FACES AND PLACES
by Myron B. Kuropas
Gideon's spies
My wife, Lesia, and I love reading spy thrillers. Our idea of a great evening is being buried in a can't-put-it-down book by Robert Ludlum, Fredrick Forsyth, even Tom Clancy.
Fictional plots are exciting, but true spy stories are better. Among the books I've devoured over the years have been "KGB: The Secret Work of Soviet Secret Agents" and "KGB Today: The Hidden Hand," both by John Barron; "Double Lives: Spies and Writers in the Secret Soviet War of Ideas Against the West" by Stephen Koch; and of course, "Special Tasks: The Memoirs of an Unwanted Witness-A Soviet Spymaster" by Pavel Sudoplatov, the man who claimed to have assassinated OUN leader Yevhen Konovalets.
I can't wait to dig into the recently published "Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America" by John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr and "Haunted Wood: Soviet Espionage in America, the Stalin Era" by Allen Weinstein and Alexander Vassiliev. Both books put the lie to the notion advanced by the anointed leftist university elite and their media fellow travelers that it was America's hysterical fear of communism that lead to the Cold War. To suggest that Soviet spies once operated freely in American government circles is still condemned as a form of pernicious red-baiting.
A few years ago I read a book by Victor Ostrovsky and Clare Hoy titled "By Way of Deception: The Making and Unmasking of a Mossad Officer." What intrigued me most about the book was the claim that the Israeli intelligence service, perhaps the best on our planet, has only 1,200 employees, including 30 to 35 case officers or "katsas" operating in the world at any one time. During its heyday the KGB had 150,000 employees. Even the CIA has some 25,000 personnel.
With so few full-timers, why is the Mossad so effective? "Israel can tap the significant and loyal cadre of the worldwide Jewish community outside Israel," wrote Mr. Ostrovsky. "This is done through a unique system of 'sayanim,' volunteer Jewish helpers." They "must be 100 percent Jewish. They live abroad, and though they are not Israeli citizens, many are reached through their relatives in Israel ... there are thousands of sayanim around the world. In London alone, there are about 2,000 who are active and another 5,000 on the list." Among the most important sayanim are those who work with the Western press people like the late British newspaper publisher Robert Maxwell.
According to the authors, a kind of siege mentality exists within the Mossad; everyone is a potential enemy and words and actions are to by judged by one criterion: "'Is it good for the Jews or not?' Forget about policies, or anything else. That was the only thing that counted, and depending on the answer, people were called anti-Semites, whether deservedly or not." Support for Israel had to be unequivocal and immutable, wrote Mr. Ostrovsky.
Mr. Ostrovsky disagreed with many Israeli shibboleths, including the prevailing Jewish depiction of the Holocaust. Recalling that "close to 50 million other people died as well," he writes: "The Holocaust could have been, and I think should have been, a source for unity with other nations rather than a tool for separation." Ukrainians in Canada take note.
When I first read Mr. Ostrovsky's book, I was skeptical. A disaffected former intelligence officer is hardly an authority to be accepted wholesale. After reading Gordon Thomas's "Gideon's Spies: The Secret History of the Mossad," however, I changed my mind. Not only does the book confirm much of what Mr. Ostrovsky alleged, it paints a picture of the Mossad that is at once laudatory and disparaging.
Recruiting sayanim was a priority for Mossad Deputy Operations Chief Rafi Eitan, here of the Rudolph Eichmann kidnapping. Describing his spiel to Mr. Thomas, he said: "I would tell them [sayanim] that for 2,000 years our people dreamed. For 2,000 years we Jews had prayed for deliverance. In song, in prose, in their hearts, we had kept alive the dream - and the dream kept us alive. Now it had happened, then I add: to make sure it continues we need people like you." Mr. Eitan's words were persuasive and soon "he had over a hundred men and women across Europe to do his bidding: lawyers, dentists, schoolteachers, doctors, tailors, shopkeepers housewives, secretaries," writes Mr. Thomas.
It was Mr. Eitan who recruited Jonathan Pollard, and it was Mr. Pollard who provided Mossad with over 1,000 highly classified CIA documents. Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir later turned over a portion of the documents to the Soviet Union "as a gesture of goodwill." When Mr. Shamir was told by Nahum Admoni [head of Mossad at the time] that the data would almost certainly enable Soviet counterintelligence to discover the [American] spies, he reportedly shrugged, claims Mr. Thomas.
"Gideon's Spies" is filled with fascinating stories of assassinations, espionage, disinformation and penetration of foreign government agencies by katsas and sayanim. A Mossad spy code-named "Mega," for example, infiltrated the White House and was/is supplying invaluable information. Mossad learned that the mole had been discovered by the FBI and to dampen any further investigation, "sayanim connected to the U.S. media" were "instructed to plant stories that Mega was an incorrect decoding of the Hebrew slang word 'Eliga,' which had long been Mossad-speak for the CIA." To further discourage investigation, the Mossad also let it be known that it had been monitoring President Bill Clinton's phone-sex conversations with Monica Lewinsky.
Of the many triumphs of the Mossad over the years, the one that I found the most remarkable was its investigation of Mehmet Ali Agca, would-be assassin of Pope John Paul II. Hoping to curry favor with a Vatican that had remained cool towards Israel, the Mossad took it upon itself to look into CIA claims that Mr. Agca had been hired by the Bulgarian secret service following instructions from the Kremlin. The Mossad, however, was able to gather compelling evidence that the order to kill the pope "had been prepared in Teheran with the full approval of Ayatollah Ruholla Khomeini. Killing the pope was intended as the opening move in a 'jihad,' a holy war, against the West and what Khomeini saw as its decadent values being approved by the largest Christian Church." Soon after learning this, the pope visited a Jewish synagogue in Rome, a first for a Catholic pontiff, and relations with Israel improved. The Mossad had scored a coup, neatly discrediting both the CIA and the Arabs.
Good reading? You bet. And instructive as well.
www.ctrl.org DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at:
http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ <A HREF="">ctrl</A> ======================================================================== To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Om
