Spies Against Armageddon (55 page)

Endnotes

Chapter 1

Meir Dagan, just before leaving the Mossad in December 2010, invited 30 journalists to the agency’s guest house at Glilot and briefed them on his views. It was intended to be off-the-record, but within hours lengthy reports were in the media. After that, he appeared in several public forums in Israel and made statements that were controversial and disliked by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak. Details of his views also emerged at the Saban Forum of the Brookings Institution in December 2011 in Washington, DC.

On the Shah of Iran’s nuclear ambitions, see Yossi Melman and Meir Javedanfar,
The Nuclear Sphinx of Tehran
(Carroll & Graf, 2007), Chapter 5, “The Grandfather of Iran’s Bomb.”

Mohammed ElBaradei, former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, offers his perspectives in his memoir,
The Age of Deception: Nuclear Diplomacy in Treacherous Times
(Metropolitan Books, 2011).

On various plans hatched by the CIA and Israeli intelligence to stop Iran’s nuclear program, including a plot to supply flawed bomb-design blueprints to Iran, see James Risen,
State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration
(Free Press, 2006).

An article reporting cooperation by Israel and U.S. intelligence in producing and testing the Stuxnet virus appeared in
The New York Times
on January 15, 2011. A virus analyst at the California-based networking security firm Symantec spoke to one of the authors in April 2012 about Stuxnet and its computer-code cousin Duqu.

Commenting on the huge explosion at an Iranian missile base in December 2011, Israel’s deputy prime minister in charge of strategic affairs, a former IDF chief of staff, Moshe (Boogie) Yaalon, claimed that the base was developing a 10,000-kilometer-range missile meant to threaten the United States. He spoke at briefings for journalists and experts in New York in January 2012.

Dagan’s meeting with Nicholas Burns, a U.S. undersecretary of state, in August 2007 was summarized in a State Department cable that was apparently authentic, released by Wikileaks in November 2010. Dagan is quoted as outlining his five-part plan for destabilizing Iran and persuading that country to stop its nuclear weapons program.

Dagan gave his first interview to American television when he spoke to the CBS News program
60 Minutes
, aired on March 11, 2012. He publicly predicted that an Israeli air assault on Iran would prompt Iranians to support their Islamic regime, while on a panel at a Jerusalem Post conference in New York on April 29, 2012.

President Barack Obama and Netanyahu declared their views on Iran’s nuclear program in speeches to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s annual policy conference in Washington on March 4 and 5, 2012, respectively.

Obama said that he was “not bluffing” when interviewed by Jeffrey Goldberg, national correspondent of
The Atlantic
, as reported at TheAtlantic.com on March 2, 2012.

Chapter 2

Moshe Tziper, the son of the allegedly disloyal Avner Israel, spoke with one of the authors in June 2011.

Rafael Eitan, “Mr. Kidnap,” was interviewed in 2011 by one of the authors about the operation to find “a Bulgarian needle in an Italian haystack.”

Amos Manor, former Shin Bet director, spoke of being “ashamed” of Avner Israel’s death, interviewed by one of the authors; see
Ha’aretz
of March 9, 2006, by Yossi Melman.

The final days of the pre-state Shai were described by Hagai Eshed,
One-Man Mossad: Reuven Shiloah, Father of Israeli Intelligence
(in Hebrew by Edanim/Yediot Aharonot, 1988), p. 120.

Isser Harel’s agents did police-type work and opened “thousands of letters,” according to Tom Segev,
1949: The First Israelis
(Domino Press, 1984), pp. 292, 294.

Some of Avri El-Ad’s activities were written about by El-Ad himself in
Decline of Honor
(Regency Books, 1976), pp. 60-2; see also Aviezer Golan,
Operation Susannah
(Harper and Row, 1978).

While El-Ad was secretly sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment, no Israeli official accepted responsibility for ordering the sabotage campaign in Egypt. Israelis called it The Rotten Business, or the Lavon Affair, and all the potential decisionmakers—IDF chief of staff Moshe Dayan, Aman chief Benyamin Gibli, and Defense Minister Pinhas Lavon—denied any knowledge.

The story of Ze’ev Avni was recounted in Moshe Zak,
Israel and the Soviet Union: A Forty-Year Dialogue
(Maariv Book Guild, 1988), pp. 301-2; and by El-Ad,
Decline of Honor
, pp. 282-4.

Chapter 3

The most complete account of ex-Chicago White Sox player Moe Berg’s secret second career is in Nicholas Dawidoff,
The Catcher Was a Spy: The Mysterious Life of Moe Berg
(Vintage, 1995).

Reuven Shiloah’s June 1951 visit to Washington is described by Eshed in
One-Man Mossad
, pp. 164-5.

James J. Angleton’s background, including his suspicious nature, is in David C. Martin,
Wilderness of Mirrors
(Harper and Row, 1980), pp. 10-12.

“Jim saw in Israel a true ally …” Teddy Kollek, who procured arms and then many friendships for Israel in the United States, and later was the long-time mayor of Jerusalem, is quoted in Martin,
Wilderness
, p. 20.

The story of Elyashiv Ben-Horin and his recruitment efforts in Washington is in Dan Raviv and Yossi Melman,
Friends In Deed: Inside the U.S.-Israel Alliance
(Hyperion, 1994), pp. 63-4.

“Russians were infiltrating Israel’s army”: Stephen Green,
Taking Sides: America’s Secret Relations with a Militant Israel
(William Morrow, 1984), p. 19, quoting a memorandum from acting Secretary of State Robert Lovett to Secretary of Defense James Forrestal; also Martin,
Wilderness
, p. 20.

Israel started feeding data about Soviet life, and allowed the CIA to use Israeli intelligence assets: in Martin, p. 21; and Eshed, p. 163.

“Shiloah persuaded the prime minister” to cooperate with the United States on intelligence: in Harel,
Security and Democracy
, pp. 381-2.

Amos Manor’s quotations are from his interview in March 2006 with one of the authors.

Chapter 4

Victor Grayevsky, who had become an Israeli radio journalist and executive, spoke with one of the authors a year before his death at age 82 in 2007. See Yossi Melman, “Trade Secrets,” in
Ha’aretz
, March 10, 2006.

Manor, former head of Shin Bet who forged the intelligence alliance with the United States, spoke with one of the authors in March 2006. Manor died in August 2007 at age 88.

“Israel’s great friend in Washington helped to maintain the smoke screen …” Angleton’s apparent role in 1956 was reported by the British newspaper,
The Guardian
, on May 13, 1987.

Nir Baruch, the Israeli spy in Cuba who helped the CIA, told his story to one of the authors on condition that it not be published until he died. See Yossi Melman in
Ha’aretz
on March 3, 2011, after Baruch passed away at age 88.

“Angleton had one major responsibility,” running the CIA’s connection with Israel in a “compartmented fashion”: ex-CIA director William Colby, quoted in John Ranelagh,
The Agency: The Rise and Decline of the CIA
(Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1986), pp. 560-3.

On King Abdullah and continued clandestine relations between Jordan and Israel, see Yossi Melman and Dan Raviv,
Behind the Uprising
(Greenwood Press, 1989).

On Hosni Zaim of Syria being on Western intelligence payrolls: Avi Shlaim,
Collusion Across the Jordan
(Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 423; Copeland,
Game Player
, pp. 93-101. The Israeli connection was revealed at a Tel Aviv University seminar in April 1989.

“Israeli military advisers trained Kurdish guerrillas”: Future Mossad directors Zvi Zamir and Nahum Admoni both made undercover trips to the Kurds, and Aryeh (Lova) Eliav revealed his activities in his Hebrew book,
Rings of Testimony
(Am Oved, 1984), pp. 156-164.

Ben-Gurion’s secret trip to Turkey and “engine problems that forced an emergency landing”: Samuel Segev,
The Iranian Triangle: The Secret Relations Between Israel-Iran-USA
(Maariv Books, 1981), p. 88.

“…the Mossad trained Turkish secret agents in counterintelligence techniques and the use of technical devices”: Yossi Melman,
The CIA Report on the Intelligence Services of Israel
(Erez, 1982), pp. 59-60, quoting a classified report dated 1976 and found by Iranian militants in the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979.

On Israeli operatives persuading Iran to let the CIA build a listening post, see Meir Doron and Joseph Gelman,
Confidential: The Life of Secret Agent Turned Hollywood Tycoon Arnon Milchan
, (Gefen Books, 2011), pp. 68-70.

Chapter 5

The gathering of French, British, and Israeli leaders around a table in a French mansion in 1956 is based on an interview by one of the authors with Asher Ben-Natan in December 1988; also, on an article by Mordecai Bar-On, then an aide to Moshe Dayan, in
Yediot Aharonot
, October 24, 1986.

Isser Harel “had to take a back seat” on war plans: article in
Ma’ariv
, October 24, 1986, as the 30th anniversary of the Sinai/Suez war approached.

On the nuclear research reactor delivered by the United States at Nahal Sorek, see Green,
Taking Sides
, pp. 149-150.

“Bourgès-Maunoury... signed top secret documents”: Many details from Shimon Peres’s point of view are in Matti Golan,
Peres
(Schocken Books, 1982), p. 54.

After resignations from the atomic energy commission, “… they were pleased that fewer people would now have the privilege of knowing what Israel was doing”: Peter Pringle and James Spiegelman,
The Nuclear Barons: The Inside Story of How They Created our Nuclear Nightmare
(Michael Joseph, 1982), pp. 295-6; and Golan,
Road to Peace
, p. 51.

“He knew how to keep a secret …”: Shimon Peres, who in 2007 would become Israel’s president, gave his assessment of Binyamin Blumberg to one of the authors in April 2005. See Yossi Melman,
Ha’aretz
, April 22, 2005.

“The spy-priest sent a highly critical cable” to Paris after visiting the Negev: Golan,
Road to Peace
, pp. 57-58.

On Blumberg and “what did he have to keep an eye on at the Defense Ministry?”: Baruch Nir was interviewed by one of the authors in June 2005.

“Lakam was established behind my back and without my knowledge”: Harel was quoted in the newspaper
Yediot Aharonot
, May 29, 1987.

Dimona was “not a textile factory, a distillation facility, or a metallurgical laboratory”: See Avner Cohen,
Israel and the Bomb
(Columbia University Press, 1998), p. 85.

America’s defense secretary saying “the plant is not for peaceful purposes” is in Cohen,
ibid
.
, p. 89. A chapter in Cohen’s book, “The Dimona Visits (1964-1967),” is the most thorough account of U.S. government inspection attempts, pp. 175-194.

On David Ben-Gurion’s revelation of an atomic reactor in December 1960, see Amos Perlmutter, Michael Handel, and Uri Bar-Joseph,
Two Minutes Over Baghdad
(Vallentine Mitchell and Co., 1982), p. 26. Also,
The New York Times
, “Ben-Gurion Explains Project” and “Israel Assured U.S. on Reactors,” December 22, 1960.

Avner Cohen wrote about the delicate verbal dance between Ben-Gurion and John F. Kennedy in
Israel and the Bomb
and again in
The Worst-Kept Secret: Israel’s Bargain with the Bomb
(Columbia University Press, 2010); and also in his article in 1995, “Stumbling Into Opacity: The Untold
Ben Gurion-Kennedy Dimona Exchange (1961-1963).”

Ben-Gurion spoke of the need to “build up a deterrent force” several times—for instance, in a meeting with newspaper editors in the summer of 1963, according to Zaki Shalom,
Ben-Gurion’s Political Struggles, 1963-1967: A Lion in Winter
, p. 41.

On Peres’s promise to Kennedy not to “be the first” to introduce nuclear weapons into the region, see “Let the World Worry,” by Yossi Melman in
Ha’aretz
, December 13, 2006.

Details of Israel’s deception efforts aimed at American nuclear inspectors were revealed to the authors in September 1992 by Abba Eban, the former foreign minister who died in 2002.

John Hadden, former CIA station chief in Tel Aviv, reminisced about nuclear secrets, alcohol, and Mrs. Ben-Gurion when interviewed in 1991 by Dan Raviv and Yossi Melman for
Friends In Deed: Inside the U.S.-Israel Alliance
, pp. 121-131.

Retired U.S. government officials revealed to one of the authors, in Washington in 2011, that Yitzhak Rabin—as Israel’s ambassador to the United States—produced a new formula in late 1968 that until there is a nuclear test, Israel will not be considered to possess nuclear weapons. See Avner Cohen,
Israel and the Bomb
, pp. 317-8, who reveals that Rabin’s notion came up in talks with Paul Warnke, a Defense Department official in the outgoing Lyndon Johnson administration. Warnke was trying to persuade Israel to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Israel always refused to do so.

Richard Nixon’s administration, which took office in late January 1969, accepted Israel as an undeclared nuclear power, “if Israel kept its nuclear profile low.” U.S. inspectors’ visits to Dimona stopped. See Cohen,
ibid.
, pp. 323 and 334-7.

Chapter 6

Levi Levi’s confirmation that in Kazakhstan he had contacts with the Soviet NKVD, a predecessor of the KGB, and more information about Levi were in Polish documents—declassified after the fall of the former Communist government—shared with the authors in October 2010 by Leszek Gluchowski, a Polish-Canadian historian.