CONTENTS

Glossary 				xi

1. Beyond the Looking Glass 		1

2. Before the Beginning			 19

3. Engravings of Gilot 			43

4. The Spy in the Iron Mask 		63

5. Gideon's Nuclear Sword 		79

6. Avengers 				95

7. The Gentleman Spy 			121

8. ORA and the Monster 			143

9. Slush Money, Sex, and Lies 		159

10. A Dangerous Liason 			179

11. Unholy Alliances 			201

12. Blessed are the Spymasters 		221

13. African Connections 			237

14. The Chambermaid's Bomb 		251

15. The Expendable Cartoonist 		269

16. Spies in the Sand 			295

17. Bunglegate				319

Notes on Sources 			333

Select Bibliography 			339

INDEX					343

GLOSSARY

Active measures		Operations to influence or otherwise affect other nations' policies.
ANC			African National Congress.
ANO			Abu Nidal Organization.
AFR			Automatic fingerprint recognition.
AI			Artificial intelligence.
AL			Specialist unit operating under deep cover in the United States.
Aman			Israeli military intelligence.
ASU			Active service terrorist unit.
AWAC			Airborne warning and control aircraft.
Babbler			Counterbugging device.
Backstopping		Fake identification papers.
Base			Permanent station in foreign country.
Bat leveyha		Female assistant agent.
Better world		Euphemism for killing enemy agent; similarly, to "send a person on vacation" means to injure
him/her - the extent of the injury depends on whether the "vacation" is to be brief or long.
Bioleverage		Euphemism for blackmail - literally, the use of derogatory information to coerce someone.
Blind dating		Meeting place chosen by a contact to meet his controller.
Blow-back		Fake stories fed to foreign news media.
Bodel			A courier.
BND	BundesNachrichtenDienst, German Federal Intelligence Service, concerned with both foreign and domestic intelligence.
Bug			Electronic device for hearing and recording.
Burn			An agent deliberately sacrificed in order to protect a more valuable spy.
BW			Biological weapons.
Case death		Operation that fails for no obvious reason.
Case officer		In charge of field agents.
CAT			Computer-aided tomography
Chamfering		Technique for opening sealed mail
CIA			Central Intelligence Agency
CIS			Commonwealth of Independent States
CIO			Central Imagery Office
Cold approach		Attempt to recruit a foreign national
Comint			Acronym for communications intelligence
Cover			Identity assumed by intelligence officer when abroad
Cultivation		Establishing rapport with a source of information
CW 			Chemical weapons
Daylight			Highest form of alert
Dardasim		Agents operating in China
DEA			Drug Enforcement Administration
DI			Directorate of Intelligence
DCI			Director of Central Intelligence Agency
DIA			Defence Intelligence Agency
Diamond		Communications unit
DO			Directorate of Operations
Dry cleaning 		Various techniques to avoid surveillance
ECM			Electronic countermeasure
EDP			Electronic data processing
Elint			Electronic intelligence intercepted from radar, satellites
Exfiltrate		Removing an agent from hostile country
Falach			Agent working in Lebanon
FACES			Facial Analysis Comparison and Elimination	 System
False flagging		Recruiting a person who believes he or she will be working for another country or interest
Fumigate 		Sweeping an area for electronic bugs
Go-away		Prearranged signal not to make contact at previously arranged rendezvous
Grinder 			Debriefing room, also used to interrogate suspects
Honey trap		Sexual entrapment for intelligence purposes
Humint 			Intelligence gathered by agents in the field
IDA			Intelligence database
IED			Improvised explosive device
IFF			Identification, friend or foe
II			Image identification
Institute			Formal name of Mossad-Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations; 
originally called Institute for Coordination
IR			Infrared
ISA 			Intelligence support activity
JIL			Joint Intelligence Center
Jumper			Agent working overseas on short-term assignment
Katsa			Case officer
Kidon			Operative specializing in assassination
LAKAM.		Intelligence agency gathering scientific data
Legend			Bogus biography for katsa
LAP			Department of Psychological Warfare
Light cover		Katsa working under diplomatic cover
Loot 			Intelligence gathered from operations
Mabuah			A non-Jewish informer
Measles			Assassination that appears to stem from natural causes
Meluckha		Recruiting department
Memune			Title given to director general of Mossad
Miketel			Bug for intercepting/recording telephone calls
Mishlashim		Dead letter box; a secure place for an agent to receive or drop off information
Music box 		Radio transmitter
Naka			Writing system
Nativ			Agent working in former Soviet Union
Neviot			Surveillance specialist
NHITC			National Human Intelligence Tasking Center
NIC			National Intelligence Center
NSA			National Security Agency
NSTL 			National security threat list
OAU			Organization of African Unity,
Oter			Arab recruited to work with other Arabs
PFLP			Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
PLF			Palestine Liberation Front
PLO			Palestine Liberation Organization
Photint			Photographic intelligence
PROD			Technique for retrieving photographs from optical disc
Radint			Radar intelligence
Reg-sig			Recognition signal for katsa to make contact with field agent in public place
RAF			Red Army Faction (Germany)
Safanim			Unit to target PLO
Safe house		Apartment or house used for secret meetings or as an operations base
Shicklut			Surveillance department
Sleeper			Katsa/agent to be called upon in only the most dire circumstances
Slick			Hiding place for documents
Target			Intelligence assignment
Teud			Forged document
Telint			Telemetry intelligence
Vacuamer		Agent who provides details of all aspects of a target
Walk-in			Person who volunteers to serve
Wash			Recycling of a valid passport obtained by theft or purchased
Yahalomin		Special communications unit

CHAPTER 1

BEYOND THE LOOKING GLASS

When the red light blinked on the bedside telephone, a sophisticated recording device was automatically activated in the Paris apartment near the Pompidou Center in the lively Fourth Arrondissement. The light had been wired in by an Israeli communications technician who had flown from Tel Aviv to install the recorder, intended to allay any suspicions neighbors would have about the phone ringing at ungodly hours. The technician was one of the yahalomin, a member of a Mossad unit that dealt with secure communications in the safe houses of Israel's secret intelligence agency.

The one in Paris was like all the others. It had a bombproof front door and window glass which, like the panes in the White House, could deflect scanners. There were scores of such apartments in all the major cities in the world, either purchased outright or rented on long leases. Many were left unoccupied for lengthy periods, ready for the time they would be needed for an operation.

One had been conducted from the Paris apartment since June 1997, when Monsieur Maurice had arrived. He spoke fluent French with a slight Central-European accent. Over the years his neighbors had encountered others like him: men, and occasionally women, who arrived without warning, spent weeks or months among them, then one day were gone. Like his predecessors, Maurice had politely discouraged interest in himself or his work.

Maurice was a katsa, a Mossad field agent.

Physically he was nondescript; it had been said that even on an empty street he would pass virtually unnoticed. He had been recruited in what was still a halcyon time for Mossad, when its legend remained largely intact. His potential was spotted during Israel's compulsory military service, when, after boot camp, he had been drafted into air force intelligence. An aptitude for languages (he knew French, English, and German) had been noted, along with other qualities: he was good at filling gaps in a case study and drawing fact out of speculation, and he knew the limits of informed conjecture. Above all, he was a natural manipulator of people: he could persuade, cajole, and, if all else failed, threaten.

Since graduating from the Mossad training school in 1982, he had worked in Europe, South Africa, and the Far East. At various times he had done so under the guise of a businessman, a travel writer, and a salesman. He had used a number of names and biographies drawn from the library of aliases maintained by Mossad. Now he was Maurice, once more a businessman.

During his various postings he had heard of the purges back in "the Institute," the name its staff used for Mossad: corrosive rumors of disgraced and ruined careers, of changes at the top, and each incoming Mossad director with his own priorities. None of them had stemmed the loss of morale within the service.

This had increased with the appointment of Benyamin Netanyahu as Israel's youngest prime minister. A man with a proven intelligence background, he was supposed to know how things worked on the inside; when to listen, how far to go. Instead, from the outset, Netanyahu had astonished seasoned intelligence officers by dabbling in operational details.

At first this was put down to unnecessary zeal, a new broom showing he was ready to look into every closet to make sure there were no secrets he should know. But matters had become alarming when not only the prime minister but his wife, Sara, wanted to peer behind the looking glass into Israel's intelligence world. She had invited senior Mossad officers to call on her at home and answer her questions, claiming she was following the example of Hillary Clinton's interest in the CIA.

The featureless corridors of Mossad's headquarters building in Tel Aviv had echoed with the scandalized whispers of how Sara Netanyahu had demanded to see psychological profiles of world leaders she and her husband would be entertaining or visiting. She had especially asked for details about President Bill Clinton's sexual activities. She had also asked to review dossiers on Israel's ambassadors whose embassies they would be staying in during overseas trips, expressing an interest in the cleanliness of their kitchens and how many times the bedding was changed in the guest suites.

Bemused by her requests, Mossad officers had explained to the prime minister's wife that obtaining such information was not in their intelligence-gathering remit.

Some of the veterans had been removed from the mainstream of intelligence and given responsibility for small operations that required little more than creating paperwork which went virtually unread. Realizing their careers were stagnating, they had resigned, and were now scattered across the length of Israel, keeping themselves occupied with reading, mostly history, trying to come to terms with the fact that they were also yesterday's people.

All this had made Maurice glad to be out of Tel Aviv and back in the field.

The operation that had brought him to Paris had provided another chance to show he was a methodical and careful agent, one able to deliver what was expected. In this case the task was relatively simple: there was no real physical danger, only the risk of embarrassment should the French authorities discover what he was doing and quietly deport him. The Israeli ambassador knew Maurice was in Paris but had not been told why. That was standard operational procedure: if things went wrong, the envoy could plead ignorance.

Maurice's task was to recruit an informer. This was known in the esoteric language of Mossad as a "cold approach," suborning a foreign national. After two months of patient work, Maurice believed he was now close to succeeding.

His target was Henri Paul, assistant chief of the city's Ritz Hotel, who also acted as chauffeur to its celebrity guests.

One had been Jonathan Aitken, a minister in Britain's last Conservative government. Aitken had held special responsibility for coordinating arms sales and had built up a raft of contacts with Middle Eastern weapons dealers. This had led to World in Action, a TV investigative program, and the Guardian newspaper publishing highly damaging reports about Aitken's ties to men not normally found in the company of government ministers. Aitken had sued for libel. The case had come to hinge on who had paid Aitken's hotel account when he had stayed at the Ritz to meet some of his Arab contacts. In court, Aitken had sworn on oath that his wife had settled the account.

Through a third-party source, Mossad had tipped off investigators acting for the defendants that Mrs. Aitken had not been in Paris. The case had collapsed. Mossad, who had long regarded Aitken's activities as a threat to Israel, had effectively destroyed him. But the hotel had remained a meeting place for Middle Eastern arms brokers and their European contacts.

Mossad had decided to have an informer in the Ritz who would be able to report on their activities. It had set about the task by first obtaining the hotel's staff list; this had been done by hacking into the Ritz computer system. No one at the hotel's senior management level appeared to be a likely prospect; junior staff did not have the overall accessibility to guests for the task required. But Henri Paul's responsibility for security meant every area of the Ritz was open to him. His passkey could access a guest's safe-deposit box. There would be no questions asked if he wanted a copy of a person's hotel bill, no raised eyebrows if he asked to see the hotel's telephone log to obtain details of calls made by arms dealers and their contacts. He could know which woman a dealer had discreetly hired for a contact. As chauffeur to VIPs, Paul would be in a good position to overhear their conversations, witness their behavior, see where they went, whom they met.

The next stage had been to create a psycho-profile of Paul. Over several weeks information on his background had been unearthed by one of the resident katsas in Paris. Using a number of covers including an insurance company employee and a telephone salesman, the katsa had learned that Paul was a bachelor in no permanent relationship, lived in a low-rent apartment, and drove a black Mini but liked fast cars and racing the motorcycle of which he was part owner. Hotel staff had spoken of his liking a drink. There had been hints that, from time to time, he had used the services of an expensive hooker who also serviced some of the hotel's guests.

The information had been evaluated by a Mossad psychologist. He had concluded that there was an inherent vulnerability about Henri Paul. The psychologist had recommended that steadily increasing pressure, linked with the promise of substantial monetary reward to finance Paul's social life, could be the best way to recruit him. The operation could be a lengthy one, requiring considerable patience and skill. Rather than make further use of the resident katsa, Maurice would be sent to Paris.

As in any such Mossad operation, Maurice had followed well-tried guidelines. First, over several visits, he had familiarized himself with the Ritz and its environs. He had quickly identified Henri Paul, a muscular man with a certain swagger in his walk, who made it apparent that he sought approval from no one.

Maurice had observed the curious relationship Paul had with the paparazzi who staked out the front of the Ritz, ready to snatch photographs of the more newsworthy rich and famous guests. From time to time Paul would order the photographers to leave, and usually they would do so, circling the block on their motorcycles before returning. During those short trips, Paul would sometimes emerge from the hotel's staff entrance and engage the paparazzi in friendly banter as they passed.

At night, Maurice had observed Paul drinking with several of the paparazzi in one of the bars around the Ritz he patronized with other staff after work.

In progress reports to Tel Aviv, Maurice had described Paul's ability to drink considerable amounts of alcohol yet appear stone-cold sober. Maurice also confirmed that Paul's suitability for the role of informer overrode his personal habits: he appeared to have the essential access and a position of high trust.

At some point in his discreet surveillance, Maurice discovered how Paul was betraying that trust. He was receiving money from the paparazzi for providing details of guest movements, enabling the photographers to be in a position to snatch pictures of the celebrities.

The exchange of information for cash took place either in one of the bars or in the narrow rue Cambon. where the Ritz staff entrance was situated.

By mid-August that exchange had focused on the expected arrival at the Ritz of Diana, Princess of Wales, and her new lover, Dodi AI-Fayed, the son of the hotel's owner. They would stay in the fabled Imperial Suite.

All the Ritz staff were under strict instructions to keep details about Diana's arrival secret under penalty of instant dismissal. Despite this, Paul had continued to risk his career by providing details of the forthcoming visit to several paparazzi. From each he had received further sums of money.

Maurice saw that Paul had also begun to drink more heavily and had overheard Ritz staff complain that the assistant security chief had become even more of a martinet: he had recently fired a floor maid he had caught stealing a bar of soap from a guest bedroom. Several of the hotel's employees said that Paul was also taking pills and wondered if they were to help control his mood swings. Everyone agreed Paul had become more unpredictable: one moment he would be good-humored; the next he would display barely controlled anger over some imagined slight. Maurice decided the time had come to make his move.

The first contact was in Harry's Bar in the rue Daunou. When Paul came in, Maurice was already sipping a cocktail. The Mossad katsa smoothly struck up a conversation, and the security man accepted a drink after Maurice mentioned that friends of his had stayed at the Ritz. Maurice added they had been surprised how many other guests had been wealthy Arabs.

If it had been a shot in the dark, it produced a staggering result.

Paul replied that many of the Arabs were rude and arrogant and expected him to jump when they raised a finger. Worst were the Saudis. Maurice mentioned he had heard that Jewish guests were just as difficult. Paul would have none of it. He insisted that Jews were excellent guests.

On that promising note, the evening ended with an arrangement to meet again in a few days, over dinner at a restaurant near the Ritz. During the meal Paul confirmed, under Maurice's well-timed questions, much of what the katsa knew. The hotel security chief spoke of his passion for fast cars and his liking for piloting a small aircraft. But it was difficult to enjoy those habits on his salary.

That may well have been the moment Maurice began to exert pressure. Finding money was always a problem for such hobbies, but not an insoluble one. Almost certainly that perked Paul's interest.

What followed then developed a rhythm of its own: Maurice laying down the bait and Paul all too eager to take it. The hook in place, Maurice would then have begun to reel in the line with the skills he had acquired at the Mossad training school.

At some point Maurice would have planted the idea he might be able to help, perhaps mentioning he worked for a company that was forever looking for ways to update its database and would pay good money to those who could help do so. This was a favorite opening gambit for Mossad recruiters on a cold-approach operation. From there it would be a small step to tell Paul that many of the Ritz guests no doubt possessed the kind of information that would interest the company.

Paul, perhaps uneasy at the turn of the conversation, may have balked. Maurice would have then moved to the next stage, saying that of course while he understood Paul's reservations, they did come as a surprise to him. After all, it was common knowledge that Paul already took payment for information from the paparazzi. So why turn away the chance to make some real money?

Maurice's undoubted skill at delivering his proposition and accompanying revelations of how much he knew of Paul's background would have been delivered with a combination of worldliness and persuasion, with the essential undertow of pressure. It would also have had an effect on Paul.

Even if he had not asked, he may well have realized that the man seated across from him at the dinner table was an intelligence officer or at least a recruiter for a service.

That may well be the reason for his response. According to an Israeli intelligence source who has a certain knowledge of the matter: "Henri Paul came straight out with it: Was he being asked to spy? If so, what was the deal? just like that. No hedging or bullshit. just what was the deal-and whom would he really be working for? That would have been the point when Maurice would have had to decide. Did he tell Paul he would be working for Mossad? There is no standard operational procedure for something like this. Every target is different. But Henri Paul was on the hook."

If so, Maurice may well have told Paul what would be required of him: obtaining information on guests, perhaps even bugging their suites, and noting whom they entertained. There would have been discussions about payment, accompanied by an offer to open an account in a Swiss bank or, if need be, to pay Paul in cash. Maurice would have given the impression that such matters were not a problem. At that point he may even have revealed that Paul would be working for Mossad. All this would be standard for the successful conclusion of a cold-approach operation.

Paul was very probably scared at what he was asked to do. It was not a question of his loyalty to the Ritz; like other members of the staff, he worked for the hotel because of the relatively high salary and the perks. Paul was understandably frightened he was getting in over his head and could well end up in prison if he was found spying on the hotel's guests.

Yet if he went to the police what would they do? Maybe they already knew that he was going to be propositioned. If he turned down the proposition, what then? If the hotel management learned he had already betrayed that most precious of all assets the Ritz offered-confidentiality-by informing the paparazzi, he could be fired, even prosecuted.

For Henri Paul in those last days of August 1997, there seemed no way out. He continued to drink, to take pills, to sleep restlessly, to bully junior staff. He was a man teetering close to the edge.

Maurice maintained the pressure. He often managed to be in a bar where Paul was drinking off-duty. The katsa's very presence could only have been a further reminder to the security chief of what he was being pressured to do. Maurice continued to visit the Ritz, sipping an aperitif in one of the hotel bars, lunching in its restaurant, taking afternoon coffee in a lounge. To Henri Paul it would have seemed as if Maurice had become a personal shadow. That would have only further Increased the pressure on him, reminding him that there was no way out.

Compounding the pressure was the forthcoming visit of Princess Diana and Dodi AI-Fayed. Paul had been put in charge of their security while they were in the hotel, with particular responsibility for keeping away the paparazzi. At the same time the photographers were calling him on his cell phone seeking information about the visit; he was being offered large sums of money to provide details. The temptation to accept was another pressure. Everywhere he turned, there seemed to be pressure.

Though he managed to conceal it, Henri Paul was unraveling mentally. He was taking antidepressants, sleeping pills, and pep pills to get him through the day. This combination of drugs could only have furthered the strain on his ability to make reasoned judgments.

The blinking light-signaling an incoming telephone call-which awoke Maurice was timed by the recorder at 1:58 AM. on Sunday, August 31, 1997. The caller worked in the Paris gendarmerie accident unit and had been recruited by Mossad some years before; its computers classified him as a mabuah, a non-Jewish informer. On the totem pole of Maurice's Parisian contacts, his caller was somewhere near the bottom.

Nevertheless, the man's news about a traffic accident stunned Maurice. It had occurred less than an hour before, when a Mercedes sedan had struck a reinforced concrete pillar on the westbound roadway of the underpass beneath the place de l'Alma, a notorious accident spot in the city.

The dead were Diana, Princess of Wales, mother of the future king of England; Dodi AI-Fayed, son of Mohammed, the Egyptian-born owner of Harrods of Knightsbridge, the "Royal" store; and Henri Paul. The couple's bodyguard had been critically injured.

Hours after the accident Maurice flew back to Tel Aviv, leaving in his wake questions that would remain unanswered.

What part had his pressure played in the accident? Had Henri Paul lost control of the Mercedes, causing it to smash into the thirteenth concrete pillar of the underpass beneath the place de l'Alma, because he could see no way of extricating himself from the clutches of Mossad? Was that pressure linked to the high level of prescribed drugs found in his bloodstream? When he had left the Ritz with his three passengers, had his mind continued to vacillate over what he should do about the pressure? Was he not only responsible for a terrible road accident but also the victim of a ruthless intelligence agency?

Questions would continue to fester in the mind of Mohammed AI-Fayed. 
In February 1998, he publicly announced: "It was no accident. I am convinced of that in my heart of hearts. 
The truth cannot remain hidden forever."

Five months later, the British network ITV, screened a documentary that claimed Henri Paul had close links to French intelligence. He had none. The program also hinted that an unnamed intelligence agency had been involved in the deaths; there were dark hints that the agency had acted because the British establishment feared Diana's love for Dodi could have "political repercussions" because he was an Egyptian.

To this day Mossad's involvement with Henri Paul has remained a well-kept secret-the way the service had always intended it should remain. Mossad acted at the behest of no one outside Israel. Indeed, few outside the service still have any idea of Mossad's part in the death of the then most famous woman in the world.

Mohammed AI-Fayed, prompted by what he saw as a campaign of villification in the English media, has continued to claim that unnamed security services had been ranged against his son and Diana. In July 1998 two Time magazine journalists published a book that included the suggestion that Henri Paul could have had some connection with French intelligence. Neither AI-Fayed or the journalists offered any conclusive proof that Henri Paul was an intelligence agent or even an informer-and none of them came near to identifying Mossad's involvement with him.

In July 1998, Mohammed AI-Fayed asked a number of questions in a letter he sent to every one of Britain's members of Parliament, urging them to raise the questions in the House of Commons. He claimed that "there is a force at work to stifle the answers 1 want." His behavior was seen as the reaction of a grieving father lashing out in every direction. The questions deserve repeating, not because they shed any light on the role Mossad played in the closing weeks of Henri Paul's life, but because they show how the entire tragedy has gained a momentum that only the true facts can stop.

AI-Fayed wrote of a "plot" to get rid of Diana and his son and attempted to link all kinds of disparate events with his questions:
“Why did it take one hour and forty minutes to get the princess to hospital? Why have some of the photographers failed to give up some of the pictures they shot? Why was there a break-in that night at the London home of a photographer who handles paparazzi pictures? Why have all the closed-circuit television cameras in that part of Paris produced not one frame of videotape? Why were the speed cameras on the route out of film, and the traffic cameras not switched on? Why was the scene of the crash not preserved but reopened to traffic after a few hours? Who was the person in the press group outside the Ritz who was equipped like a news photographer? Who were the two unidentified men mingling in the crowd who later sat in the Ritz bar? They ordered in English, watching and listening in a marked way?"

Mossad had no interest in the relationship between Diana and Dodi. Their sole concern was to recruit Henri Paul as their informer in the Ritz. Regarding the mysterious news photographer: in the past Mossad has allowed its agents to pose as Journalists. It may, well have been Maurice keeping watch outside the hotel. The two unidentified men in the hotel bar may have had some connection to Mossad. It would no doubt comfort Mohammed AI-Fayed if that were true.

Some of Maurice's colleagues have increasingly felt that the attempt to entrap Henri Paul was additional proof that Mossad has lurched a little further out of control, carrying out reckless international operations without taking into account the potential long-term consequences for itself, for Israel, for peace in the Middle East, and, ultimately, for the relationship with the Jewish state's oldest and closest ally, the United States of America. Several officers claimed that since Benyamin Netanyahu became prime minister in 1996, matters have worsened.

A veteran member of the Israel] intelligence community has said: "People are seeing those who work for Mossad are often thugs masquerading as patriots. That is bad for us [and] for morale, and, in the end, will have a bad effect on Mossad's relationship with other services."

Another experienced Israeli intelligence officer was equally blunt: "Netanyahu behaves as if Mossad is part of his own version of the Court of King Arthur; something new every day or the knights of his own Round Table get bored. That's why things have gone very wrong with Mossad. There's a need to ring the alarm bell before it's too late."

The first lesson 1 learned during a quarter of a century of writing about secret intelligence is that deception and disinformation are its stock-in-trade, along with subversion, corruption, blackmail, and, sometimes, assassination. Agents are trained to lie and to use and abuse friendships. They are the very opposite of the dictum that gentlemen do not read each other's mail.

1 first encountered their behavior while investigating many of the great spy scandals of the Cold War: the betrayal of America's atomic bomb secrets by Klaus Fuchs, and the compromising of Britain's M15 and M16 by Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean, and Kim Philby. Each made treachery and duplicity his byword. 1 also was one of the first writers to gain access to the CIA's obsession with mind control, a preoccupation the Agency was forced to confirm ten years after my book on the subject, journey into Madness, appeared. Denial is the black art all intelligence services long ago perfected.

Nevertheless, in getting to the truth, I was greatly helped by two professional intelligence officers: Joachim Kraner, my late father-in-law, who ran an M16 network in Dresden in the post-World War 11 years, and Bill Buckley, who was station chief of the CIA in Beirut. Physically they were similar: tall, lean, and trim, with chins ready to confront trouble halfway. Their eyes revealed little - except to say if you weren't part of the answer, you had to be part of the problem. Intellectually formidable, their criticism of the agencies they served at times was astringent.

Both constantly reminded me that a great deal can be heard from what Bill called "murmurs in the mush": a deadly skirmish fought in an alley with no name; the collective hold-your- breath when an agent or network is blown; a covert operation that could have undone years of overt political bridge building; a snippet of mundane information that completed a particular intelligence jigsaw. Joachim added that "sometimes a few words, casually offered, could often throw a new light on something."

Proud of being members of what he called "the second oldest profession, both not only were my friends, but convinced me that secret intelligence is the key to fully understanding international relations, global politics, and diplomacy-and, of course, terrorism. Through them 1 made contacts in a number of military and civilian intelligence agencies: Germany's BND and France's DGSE; the CIA; Canadian and British services.

Joachim died in retirement; Bill was murdered by Islamic fundamentalists who kidnapped him in Beirut and triggered the Western hostage crisis in that city.

I also met members of Israel's intelligence community who first helped me by filling in the background of Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turkish fanatic who attempted to assassinate Pope John Paul in St. Peter's Square, Rome, in May 1981. Those contacts were arranged by Simon Wiesenthal, the renowned Nazi hunter and an invaluable Mossad "source" for over forty years. Because of his fame and reputation, Wiesenthal still finds doors readily open, especially in Washington.

It was in that city in March 1986 that I learned a little more of the tangled relationship between the intelligence communities of the United States and Israel. I was there to interview William Casey, then the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, as ongoing research for my book journey into Madness, which deals in part with the death of Bill Buckley.

Despite his customized suit, Casey was a shambling figure. His jowled face was pale and the rims of his eyes were red as we sat in a Washington club; he looked like someone whose ectoplasm was running out after five years of directing the CIA.

Over a Perrier he confirmed the conditions for our meeting. No notes, no tape recordings; anything he said would be purely background. He then produced a sheet of plain paper on which were typed his biographical details. He had been born in New York on March 13, 1913, and graduated from St. John's University in 1937 with a law degree. Commissioned into the U.S. Naval Reserve in 1943, within months lie bad transferred to the Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner of the CIA. In 1944 he became chief of the OSS Special Intelligence Branch in Europe. Next came the chairmanship of the Securities and Exchange Commission (1971-73); then, in quick succession, he was undersecretary of state for economic affairs (1973-74); president and chairman of the Export-Import Bank of the United States (1974-76); and a member of the president's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (1976-77). In 1980 he became campaign manager for Ronald Reagan's successful bid for the presidency. A year later, on January 28, 1981, Reagan appointed him DCI, the thirteenth man to hold the single most powerful office in the U.S. intelligence community.

In response to my remark that he appeared to have been a pair of safe hands in a number of posts, Casey sipped more water and mumbled he "didn't want to get into the personal side of things."

He put the paper back into his pocket and sat, watchful and waiting for my first question: what could he tell me about Bill Buckley, who, almost two years earlier to the day-on Friday, March 16, 1984 - had been kidnapped in Beirut and was now dead. I wanted to know what efforts the CIA had made to try to save Bill's life. I had spent time in the Middle East, including Israel, trying to piece together the background.

"You speak to Admoni or any of his people?" Casey interrupted.

In 1982, Nahum Admoni had become head of Mossad. On Tel Aviv's embassy cocktail circuit, he had a hard-nosed reputation. Casey characterized Admoni as "a Jew who'd want to win a pissing contest on a rainy night in Gdansk." More certain, Admoni had been born in Jerusalem in 1929, the son of middle-class Polish immigrants. Educated at the city's Rehavia Gymnasium, he developed linguistic skills that had earned him a lieutenant's stripes as an intelligence officer in the 1948 War of Independence.

"Admoni can listen in half a dozen languages," was Casey's judgment.

Later, Admoni had studied international relations at Berkeley and taught the subject at the Mossad training school on the outskirts of Tel Aviv. He'd also worked undercover in Ethiopia, in Paris, and in Washington, where Admoni had linked closely with Casey's predecessors, Richard Helms and William Colby. These postings had helped hone Admoni into a soft-spoken intelligence bureaucrat who, when he became Mossad's chief, in Casey's words, "ran a tight ship. Socially gregarious, he has as keen an eye for women as for what's best for Israel."

Casey's thumbnail sketch was of an operative who, he said, had climbed through the ranks because of his skills at avoiding his superiors' 'corns.' "

His next words came in the same mumbling undertone.

"Nobody can surprise like someone you took to be friendly disposed. By, the time we realized Admoni was going to do nothing, Bill Buckley was dead. Remember what it was like at the time over there? There had been the massacre of almost a thousand Palest]mans in those two Beirut refugee camps. The Lebanese Christian forces (lid the killings; the Jews looked on in a kind of reversal of the Bible. Fact is, Admoni was in bed with that thug, Gemayel."

Bashir Gemayel was head of the Phalangists and later became president of Lebanon.

"We ran Gemayel as well, but 1 never trusted the bastard. And Admoni worked with Gemayel all the time Buckley was being tortured. We had no idea where exactly in Beirut Bill was held. We asked Admoni to find out. He said no problem. We waited and waited. Sent our best men to Tel Aviv to work with Mossad. We said money was not a problem. Admoni kept saying okay, understood."

Casey, sipped more water, locked in his own time capsule. His next words came out flat, like a jury foreman handing down a verdict.

"Next thing Admoni was selling us a bill of goods that the PLO were behind the kidnapping. We knew the Israelis were always ready to blame Yasser Arafat for anything, and our people did not buy at first. But Admoni was very plausible. He made a good case. By the time we figured it wasn't Arafat, it was long over for Buckley. What we didn't know was that Mossad had also been playing real dirty pool-supplying the Hezbollah with arms to kill the Christians while at the same time giving the Christians more guns to kill the Palestinians."

Casey's less-than-full glimpse of what the CIA now believed had happened to Bill Buckley-that Mossad had deliberately done nothing to save him in the hope the PLO could be blamed, so frustrating Arafat's hopes of gaining sympathy in Washington-provided a chilling insight into the relationship between two intelligence services supposedly friendly with each other.

Casey had shown there was another side to the ties between the United States and Israel other than fund-raising and other manifestations of American-Jewish solidarity that has turned the Jewish state into a regional superpower out of a fear of the Arab enemy.

Before we parted, Casey had a final thought: "A nation creates the intelligence community it needs. America relies on technical expertise because we are concerned to discover, rather than secretly rule. The Israelis operate differently. Mossad, in particular, equates its actions with the country's survival."

This attitude has long made Mossad immune to close scrutiny. But, in two years of research for this book, a series of mistakes-scandals in some cases-has forced the service into Israel's public consciousness. Questions have been asked, and, if the answers are rarely volunteered, gaps have begun to appear in the protective body armor Mossad has worn against that outside world.

I spoke to more than a hundred persons either directly employed by, or working indirectly for, Israeli and other intelligence services. Several urged I should focus on recent events; the past should only be used to illustrate events that are relevant to Mossad's role at the cutting edge of the current frontiers of espionage and intelligence gathering. Many interviews were with participants who had not been questioned before; often no amount of probing could produce a comfortingly simple explanation for the way they or others behaved. Many were surprisingly frank, though not all agreed to be fully identified. In the case of serving Mossad personnel, they are prevented by Israeli law from voluntarily allowing their names to be published. Some of the non-Israeli sources asked, and received, a guarantee of anonymity.

On the organization charts newspapers try to piece together and publish, many sources remain among the empty spaces. They still take their anonymity seriously and some wish to be known in these pages by an alias or only a first name: it does not make their testimony less valid. Their personal motives for breaking silence may be many: a need to secure their own place in history; a desire to justify their actions; the anecdotage of old men; even perhaps expiation. The same can be said for those who agreed to be identified.

Perhaps the best motive of all that drove them to break silence was a real and genuine fear that an organization they had served with pride was increasingly endangered from within-and that the only way, to save it was to reveal what it had achieved in the past and what it is doing today. 
To understand both requires knowing how and why it was created.