aqsa Mosque affair. We’ve read about the way you helped.” It was never stated, but I assumed he meant that they were pleased I had cooperated when asked to keep my mouth shut about the possible Jewish Defense League involvement. “Who are you? “ I asked again. “We’re from the Prime Minister’s Office, and the internal security of the Jewish state is on our shoulders. You have the privilege of being invited to join our family.” He explained that I was not being invited just yet. I had to go through security clearance, my background would be checked further, and I would have to pass tests. But he said my file left him convinced they would be in a position to make me an offer. “Even though you are not an Israeli citizen yet, you are going to become one, which will make you subject to the draft.” What he said was quite true. At this point I intended to become an Israeli citizen. In 1973 I actually got the final papers. “We can make you a better offer than going into the army,” said my host. “You will sign a contract to work for us for at least five years, and you will stay teaching in the Arab village where you are working right now. All you have to do is just answer some questions once in a while to the person in charge of security in that area. You will be getting a salary from the school and a salary from us. And who knows, if you’re good, you could be promoted to chief of security in that region and you could eventually be stationed abroad – the future is open to you.” I looked at him without saying a thing. “If you are agreeable, we will schedule you for tests right away.” “You want me to be a manyak [Hebrew slang for a snitch]?” I asked. He was taken aback. This was something he had not expected. “No, no – we want you to be an undercover agent for the most prestigious and noble organization in the State of Israel. We want to put some of the burden of the security of the Jewish state, which I personally believe is a great honor, on your shoulders.” He was asking me to spy on my friends, to spy on Adel. “No, thank you,” I said. “I’m not prepared to betray friendships.” “But these are Arabs, our enemies.” “Stop the nonsense. Sure they’re Arabs, but they’re also Israeli citizens.” He suddenly became very angry. “You know what will happen if you turn this down. They’ll take you into the army.” “I don’t mind serving my country. I just don’t want to be a manyak. I left with his final words ringing in my ears: “We’ll give you a week to change your mind. After that, we’re gone.” When I got home, my girlfriend was waiting. I told her what had happened. “Are you crazy?” she asked. She spent the following week trying to persuade me to accept the offer. But I never called them back. A year later, in 1973, after I had become an Israeli citizen but while I was still studying and teaching, I received another letter. This time, it was from the Ministry of Defense, inviting me to an interview in Tel Aviv. They had a “very special” position to offer me in connection with my upcoming military service. It was a different apartment. A young woman who opened the door took me in to meet a chubby, balding man who introduced himself as Lt. Col. Sasson. He brought out a file and said he understood I was about to be drafted by the military. He had an offer, but before it was made, he asked me to sign a secrecy statement. I had a feeling of déjà vu. “You have to serve three years in the military. But if you pass all the tests and if you get a security clearance, we will ask you to sign on for an extra two years for career service, meaning you will serve five years in the military. We will give you a very special position, and we’ll also send you to officers’ school.” “Great,” I said. “What am I supposed to do?” “When will you be ready to join the military?” “My studies finish some time at the end of this year.” Because of my background, my education, and my fluency in Farsi, Hebrew, and English, I had been selected to work for Military Intelligence. As long as I didn’t have to spy on my friends, I had no problem with this. I was committed to Israel and wanted to serve the country – all the better if it was a good, prestigious job as well. I agreed to undergo security clearance procedures. They began the following morning. At the offices of Field Security, I was asked to fill in tens of pages of questions that covered my background, the names of my family and friends, and others who could provide references. This was followed by three days of psychological and aptitude tests. I was to be assigned to work at the Iranian desk at the codecracking Sigint – Signals Intelligence – unit. But there were more tests to come, including a physical, in order to be able to join the military in a special unit. My draft date was set for May 6, 1974. When I asked why this was so far away, I was told I had been scheduled for a pre-military course in codebreaking starting in Jerusalem in mid-November 1973. It turned out that my basic training would be in a special infantry unit known as Golani, in which I would undertake a special high-explosives sabotage course. This would be followed by an officers’ course, and then I was to be put into the codebreaking unit. “Why,” I asked, “is all this necessary for a man who’s to be working as a codebreaker?” I was told I asked too many questions. Lt. Col. Sasson asked if I was going to sign for the extra two years or not. If I refused, I would be assigned to a regular army unit for three years. I signed. During my codebreaking course, I was introduced to the Iranian method of cryptography. It was pointed out that all the Iranian embassies around the world used a model of the Swiss Haglin coding machine, and they transmitted in Farsi, but using the Roman alphabet. We were taught the method of breaking the code sent by the Haglin machine. Using a computer, even without knowing the starting point of the machine, the Israelis had found a method of breaking the code. But a new problem came up. The Iranians started double-coding – making a code out of a code – and nobody was able to break it. The only way the Israelis could read communications was by “acquiring” the black book that was sent weekly by diplomatic pouch to the communications officer in the unofficial Iranian embassy in Ramat Gan in Israel. For “security reasons,” Iranian diplomatic pouches had to lay over for 24 hours at Ben-Gurion Airport before the embassy received them. This allowed the SHABAK to get into the pouches. These pouches are sealed, but the SHABAK people were experts at breaking the seals and then repairing them after the black book had been “borrowed” and photocopied. On one occasion a sloppy job was done on the resealing, but that was quickly overcome – the Iranian communications officer was also the man in charge of picking up the pouch. When he discovered the broken seal, he was paid handsomely, which made life a lot easier thereafter. He simply photocopied the weekly code and passed it to us. After my course was finished, I was stationed in Unit 8200, in the code-breaking department in the non-Arab branch of Sigint. Unit 8200 was housed in a base consisting of a number of white and grey concrete buildings located near a country club some ten kilometers north of Tel Aviv. Close by, on an elevation, was a grey-white building known as the villa, belonging to Mossad, where top-secret security meetings were held. About a kilometer away were several intelligence corps service bases and the intelligence school. Each department in Unit 8200 was run on a need-to-know basis. A person from one department could not enter another without special permission. The unit commander was Col. Yoel Ben-Porat, known as Buffy, the Hebrew acronym of his name. The number two person in the code-breaking department, Lt. Col. Sasson Yishaek, was the man who had recruited me, as “Lt. Col. Sasson.” The department’s commander, Col. Reuben Yirador, had been involved in a discovery a few years earlier. In 1972 he had decoded a Soviet intercept which had not been encrypted in the regular way. It was one of the same VENONA intercepts that British MI-5 agent Peter Wright mentions in his book Spycatcher, although he doesn’t say it was the Israelis who cracked this code in Rome. Col. Yirador found out that the Soviets were bugging the office of the prime minister of Israel, Golda Meir. The bugs had been planted by two technicians, Soviet immigrants to Israel, who were working in the Prime Minister’s Office. Someone leaked the fact that the Israelis were on to the bugging by the Soviets. The two technicians disappeared from Israel before they could be arrested. The discovery of the bugs meant, of course, that the Soviets were privy to many of the goings-on in Golda Meir’s office in 1972 – a very significant year. The Soviets had a special interest in Israel that year because it was then that Golda Meir had met Leonid Brezhnev in Finland, and had rejected his proposal for a comprehensive peace settlement in the Middle East. As a result of that meeting and the bugging, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat was well informed by the Soviets about Israel’s attitude. The intelligence he had been fed may well have prompted Sadat to launch a war against Israel to force it to sit down at the peace table. The branch of Unit 8200 I was assigned to was headed by an older civilian woman, Shulamit lngerman, one of Israel’s best cryptographers, who had twice won the highest award for contributions to Israel’s security. A likable woman who cared more about her career than her sloppy appearance, she introduced me to the Iranian team of six. While it was accepted wisdom that – like Israel’s encrypting system – NATO and Soviet codes could rarely be broken because the coding method was always being randomly changed, my task of reading the Farsi material was not difficult. This was because the “starting point” was being stolen from the Iranian pouch. It was only a matter of translation. However, it was still necessary to try to crack the code because at some point the black book might not be available. One night, when I was duty officer and working with a young woman in the unit, I decided to try looking for the secret of the code around the word noghteh,which in Farsi means “full stop” or “period.” This, of course, appears frequently in telegrams, and the messages to and from Tehran were no exception. The Iranians used the letter W to represent the spaces between words, but our computer had been designed to delete the Ws. I instructed the computer to put the Ws back in and to look for the word noghteh with Ws on each side. I believed that if we could find a certain frequency of these stops and spaces we would crack the code. Sometime in the dead of night we broke through. No longer would we need the little black book. The young woman on duty and I shrieked with joy. I immediately called Shulamit, Col. Yirador, Col. Buffy, and Lt. Col. Yishaek. They said they’d be around right away. The only problem I had that night was that, against regulations, I did not have a uniform on. I was wearing shorts, having traveled in for my night shift by bicycle from Ramat Gan – it was a pleasant ride. On their arrival shortly after 3:00 a.m., the heavy brass of the unit expressed their delight and extended their congratulations. Suddenly Buffy turned to me with a stern face and demanded: “When is your shift over?” I told him at eight in the morning. “At 8:05 you will come to my office to stand court martial for being insubordinate and out of order.” Everyone in the room was taken aback. “Sir?” I asked. “The next time you break a code, he said, “make sure you are in uniform.” At eight in the morning I made my way in a borrowed uniform to Buffy’s office. He told me right away that he was sentencing me to 14 days in jail for disorderly conduct. He ordered me to sit. I sat. Then he broke into a smile and said, “But I’m suspending the sentence. I have a driver outside with a car. Go home, take a shower, have a shave, and be back in an hour. I did as I was told. Then other members of the Iranian desk and I were taken to see the director of Military Intelligence, Maj. Gen. Shlomo Gazit, where we were all commended. Life with the military held promise. Or so I thought. 2 Codebreaker BETWEEN 1975 AND 1977, the Iranian desk in Unit 8200 was reading coded messages faster than the Iranians. They came in, we threw them into the computer, translated them, and sent them on to various interested intelligence quarters. Breaking the code had opened doors to a wealth of material from around the world. The monitoring of the Iranians, along with other signals, was carried out through the satellite station in Bet Ella in the foothills of the Judea mountains, half an hour’s drive from Jerusalem. There were also various Unit 8200 listening stations in northern Israel, the Sinai, and overseas. Located in innocuous-looking buildings in Japan, Italy, and Ethiopia, these powerful listening posts could intercept, among other signals, all the traffic in and out of the Iranian Foreign Ministry, the Royal Court, the SAVAK, and Iranian military intelligence. The listeners zeroed in on Tehran, the hub, and other Iranian embassies. Under the Shah, Iran had good relations with what we referred to as the “moderate pro-American Arab countries” – Egypt, Jordan, and the Emirates, including Kuwait. We were getting no intelligence on these nations from the Americans. With the code broken, however, we were able to find out what various Iranian emissaries were reporting back to Tehran. In addition, the Iranians had good contacts with the Soviet Bloc, and what the Soviets told Tehran they also unwittingly told us. There was one other vital source of information – Ardeshir Zahedi, the Iranian ambassador to the U.S. Zahedi reported directly back to the Shah’s office in the Royal Court what was being said in the U.S. capital about Middle East policy and the Americans’ initiatives with Anwar Sadat’s Egypt. While we “read” a great deal of important material, we also noticed how much junk came through the code system. We found out just how lazy some ambassadors were – they merely translated newspaper editorials into Farsi and sent them as their well-informed analyses of what was going on in their respective countries. Among the “newspaper clippers” was the Iranian ambassador to Israel, who was obviously an avid reader of the Jerusalem Post, at the time the only English language daily in Israel. He would translate the editorials and, passing them off as his own assessments, direct them to his foreign minister. This was done with such regularity that finally we saved ourselves a great deal of translation time – we would cut out the editorial from the paper and clip it to the printout of the coded message, then send it on to our analysts. Often, they had already read the editorials anyway. It wasn’t all office work in Unit 8200. Friday morning, July 2, 1976, I was ordered to report to Lt. Col. Yishaek’s office. I found a number of other officers there, all experts in various languages. We were then asked to accompany him to the office of Col. Yosef Zeira, a very stern department commander in Unit 8200. The colonel locked his door. Then he turned to us all and said, “From now until Sunday morning you are all going to ‘disappear.’ No going home, no telephone calls. You have simply vanished.” No one protested. Whatever this was about, it was all part of our work. Our families and friends would simply have to understand. “You’re all going on a trip to Kenya,” the colonel said. Then he told us that Israel had decided to mount a commando raid to rescue the Israeli and other passengers on board an Air France jet that had been hijacked June 27 while flying to Paris from Tel Aviv. Members of the Baader-Meinhof Group had boarded the plane on a stopover in Rome, diverted it to Athens, and then finally landed it at Entebbe Airport in Uganda. The non-Israeli passengers had, by Friday, been released. At that time relations between Israel and Idi Amin were at their lowest. The self-proclaimed president of Uganda had been a close friend of Israel and had been installed in a military coup, planned and led by the former Israeli military attaché in Uganda, Col. Baruch Bar Lev. But now, after Col. Muammar Qaddafi of Libya had promised money to black African nations if they cut ties with Israel, relations between Israel and Uganda had deteriorated. Amin, however, still wore the paratrooper’s wings bestowed on him by the Israeli military when he had undergone training in Israel. The details of the Israeli rescue are, of course, well known. What isn’t known is the misery that at least one of the backup teams endured. We were told we would be flying to Nairobi in an Air Force Boeing 707, which would be used as a listening post. The plan was to fly there, park on the airfield, and tap into radio frequencies to establish if any messages were being passed, in any language, that the Israelis were on their way. I was told to scan for Farsi. In addition to being used for our various language skills, we were also ordered to sign for combat gear – if extra manpower were needed, we would be the first to be airlifted to Entebbe as backup. Now I could see that my training with explosives might come in handy after all. The Boeing 707 that took off from Israel carried no markings. I had been assigned a seat at the rear with my equipment: earphones and a scanner. This, I was told, would be where I would stay for however long the rescue operation took. During the flight the toilets broke down. My seat was right by the toilet door. By the time we touched down shortly before dawn that morning, the air conditioning had also failed. Sweat poured from all our bodies as the plane taxied to its position in a dark corner of the Nairobi airfield. By the following night the heat and stench were unbearable. In stark contrast to the commando raid at Entebbe, I had absolutely nothing to do but listen to the crackling earphones and try to overcome waves of nausea. We were self-sufficient for food and water, although I couldn’t face eating anything. After who knows how many hours, the technicians on board were able to repair the toilets and the air conditioning, and I then continued listening for Farsi in relative comfort. Many hours later a shout went up. The raid had been a success. Our job was over – if it could be called a job. When we arrived back at the airfield in north-central Israel, the nation was in a jubilant mood. Everyone involved in the operation, no matter what their role, was lauded as a hero. A young woman I was going out with at the time forgave me for disappearing on her and hugged and kissed me. I tried to tell her that all I had done was sit in a sardine can beside a smelly toilet listening to stereophonic crackling, but she didn’t care. I was her hero, she said. One night in 1976 while I was duty officer in Unit 8200, I read a telegram sent from the Iranian Embassy in Ramat Gan to Tehran. I couldn’t believe my eyes. The ambassador talked in detail about a meeting he had had with the Lockheed Aircraft Company representative in Israel who had passed on details of Lockheed bribes paid to Defense Minister Shimon Peres. The sum involved was the equivalent of $3.5 million. I remembered the Lockheed bribe scandal that had hit Japan, but no one had heard of Israeli involvement in such things. The intercepted telegram dealt with the sale of C-130 aircraft to Israel and the possibility of Israel purchasing more C-130s as opposed to other transport. I double-checked the translation. There was no way I could have been mistaken. By now, Lt. Col. Yishaek had become commander of the department, replacing Col. Yirador, who had remained in Military Intelligence. It was the middle of the night, but I knew how explosive this material was. A sleepy voice answered Yishaek’s number. “Sir,” I said, “you need to come here right away.” “I hope this is important.” “Sir, I wouldn’t have called you for anything less. It’s more than important – it’s extremely sensitive.” “Unless this is as big as the Egyptians declaring war on Israel, I’ll have your balls cut off for getting me out of bed at this time.” “It’s worse,” I said. He arrived 20 minutes later, in uniform, unshaven. “OK,” he said, “what’s so important?” I told him to sit and read the computer. He said he couldn’t read Farsi. I told him I deliberately hadn’t translated it. I went through it for him word by word, whispering, so a woman soldier working in another part of the office couldn’t hear. He asked me to translate it again. ‘’Are you sure? “ he asked. “Sir, I am absolutely sure.” The telegram also detailed in which of Shimon Peres’s brother’s business accounts in Europe the bribe money had been deposited. Other than his “analyses” plagiarized from the newspaper, the ambassador was very credible. Yishaek got on the phone and told Buffy to come right away. By the time he arrived, I had the translation on paper. Buffy read it, his brow furrowed under the fluorescent lighting. Known for his good relations with Peres, Buffy looked up finally and sighed heavily. “I want the original telegram, the translation, your log, and anything else connected to this erased,” he said slowly and deliberately. I told him it couldn’t be done. The monitoring of embassies inside Israel was not carried out by Military Intelligence, but by the SHABAK, and the telegrams in and out of the Iranian building were accounted for by the SHABAK. They sent the telegrams to us every day, we would decode the letters, and early the following morning they would demand every telegram back with its translation. It wasn’t a matter of just fixing the local log. The SHABAK had a log, too. However, the following morning, the SHABAK, for the first time did not ask for the telegram. Before I went home, I was called into Buffy’s office. He told me, “We all know that you are a good officer. You are a patriot. You love your country. And I know that nothing of this matter will leak out.” The young woman who had been working with me immediately received transfer orders to another unit of 8200 in northern Israel, and within a short time Col. Ben-Porat was promoted to the rank of brigadier general and later appointed official spokesman of the Israel Defense Forces. I don’t know if Peres actually received the bribe. I do know that after I stumbled on the accusation and passed it on to my superiors, it was covered up. No public disclosure or inquiry was ever made. In April 1977, Lt. Col. Yishaek told me that I was required to travel to Italy, to work in our Rome listening station. Alarm bells rang in my head. Only recently two members of Military Intelligence working in that station had been killed, and although nobody claimed responsibility, suspicion had fallen on the Palestine Liberation Organization. In the aftermath of the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, a battle was raging in Europe between Mossad agents and a Palestinian group called Black September. They were killing each other at every opportunity. We knew there was a leak somewhere at the embassy in Rome; someone was passing on to the Palestinians the names and activities of Israeli military and security personnel. The chances were that I would be a marked man as soon as I arrived. Obviously one’s life is put at risk at times in the service of one’s country, but I simply didn’t want to be one of those who could die in this senseless situation. “I’m not going,” I said. “You can say or do what you like, but I won’t go.” Yishaek was furious. “You’ll be court-martialed for insubordination,” he said. “So be it,” I replied. “At least I’ll still be alive.” The next morning, I was called to the Administrative Officers’ Bureau, where two military policemen were waiting. I was taken before a military tribunal on a charge of serious insubordination. I refused an attorney and was found guilty. The sentence was 14 days in jail and reduction in rank from lieutenant to corporal. I was also told I would no longer have the honor of serving the extra two years in the military. I would be released after I completed my regular military service. I was taken to a military prison near Haifa to serve my 14 days. Two days later, to my surprise, I was released and sent straight back to my unit. Shulamit Ingerman was waiting to tell me that Col. Yishaek had overreacted and she had gone over his head to obtain a pardon from the director of Military Intelligence – only someone with a rank of major general or above can overrule a military tribunal. “Your rank can be restored right away if you agree to sign again for the extra two years’ service,” said Shulamit. My regular military service was due to end in less than a month, and if I were to keep to the contract, I would be doing an extra two years as a career officer. This was my opportunity to scrap the contract and I took it. I told Lt. Col. Yishaek, “Thanks for the pardon. But I’m not going to stay here any longer.” If truth be told, I was bored. We had broken the code. I didn’t want to spend another two years there. I was looking in another direction – I wanted to work in the deepest sanctum of Israeli intelligence: the External Relations Department of the Israel Defense Forces/Military Intelligence. I wanted to serve Israel where I would have the most impact. I was ambitious, and with my unique background and skills, I felt the ERD offered the most challenging future for me. I obtained an interview with the office of the chief personnel officer of the intelligence corps. I expressed my hopes of joining Military Intelligence as a civilian in the External Relations Department, where almost everyone else was a civilian anyway. On May 3, 1977, I was released from the military. I was then scheduled for a number of interviews, including one with the chief of External Relations, Col. Meir Meir. “I think,” he said, “we could draw on your Iranian expertise.” At the same time I was offered a job in Mossad operations, to be stationed in Europe. I declined, pinning my hopes on getting assigned to External Relations. The SHABAK also offered me work in their Iranian Unit, and there was a possibility of joining the Foreign Ministry. I still wasn’t interested. I knew what I wanted. Finally the message came back. I had been accepted in External Relations. Had I known what was in store, I might have considered it safer to go to Rome. 3 Love in the Time of Revolution AUGUST 15, 1977. How could I ever forget my first day in the External Relations Department of the Israel Defense Forces/Military Intelligence? My right cheek was badly swollen with an abscessed tooth, and I could hardly speak because of polyps on my vocal cords. It was three weeks before I felt normal again. Spooks, too, are human. IDF/MI/ERD was the most prestigious department in the intelligence community. Its status went back to the 1974 Agranat Commission, which the prime minister had appointed to investigate the intelligence failures of the 1973 war, when Israel had been surprised on Yom Kippur by the Syrian-Egyptian attack. Several of the important recommendations in the commission’s secret report were implemented immediately by the government. One that I was well aware of converted Military Intelligence into the senior intelligence agency, giving it more powers than Mossad. As a result, the National Assessment, the intelligence term for the immediate security situation in the country and what the security arrangements were to be, would be solely the responsibility of the director of Military Intelligence. It was not to be a pooled responsibility of the various intelligence agencies – this one was his alone. A further effect of the recommendations was the creation of the External Relations Department of Military Intelligence. This was built around an existing unit called Foreign Liaison. When I joined External Relations in 1977, it had four branches: There was the Special Assistance Branch (SIM), through which special military assistance was to be given to other countries and various “liberation movements.” The Mossad department that had been in charge of external military assistance now became a liaison department between foreign countries and SIM. Then there was the branch in which I was initially employed, known as RESH – the pronunciation in Hebrew of the letter R. R branch was in charge of intelligence exchange with foreign intelligence communities and general relations with foreign intelligence networks. The Mossad, in fact, had a large parallel branch called Tevel, but once R branch gained prominence, Tevel had a problem. It arose because in order to receive intelligence information from foreign countries, it was necessary to give them something in return. And what countries in the West wanted most was technical information about Soviet weapons systems; in other words, military information. The Mossad no longer had access to the analytical departments of the military to gain this information – they had to go through the R branch. The result was that the once-powerful Tevel now found itself also playing the part of a liaison department with the R branch. A third branch, known as Foreign Liaison, was charged with taking care of Israeli military attachés outside Israel as well as Israeli military personnel serving in foreign countries. It was also in charge of liaison with foreign military personnel and foreign military attachés in Israel. The fourth branch, Intelligence 12, was a general liaison branch with the Mossad. Other than these four branches, the External Relations Department also had an operations officer who was directly subordinate to the chief of ERD and who took care of various logistical matters such as passports, intelligence exchange conferences, diplomatic pouches coming in and out, security; and so on. He also had under his control the ERD conference halls, where secret intelligence meetings were held. While working in the R branch, I was assigned by the office of the director of Military Intelligence to work with the Iranians. The director’s office wanted someone who was knowledgeable about Iran to be a direct liaison with the Iranian intelligence community. The Mossad representative in Tehran at the time was very ineffective, and finally the director and the chief of Tevel agreed to his recall. The deputy military attaché in Tehran, Col. Yitzhak Cahani, who acted as the External Relations Department’s representative, was also rather unsuccessful with intelligence work, as he didn’t speak Farsi and didn’t understand the situation on the ground. Starting in late September 1977, I became a Middle East commuter, traveling back and forth between Tel Aviv and Tehran. Because I was born in Tehran, I was still regarded in Iran as an Iranian citizen and therefore subject to Iranian laws, even though I had by now taken out Israeli citizenship. I wasn’t supposed to have a foreign diplomatic passport – which Israel had issued to me – because the Iranians deemed dual citizenship illegal. The difficulty was overcome when the Israeli government issued me a diplomatic passport in which the place of birth was conveniently not mentioned. I used it only when I went to Tehran. As a result of the establishment of diplomatic relations in the late 1960s between Iran and Israel, the Iranians had a full embassy in Ramat Gan with a SAVAK representative, a military attaché, a commercial attaché, a consul, and an ambassador. But it wasn’t officially designated as an embassy, and it did not have a sign on the door or a flagpole. Officially, the Iranians had an interests section in the Swiss Embassy in Tel Aviv, but it didn’t really exist, and callers to the Swiss Embassy who asked for it would be referred to the unofficial Iranian Embassy in Ramat Gan. Israel had the same unofficial status in Tehran. The building on Kakh Avenue had no sign on the door, but everyone knew what it was. The reason for this elaborate charade was the Shah’s concern that his relationship with Arab nations would be disrupted. They were fully aware of the unofficial arrangement, but this ruse allowed the Arabs to turn a blind eye. My trips to Tehran were a source of ill will toward me from Col. Cahani and the Mossad, because I had taken over some of their territory. However, they could say nothing: I had been commissioned by the big boss, the director of Military Intelligence. In Tehran I would often meet the SAVAK representative, as well as officials from Iranian Military Intelligence. Mostly the meetings were held in my room at the Carlton Hotel, not far from the unofficial Israeli Embassy. Besides sharing information about Iraq and other Arab countries, the Iranian intelligence people and I also exchanged technical information. For example, Israel at the time was developing a tank called Merkava at the Israel Military Industries. The tank developers were interested in knowing the composition of metal sheets, developed by the British and used on their advanced battle tanks, some of which had been supplied to the Iranians. This metal, known as Chobham armor, was thought to be impenetrable by indirect rocket or missile hits. On instructions from my superiors, I asked the Iranian military, through their foreign liaison department, if we could have a sample of the metal. “The only way you can get a sheet of this metal would mean us cutting up a tank,” said my Iranian counterpart. “Fine,” I said. “Why don’t you do it?” And they did. They cut a sheet of Chobham armor off one of their tanks and dispatched it to Israel in a diplomatic crate. It didn’t destroy the tank – but it made it less secure because the hole had to be patched with inferior metal. Later, in the early 1980s, the British realized that the Merkava tanks had features of the British armor. We were exchanging a great deal of intelligence with the Iranians on Iraq, which we saw as a mutual enemy, even though the Shah had officially settled his disputes with the Iraqi leadership. We were also passing to them information on the activities of anti-Shah Shi’ite Iranians living in Lebanon. It was from there that information about the impending Iranian revolution first started to leak out. “You must be careful,” I told my Iranian colleagues. “We think you’re in for big trouble here.” Apart from these intelligence-swap meetings, I had another task in Tehran – putting together an analysis of the underground Tudeh Party of Iran, a pro-Soviet group. My research visits to Tehran University resulted in my meeting two special friends who were to play major roles in my life and in the complex political scene in the Middle East. One was a man calling himself Mahmoud Amirian, an alias, who was writing a doctoral dissertation on Marxism. He used an alias because he had been jailed in the late 1960s by the SAVAK for subversive activity. When he was released, he left Iran and lived in Baku, in the Soviet Union, just over the Iranian border, until 1976, when he came back to Tehran using an alias and a French passport. He came in as an Iranian expatriate who was born and lived in Paris. He had effectively “laundered” himself. After we became friendly and I had found out who he really was, he revealed that he was one of the leading members of the Tudeh Party in charge of foreign liaison. An extremely well-educated man, he believed in “the cause.” Even though he knew I was in Israeli intelligence, he told me he trusted me. The other man I met at Tehran University in 1977 was Sayeed Mehdi Kashani, who was doing a Master’s thesis on the Shi’ite community of southern Iraq. A few years older than I, he was the son of Ayatollah Abol Qassem Kashani, who at the time was an opposition Shi’ite leader living in the holy city of Qom. Like Amirian, Kashani had been jailed for subversive activities against the Shah. My meeting these two men was not entirely accidental. I had been directed to them by the research department of IDF/MI. Israel had an intelligence network within Tehran, using the local Jewish community, and possessed a lot of information about the opposition in the capital. Kashani and Amirian both introduced me to their friends in the Iranian opposition. I heard enough to convince me to write reports for Israel early in 1978 declaring without reservation that the Shah was about to be overthrown. I also pointed out that it was the first time that opposition circles were no longer wishfully thinking; they were talking realistically. The intellectuals and the middle class in Tehran, I reported, were fed up. There was extreme corruption in higher circles, prices were skyrocketing, and food production in Iran, which had been the breadbasket of the Middle East, had come to a halt as a result of the Shah’s White Revolution, breaking up the feudal system. He had distributed land to the peasants to keep them happy, but he had destroyed their life-support systems. In times past, the feudal lords had provided villagers with seeds, a marketing system, transportation, water, and so on, but after these lords had been dispossessed and the land divided up, the peasants’ infrastructure was destroyed. Who was to take care of their marketing? The Shah wasn’t interested – his attention was on the military, not food production. As a result, food production in Iran came almost to a standstill, and by 1978 most supplies were being imported. The peasants managed because they found ways of providing for themselves. The rich were all right, too, because they could afford to buy the high-priced imported foodstuffs. The people who suffered were those caught in the middle, the intellectuals and the middle class. They were battling extremely high food prices, and on top of that the infrastructure of the city of Tehran was not capable of handling the traffic, which came to a standstill. Even my superiors laughed at me when I wrote that the traffic might be one of the reasons the Shah would be overthrown. But it was true. It was quite clear that people were fed up with taking hours to get to work and back. The middle classes spearheaded the revolution, but the Shi’ite fundamentalists quickly jumped on the bandwagon. My talks with Kashani’s Shi’ite friends left me no doubt that they were extremely well-organized through the mosques, the one perfect infrastructure remaining. Discontent spread through the university, intellectual circles, and the mosques. A report I sent back in February 1978 pointing out the “mosque network” was dismissed by Military Intelligence and Mossad analysts, who thought it too theoretical. I believed that my sources were impeccable and my assessments on the mark. I had gone deeper than any other Israeli intelligence official. I spoke the same language as my contacts, both in tongue and, to a large degree, thought. I was convinced that it would not be long before I was proved correct. * * * Despite the volatile situation in Iran, my controllers in the External Relations Department decided they could use me in an entirely different part of the world – Central and South America. Apart from Iran, Israel’s main military exports were going to those two regions. There were direct government sales as well as sales through a private network coordinated by Ariel Sharon, at that time minister of agriculture. With the swing toward left-wing governments, there was a danger that these markets might be closed down. If the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) took over from President Anastasio Somoza Debayle in Nicaragua, for example, it was likely they would obtain their military equipment from the Soviet Union. Upon learning of close contacts between the Tudeh Party and the commanders of the Sandinistas, my controllers asked me if I could get my Iranian friends to help arrange a meeting between an Israeli intelligence official and the Sandinistas. Although I wanted to concentrate all my talks with my contacts on the coming changes in Iran, I did what I was asked. I wasn’t sure of the roots of contact between the Tudeh Party and the Sandinistas, but I assumed they arose through connections in Moscow and Havana. “Can you arrange a meeting?” I asked Amirian. “I will try,” he said, and I knew as soon as he said it that there would be no problems. It took Amirian just a short time to get back to me. The path had been cleared for a meeting with the Sandinistas. My superiors were delighted and had no hesitation in deciding who should travel to Central America: me. I realized there was a very good reason for my selection. My superiors wanted me out of Iran for a while for my own safety. Although my warnings of an impending uprising against the Shah had not been treated seriously, everything that I had reported had been passed on to the Americans as a matter of policy. In turn, the Americans had referred my reports back to Iranian intelligence. I was being placed in an extremely delicate position, and it was felt I should be pulled out of Tehran for a few weeks at least. Not that the mission to Nicaragua was going to be a piece of cake. No one knew how I would be received by the Sandinistas and what they might decide to do with me once I was in their territory. And there would be no backup. I had to go in complete secrecy. Even the Israeli intelligence network stationed in Central America could not be informed of the mission out of concern about a possible leak to the right wing. I did not like the idea of leaving my post in Iran unattended even briefly when the country was at such a critical juncture. I felt I should return to Tehran as soon as possible, but I was excited about my new mission. Late in March 1978, I flew to the United States and from there traveled to Managua. The city, leveled by an earthquake in 1931, badly damaged by fire four years later and then hit again by a major earthquake in 1972, was now in a state of great uncertainty, with recent fighting in the streets between Somoza’s troops and the Sandinistas. The left-wing movement had not forgotten Somoza’s father’s act of treachery in 1934 when, as head of the National Guard, he had invited Augusto Sandino, the revolutionary patriot after whom the movement is named, to a banquet and then murdered him. But now, with 500,000 homeless, a death toll of more than 30,000 from the political fighting between the Somoza government and the Sandinistas, and an economy that was in ruins, everyone knew it would not be long before Somoza was overthrown. On arrival at the Intercontinental Hotel, a vast concrete structure rising up from old Managua, I phoned a number that had been given to me by an FSLN representative I had met in Washington while en route to Central America. The woman who answered said she would call for me at eight the following morning. She arrived as arranged, dressed in jeans, a light-blue blouse and sneakers. I’ll always remember that first image of her … tall, slim, with green eyes, light-olive skin, and jet-black hair. She flashed a bright smile as she held out her hand. “I’m Marie Fernanda,” she said. “We’re in for a bit of a trip.” Then she led me outside and with a soft chuckle introduced me to her old, mud-splattered yellow Fiat. That car was to be the catalyst for some of the happiest and most tragic moments of my life. Less than ten kilometers out of Managua we reached the first military roadblock. Marie pulled out a press card that identified her as a Colombian journalist. She was going north, she told the inquisitive government soldiers, to write a story. I was merely introduced as her companion. We were waved through. Skirting Lake Managua, we smashed over potholes as the road narrowed, but at least the traffic was thinning out. An hour later we hit a small town. The National Guard was everywhere with roadblocks at each end of the town. We were told that if we kept going we would be risking our lives, because we would be entering areas held by the revolutionary forces. “That’s why I’m here,” Marie told the officers. “To cover the war.” Twenty minutes on, we came to another roadblock. Russian submachine guns were trained on us. “These are friends,” said Marie. “They know the car.” I was happy to hear her reassurance. A group of unkempt young men in “odds and ends” paramilitary dress approached, Kalashnikovs slung over their shoulders. After a few words of greeting, they moved back the barbed-wire barriers and we continued. Now that she was in territory held by the FSLN, Marie lost her nervousness. Her voice now full of confidence, she let me have it. “I don’t understand you people,” she said angrily. “You Israelis and the Jews who have suffered so much are now helping this Nazi Somoza. You don’t care about what he has done to the Nicaraguan people.” There wasn’t much I could say. It was true we were supplying Somoza. She had not finished: “It’s very bad that your country that was created on a socialist-egalitarian basis has turned into a fascist state which helps the Nazi dictators of South America.” I let her run with it. The fertile countryside, with rocky outcrops pushing through dense vegetation, flashed by. “Where did you learn your English?” I asked. I’d taken her point. I wanted to talk about other things. “In the United States. I lived there for a few years. Don’t think we are all peasants,” she said, her voice brimming with dignity and indignation. “While the revolution is for the peasants, it is being run by enlightened professionals.” She told me she was taking me to the Sandinista military headquarters in the area. There I could present my case – “and it had better be good.” I wasn’t there to present a case, of course. My assignment was to find out what the Sandinista policies might be when they came to power and try to establish lines of communications. Civilian traffic had been replaced by jeeps filled with youths, all clutching Kalashnikovs. It was obvious who controlled this part of the country. It was a long, hot drive, during which we stopped at small towns for cold drinks or to fill up with gas from old-fashioned, hand-cranked pumps. I asked where they got their gas. “We have a supply system,” she said. “We Sandinistas have everything under control. All civilian needs are being met.” Finally we reached a heavily guarded military base. The guards moved aside as Marie turned into the gates. “Welcome to the regional headquarters of the Sandinista military forces,” she said. An officer in full uniform, who explained he was “foreign liaison,” led me to a prefabricated building that had been comfortably fitted out with a bed and shower. This was my room. It was obvious I’d be spending the night here. Marie was given a similar “villa” next to mine. She came in and sat on the bed. She told me she was 21, and that her role with the Sandinistas was also foreign liaison. “And maybe one day,” she added, “I’ll be foreign minister of a liberated Nicaragua.” She was so earnest and serious. I wanted to see that bright smile I’d seen earlier. “Marie Fernanda, can I call you Freddie?” I asked, which made her laugh. “Sure,” she said. There was a shy awkwardness between us. I was deeply attracted to her, and she knew it. I asked her why there had been no sound of gunfire. “Is this war? It’s so quiet.” “There’s a lull. The biggest fighting is a long way away, near Costa Rica. But soon there will be no more war. It’s been a long struggle, but Somoza is finished.” Having said that, she left. Later that afternoon I was taken to the commander’s office. A bespectacled man in his mid-30s greeted me with a warm handshake, then introduced me with great modesty to a number of his companions. “I hope you had a nice trip to Managua, and I hope soon we will be able to meet there, too, he said in good English, with a trace of a Spanish accent. We sat around in the office, and he made it clear that the Sandinistas would like to have a relationship with Israel. “We respect the Israeli people very much,” he said. “We identify with the Jewish plight because we are facing the same type of Hitler in our country. We have faced him for many years. It’s too bad that your government is aiding him and selling him arms.” So I got it again, this time from the top man. But I had expected it. I outlined our thoughts about our links with Central America. I repeated to him, as I had to Freddie, that I had no excuses to offer – Israel was selling arms to Somoza in a big way: artillery, machine guns, mortars, and soon it would be helicopters. I could have given him the usual spiel that Israel wasn’t to blame, that independent arms brokers were the real culprits. That was the accepted Israeli line, but I suspected that my hosts knew better. However, I did have a point to make. A number of Sandinistas were being trained by our enemies, the PLO, in Lebanon. The commander shrugged. “We have a war to win, Mr. Ben-Menashe. Your country is arming Somoza, we receive some training from the PLO. Who is to judge who is right? But I can only ask you to tell your government to stop arming Somoza and start siding with the people of Nicaragua. You could begin by providing us with any medical aid or field hospitals which you can spare. There is still a lot of blood that is going to be shed.” I made a note of his requests, and we established a means of contact through a Sandinista liaison office in South America. Of course, I had no authority to make any promises. I was there to sound them out – and tell them that Israel would like to keep its embassy running in Managua when the Sandinistas were in control and that we could act as a go-between for them with the U.S. My hosts said that they would support any peace moves in the Middle East – but also emphasized that Israel should recognize the PLO. “Although we recognize Israel’s right to exist, we recognize the PLO as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people,” the commander said. It was clear that my hosts didn’t want to commit themselves one way or the other. “The Sandinistas are a very democratic movement, from the social democrats down to supporters of Soviet communism,” the commander continued as we sipped sweet tea. “When we take over, there will be democratic elections. We are spearheading the revolution for the people of Nicaragua. We are not against a free market, but we don’t believe the peasants should be starved out.” The commander was drawing a picture of a socialist country with freedom of the press, freedom of speech, free education, and a good health and welfare system. I explained that I had been working in Iran. “Another revolution,” he said with a laugh. “You must enjoy them.” He was interested to know if the Tudeh Party was going to have any part in the government after the Shah was toppled. I told him the Shah was going, but I certainly didn’t think the left would take over. The new leaders would be religious. “Are they going back to the Dark Ages?” “Dark Ages or not, I think you’ll find that religion, rather than accepted government principles, will soon be Iran’s driving force.” We were served dinner in the office area. The air was thick with the smoke from the Marlboro cigarettes my hosts were smoking. “Not everything American is bad,” the commander laughed. Back in my room, Freddie showed up. “How was your discussion?” she wanted to know. I told her that it had gone well. She made coffee. My pulse pounded, and it wasn’t the drink. In the morning, we headed south, the Sandinistas again showing respect for my lovely companion. Back in government-held territory, the Fiat started to act up. Then, with a loud bang and gushing of steam, the radiator blew. Fortunately, we were close to a small village where we found a cantina and called a mechanic. The car would take several hours to repair, and we knew we’d never get back to the capital in time to beat the curfew. If you drove around the city after curfew, you were likely to be shot. There was only one room available above the cantina with two beds. Freddie kissed me warmly, then told me she was going to sleep. I climbed into my own bed, my mind racing over the events of the previous day. Freddie, breathing softly in the darkened room, was foremost in my mind. She was no ordinary peasant woman, that was for sure. Apart from her beauty, she had a fast mind. I watched her sleep, so peaceful, and then dozed off myself. We were back at the Intercontinental Hotel shortly after noon the following day. Freddie said she’d show me around the city. We sipped the strong, locally produced coffee, and wandered through the streets. She showed me the monument to the poet Ruben Dario and took me around areas that had been rebuilt following the devastating 1972 earthquake. And that night she stayed with me. The smell of her skin, her sparkling green eyes, overwhelmed me. I was her first lover. She left at ten the following morning. I phoned Israel and reported that all was well. At noon there was a call from the lobby. Three men had come to see me. It was important, said the porter, that I meet them. I guessed who they were as soon as they entered the room. Dressed in dark suits with bulges under their jackets, it was obvious they were from state security. They wasted no time. “Where were you in the last few days?” the most senior, a well-built man with neatly trimmed hair, wanted to know. “Who are you working for?” “None of your business.” He banged on the coffee table. “It is our business. If you don’t already know it, we make everything our business in Nicaragua.” I told them I would not speak to them further until I had talked with my ambassador and that if they didn’t let me call him there would be an “incident.” They found the number and dialed it themselves. They wanted to be sure whom I was talking to. I asked for the ambassador. I didn’t even know his name, because I hadn’t told the embassy I was there. When I was finally put through, I spoke to the ambassador in Hebrew, explaining I was an Israeli citizen and that I worked for the government. “We weren’t informed,” was the terse reply. “I know you weren’t informed. But please call the Tel Aviv office of Col. Meir Meir, chief of External Relations. And do it quickly, or you’re going to be involved in something far bigger.” “Such as?” “Such as trying to get an Israeli intelligence officer out of a Nicaraguan jail.” It was about 12:30 p.m. in Nicaragua, evening in Israel. There was still a chance Col. Meir would be in the office. I hung up and waited. There was an awkward ten minutes as the security men and I sat staring at one another. I could see their patience was running out. Then the ambassador called back. He said he was coming around right away. Minutes later he hurried into the room. He gave me a cold glare, then told my visitors:
