Gordon Thomas - Gideon's Spies

In Tel Aviv, Meir Amit sat looking out of his office window toward the south, knowing his intelligence analysts had virtually settled the outcome of the war. It was one of the most stunning examples of his extraordinary skills—and even more remarkable given the numerical size of Mossad.

From the time he took over, Meir Amit had resisted attempts to turn Mossad into a version of the CIA or KGB. Those services between them employed hundreds of thousands of analysts, scientists, strategists, and planners to support their field agents. The Iraqis and Iranians had an estimated ten thousand field agents; even the Cuban DGI possessed close to a thousand spies in the field.

But Meir Amit had insisted that Mossad’s permanent total staff would number little more than twelve hundred. Each would be handpicked and have multiple skills: a scientist must be able to work in the field should the need arise; a katsa must be able to use his specialist skills to train others.

To them all he would be the memune, which roughly translates from Hebrew as “first among equals.” With the title came unfettered access to the prime minister of the day and the annual ritual of presenting his budget for the Israeli cabinet to rubber-stamp.

Long before the Six Day War he had established Mossad’s ability to strike mortal terror into Israel’s enemies, penetrating their ranks, vacuuming up their secrets, and killing them with chilling efficiency. He had soon made Mossad mythic in stature.

Much of that success came from the rules he laid down for selecting katsas, the field agents who, ultimately, were at the cutting edge of Mossad’s success. He fully understood the deep and complex motives that allowed them, upon selection, to shake his hand, the gesture that acknowledged they were now his to command as he wished.

While much else had changed in Mossad, Meir Amit knew on that March morning in 1997 that his recruiting criteria had remained intact:

No katsa is accepted into Mossad who is primarily motivated by money. The overly zealous Zionist has no place in this work. It gets in the way of a clear understanding of what the job is all about. It is one that calls for calm, clear, farsighted judgment and a balanced outlook. People want to join Mossad for all kinds of reasons. There is the so-called glamour. Some like the idea of adventure. Some think joining will enhance their status, small people who want to be big. A few want the secret power they believe being in Mossad would give them. None of these are acceptable reasons for joining.

And always, always, you must ensure your man in the field knows he has your total support. That you will look out for his family, make sure his kids are happy. At the same time you must protect him. If his wife starts to wonder if he has another woman reassure her he has not. If he has, don’t tell her. If she goes off the rails, bring her back on the straight and narrow. Don’t tell her husband. You want nothing to distract him. The job of a good spymaster is to treat his people as family. Make them feel he is always there for them, day, night, no matter what the time. This is how you buy loyalty, make your katsa do what you want. And in the end what you want is important.

Each katsa underwent three years of intensive training, including being subjected to severe physical violence under interrogation. He, or she, became proficient in the use of Mossad’s weapon of choice—the .22-caliber Beretta.

The first katsas stationed outside the Arab countries were in the United States, Britain, France, and Germany. In the United States there were permanent katsas in New York and Washington. The New York katsa had special responsibility for penetrating all UN diplomatic missions and the city’s many ethnic groups. The Washington katsa had a similar job, with the additional responsibility of “monitoring” the White House.

Other katsas operated in areas of current tensions, returning home when a mission ended.

Meir Amit had also considerably expanded the organization to include a Collections Department responsible for intelligence-gathering operations abroad and a Political Action and Liaison Department, working with so-called friendly foreign intelligence services, mostly the CIA and Britain’s MI6. The Research Department had fifteen sections or “desks” targeting Arab states. The United States, Canada, Latin America, Britain, Europe, and the Soviet Union all had their separate desks. This infrastructure would, over the years, expand to include China, South Africa, and the Vatican. But essentially Mossad would remain the same small organization.

A day did not pass without the arrival of a fresh sheaf of news stories from overseas stations. These were circulated throughout the drab gray high-rise building on King Saul Boulevard. In Meir Amit’s view, “If it made someone walk a little taller, that was no bad thing. And, of course, it made our enemies that more fearful.”

Mossad’s katsas were coldly efficient and cunning beyond belief—and prepared to fight fire with fire. Operatives incited disturbances designed to create mutual distrust among Arab states, planted black counterpropaganda, and recruited informers, implementing Meir Amit’s philosophy: “Divided, we rule.” In all they did, his men set new standards for cold-blooded professionalism, moving like thieves in the night leaving a trail of death and destruction. No one was safe from their retaliation.

A mission completed they returned to be debriefed in Meir Amit’s corner-window office overlooking the broad thoroughfare named after Israel’s Old Testament warlord. From his office he personally ran two spies whose bravery would remain without equal in the annals of Mossad. Recalling their contributions, his voice became tentative, the occasional smile one of apologetic self-protection, as he began by recounting biographical details.

Eli Cohen was born in Alexandria, Egypt, on December 16, 1924. Like his parents, he was a devout Orthodox Jew. In December 1956 he was among Jews expelled from Egypt after the Suez crisis. He arrived in Haifa and felt himself a stranger in his new land. In 1957 he was recruited into Israeli military counterintelligence, but his work as an analyst bored him. He began to inquire how he could join Mossad, but was rejected. Meir Amit recalled, “We heard that our rejection had deeply offended Eli Cohen. He resigned from the army and married an Iraqi woman named Nadia.”

For two years Cohen led an uneventful life as a filing clerk in a Tel Aviv insurance office. Unknown to him, his background had surfaced in a trawl through Mossad’s “reject files” by Meir Amit, who was looking for a “certain kind of agent for a very special job.” Finding no one suitable in the “active” files, he had gone to the “rejects.” Cohen seemed the only possibility. He was put under surveillance. The weekly reports by Mossad’s recruiting office described his fastidious habits and devotion to his wife and young family. He was hardworking, quick on the uptake, and worked well under pressure. Finally he was told that Mossad had decided he was “suitable” after all.

Eli began an intensive six-month course at the Mossad training school. Sabotage experts taught him how to make explosives and time bombs from the simplest of ingredients. He learned unarmed combat and became a first-class marksman and an accomplished burglar. He discovered the mysteries of encoding and decoding, how to work a radio set, use invisible inks, and hide messages. He constantly impressed his instructors with his skills. His phenomenal memory came from memorizing tracts of the Torah as a young man. His graduate report stated he had every quality needed by a katsa . Still Meir Amit hesitated.