The Volunteer (19 page)

When people use the word “failure,” failure means no focus, no attention, no discipline, and those were not present in what we or the FBI did here or around the world.

GEORGE TENET

J
onathan Pollard, the American convicted of espionage in 1986 while working for the U.S. Navy Field Operational Intelligence Office, was not, as most people continue to believe, a Mossad-recruited spy. If he were, the U.S. government wouldn't have caught on to him so easily. The Mossad wouldn't touch such a poorly conceived and run operation as the Pollard case with a ten-foot pole. Rather, he was controlled by Lakam, an obscure and since-disbanded office of Israeli intelligence run out of the prime minister's office.

The Pollard case was certainly a black eye for Israel. But in the country's defense, I should note that it's actually quite common for allies to spy on one another. (In 1995, to cite just one example, France deported five CIA officers who'd been caught with their hands in the cookie jar. The CIA lamely tried to spin the incident as a diversion orchestrated by the French to deflect attention from a scandal involving former prime minister Édouard Balladur, whose re-election was looking doubtful.) Moreover, the only reason Israel resorted to using Pollard was that Washington was at that time withholding crucial intelligence from Israel, even as we were sending valuable information back in the other direction.

In any case, the harsh treatment Pollard received—a life sentence with a recommendation against parole—was more a reflection of American embarrassment than any damage wrought by his espionage activities. The U.S. government wanted to make an example of Pollard, one that would discourage more serious acts of espionage by other allies. That's the only way to explain his receiving a prison sentence and gag order worse than those meted out to some convicted terrorists and Soviet-era communist moles.

The nature of the information Pollard gave to Israel remains secret. But some journalists have speculated that he handed over the names of CIA sources in Russia, which were in turn delivered to the KGB in return for the release of Russian Jews. To anyone who actually knows the ins and outs of international espionage, this theory is ridiculous. An analyst of Pollard's rank and station wouldn't be trusted with the code names of the CIA's Soviet-resident sources, let alone their true identities. Such information is rigidly compartmentalized within the CIA, and is rarely shared with military intelligence. (The CIA's dislike for the FBI is mild compared with its hostility toward the Pentagon.)

The relationship between the Mossad and the CIA has become strong in recent decades, and Israel now receives far more through its liaison channels than it ever could through a well-placed operative. But ever since the Pollard scandal broke, a vocal segment of the U.S. intelligence community remains convinced that Pollard was just one of many Israeli moles. This paranoia was only fuelled in 1990, when Canadian-born author Victor Ostrovsky, in his book
By Way of Deception
, purported to describe a top-secret Mossad department known as “Al” that is tasked with spying on the United States.

There was a Mossad department called Al—which means “above” in Hebrew. But it didn't spy on the United States, and being a missionspecific unit, it was shut down in 1998. Nevertheless, such tales as Ostrovsky's are widely believed. According to the fantasies entertained by Israel's critics, the Mossad is a sinister, ubiquitous force, its tentacles extending everywhere. As a result, perfectly innocent remarks or coincidences involving Mossad agents are seen by the Americans as evidence of Israeli scheming.

I recall one instance in 1997 when Stan Moskowitz summoned a group of Mossad officers into a CIA conference room and confronted us with photographs purportedly depicting an Israeli surveillance team spying on CIA operations at the U.S. embassy in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. With a condescending air of
j'accuse
, he reeled off the operatives' names, passport numbers, and hotels.

But when Uri and I did a little investigating that afternoon, we found out the surveillance team was actually targeting a local Hezbollah operative who'd been identified as a possible recruit. (Hezbollah has a long history of setting up shop in third world countries. Currently, Southeast Asia is the group's preferred location, but at the time it was sub-Saharan Africa.) Through some weird happenstance, the Mossad team had unwittingly stumbled across an unrelated CIA operation. The Americans immediately assumed they were the targets.
¹⁵

The Ivory Coast affair was never publicized, so the only people who dwelled on it were members of the U.S. intelligence community. Unfortunately, the same wasn't true of the so-called Mega Affair, a similarly silly nonscandal that made news around the world thanks to a May 7, 1997
Washington Post
story written by journalists Nora Boustany and Brian Duffy.

The scandal centered on a single taped remark made to a senior Israeli intelligence officer in Washington by a superior in Tel Aviv: “This is not something we can use Mega for.” The tantalizing speculation underpinning the Post story was that “Mega” was some super-secret Israeli mole who'd burrowed deep into the heart of the U.S. national security establishment. A front-page story in the
Washington Post
, the Mega scandal became headline news around the United States and was subsequently picked up by much of the world press. The interest in the story was nestled in the fact that it was being portrayed as a major rift between Israel and the United States—which are regarded as uneasy allies at the best of times. In fact, there was no Mega mole. The whole brouhaha was based on a misinterpreted communication, coupled with the improper use of a Mossad cryptonym on an open telephone line.

The Mega scandal broke during my time at Tevel, and I was involved in many meetings where we discussed the best way to prove to the Americans that the NSA and the Washington Post had made a mountain out of a molehill. The easiest approach would have been simply to pick up the phone and dish the facts to someone senior at Langley. But for a variety of reasons, that wasn't the way these things were usually handled by the Mossad. For one thing, such a dialogue would require divulging Israeli tradecraft secrets to the Americans, who might or might not keep the information to themselves. Secondly, by the damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't logic of Israel's critics, the mere fact that the Mossad was defensive about accusations of espionage provided further proof of guilt. In such situations, the Mossad's higherups tended to revert to the instinct that made them good spies earlier in their careers: they kept their mouths shut.

But shortly after the Mega scandal broke, the Mossad was handed a golden opportunity to debunk the matter in a discreet and definitive manner: a high-profile meeting on home turf with CIA Director George Tenet. And as things turned out, I was to have a role in the proceedings.

The Mossad uses cryptonyms for most of the figures in its orbit. (Mine remained “Rick,” as it had been since my first day of training back in 1989.) Some of these secret nicknames were merely silly, but Tenet, who was known to all of us as “Greaseball,” was less fortunate. The term wasn't meant as an insult to the CIA director. It was simply that he seemed to fit the part of stereotypical Mafia don, complete with big cigar and sycophantic entourage.

As part of my work at Tevel, I often had to help play social host to visiting intelligence officials. The bigger the fish, the more elaborate the protocols. And Tenet was just about as large as they came. His visit to Israel in 1997 was his first as CIA director, and while his subsequent trips became almost routine, they were nowhere near in scope and importance as this initial foray into the region. He came with an army of assistants. I was always shocked by the sheer size of visiting American VIP delegations. By contrast, when Tenet's Israeli counterpart, the Mossad director general, travelled abroad, he took a single assistant with him, usually a communications specialist with a special laptop computer to handle his encrypted correspondence, and that's it. No security detail. No motorcade. No Air Force C-141 Starlifter outfitted with VIP appointments. The DG's only perk was that he flew business class.

My first meeting was with John, Tenet's security-detail commander, who arrived in Israel weeks before the CIA director. He was a fit young guy in his late twenties, carefully groomed, with short hair. The two of us hit it off immediately and became fast friends. (I gave him some Israeli wine from the Golan as a parting gift. In return, he gave me a CIA pen and a kind note instructing me to “aim the pen in the direction of my window for better reception.”) We worked out the security details. During Tenet's visit, he and his team, including some thirty-five armed personnel, would ride in six armored Chevy Suburbans from the U.S. embassy fleet. Escorting Tenet's core team would be two Mossad vehicles, fully loaded navy-blue turbo-charged Volkswagen Passat sedans, complete with chauffeurs and Mossad security officers armed with 9mm Uzis and GLOCK 19C pistols. I'd be in the first Passat, traveling a few minutes ahead of the pack. My Tevel colleague Danny would drive in the second vehicle, which would lead the motorcade, along with Mike from the CIA's Tel Aviv station.

Danny and I would be issued what we jokingly called “get-out-of-jail-free cards”—special passes that tell police we are on official business and that they should help us in any way we requested. We would also get magnetic police strobe lights to put on the roofs of our cars should we need to break a traffic rule or two. You'd think the Israel National Police would be the first to be informed that Tenet was coming to town but, aside from the head of INP intelligence, they were completely in the dark. Telling the police was almost certain to produce a media leak.

From the tarmac at Ben Gurion Airport, the motorcade would travel to the Tel Aviv Sheraton, where Tenet would spend the night. In the morning, he would travel to Jerusalem for a meeting with Netanyahu; then on to the Israel Defense Forces HQ for a meeting with the head of military intelligence and the IDF chief of staff; from there to the Israel Security Agency HQ for a meeting with Admiral Ami Ayalon; and finally back to the Mossad for meetings with the DG, Ephraim Halevy.

The next day, Tenet and his entourage would be on their own as they headed into bandit country to meet with Yasser Arafat and his various warlords. I knew Tenet's people were dreading that part of the trip because, as in present-day Iraq, everyone and his mother was running around with an AK-47 and a grudge against the United States.

When the big C-141 Starlifter landed at Ben Gurion, and taxied to the special area designated for VIP flights, Uri, Lucinda, Sheila, Danny, and I all approached the aircraft as part of the reception line. Stan Moskowitz and Mike were there, along with about a dozen members of the CIA station. Once the plane door opened, the on-board security detail fanned out and Tenet's entourage disembarked.

When Tenet got to me and Danny, he complimented us on our English with a smile and a wink. His charisma was immediately apparent. As I watched Tenet charm every Israeli he met over the next few days, I would come to understand why—notwithstanding his organization's failures surrounding 9/11 and the Iraq war—Tenet was so popular with the White House and the folks at Langley.

John, Pete, and I jumped into the lead Passat, and I gave Yigal, our driver, the signal to make for the Sheraton. As the car roared off, I reached up and placed the strobe on the roof. Sure enough, we immediately hit a traffic jam on the No. 1 Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway. Yigal managed to avoid the gridlock by riding on the shoulder—until some idiot ahead of us tried the same trick without looking in his rear-view mirror first. We were doing about 430 feet an hour when Yigal hit the brakes, almost rear-ending the jackass.

The next day, security was especially tight at the PM's office: Yitzhak Rabin had been assassinated just two years earlier, and the place was swarming with buff, heavily armed people from the ISA's protective security division.

In the few minutes before Tenet's motorcade appeared at the PMO, I noticed a white Peugeot 605 sedan pull into the secure parking area. It was one of the Mossad DG's cars, and I recognized his driver, Golan, as he stepped out to open the back door. Ephraim Halevy emerged and stood waiting for Tenet. Rather than leave him standing idly, I walked over and shook his hand. I liked Halevy, and was gratified by this rare opportunity to spend some one-on-one time with him.

Halevy was British born, a nephew of Sir Isaiah Berlin, the renowned political philosopher and historian. Many considered him remote and donnish, but I could understand his sense of social detachment: he was a foreign-born Jew. Being an Israeli-born sabra is still a badge of honor. (In my case, even after living in Israel for many years, and serving in both its military and intelligence services, I was often jokingly called Kanadi, or Canadian, by my colleagues. They meant no harm, but the appellation served as a constant reminder that I, like everyone else, was marked by my birth.)

Halevy reminded me of George Smiley—John le Carré's fictional spymaster, as famously brought to life on screen by the late Alec Guinness—perhaps more than anyone else I encountered in my career. Like Smiley, he was bookish and reserved, while at the same time passionate about his cause—Israel, the Jewish people, and their continued survival. As a young child, he endured the Nazi Blitz in Britain, a formative experience that allowed him to appreciate the same brand of murderous hatred when it manifested itself in Middle Eastern garb following his emigration to Israel in 1948.