ISRAEL

Other Operations

Included here:

1. Khrushchev's Speech

2. Attack on Iraq's Nuclear Facilty (1981)

3. Operation Moses

4. Miscellaneous

1. Khrushchev's Speech

Melman, Yossi, and Dan Raviv. "The Journalist's Connections: How Israel Got Russia's Biggest Pre-Glasnost Secret." International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence 4, no. 2 (Summer 1990): 219-225.

Shin Bet -- not Mossad -- got Khrushchev's speech. Question: How definitive?

2. Attack on Iraq's Nuclear Facilty (1981)

Claire, Rodger W. Raid on the Sun: Inside Israel’s Secret Campaign that Denied Saddam the Bomb. New York: Random House, 2004.

Rosales, Air & Space Power Journal 19.2 (Summer 2005), finds that the author describes Israel's attack on Saddam Hussein's Osirak nuclear facility in 1981 "with remarkable clarity and accuracy. Granted access by the Israeli government to formerly classified documents and voluntary contact with all eight pilots, the mission coordinator, and cockpit film of the attack[,] Rodger Claire captures details previously unknown to the rest of the world. His style combines historical fact with clandestine thrill and the suspense of cloak and dagger, making the reader privy to every perilous decision made by the Israeli leadership."

For Peake, Studies 50.2 (2006), the author "fills in the details of Operation Babylon in an easy-reading style, though his grasp of administrative and technical detail sometimes falters." The book is strongest when "Claire describes the pilot selection process, the technical problems involved in the attack ... and the step-by-step execution of the mission itself."

3. Operation Moses

Livingstone, Neil C., and David Halevy. "Miracle in the Desert: The CIA's Role in the Rescue of the Black Jews of Ethiopia." Intelligencer 20, no 2 (Fall-Winter 2013): 33-42.

A nicely told story (no sources) of a covert humanitarian operation in March 1985, conducted as a favor to Israel (plus the exfiltration of four Mossad personnel a week later).

Shimron, Gad. Mossad Exodus: The Daring Undercover Rescue of the Lost Jewish Tribe. Jerusalem: Gefen Publishing House, 2007.

According to Peake, Studies 54.4 (Dec. 2010), and Intelligencer 18.2 (Winter-Spring 2011), the author tells the "exciting story" of Operation Moses, the covert exfiltration of the Falasha who had fled from Ethiopia to Sudan. At one point, the CIA helped arrange secret flights for Mossad's operation. Shimron participated in the operation from 1981 to 1985, and he "describes field expedient tradecraft conducted by a few officers working under difficult nonofficial cover conditions. It is told with a sense of humor and is a tribute to all involved."

4. Miscellaneous

Alexander, Yonah, Yuval Ne'Eman, and Ely Tavin, eds. Future Terrorism Trends. Washington, DC: Global Affairs, 1991.

Surveillant 2.1 notes that this work includes a chapter on, "'The Role of Intelligence in Combating Terrorism: The Israeli Experience,' by General Yehoshua Saguy, former chief of intelligence, Israeli Defense Forces, currently a member of the Knesset."

Bar-Zohar, Michael, and Haber Eitan. The Quest for the Red Prince. New York: Morrow, 1983.

Markham, NYT, 10 Jul. 1983, wonders why the authors "have omitted the best part of their tale," that is, as head of Fatah's "security outfit," Ali Hassan Salameh was Arafat's "contact with the United States Embassy in Beirut and the Central Intelligence Agency.... [T]he book contains little that has not been published elsewhere, and it leans heavily on a seven-year-old British book, "The Hit Team" by David B. Tinnin with Dag Christensen, for its cloak-and-dagger material."

Dan, Uri, and Yeshayahu Ben-Porat. The Secret War: The Spy Game in the Middle East. New York: Sabra, 1970.

Constantinides identifies this as an account of a number of Israeli, Egyptian, and Soviet espionage cases involving Israel. The Israel Beer and Wolfgang Lotz cases receive the greatest attention. Dan and Ben-Porat present their material "without indicating sources, except infrequently in the text.... There are a number of errors in their treatment of other intelligence services and their roles." See Wolfgang Lotz, The Champagne Spy: Israel's Master Spy Tells His Story (New York: St. Martin's, 1972).

Goldman, Adam, and Ellen Nakashima. "CIA and Mossad Killed Senior Hezbollah Figure in Car Bombing." Washington Post, 30 Jan. 2015. [http://www.washingtonpost.com]

"[F]ive former U.S. intelligence officials" have confirmed "U.S. involvement in the killing" of "Imad Mughniyah, Hezbollah's international operations chief," in Damascus on 12 February 2008. "The United States helped build the bomb," a CIA team tracked Mughniyah's movements, and Mossad agents triggered the device remotely from Tel Aviv. "The authority to kill Mughniyah required a presidential finding by President George W. Bush.... In the leadup to the operation, U.S. intelligence officials had assured lawmakers in a classified briefing that there would be no collateral damage, former officials said."

Jones, Clive. "'A Reach Greater than the Grasp': Israeli Intelligence and the Conflict in South Lebanon, 1990-2000." Intelligence and National Security 16, no. 3 (Autumn 2001): 1-26.

Israel's overall intelligence effort in South Lebanon was "conceptually flawed. The inability to regard Hizb'allah as anything more than terrorists, or to look beyond the more extreme rhetoric at their emergence into the mainstream of Lebanese politics produced erroneous intelligence assessments."

Lotz, Wolfgang.

1. The Champagne Spy: Israel's Master Spy Tells His Story. New York: St. Martin's, 1972. New York: Manor, 1973. [pb]

Surveillant 3.2/3 identifies Lotz as an "Israeli soldier who spied in Egypt from 1960 to 1965 while posing as a ... German." Constantinides notes that disagreement exists over aspects of Lodz' account, but concludes that this is "nevertheless a rare work -- the story of a post-World War II non-Soviet illegal operation written by the illegal himself." Lotz' Handbook for Spies offers further insight into Lodz the man and Lodz the spy.

2. A Handbook for Spies. New York: Harper & Row, 1980.

Surveillant 3.2/3 describes A Handbook for Spies as "something of a do-it-youself manual for testing your suitability to be a spy." To Constantinides, the book "not only reflects [the author's] experiences and his outlook stemming from his work in Egypt but reveals much about Lodz himself.... Some of his observations on the agent and espionage are universally pertinent, while others seem to fit his particular experiences and circumstances."

Schack, Howard H., with H. Paul Jeffers. A Spy in Canaan: My Life as a Jewish-American Businessman Spying for Israel in Arab Lands. New York: Birch Lane Press, 1993.

Surveillant 3.2/3 says that the author worked for Mossad from mid-1970s to late 1980s.

Schleiffer, Ron. "Psychological Operations: A New Variation of an Age Old Art: Hezbollah versus Israel." Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 29 (2006): 1-19.

Schleiffer, Ron. Psychological Warfare in the Intifada: Israeli and Palestinian Media Politics and Military Strategies. Portland, OR: Sussex Academic Press, 2006.

For Gordon, DIJ 16.2 (2007), this work "provides valuable insights into the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians." It "is especially strong in its discussion of media policy in the furtherance of strategy.... Israeli fear and distrust of propaganda resulted in an information mechanism [that] was inadequate to deal with the challenge presented by the Intifada. Palestinians on the other hand ... understood the power of propaganda and did not hesitate to employ it in their struggle."

Perry, NWCR 61.2 (Spring 2008), believes that this work "offers a unique, though logically flawed, perspective of the first intifada, which he describes as 'political warfare.'" The author "analyzes the successful Palestinian tactics and compares them to the unsuccessful Israeli response through the components of 'psychological operations' (PSYOP) as presented in the U.S. Army Manual of Psychological Warfare.... [T]his work is ultimately unsatisfying, because its organization and thesis have logical flaws."

Silman-Cheong, Helen. Wellesley Aron: A Rebel With a Cause -- A Memoir. London: Frank Cass, 1991.

Surveillant 2.2 identifies this as the biography of a "Jewish Palestinian who worked clandestinely for the Hagannah in the US during Israel's War of Independence."

Sumaida, Hussein Ali, with Carole Jerome. Circle of Fear: From the Mossad to Iraq's Secret Service. Toronto: Stoddart, 1991. London: Robert Hale, 1992. Circle of Fear: My Life as an Israeli and Iraqi Spy. Washington, DC: Brassey's, 1994.

According to RJB, Surveillant 1.6/2.6, the author, whose father was a high-ranking official and an intimate of Saddam Hussein, claims to have worked with Mossad in Europe and later with the Iraqis. "Despite an occasional tendency toward glib generalization, this would seem to be a powerful and informative book; its many plausible, but unsupported, assertions should be carefully evaluated."

Ashton, I&NS 9.4, sees Sumaida as "more concerned to vindicate his own actions than to dwell in any detail on intelligence structures and methods.... [Some] sections seem to have been sensationalized ... [and] his evidence is little more than hearsay." It would be "difficult to show" that his "claims could be relied on." For Karl, WIR 15.2, "there is something not quite right in th[is] story." There is no way "to confirm or verify [Sumaida's] stories regarding his frequent encounters with the Mukhabarat, the CIA, or Canadian intelligence officials." There is also some "questions about who actually wrote this book, and when and why it was written."

Szulc, Tad. The Secret Alliance: The Extraordinary Story of the Rescue of the Jews Since World War II. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1991.

According to Surveillant 2.2, the "Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society ... created secret intelligence networks, funded by Mossad, to organize illegal immigration... -- essentially a massive and complex covert operation." Glick, WPNWE, 30 Dec. 1991-5 Jan. 1992, praises Szulc for recording the exploits of the participants in the "secret alliance" with an "unadorned precision."

Return to Israel Table of Contents