Gideon's Spies: The Secret History of the Mossad

by Gordon Thomas

  In the United States the saga of President Nixon and Watergate had moved to an inescapable finale, leaving the CIA tarred with suspicion, the likes of which had not been seen since the death of President Kennedy, as more and more revelations emerged about the Agency’s activities during the Nixon years.

  Kimche studied every facet of the drama, “absorbing the lessons to be learned from a debacle that should never have happened. The bottom line was that Nixon should never have kept those tapes. Without them he would still probably have been president.”

  Closer to home, what was happening in Iran, ever a matter of abiding interest to Israel, also occupied him. With Khomeini and his ayatollahs firmly in control, it came as a genuine shock to Kimche to see how badly the CIA and the State Department had failed to correctly judge the situation.

  But there was a new president in the White House, Ronald Reagan, who promised a new dawn for the CIA. The Agency, Kimche learned from his own contacts in Washington, would become Reagan’s “secret trump” in foreign policy. Heading the CIA was William Casey. Instinctively, Kimche sensed he was no friend of Israel—but someone who could be outmaneuvered should the need arise.

  As part of his work, Kimche closely followed CIA operations in Afghanistan and Central America. Many of them struck him as “babe-in-the-wood stuff, old-fashioned intelligence gathering, mingled with some pretty ruthless killing.”

  Then, once more, Kimche’s attention was brought to focus on Iran—and what had happened in Beirut.

  A few months after Kimche took up his duties at the foreign ministry, Israel had begun to arm Iran with the tacit support of the United States. Israel had provided the help to weaken the Baghdad regime—part of Jerusalem’s long-established tactic of what Kimche called “playing at both ends.”

  Three years later, two events had affected matters. There had been the car-bomb massacre in Beirut of 241 U.S. Marines and the growing U.S. suspicion that Mossad not only had prior knowledge of the attack, but that Iran’s intelligence service had helped to prepare it. Pressure was put on Israel to stop supplying Tehran. It increased with the kidnapping, torture, and subsequent death of William Buckley, the CIA station chief in Beirut. In quick succession, seven other Americans were taken hostage by Iran-backed groups.

  For the tough-talking Reagan administration, which had come into office with its promise to crack down on terrorism, the idea of American citizens languishing deep beneath the rubble of Beirut demanded action. But retaliation was out of the question; to bomb Tehran, as Reagan suggested, was ruled out by even his hard-line aides. A rescue mission would also likely fail, said Delta Force chiefs.

  There then occurred a conversation between the president and Robert McFarlane, a gung ho former marine who was national security adviser. Kimche was to recall that McFarlane told him that the conversation went like this:

  “What do the Iranians need most, Mr. President?”

  “You tell me, Bob.”

  “Weapons to fight Iraq.”

  “So we give them what they want. And we get back our people in return.”

  Reagan and McFarlane—against the advice of Casey and other U.S. intelligence chiefs—took the simplistic view that arming Iran would not only result in the mullahs bringing pressure to bear on the Beirut group to free the hostages, but would improve the administration’s relations with Tehran. There could also be the added bonus that it was bound to weaken Moscow’s position in Iran. The seeds were sown for what became known as Irangate.

  Marine colonel Oliver North was put in charge of supplying the arms. North and McFarlane decided to exclude the CIA from their plans. Both were action-oriented men. Their push-and-shove mentality had served them well in Vietnam, and from all they had heard, Israelis were similar men of action. So, in North’s words, “it was time to bring Israel into the fold.” There was also the personal prospect of visiting the Holy Land; a committed Christian, North relished the thought of treading in the footsteps of Jesus.

  Israel’s new prime minister, Yitzak Shamir, decided there was only one person capable of handling the request from Washington for help—and making sure Israel’s interests were fully protected. On July 3, 1983, David Kimche flew to meet with McFarlane in the White House. Kimche said he believed the arms-for-hostages deal could work. He asked if the CIA was “actively involved.” He was told the Agency was not.

  In turn, McFarlane asked Kimche how far Mossad would be involved : “After all,” he stated, “they are the guys who do all your secret work overseas.” Kimche told him that Yitzhak Rabin, then defense minister, and Shamir had decided to exclude Mossad and leave the entire matter to him. McFarlane said that was fine by him. Kimche had not told him that Mossad’s chief, then Nahum Admoni, shared Casey’s fears that the arms-for-hostages deal was fraught with operational hazards.

  McFarlane drove to Bethesda Naval Hospital to present Kimche’s views to Reagan, who was recovering from a colon operation. The president had one question: Could Kimche ensure that Israel would keep the deal secret? A leak could harm U.S. relations with more moderate Arab states already fearful of the growing radicalism of Tehran. Kimche claims that McFarlane reassured Reagan that Israel would “batten down the hatches.” The deal was on. Kimche flew back to Israel. Two weeks later Kimche was back in Washington. Over dinner, he laid out his game plan to McFarlane. Kimche was to recall the conversation went like this:

  “Do you want the good or bad news first?” Kimche asked McFarlane.

  “The good.”

  “We’ll ship the arms for you, using the same routes we used before.”

  McFarlane said “no problem.”

  Kimche’s method would ensure that the United States had no direct contact with Iran, and so the administration’s bellicose attitude about being tough on terrorism would not be compromised: the U.S. arms embargo on Iran would be intact and the hostages, when freed, would not have been directly exchanged for weapons.

  “And the bad news?” McFarlane prompted.

  Kimche said his own well-placed contacts in Iran were uncertain the mullahs could actually manage to procure the release of the Beirut hostages.

  “The radicals there are getting beyond Tehran’s control,” he told his host.

  If McFarlane was disappointed, he did not show it. The next day, Secretary of State George Shultz told Reagan, back in the Oval Office, the risks were too high. Supposing the Iranians took the arms and then revealed the deal to embarrass “the Great Satan,” the mullahs called the United States? Wouldn’t that draw Iraq further into the Soviet camp? And what about the hostages? They could be even worse off. All morning the arguments continued. By lunchtime Reagan was visibly tired. The decision, when it came, was sudden. The president agreed to support the proposition that the United States would replace all arms Israel sold to Iran. Once more Kimche returned home with a green light. Nevertheless, Shamir insisted that all possible steps should also be taken so that he “could deny any connection with the matter should there be a problem.”

  To ensure this, Kimche assembled a colorful cast of characters to initiate the operation. There was Adnan Khashoggi, the Saudi petrobillionaire, with a habit of eating caviar by the pound and an eye for the current cover girls; Manacher Thorbanifer, a former agent in the shah’s notorious SAVAK secret service who still behaved like a spy, calling meetings for the middle of the night. There was the equally mysterious Yakov Nimrodi, who had run agents for Aman and had once been Israel’s military attaché in Iran during the shah’s regime. He was invariably accompanied by Al Schwimmer, the closemouthed founder of Israel Aircraft Industries.

  Khashoggi brokered a deal that was to be a precursor for all that followed. He would head a consortium that would indemnify the United States if Iran failed to live up to its obligations, and would similarly protect Iran if the arms were not acceptable as specified. For these guarantees the consortium would receive a 10 percent fee from the purchase of all the arms with cash provided by the United States. In return it would also
act as a buffer to ensure that plausible deniability would remain intact for both the Iranian and U.S. governments if anything went wrong. Everyone understood that the consortium would essentially be working outside any political control and would first and foremost be driven by the profit motive.

  In late August 1985, the first planeload of arms landed in Tehran from Israel. On September 14, a U.S. hostage, the Reverend Benjamin Weir, was freed in Beirut. As the pace quickened, still more raffish players joined the consortium, including Miles Copeland, a former CIA officer who, on the eve of the shah falling from power in what was soon to be renamed the Islamic Republic of Iran, had sent CIA agents into Tehran souks distributing hundred-dollar bills to anyone who dared shout “Long live the shah!” Other shadowy figures also became involved, such as a former Special Air Services officer who ran a company in London that had once provided nonspecific services to Mossad. Meanwhile, the policymakers in Israel and Washington looked the other way. All that mattered was that the operation had taken off under the noses of an unsuspecting world—at least for the moment.

  In all, Iran would receive 128 U.S. tanks; two hundred thousand Katysha rockets captured in south Lebanon; ten thousand tons of artillery shells of all calibers; three thousand air-to-air missiles; four thousand rifles; and close to fifty million rounds of ammunition.

  From Marama Air Force Base in Arizona, over four thousand TOW missiles were airlifted to Guatemala to begin their long journey to Tel Aviv. From Poland and Bulgaria, eight thousand Sam-7 surface-to-air missiles were shipped, together with one hundred thousand AK-47s. China provided hundreds of Silkworm sea-to-sea missiles, armored cars, and amphibious personnel carriers. Sweden provided 105-mm artillery shells, Belgium air-to-air missiles.

  The weapons were shipped with certificates showing Israel was the end user. From IDF military bases in the Negev Desert, the consortium arranged for chartered transport aircraft to fly the weapons to Iran. The consortium received a “handling fee” for each consignment, Iran paying the money out of funds in Swiss bank accounts. The sum eventually totaled $7 million. Israel received no financial reward—only the satisfaction of witnessing Iran improve its capability to kill more Iraqis in the long-drawn-out war between both countries. For David Kimche it was a further example of the “divide and rule” policy he strongly advocated.

  Nevertheless, his well-honed instincts told him that what had started as “a sweet operation” was now in danger of running out of control. In his view: “The wrong men now had too much power in the consortium.”

  In creating it, he had again demonstrated Israel’s realpolitik: Israel had been ready to help the United States because it recognized it could not survive without Washington’s support in other areas. It was also a way to demonstrate that Israel could perform decisively on the world stage and keep matters secret.

  But the longer the arms-for-hostages operation continued, Kimche sensed, the greater was the chance of discovery. In December 1985, he told the consortium that he could no longer remain involved in its activities—using the old saw of being overworked at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

  The consortium thanked him for his help, gave him a farewell dinner in a Tel Aviv hotel, and told him that he was being replaced as the Israeli link by Amiram Nir, who was Peres’s gung ho adviser on terrorism. That was the moment, Kimche would later admit, when the arms-for-hostages deal was firmly on the fast track to self-destruction. If anyone could derail it, then Nir was the man. A former journalist, Nir had shown the alarming trait of regarding real-life intelligence as being part of the same world occupied by the James Bond thrillers he so liked. He shared that fatal weakness with men in Mossad who had also decided that journalists could also serve their purpose.

  In April 1999, David Kimche showed he had not lost his skills to correctly read the current political situation in the Middle East. Yasser Arafat, the man he had once plotted to murder, “because he was my blood enemy, certain that his demise would be a great victory for Israel,” had now, in Kimche’s view, become “Israel’s best hope for long-term peace. Mr. Arafat is still hardly my idea of a perfect neighbor, but he is the only Palestine leader capable of making concessions to Israel while retaining power and domestic support.”

  Kimche believed he had found common ground with Arafat. He was convinced the PLO leader had finally come to recognize what Kimche had seen a quarter of a century earlier, “the real threat Islamic fundamentalism posed for the new millennium.”

  Sitting in his small study looking out over the garden he had seen come to fruition, Kimche was able to deliver a balanced judgment. “I cannot forgive my old enemy for endorsing the murder of my countrymen decades ago. But it would also be unforgivable to deny Arafat—and the Israelis—the chance to end the bloodshed once and for all.”

  CHAPTER 8

  ORA AND THE MONSTER

  The cavernous lobby of the Palestine-Meridian Hotel in Baghdad was crowded as usual on that last Friday in April 1988, and the mood was cheerful. Iraq had just won a decisive battle against Iran in the Gulf of Basra and the consensus was that their war was finally drawing to an end after seven bloody years.

  One reason for impending Iraqi victory could be attributed to the foreigners who sat in the lobby in their well-tailored blazers and trousers with uniformly knife-edge creases, the permanent smiles of successful salesmen on their faces. They were arms dealers, there to sell their latest weapons, though they rarely used the word, preferring more neutral expressions: “optimum interface,” “control systems,” “growth capability.” Between them, the salesmen represented the arms industries of Europe, the Soviet Union, the United States, and China. The common language of their trade was English, which they spoke in a variety of dialects.

  Their Iraqi hosts needed no translation: what they were being offered was a range of bombs, torpedoes, mines, and other destructive gadgetry. The brochures being passed around showed helicopters with cartoonish names—Sea Knight, Chinook, Sea Stallion. One chopper, “Big Mother,” could carry a small bridge; another, “the Incredible Machine,” could airlift a platoon of troops. Leaflets showed guns that could fire two thousand rounds a minute or hit a moving target in pitch-black darkness with a computer-chip sight. Every and any kind of weapon was for sale.

  Their hosts spoke an esoteric jargon the salesmen also understood: “twenty on the day,” “thirty at half-and-half minus one”: twenty million dollars on day of delivery, or thirty million dollars for a consignment, payable half down, the balance on the day before the weapons were shipped. All payments would be made in U.S. dollars, still the preferred currency in this closed world.

  Watching over this ever-shifting bazaar of dealers and clients meeting over mint tea were officers from the Da’lrat Al-Mukhabarat Al-Amah, Iraq’s main intelligence organization, controlled by Sabba’a, Saddam Hussein’s almost as fearsome half-brother.

  Some of the arms dealers had been in the hotel lobby on a very different day seven years before when their stunned hosts had told them that Israel, an enemy even more hated than Iran, had struck a powerful blow against Iraq’s military machine.

  Since the formation of the Jewish state, a formal state of war had existed between Israel and Iraq. Israel had felt confident its forces could win a conventional war. But in 1977, Mossad discovered the French government, which had provided Israel with its own nuclear capability, had also given Iraq a reactor and “technical assistance.” The facility was Al-Tuweitha, north of Baghdad.

  The Israeli air force began planning how to bomb the site before it became “hot” with the uranium rods in the reactor core. To destroy it then would cause widespread death and pollution and turn Baghdad and a sizable area of Iraq into an irradiated desert—and earn Israel global condemnation.

  For these reasons, Yitzhak Hofi, then Mossad’s chief, opposed the raid, arguing an air strike would anyway result in a heavy death toll among the French technicians and would isolate European countries Israel was trying to reassure of its peaceful inten
tions. Bombing the reactor would also effectively end the delicate maneuvering to persuade Egypt to sign a peace treaty.

  He found himself presiding over a divided house. Several of his department chiefs argued that there was no alternative but to neutralize the reactor. Saddam was a ruthless enemy; once he had a nuclear weapon, he would not hesitate to use it against Israel. And since when had Israel worried unduly about winning friends in Europe? America was all that mattered, and the whisper from Washington was that taking out the reactor would result in no more than a slap on the wrist from the administration.

  Hofi tried a different tack. He suggested the United States should bring diplomatic pressure to bear on France to stop the export of the reactor. Washington received a curt rebuff from Paris. Israel then chose a more direct route. Hofi despatched a team of katsas to raid the French plant at La Seyne-sur-Mer, near Toulon, where the core for the Iraqi reactor was being built. The core was destroyed by an organization no one had ever heard of previously—the “French Ecological Group.” Hofi had personally chosen the name.

  While the French began to build a new core, the Iraqis sent Yahya Al-Meshad, a member of its Atomic Energy Commission, to Paris to arrange the shipment of nuclear fuel to Baghdad. Hofi sent a kidon team to assassinate him. While the others patrolled the surrounding streets, two of them used a passkey to enter Al-Meshad’s bedroom. They cut his throat and stabbed him through the heart. The room was ransacked to look like robbery. A prostitute in an adjoining room told police she had serviced the scientist hours before his death. Later, entertaining another client, she had heard “unusual movement” in Al-Meshad’s room. Hours after she reported this to the police, she was killed in a hit-and-run incident. The car was never found. The kidon team caught an El Al flight back to Tel Aviv.