The Volunteer

by Michael Ross

  As the months rolled on, Ramez slowly ticked off the items on Laqis’s list. He took his time and proceeded carefully; none of his purchases, taken in isolation, would have alerted anyone of his intentions. But Laqis wasn’t impressed. He would call Ramez occasionally and berate him for the slow pace. He regularly played the guilt-trip card, reminding him how Hezbollah terrorists were falling prey to Israeli soldiers while Ramez dilly-dallied in the United States.

  By late spring 1998, with Ramez’s shopping list almost complete, Sarah called my office and told me that the FBI was about to make an arrest. But there was a catch: the Bureau wanted one of us to testify against Ramez in court. This was a problem. The Mossad is a covert intelligence-gathering operation. Our agency would be compromised if we were forced to disclose sensitive details about our methods (including many I am omitting in this book) under cross-examination in open court. This was exactly the sort of conflict that inevitably materialized when you paired up scofflaw spies with buttoned-down G-men.

  “No way are we going to put either one of you on the witness stand,” Uri told Sheila and me.

  I played devil’s advocate. “What if this is our only chance to bring him down? Maybe I could do it in camera or by way of a written affidavit ?”

  “No way,” Uri replied. “The DG won’t go for it and it isn’t going to happen. Besides, they’ve got mountains of evidence. What do they need you for?”

  We went back to Sarah and she took the matter up with FBI HQ. A few hours later, she called us back. “Watson is coming out to see you guys,” she said. “And he seems kind of pissed.”

  I met Dale Watson, along with Paul and Wayne, at a seafood restaurant on the beach in north Tel Aviv. This was essentially a getto-know-you gathering in anticipation of a substantive meeting the following day at Mossad HQ. Watson was an amiable fellow with a southern drawl, not very tall, with blue eyes and neatly combed brown hair. While he commanded respect, the man was far from overbearing.

  Watson was intrigued by my Western appearance and lack of Israeli accent, and took a particular interest in my background. I answered his questions as vaguely as I could, but he probably guessed I was from the operational side of the business. We drank lots of wine and kept the discussion away from Ramez. He appreciated the hospitality and invited me to give him a call if I ever visited D.C.

  The next morning I received a call from Andy at the Tel Aviv CIA station. Andy was an easygoing Californian, complete with goatee and laid back Haight-Ashbury attitude. Like Kerouac, he didn’t fit the spy stereotype. But he was competent and professional all the same. He told me that one of their officers would be sitting in on the meeting with the FBI.

  “What for?” I asked, sensing some kind of CIA-FBI turf battle was in the works.

  “Hezbollah is a foreign terrorist organization and therefore falls within our mandate, so we have to be in on it.”

  “Does the Bureau know you’re going to be there?” I asked. “Because if they don’t, you’d better tell them now.” I felt like a dinner party host trying to preempt an embarrassing catfight between two guests.

  “Yeah, they know. And they ain’t happy about it. But don’t worry. We’re just in observation mode.”

  Sure enough, Mike from the CIA Tel Aviv station presented himself at the meeting. He was deferential and didn’t say a word, but he sure took a lot of notes. The FBI folks ignored him as if he wasn’t there. I marvelled at how cold and adversarial their relationship was. It was particularly ironic in this case, as Watson had served the previous year as deputy head of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center.

  When we got down to business, Watson surprised everyone by announcing he didn’t need our testimony. The FBI, he told us, was going to launch a sting operation in concert with U.S. Customs. It appeared that many of the articles were export-restricted to Lebanon under customs rules, a fact that would facilitate a criminal proceeding under a 1996 law that outlaws material support to terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah. Watson told us that Ramez could face up to life in prison and a $750,000 fine if convicted.

  “That works for us,” I said. In fact, it seemed like such a win-win that I wondered why he’d bothered to fly ten hours to give us the news.

  After the meeting, I took Watson over to meet Admiral Ami Ayalon, the head of the Israel Security Agency, at their HQ near Tel Aviv University. It was a courtesy meeting, and we met in a boardroom that adjoined Ayalon’s office.

  Although I’d never met the man before, I knew the Ayalon legend. As a member (and, subsequently, commander) of Israel’s elite naval commando unit, Flotilla 13, he’d been decorated numerous times for bravery. He had been put in the ISA job after the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin in 1995 to revitalize the demoralized service and, by all reports, he’d succeeded in turning things around. Now fifty-three years old, he had the gruff but friendly demeanor of a native-born Israeli, and the terse speaking manner of a military veteran. Everyone regarded him as a man’s man. The ISA’s rank and file adored him.

  Despite being on the short side, Ayalon was an intimidating presence. He was bald and well muscled. One glance told you he was tough as nails. One of my office mates told me he would see Ayalon swim a few miles in the Tel Aviv University pool and then do hundreds of push-ups and sit-ups in the dirt and mud outside the building—even on rainy days—as if he were back in boot camp. That’s old-school tough.

  When I introduced myself, he practically crushed my hand and looked me up and down. I could tell what he was thinking: here’s another wimpy, foreign-born Mossad aristocrat.

  Watson and the admiral briefly discussed issues related to cooperation between their two services. I politely waited until the meeting concluded, then I returned Watson to his hotel, where we exchanged parting pleasantries. The next time I would see him would be on CNN in 2002, testifying before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence about the events that led to 9/11.

  A few weeks later, Ramez began trying to ship out some of the goodies he’d purchased from the Detroit airport. His first shipment included seven pairs of night-vision goggles, one infrared heat detection device, and two global positioning satellite modules. The FBI arranged for U.S. Customs to conduct a “random” search of his packages and—lo and behold—they were full of export-restricted items. In an act of calculated leniency, Customs seized the items and let Ramez go with a fine. He immediately called Laqis, who told him to sit tight.

  But Ramez, sensing (correctly) that the gig was up, began to panic. One night, he tried to get rid of all the items he’d purchased for Hezbollah by putting them into a dumpster near his home in Dearborn. Fortunately, he was still under surveillance, and the FBI was able to seize the discarded goods—which included more night-vision devices, thermal imaging scopes, and literature on Israeli Cabinet members with details of their home addresses. This gave the FBI all they’d need for a conviction.

  FBI agents arrested Ramez without incident at his house. From that moment on, it became a criminal proceeding and the Mossad was cut out of the loop. But Sarah learned that more incriminating items had been discovered hidden in his house, and at his Ford office. Evidence seized by the FBI also indicated that he’d already managed to ship Kevlar bulletproof vests and various other items to Laqis before we got a hold of him. No doubt, some of those very items were used by the Hezbollah troops Israel fought against in 2006.

  Ramez was to become the first person in American legal history to be indicted using the “material support” provisions of the 1996 anti-terrorist law, and we were all looking forward to the successful prosecution of this case after such a long build-up.

  At this point, however, the story goes south. Ramez was charged and brought before U.S. Magistrate Virginia Morgan who, despite the pleas of all concerned, granted Ramez bail—he put his parents’ house up as a hundred-thousand-dollar bond—with the condition that he wear an electronic tether. Once released, Ramez promptly cut the tether, grabbed his
brother’s passport, crossed into Canada, and fled to Lebanon.

  After September 11, 2001, this sort of thing would never be allowed to happen, of course. But back in 1998 few Americans took the threat of terrorism seriously—despite the fact that Hezbollah had been tied to numerous terrorist attacks against American targets, including the 1996 Khobar Towers attack in Saudi Arabia, which left nineteen American servicemen dead. The judge’s reckless action was as perfect an example as I’d ever encountered of the pre-9/11 mindset.

  When I heard the news, I was dumbstruck, and I fumed around the office for days. We just watched a year’s worth of work get poured down the drain. What really bugged me was the tantalizing prospect of what we could have gotten out of Ramez. He had a jittery personality, and probably would have provided a wealth of intelligence about Hezbollah’s procurement methods and Laqis in return for leniency.

  For Hezbollah, Ramez’s capture was but a minor setback. In recent years, the group has received an estimated $120 million in aid from Iran, as well as a roughly equal amount through overseas donations from sympathetic Shiite expatriates. The group used this cash to acquire a wide range of valuable military hardware—as its deadly attacks against Israel in 2006 demonstrated.

  Moreover, Hezbollah is still active in the United States, Canada, and other Western nations, and in Southeast Asia. If push comes to shove between the United States and Iran over the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program, one of the ways Iran can be expected to attack the U.S. is through Hezbollah’s network of North American and worldwide cells.

  In fact, in 2000 in North Carolina, the FBI arrested eighteen men connected to a Hezbollah smuggling ring that had transferred some eight million dollars back to Laqis to assist in the financing of Hezbollah’s operations. The main ringleader was a man named Mohammad Dbouk, a senior operative based in Canada, who had been in direct contact with Laqis and had helped manage many of Hezbollah’s procurement operations across North America. Had Ramez been faced with the prospect of spending the rest of his life behind bars in a federal penitentiary, he might have led the FBI to that network a few years earlier. Instead, a single naive judge managed to screw everything up. Not for the first or last time, Etti had been right.

  Six years later, in 2004, long after I’d left the Mossad, Ramez suddenly returned to the United States on a flight from Beirut. Why did he come back? I can only speculate. He probably missed his estranged family, who were still in Michigan. I also doubt that he’d received a particularly warm reception in Lebanon, seeing as how he’d screwed up his mission and attracted the FBI’s scrutiny to Hezbollah’s procurement network. He was a blown operative, and of no use to anyone. Even his parents probably weren’t too happy with him, seeing as how they lost their home when he jumped bail.

  Fawzi Mustapha Assi, aka Ramez, is now currently a resident of the federal correctional institution in Milan, Michigan, a low-security facility. Given the general mood on terrorism in the U.S., I’m guessing that he’ll be there for a long time.

  Maybe I’ll drop by for a visit?

  13

  THE MASHAAL AFFAIR

  Before Israel dies, it must be humiliated and degraded. Allah willing, before they die, they will experience humiliation and degradation every day. America will be of no avail to them. Their generals will be of no avail to them. Allah willing, we will make them lose their eyesight, we will make them lose their brains.

  KHALED MASHAAL

  Even before September 11, the United States received multiple warnings about the scale of the threat from militant Islam. In the wake of these tragedies in Africa, Saudi Arabia, and Lebanon, a small but growing stream of forward-thinking American security officials came to the Mossad looking to educate themselves about Middle Eastern terrorist groups.

  Of the many meetings I had with CIA and FBI agents during this period, the one that took place on September 25, 1997, stands out in my memory. The CIA’s Counterterrorism Center had sent a three-man delegation to discuss Hezbollah, including the possibility of the CIA and Mossad conducting joint operations against the group’s leaders. We saw it as a golden opportunity to involve the United States more actively against a foe that we sometimes felt we were fighting single-handedly.

  Of the three visiting Americans, the one I remember best is Harry, then the CIA’s principal Hezbollah analyst. The day was hot and humid, and Harry must have been the only person in Israel wearing a tie. He reminded me of a smooth salesman, complete with ready smile, toothpaste-commercial teeth, stylish suit, and shiny cufflinks. He presented quite a contrast with his Israeli hosts, clad in the usual Mediterranean uniform of open-collar shirts and too much chest hair. Even with the air conditioning running full blast, the rest of us were sweating, yet Harry seemed cool as a cucumber.

  We met in the area of HQ that, for some reason, we all called the midrasha, or “seminary.” Along with the liaison meeting rooms, it housed a commercial-style kitchen, plush suites for visiting dignitaries requiring a discreet place to stay, a conference center, and training classrooms.

  Harry was joined by his grey-haired, avuncular boss, David, and a shy tagalong who never said or did anything that recorded itself in my memory. From the Mossad’s counterterrorism department, we brought along Nissim and Lior, both Hezbollah analysts. We also had with us the head of the Mossad’s counterterrorism department, Yuval. I was there in my capacity as liaison officer along with Mike, the deputy from the CIA’s Tel Aviv station. (Mike’s senior colleagues had shown up for the opening pleasantries but, as was usually the case, they vanished once we got down to details.)

  Lior presented the delegation with aerial photos outlining the locations of Hezbollah functionaries, along with intelligence data about their activities. None of our proposals went beyond electronic eavesdropping or human intelligence recruitment operations. Certainly, assassination plots were out of the question: in the pre-9/11 days, the CIA was a skittish, risk-averse organization, a far cry from the agency that led the invasion into Afghanistan in late 2001, and that used a drone-mounted Hellfire missile to blow up a car full of jihadists in the Yemeni desert a year later.

  Seen in retrospect, that skittishness likely cost many lives. If the United States and its allies had taken the Hezbollah threat seriously in those early days, the Shiite terrorist group might never have built up the weaponry it used to such deadly effect during the Israeli-Hezbollah war of 2006. Nor would Hezbollah have been able to lend their expertise to al-Qaeda in the run-up to the Kenya, Tanzania, and New York attacks. On the other hand, I suppose it’s human nature to ignore a threat until it matures: even Israel under Ariel Sharon largely turned its back on Hezbollah for the six years following its evacuation of Lebanon in 2000.

  After a long round of discussions, we broke for a catered lunch, and I went down to my office to see if any time-sensitive messages had come in. It was hot, and I had just maneuvered myself close to the air conditioning outflow duct when Sheila walked into my office with a grave expression on her face.

  “Nobody knows this yet,” she said, “but two Mossad combatants from the Kidon division have fallen into Jordanian hands in Amman.”

  Since leaving my combatant job with Caesarea, I’d fallen out of the loop. But Sheila had close contacts in the branch, given her father’s former position in Caesarea. As in any organization, blood connections carried a lot of weight.

  “I heard they were taking out a senior Hamas leader and the mission went awry. Two were captured and four are holed up in the Israeli embassy.”

  It was stunning news, and I had trouble believing it for two reasons. The first was that—as an empirical matter—combatants just don’t get caught. The other was that I’d never heard of Caesarea’s Kidon unit being deployed in an Arab country before. Their sphere of operations is everywhere outside of “target countries” that pose a threat to Israel.

  “You can’t tell anyone because we’re not supposed to know,” she added. “Even in Caesarea, only a few people know about it.”


  I gave her my vow of silence—who would I tell anyway? All I could think to say was, “What a colossal fuck-up.”

  As I walked back to the liaison meeting rooms, my head was reeling at the implications. If her news was true, this was almost unprecedented: the last time a Caesarea combatant fell into enemy hands was when the legendary Eli Cohen was captured by the Syrians and publicly executed on May 18, 1965, more than three decades earlier. Cohen had managed to ingratiate himself with Syria’s military and government officials, and sent intelligence to Israel via secret radio transmissions, encoded written correspondence, and debriefings by his controllers in Europe and Israel. In one famous episode, he even convinced Syrian generals to permit him access to their army’s main fortifications in the Golan Heights, which would soon pass into Israeli hands. Feigning sympathy for the Syrian soldiers, he had offered to plant trees near their barracks so they could have some shade—trees that were then used as targeting markers by the Israelis. He was ultimately caught by Soviet counterintelligence experts who triangulated the frequency of his radio communications. After his execution, he became a legend in Israel. While I worked at Tevel, the lobby of Mossad HQ featured an exhibit in his honor, displaying some of his surviving equipment and personal effects.

  I put myself in my colleagues’ shoes. Like every combatant, I’d worried often about the prospect of capture throughout my career. The world is unkind to captured spies. There are no Geneva Conventions governing their treatment, nor even any gentlemanly codes of conduct. In places such as Iran and Syria, a captured Mossad agent could expect to be hanged—after any useful information had been extracted from him through torture and inhumane confinement.13