Gordon Thomas - Gideon's Spies

Bacon sensed that perhaps, after all, Joseph was more than he appeared. There was a quiet certainty about him. But as he began to question him, the old man shook his head. “Not here. People could be listening.”

They arranged to meet again the following day on a park bench along the Euphrates River, which flowed through the city. That night Bacon slept very little wondering if, after all, he was being slowly hooked, if not by Iraqi intelligence, then by some very clever con men who were using Joseph as a front.

The next day’s meeting revealed a little more of Joseph’s background and motives.

He came from a poor Iraqi Jewish family. As a boy he had been employed as a servant by a rich Marionite Christian family in Baghdad. Then, after thirty years of loyal service, he had been abruptly dismissed, wrongly accused of stealing food. He found himself, on his fiftieth birthday, cast out into the streets. Too old to find other work, he existed on a modest pension. He had also decided to seek out his Jewish roots. He discussed his quest with his widowed sister, Manu, whose son, Munir, was a pilot in the Iraqi air force. Manu admitted she too had a strong desire to go to Israel. But how could they possibly do that? Even to mention the idea was to risk imprisonment in Iraq. To leave anyone behind would guarantee the authorities would punish them severely, perhaps even kill them. And where would the money come from? She had sighed and said it was all an impossible dream.

But in Joseph’s mind the idea took hold. Over dinner Munir had often told how his commander boasted that Israel would pay a fortune for one of the MiGs he flew, “perhaps even a million U.S. dollars, Uncle Joseph.”

The sum had focused Joseph. He could bribe officials, organize an escape route. With that money he could somehow move the entire family out of Iraq. The more he thought about it, the more feasible it became. Munir loved his mother; he would do anything for her—even stealing his plane for a million dollars. And there would be no need for Joseph to have to organize the family’s escape. He would let the Israelis do that. Everyone knew they were clever at such things. That was why he had sent Salman to the embassy.

“And now you are here, my friend!” Joseph beamed at Bacon.

“What about Munir? Does he know any of this?”

“Oh, yes. He has agreed to steal the MiG. But he wants half the money down now, then the balance delivered just before he does so.”

Bacon was astounded. Everything he had heard sounded both genuine and feasible. But first he had to report to Meir Amit.

In Tel Aviv, the Mossad chief listened for an entire afternoon while Bacon reported every detail.

“Where does Joseph want to be paid?” Meir Amit finally asked.

“Into a Swiss bank. Joseph has a cousin who needs urgent medical treatment not available in Baghdad. The Iraqi authorities will give him permission to go to Switzerland. When he arrives, he expects to have the money already deposited by us.”

“A resourceful man, your Joseph,” Meir Amit commented wryly. “Once the money is in that account, we’ll never get it back.”

He put one more question to Bacon. “Why do you trust Joseph?”

Bacon replied. “I trust him because it is the only choice.”

Meir Amit authorized half a million U.S. dollars should be deposited in the main branch of Credit Suisse in Geneva. He was gambling more than money. He knew he could not survive if Joseph turned out to be the brilliant fraud some Mossad officers still believed he was.

The time had come to brief Prime Minister Ben-Gurion and his chief of staff, Yitzhak Rabin. Both men green-lighted the operation. Meir Amit had not told them he had taken one more step—withdrawing the entire Mossad network from Iraq.

“If the mission failed, I didn’t want anyone’s head on the block except my own. I set up five teams. The first team was the communications link between Baghdad and me. They would break radio silence only if there was a crisis. Otherwise I didn’t want to hear from them. The second team was to be in Baghdad without anyone knowing. Not Bacon, not the first team, no one. They were there to get Bacon out of the country if there was trouble, and Joseph, too, if possible. The third team was to keep an eye on the family. The fourth team was to liaise with the Kurds who would help in the last stages of getting the family out. Israel was supplying them with arms. The fifth team was to liaise with Washington and Turkey. For the MiG to be flown out of Iraq, it would have to fly over Turkish air space to reach us. Washington, who had bases in northern Turkey, would have to persuade the Turks to cooperate by saying the MiG was going to end up in the United States. I now knew that the Iraqis feared the possibility of a pilot defecting to the West, so they kept fuel tanks only half-full. That was something we could do nothing about.”

There were still other problems. Joseph had decided that not only his immediate family but distant cousins should have the opportunity of escaping from the harsh Iraqi regime. In all he wanted forty-three persons to be airlifted to safety.

Meir Amit agreed—only to face a new worry. From Baghdad, Bacon sent a coded message that Munir was having second thoughts. The Mossad chief “sensed what was happening. Munir was first and foremost an Iraqi. Iraq had been good to him. Betraying his country to Israel did not sit well. We were the enemy. All his life he had been taught that. I decided the only way was to convince him the MiG would go straight to America. So I flew to Washington and saw Richard Helms, then DCI [director of the Central Intelligence Agency]. He listened and said no problem. He was always very good like that. He arranged for the U.S. military attaché in Baghdad to meet Munir. The attaché confirmed the plane would be handed over to the United States. He gave Munir a lot of talk about helping America catch up with the Russians. Munir bought it and agreed to go ahead.”

The operation now took on a pace of its own. Joseph’s relative received his Iraqi exit permit and flew to Geneva. From there he sent a postcard: “The hospital facilities are excellent. I am assured of a total recovery.” The message was the signal that the second five hundred thousand dollars had been deposited.

Reassured, Joseph told Bacon the family were ready. On the night before Munir would make his flight, Joseph led them in a convoy of vehicles north, to the cool of the mountains. Iraqi checkpoints did not trouble them; residents moved every summer away from the stifling heat of Baghdad. In the foothills Kurds waited with the Israeli liaison team. They led the family deep into the mountains, where Turkish air force helicopters were waiting. Flying below radar, they crossed back into Turkey.

An Israeli agent made a call to Munir telling him his sister had safely delivered a baby girl. Another coded signal had been safely transmitted.

Next morning, August 15, 1966, at sunup, Munir took off for a practice mission. Clear of the airfield he kicked in the MiG’s afterburners and was over the border with Turkey before other Iraqi pilots could be instructed to shoot him down. Escorted by U.S. Air Force Phantoms, Munir landed at a Turkish air base, refueled, and took off again. Through his headphones he heard the message, in plain talk this time. “All your family are safe and on the way to join you.”

An hour later the MiG touched down at a military air base in northern Israel.

Mossad had become a serious player on the world stage. Within the Israeli intelligence community the way matters were conducted in the future would be known as “BA”—before Amit—or “AM”—after Meir.

Exiting the highway north of Tel Aviv, Meir Amit continued to maintain his speed at a little above the speed limit. Discreetly bucking the system had continued to be part of his life since, almost forty years before, he had masterminded the theft of an Iraqi jet.