by Michael Ross
His code name: “Ramez.”
11
A FAILURE TO LAUNCH
I didn’t like the play. But I saw it under unfavorable circumstances—the curtains were up.
GROUCHO MARX
It was surreal to watch Ken Williams on CNN as he bounded up the Capitol Building steps on his way to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee. This was May of 2002, and the last time I had seen him was in person during a scorching hot Jerusalem day in 1998. The devout Catholic FBI agent from the Phoenix field office was kissing the “Stone of Unction”—a slab of very old looking and polished veiny rock where Jesus’ body lay after his crucifixion in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. I had taken him there after a round of meetings and after visiting the sites of previous suicide bombings where U.S. citizens had been killed. I’d learned that these side trips were a pleasant, almost necessary distraction from being in a place that had very recently been the site of much death and carnage.
I wasn’t surprised Ken had, in some way, seen the precursors to 9/11 while the rest of the intelligence community was either preoccupied or asleep at the wheel. His mere presence before the Committee must have been very embarrassing for the FBI mandarins as they nervously hid under their desks in their D.C. headquarters (also known as the bureau’s “black hole”). Ken wrote a memo in July 2001 warning that al-Qaeda operatives taking flight lessons in Arizona could be part of a broader scheme, based on his theory that al-Qaeda terrorists could infiltrate the airways as pilots or ground staff.
He wrote:
“Phoenix believes that the FBI should accumulate a listing of civil aviation universities/colleges around the country. FBI field offices with these types of schools in their area should establish appropriate liaison. FBI HQ should discuss this matter with other elements of the U.S. intelligence community and task the community for any information that supports Phoenix’s suspicions.”
That’s an incredible recommendation, and a damning indictment of how FBI HQ didn’t take its field offices seriously. Every field agent I have known or worked with always complained about the disconnect between HQ and its operatives in the field. It’s an axiom that is true of every intelligence service, but in this particular instance, it was nothing short of catastrophic.
To say Ken Williams is a dynamo is an understatement. I met him in the fall of 1996 when he came over on a trip to co-ordinate a joint operation with the Israel Security Agency (also known as Shin-Bet), Israel’s domestic security-intelligence service. Ken and his soft-spoken Mormon partner, Jim, were running a source in the U.S., known by his cryptonym of “Galaxy-Quest.” The idea was to infiltrate this source into Gaza as a means to gather intelligence on Hamas and their fund-raising infrastructure in the U.S. Stopping the money flow was a big part of the ISA’s strategy in combating Hamas terrorism. As it turned out, a lot of the money being canvassed across the U.S. was finding its way into the operational coffers of Hamas’ Izz-al-Din al-Qassam terrorist cells. Ken and Jim made numerous visits to co-ordinate the joint operation and engage in an intelligence exchange on Islamist terror groups, and I was tasked to work with them and the local FBI station, or Legat.
Ken was tallish, fair and bespectacled with neat short hair. He looked very wholesome in that way that many police officers do (as it turned out, he spent some time in the San Diego PD before joining the Bureau). He had a quick smile and was extremely courteous and deferential. It was difficult to remain unaffected by his almost boyish enthusiasm and his even-temperedness, which made it seem almost physically impossible for him to blow his cool. He was a real pro with an encyclopaedic mind and knew his Islamic terrorism inside and out. I liked him, but the Hamas section of the Mossad’s counterterrorism section absolutely adored him. I put him together with Gordo, the Hamas section’s head, and they got along so well that I casually remarked, “You two should get a room.” They poured over files on every Hamas terrorist operating in the disputed territories and the U.S. Gordo was in some ways Ken’s opposite. He was portly and something of a bon vivant. He and his buddies often organized restaurant crawls in Rome over the weekends. They’d hop a three-hour flight to Italy, check into a hotel, eat themselves through the city, and be back at their desks by the beginning of the week. Gordo was a brilliant intelligence officer and was juggling his Mossad duties while getting an advanced degree (many of us did our university studies while working in HQ).
As the Mossad’s liaison officer mandated coordinating all terrorism-related intelligence exchanges between the Israeli intelligence community and their U.S. counterparts, I had to facilitate joint operations between the FBI and ISA. This didn’t go over very well with the ISA and they probably thought that they didn’t need supervision from some Mossad staffer. My role in these ISA-FBI exchanges was really one of go-between, and I had better things to do than hand-hold some surly ISA officers and baby-sit their FBI brothers-in-arms, but until the rules were changed, I had to be involved.
It was around this time that the ISA was granted authorization to send one of their officers—the first of his kind—to Washington as part of the Mossad station housed in the Israeli embassy. Mossad’s move was seen as dangerous, and an incursion on our turf overseas, but the ISA’s chief, Ami Ayalon, had lobbied the Prime Minister hard and the Mossad acquiesced. The ISA was lobbying to take over the terrorism mandate in its entirety within the intelligence community, and this was seen as a maneuver to gain more control. Even though we had our internal squabbles from time to time, we always shared intelligence with each other, unlike our American counterparts.
The officer dispatched was named Udi. He was a perfect choice for the job. Tenacious as a bulldog, and in some ways resembling one, Udi was chosen for his doggedness by his masters in ISA HQ. While the new rotation of Mossad officers were decamping in D.C., looking for cars and getting their kids into school, Udi passed the non-work related reins to his wife and promptly showed up at FBI HQ a day after arriving in the beltway. I liked Udi and took part in some of his preparation for an overseas posting. He was no fan of the Mossad however, and worked vigorously to make sure that the FBI knew that he was a kindred spirit. He had served previously in a counter-intelligence role in the ISA and I think he instinctively loathed “spies” of the sort the Mossad deployed, seeing as in his eyes we were poachers and he was a former gamekeeper. He worked hard and it was due to his efforts (and my bitching to him) that the ISA eventually took over the liaison relationship with the FBI—except on matters that fell under our mandate, such as Iranian intelligence, al-Qaeda and Hezbollah.
One day in 1997, Udi sent me a cable stating that Ken and his partner Jim were soon to be arriving in Israel from the Phoenix field office with their source, “Galaxy-Quest.” “Galaxy-Quest” was an older man of dubious Islamic credentials who had ingratiated himself with Hamas fundraisers in the U.S. He had arranged, through the gentle handling of Ken and Jim, to visit Gaza and meet with members of both the Palestinian Authority and Hamas regarding fundraising. I then contacted the FBI Legat and let Paul and Wayne know that their HQ was dispatching two of their officers and a source for a joint operation with the ISA. At these moments, Wayne justifiably went ballistic at the news. He frothed and fumed at his HQ’s duplicity and to be honest, I think he was embarrassed that he was finding out about his HQ’s intentions from someone in the Mossad sitting in Tel Aviv. I knew before the Legat because when Udi left his meetings with the FBI brass, he cabled me right away with the details of the operation. The FBI “black hole” seldom took the time to update their Legats and field offices, and it was a sorry testament to their way of doing things.
I set up the meetings with Ken and Jim and their ISA co-handlers, as well as the two from the Legat. I even managed to get Gordo involved, seeing as he was dealing with Hamas in our counter-terrorism department. The ISA didn’t mind, seeing that Gordo was popular and knew a lot about Hamas’ overseas networks. I also knew that Ken would have been disappointed not to have the chance to share notes with Gordo.
I set up a pre-meeting without “Galaxy-Quest” at a local restaurant in Herzliya, located just north of Tel Aviv. The Mossad picked up the tab because our mandate to liaise between the Mossad and foreign intelligence services came with the appropriate expenditures. To my chagrin, when ordering our meals, the ISA officers would always tell the FBI to order the most expensive items because “it was on the Mossad.” For my part, I wanted the pre-meeting because I needed to explain to all the parties concerned that I had no intention of meeting “Galaxy-Quest,” to avoid compromising my security and having him be able to identify me as a Mossad officer. I was a former combatant, and these were things we had to worry about. It was something that I couldn’t always explain - not even to the ISA. They thought me paranoid and we all agreed that the handlers and Gordo would meet and prepare “Galaxy-Quest” for his descent into Gaza without me. I would receive updates as the mission progressed.
After dinner, Gordo took me aside and said, “This isn’t the first jointop between these two outfits. Be careful not to get overly associated with it.” His words sounded ominous. What did he mean?
“Well, last year before you joined our little party, the FBI and ISA ran a Lebanese source in Detroit called ‘Wishing-Well’ with their local field office. He was the FBI’s man and, oh boy, what a fucking train wreck he turned out to be.” I pressed him further.
“This guy freaked out and tried to kill himself once he figured out he was supposed to spy on Hezbollah activity near where he lived. He grew more and more paranoid and mentally unstable as time progressed until we had to cut him loose because we were sure he’d go postal.”
“Where is he now?” I asked.
“Lost, dead, in an asylum . . . who knows?” Gordo said. The subject of a source’s fate, after he has been of use to us, is not something intelligence officers care to discuss.
After establishing communications and procedures protocols with his FBI and ISA handlers, “Galaxy-Quest” was deployed into Gaza. Ken and Jim returned to Phoenix and I asked to receive updates of his progress.
A few weeks later, Gordo came into my office holding a stack of papers and handed them to me. He looked like he was trying to suppress his laughter. The report was a summary of “Galaxy-Quest’s” activities in the field. He started off fine, doing his best to ingratiate himself with Arafat’s crowd and meet with Hamas leaders, but it was becoming apparent that he was starting to get bored with life in Gaza. I couldn’t blame him - he had been living comfortably in Arizona and was now thrust into one of the world’s grimmest places. “Galaxy-Quest” was not only chasing after the local women, he had managed to become acquainted with a female Chinese diplomat who the ISA revealed was an operative with Chinese intelligence. The rather observant Muslim residents of Gaza do not take kindly to overtures—no matter how seemingly inoffensive—from American males towards the female population. Not only was he getting into mischief, he had a number of male family members looking for him presumably determined to shoot, stab, hang or perform all three actions at once on his person. He never reported his shenanigans, but we found out about his behavior through other source reports and by listening to his cell phone conversations (sources are never sent into the field without some form of oversight that they are not privy to). “Galaxy-Quest” was told to leave immediately, but he insisted on staying two more weeks, directly disobeying his handler’s instructions. Needless to say, Ken was on the next flight out to sort his asset out. Later, it emerged that “Galaxy-Quest” was also drinking Muslim-forbidden alcohol that he had secreted on his person and smuggled with him into Gaza. I began to wonder who was really more suicidal, Wishing-Well or “Galaxy-Quest.” Of course, “Galaxy-Quest” was quite unaware of the fact that he had an obvious deathwish. I said as much to Gordo and he only laughed.
“Galaxy-Quest” was finally exfiltrated safely and found himself on the next plane home to Phoenix, or perhaps the nearest Betty Ford clinic. The next time Ken and I met at a dun-coloured and sandy seaside hotel north of Tel Aviv, I could see that he was embarrassed.
“I think he was there a little longer than we actually needed to send him,” Ken said, and I agreed. I secretly questioned the wisdom of anyone going to Gaza for more than a week or two.
I asked if “Galaxy-Quest” had told the Chinese intelligence agent anything about his real identity and purpose, and Ken said that he needed to talk with him back in Phoenix and get the whole story. I was sure that “Galaxy-Quest” had slept with her and told her something but I didn’t press the matter.
The next time I saw Ken was on television. I know that he never sought the limelight nor tried to place blame on anyone at the FBI for ignoring his now prophetic memo, but he came the closest to anyone I ever met who could have potentially prevented the fateful attacks of that clear September morning. I heard that Ken went right back into the field after his testimony and continued to work unabated at his usual breakneck pace. I can honestly say that he was one of the finest Americans I ever had the pleasure of working with. The President should make him the FBI’s next Director.
While “Galaxy-Quest” and his suicidal predecessor were the source of much humor and U.S.-directed schadenfreude at the hands of the ISA, as luck would have it, the last joint-operation with the ISA and FBI turned out to be just as big—if not bigger—an embarrassment for the ISA.
Udi, the ISA’s man in Washington, had been conferring with his colleagues at ISA HQ located near Tel Aviv University and proposed to the FBI another joint operation. Only this time, the ISA wanted to infiltrate one of their sources to be deployed into the Islamist network in Chicago. The ISA was pretty cocky about its success rate and some of their officers were using a crude old Yiddish saying that roughly translated as, “Now we’ll show them [the FBI] from which hole the fish pisses from.”
The source, code named “Brazil-Nut,” was in his early twenties, had been a Koranic scholar, and had good Islamist credentials. He had never left his village in his short life and I was already wondering how he would be affected by the sheer size, grandeur and pace of a city like Chicago. His English was rudimentary at best.
The preparations were long and arduous and the Chicago field office sent out a special agent named Roger, who was tasked with running the operation. Roger was a tall, lean, clean shaven man with the usual Boy Scout-in-Brooks Brothers look. Like all the FBI people I met, he was also courteous and professional in all his dealings with us. I knew that the FBI thought the Mossad was always trying to spy on the U.S., but they never appeared hostile or confrontational in their dayto-day dealings. If they had any reservations, they never showed them. Personally, I think the paranoiacs in the FBI are in their D.C. HQ and are probably people who have seen too many beltway conspiracies to have a clear perspective on the Israel-U.S. intelligence relationship. Having been in Israel’s most covert of units, Caesarea, I can say that I never caught even a trace of covert operations in or against the U.S.
We had a round of meetings and agreed that the ISA would dispatch “Brazil-Nut” to the U.S. The FBI would fund the operation and give tasking and direction to operational targets in Chicago. It was the FBI’s patch after all, and it was only fair, given that they understood the nuances of the area where “Brazil-Nut” would be operating. “Brazil-Nut’s” ISA handler would deploy to Chicago and monitor his progress. Sources and their handlers build up a relationship of mutual trust over a long period of time and you can’t simply pass them around like collectible figures. Sources go wobbly from separation anxiety. It felt like “Brazil-Nut” was getting the jitters despite assurances from his ISA handler, and the last thing he needed was a non-Arabic speaking FBI agent who looked like he came from central casting suddenly telling him what to do.
Once we’d established the mission parameters, essential elements of intelligence, finances and logistics of the operation, we all went out for a celebratory dinner. There was still one point of contention—Brazil-Nut’s visits to the local Mosque, which was specifically ch
osen for the hard-line Islamists who frequented it and, on occasion, visited from overseas. For those not acquainted with Muslim culture, the Mosque is the focal point of the Muslim community and its activities as meeting place, social hall and place of religious study and prayer exclusively serve its adherents. In some Mosques, the seeds of radicalization are sown (it’s almost axiomatic if there is a firebrand Imam—usually imported from overseas) and the place of worship is transformed into an induction center for Islamic terrorist groups. During the meetings, our FBI partners stunned us by stating that any and all intelligence gathered by “Brazil-Nut” at the Mosque would be deemed inadmissible as evidence, as it was obtained while in a place of worship. The ISA handlers had a very hard time understanding and accepting this point as they knew that the Mosque was almost exclusively the only place where Islamists talked openly about their activities. Like Britain’s MI5 and Canada’s CSIS, the ISA has no powers of arrest and relies on the police and Ministry of Justice lawyers to make their case. The FBI, while having a national security division, is really nothing more than a gigantic lawenforcement body. They didn’t always talk about intelligence but spoke in terms of evidence and criminal prosecution. There was nothing anyone could do and nobody, least of all Udi, the ISA’s man in D.C., was prepared to pull the plug. I realized that the joint operations in themselves were of little consequence and started to understand that the whole exercise had been to establish a direct link between the ISA and FBI for intelligence exchange and to open the floodgates in both directions. It was also a neat and tidy way to cut the Mossad out of the picture so that the ISA could run their own liaison relationship. I was well on my way to feeling irrelevant—a feeling that I’ve never coped with successfully.
