decision to withdraw forces from the Suez Canal.
Unit 131 recruited idealistic Egyptian Jewish students who wanted to help Israel and hoped to move there one day. They were instructed to use home-made bombs to attack American and British institutions in Egypt. Aman called this Operation Susannah. The young Egyptians were inept and, falling like dominos, they were quickly arrested one after another. Israel did not acknowledge responsibility. Two of the students were hanged, and several were given long prison terms.
Harel, with a keen sense for disloyalty, strongly suspected that the network had been betrayed by Aman’s chief case officer, Avri El-Ad. Harel followed his instincts and determined that El-Ad was hiding out in Germany. The joint Mossad-Shin Bet operations team sprang into action, traveling to El-Ad’s location and luring him back to Israel.
El-Ad refused to admit he had betrayed the Egyptian Jews, and, indeed, there was no evidence of that. So, in an Israeli court that ordered total secrecy, he was convicted of having unauthorized contacts with Egyptian intelligence, and he was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Another important spy caught by Harel was Ze’ev Avni. He arrived from Switzerland during the War of Independence in 1948 and managed to get a job in the foreign ministry with unbelievable ease.
In the mid-1950s Avni was assigned to the Israeli embassy in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. There, he inflicted severe damage to national security by harvesting all the codes used by the foreign ministry and giving them to the KGB.
His employers did not know that Avni was a trained KGB agent, serving his masters in Moscow because of his belief in Communist worldwide fraternity. The Mossad had been ignorant of this, too. In fact, it used Avni occasionally to recruit Yugoslavs and foreigners in Belgrade to do some spying for Israel. Avni then started nudging Mossad chiefs to get him transferred out of the foreign ministry so he could work in espionage full-time.
Harel, constantly surveying personnel rolls with his finely honed counterespionage instincts, found reasons to doubt Avni and his enthusiasm for working overtime.
Clearly, the best way to get Avni to Tel Aviv was to pretend to offer him a job in the Mossad. In April 1956, unaware that he was in trouble, Avni flew home and was arrested by Harel’s and Manor’s Shin Bet. Under interrogation, the committed Communist at first refused to cooperate. Shin Bet had no evidence against him, so it needed a confession.
As a final desperation move, Manor showed the suspect articles about a secret speech by the Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev. Avni did not know that the original text had been obtained, just a few days earlier, by Manor’s own men in Eastern Europe—an intelligence coup that delighted the CIA. (See Chapter 4.) The speech revealed many of the horrors of Josef Stalin’s dictatorship, enough to unsettle all but the most rabid Marxists.
In the end, the Khrushchev speech broke Avni. Shin Bet interrogators could not help but be surprised by Avni’s instant disenchantment with Soviet Communism. He confessed everything about his secret career as a KGB agent and named his handlers—a “debriefing” that the Israelis found most useful. Now, Harel knew how the Russians were trying to plant spies in the Jewish state.
Avni was so cooperative that after being sentenced to 15 years in prison, he was planted in the jail cell of other suspected traitors as an informer for Shin Bet.
Harel clearly was dealing with highly unusual human beings, both friends and foes. Among his intelligence staffers, he did his best to inspire pride in belonging to an exclusive fraternity. “You are rare creatures in a game reserve,” he remarked to his subordinates.
Being all too human, they enjoyed the oddly worded praise. They certainly were not in the espionage game for money. The salaries paid to employees of Shin Bet and the Mossad were in line with those paid to ordinary
Unit 131 recruited idealistic Egyptian Jewish students who wanted to help Israel and hoped to move there one day. They were instructed to use home-made bombs to attack American and British institutions in Egypt. Aman called this Operation Susannah. The young Egyptians were inept and, falling like dominos, they were quickly arrested one after another. Israel did not acknowledge responsibility. Two of the students were hanged, and several were given long prison terms.
Harel, with a keen sense for disloyalty, strongly suspected that the network had been betrayed by Aman’s chief case officer, Avri El-Ad. Harel followed his instincts and determined that El-Ad was hiding out in Germany. The joint Mossad-Shin Bet operations team sprang into action, traveling to El-Ad’s location and luring him back to Israel.
El-Ad refused to admit he had betrayed the Egyptian Jews, and, indeed, there was no evidence of that. So, in an Israeli court that ordered total secrecy, he was convicted of having unauthorized contacts with Egyptian intelligence, and he was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Another important spy caught by Harel was Ze’ev Avni. He arrived from Switzerland during the War of Independence in 1948 and managed to get a job in the foreign ministry with unbelievable ease.
In the mid-1950s Avni was assigned to the Israeli embassy in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. There, he inflicted severe damage to national security by harvesting all the codes used by the foreign ministry and giving them to the KGB.
His employers did not know that Avni was a trained KGB agent, serving his masters in Moscow because of his belief in Communist worldwide fraternity. The Mossad had been ignorant of this, too. In fact, it used Avni occasionally to recruit Yugoslavs and foreigners in Belgrade to do some spying for Israel. Avni then started nudging Mossad chiefs to get him transferred out of the foreign ministry so he could work in espionage full-time.
Harel, constantly surveying personnel rolls with his finely honed counterespionage instincts, found reasons to doubt Avni and his enthusiasm for working overtime.
Clearly, the best way to get Avni to Tel Aviv was to pretend to offer him a job in the Mossad. In April 1956, unaware that he was in trouble, Avni flew home and was arrested by Harel’s and Manor’s Shin Bet. Under interrogation, the committed Communist at first refused to cooperate. Shin Bet had no evidence against him, so it needed a confession.
As a final desperation move, Manor showed the suspect articles about a secret speech by the Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev. Avni did not know that the original text had been obtained, just a few days earlier, by Manor’s own men in Eastern Europe—an intelligence coup that delighted the CIA. (See Chapter 4.) The speech revealed many of the horrors of Josef Stalin’s dictatorship, enough to unsettle all but the most rabid Marxists.
In the end, the Khrushchev speech broke Avni. Shin Bet interrogators could not help but be surprised by Avni’s instant disenchantment with Soviet Communism. He confessed everything about his secret career as a KGB agent and named his handlers—a “debriefing” that the Israelis found most useful. Now, Harel knew how the Russians were trying to plant spies in the Jewish state.
Avni was so cooperative that after being sentenced to 15 years in prison, he was planted in the jail cell of other suspected traitors as an informer for Shin Bet.
Harel clearly was dealing with highly unusual human beings, both friends and foes. Among his intelligence staffers, he did his best to inspire pride in belonging to an exclusive fraternity. “You are rare creatures in a game reserve,” he remarked to his subordinates.
Being all too human, they enjoyed the oddly worded praise. They certainly were not in the espionage game for money. The salaries paid to employees of Shin Bet and the Mossad were in line with those paid to ordinary
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