Gordon Thomas - Gideon's Spies

The defector had described the all-too-familiar story of the regime’s oppression: dawn roundups, families set to spy on each other, starvation and abuses of power by those who were favored by the regime. The slightest indiscretion was severely punished. Men had been shot after defacing one of the portraits of the country’s leader, which adorned every public place. Women had been taken by the police to their barracks and gang-raped. Some had committed suicide afterward. The names of some of those who had been brutalized and those of their torturers, along with the places where the brutality had occurred, had been recalled by the defector. At the factory he had witnessed a woman being roasted in an electric oven and a man being beaten to death with steel rods. Both had been caught trying to smuggle out food from the factory kitchen.

The Mossad agent’s report had included details of how the Taep’o-dong 2 missile had been modified by North Korean technicians so it could fire the rocket from a land-based transporter. The vehicle had been dismantled and flown to Tehran. With it had gone a warhead designed to carry a biological weapon.

The details had been sent to Washington. Condoleezza Rice, the U.S. secretary of state, had flown to Moscow to protest to President Vladimir Putin about the situation that had resulted from the initial sale of Russian technology to North Korea. She had met with the cold response to direct her protest to North Korea. Dr. Rice had flown to London and discussed the matter with Prime Minister Tony Blair to see what diplomatic pressure could be jointly exerted by Britain and the United States on Iran. He had favored referring Iran to the United Nations Security Council. John Bolton, the U.S. ambassador to the UN, had publicly announced that he had evidence that Iran was determined to produce nuclear weapons, which could be used to intimidate the Middle East and Europe and to “possibly supply terrorists” with the missiles. His statement was largely based on the Mossad report from Seoul.

Its content was later endorsed when Dr. Rice met MI6 director general John Scarlett. He told her the evidence had been “copper-bottomed” by Mossad, and that it was accepted North Korea could have acted only with the full knowledge of China. There was quick agreement that to avert the situation developing into a full-blown crisis, Beijing should be made fully aware of the intelligence Mossad had obtained and asked to exert its considerable influence over North Korea to withdraw its support from Iran. The overt diplomacy that had failed Condoleezza Rice was now about to go covert.

There were further discussions on how the request should be conveyed. It could be done at ambassador level, but there was no guarantee this would be perceived with sufficient seriousness by Beijing. But neither Dr. Rice nor Britain’s foreign secretary, Jack Straw, could jump on the next plane to China; that would create a sense of panic Beijing could well exploit. Yet it was essential to convey to its leaders that North Korea must be stopped and that only Beijing could pressurize a dangerously unstable regime to desist from helping Iran. After hours of consultation by advisers in London and Washington, and finally a secure-line conference call with Tel Aviv to Ariel Sharon, it had been decided that Mossad, who had provided so much of the detail, should once more use its connections with China’s Secret Intelligence Service, CSIS, to convey the seriousness of the situation. “If it is not a full-blown crisis yet, then it will soon be,” said John Bolton.

It was not the first time Mossad had played such a role. In the past it had paved the way for the diplomatic exchange of Egyptian prisoners captured during the Six Day War; it had organized the bridge building that enabled Israeli diplomats to have working relations with Jordan and Lebanon.

All of Israel’s political leaders had used Mossad for covert diplomacy. Some, like Yitzak Shamir, Benyamin Netanyahu, and Ehud Barak, had exaggerated hopes of what Mossad could, or should, achieve; this was largely due to their own past connections with intelligence operations. In Ariel Sharon, Mossad had a political master who had both the temperament and experience to know how to handle the service. On more than one occasion he had tasked Meir Dagan to use the “backdoor” connection to the CIA to raise a politically sensitive matter and test the response in Washington before Sharon formally raised it with the White House. It was Dagan who told Porter Goss that Israel would continue to attack Hamas while still trying to negotiate with the Palestinian Authority. Sharon also well understood that in a high-tech world of intelligence gathering, the human factor remained critical when it came to covert diplomacy. The character of Meir Dagan was perfectly suited to the role and complemented Sharon’s own rumbustious personality that had given him a keen interest in spies and their activities. For the prime minister, it was a natural progression to use Meir Dagan as his own secret diplomat.

“Our kind of diplomacy is based on contacts with other intelligence services. We tell their spymasters what our foreign service people would like to see happen. We know their intelligence people usually wield strong influence with the governments or regimes they work for. In more cases than not, it works very well. The diplomats get the public credit. We have the private satisfaction of a job well done,” Meir Amit once told the author.

Setting up Mossad’s latest venture into the dark side of diplomacy was something Meir Dagan had developed over his three years in office. On his personal computer were the updated names, direct-line phone numbers, and encrypted e-mail addresses of intelligence chiefs in over a hundred countries. His contacts also included diplomats, businessmen, and those who operated close to the edge of legality.

This would be Dagan’s second visit to China. Eighteen months before he had been a member of a delegation that had included General Amos Yaron, the director general of the Israeli Defense Ministry, and a team of the country’s top armaments salesmen. They had come to develop ties that had already produced for Israel over $4 billion in sales of arms and military equipment. Much of it had originally been sent to Israel by the United States, and when Washington had finally objected to Israel Aircraft Industries (IAI) selling an early warning system, AWACS, Israel had reluctantly paid $350 million compensation to cancel the deal. Diplomatic relations between Beijing and Tel Aviv, established in 1992, had become virtually frozen.

In Asia House in downtown Tel Aviv, the directors of IAI were furious after the years spent making Israel’s arms industry its main export. They had brokered deals not only with China but South Africa and the nations of Latin America. IAI had become a home for former Mossad directors Zvi Zamir, Yitzhak Hofi, and Danny Yatom. Amos Manor, the first head of Shin Bet, the country’s equivalent to the FBI, also had his office in IAI. It was a standing joke among them that the “big question is whether the state owns IAI or whether IAI owns the state of Israel.” The corporation’s unique position included being the only one in Israel that had total tax relief on all its income.

Dagan knew that when the time came for him to give up being the Mossad chief, he too would be offered a comfortable desk at IAA. How he performed on this mission to Beijing would be carefully watched.

For the previous sales trip to Beijing, the Israeli delegation had brought with them a number of enticing new weapons, many developed from their American originals. Among them was the latest version of Promis, the software program that could track the movements of literally untold numbers of people anywhere in the world (see chapter 10, “A Dangerous Liaison,” pp. 195–202). China had been among the 142 countries to buy the software whose undetectable “trapdoor” had been installed by Israel’s top programmers, enabling Mossad to monitor all those who used it. The new version could do that even better.