Haggai Harmon - The Chameleon Conspiracy

“I’m sure he knows about your reputation and the benefits you bring from your close relationship with other intelligence organizations. Anyway, he must have his reasons.”

“I hope so,” said Benny. “You have to hope reality and good sense will prevail.” A glimmer of his usual optimism was returning. “All he has to do is to go to the next prime-ministerial meeting on Israel’s national security, and have to listen to Aman’s military intelligence without having his own estimate, based on his own intelligence gathering. He’ll be tacitly yielding to Aman seniority.” Benny smiled. “In these meetings, Mossad, Aman, and SHABACH, the internal security service, present their opinions. Believe me, after the first session as a passive listener, he’ll change his mind. There are no shortcuts here.”

“To be the devil’s advocate,” I said, “even given the fact that your wing is the very best in what you’re doing, what’s wrong with increasing operational capabilities?”

“Dan, the intelligence-gathering world from human sources isn’t limited to James Bond-like operations. You know that as well as I do. There is all the tedious work of identifying sources and recruiting them, with or without their knowledge. True, break-ins and eliminating rivals are vital elements of ‘operations,’ but only relatively small ones. We’re less interested in Jordan and Egypt since the peace agreements. We’ve got enemies far from our borders, hosted by governments that ask no questions. To confront all that, you really need carefully planned operations.”

“But Benny, don’t you think you’d be better off using local intelligence services? Let’s take for example friendly nations like Thailand or India, which are engaged in a daily battle against terrorists surreptitiously using their territories. You can send five case officers there, or even ten. They don’t speak the local languages and have no local authority. So not only do they have to identify terrorists plotting against Israel, but at the same time they need to protect their backs from the wrath of the local governments that don’t particularly like agents of foreign countries infringing on their sovereignty and playing cops and robbers on their land. Wouldn’t it be simpler to cooperate with the domestic intelligence services and send just one or two case officers for liaison, and to inspect and taste the fruit that they’re picking off their own trees and offering us?”

“Dan, that’s my quibble with Dagan. The marketplace for terrorist-related intelligence is becoming crowded. Now we compete for the same information with the big guys. Why do you think I looked to the U.S. to join forces in Giverny? In order to survive in the newly created marketplace we need goods to trade with. Either we develop them independently or hook up with the bigger folks to broaden our capabilities.”

Now the coin had dropped into the slot. I realized that there was another reason why Benny was seeking pointed cooperation in combating terror financing between his wing at Mossad and the CIA. A successful cooperation could give Benny a winning card in his efforts to keep his wing’s central role, not to mention his own job.

“Dan, we must continue to regard as important the gathering of intelligence from sources you can identify, verify, and communicate with. That means operational capability. But maintaining our close contacts with foreign intelligence services is just as important, because of the volume. No operation brings us as much as a good contact with a foreign intelligence service.

“But your foreign-liaison activities buy secondhand or recycled intelligence that’s always neutered to disguise its source. Foreign services trade or sell you stuff without a ‘certificate of origin or authenticity.’ You don’t know the value of it. Foreign intelligence services aren’t going to tell you how they obtained the information and from whom. It could be sanitized to protect sources-or worse, it could be disinformation. Anyway, the traded information is not of operational nature, but in the form of disseminated intelligence reports identified as such.

“That’s one of the reasons Dagan wants raw intelligence harvested by our agents, not purchased in the marketplace,” said Benny. “Therefore, we treat the information we receive through barter accordingly. Most of the time we use it as a lead, and nothing else. We never make a recommendation, or worse, plan an operation, based solely on that type of information. You know what happens in the end. Such an operation will take twice the time, will cost twice than what your plan said it would and, in the best-case scenario, will yield half of what we need. But,” he concluded with a sigh, “these are my troubles, not yours. You said you wanted something?”

“Yes, your help with Iran. Can you run the name Bahman Hossein Rashtian and see what you can find in your database?”

“Is that all?” Benny knew me too well.

“Nope.”

“Is the next request off the record?”

“Off the record, for now.”

“Why?”

“I’m just checking things, and haven’t got clearance for the idea yet. I’m developing a conviction that to crack this case we need to employ human intelligence, and I’ve got some ideas on that.”

“And you say that you haven’t asked the Agency about it yet?”

“Not yet, but I will very soon. They’ll never answer anything without a gazillion procedures. Anyway, you heard during our conference a hint that they had lost their permanent station in Iran.”

“How will human intelligence in that particular case help?” asked Benny. “And where?”

“I had some talks with the NSA. Even with all their gadgets and sophistication, their help is potentially limited. Remember what Alex, our Mossad Academy instructor, said about recruiting human sources. ‘Basically there are three ways to recruit an “asset”-a human source. Do it when your source is outside your target country, and you have a very limited selection to choose from, or you can travel to the lion’s den and pick your prey. The third category are people who travel out for brief periods, to conferences, for example. They are often desirable targets.’ In our case, the people with access to the information we want don’t travel. We have to go to them. It’s the logical thing to do. Computer surveillance and hacking are good, but nothing can substitute for personal presence.”

Benny didn’t answer at once. He just looked at me pensively, and said, “I think so too, hence my presentation at the conference. I think you should be ready to answer questions regarding the intelligence rationale of doing it. Show a raw plan, the risks, the probabilities, and the potential hunting field to recruit sources. Let’s say that we have our respective agencies’ consent to go ahead. Then what? Even after careful planning and logistics, we must have a head start while we are still here.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning that the first task will be to identify potential local sources before commencing with recruiting efforts. That takes time. But sending an agent cold turkey to Iran without preparatory groundwork will not only take much more time, it’s significantly riskier.”

“Granted,” I said. “So we’ve identified potential targets of recruitment. Now we need to move in. Debriefing exiled Iranians in Europe is good, but your selection is limited, and you never know who you’re talking to and what the guy’s doing in Europe to begin with. Could be dangerous. Maybe he’s after you to bilk you, or worse, to entrap you.”

“Dan, bear in mind that with the kind of Iranian police supervision on every citizen and certainly on visiting foreigners, it’s going to be difficult to return in one piece, even if we succeed in the intelligence-gathering effort. Unless there’s a risk-free, maverick plan that will yield immediate results, I think we should concentrate on sources outside Iran.”