The Volunteer (14 page)

I mention the STU not just because it's an interesting piece of technology, but because it exemplifies the way the Mossad and the CIA work together. The equipment, which belongs to the CIA, is kept at Mossad HQ in a locked, soundproof room, specially constructed by our science and technology division. The phone itself is sealed by the CIA with special holographic stickers to prevent our opening it. This odd arrangement serves as a metaphor for the relationship between the two intelligence services: intimate and co-operative—to a point. The CIA, having been penetrated by Soviet moles, has some serious trust issues when it comes to outsiders.

The other main liaison channel was through our station in Washington. Our officers would meet with their CIA counterparts at Langley, Virginia, and perform the same function as the CIA station representatives did in Tel Aviv. Maintaining an office in Washington was important, as it allowed us to have a presence close to America's primary power circles. But it also caused a turf war with the Mossad's Tel Aviv station, since both offices wanted the relationship with the Americans managed on their end. The winner of such battles was often decided, indirectly, by the Americans. If the CIA's Tel Aviv chief of station was a powerful appointee, as Stan Moskowitz was under Bill Clinton, then our Washington office pulled the short straw.

Aside from Uri (our volcanic department head), his deputy, Guy, and Lucinda, an English girl who had served eleven years in Caesarea before joining Tevel, there were three other members of our department. We all shared Uri's secretary, and we had access to a departmental translator for translating documents from Hebrew into English. That was the extent of our manpower, which explained why our department was by far the hardest working in the division.

Uri was your classic powder-keg type personality. Every issue was handled as if it were a major crisis. He had never served on the operational side of the fence but had instead risen through the ranks in the liaison division. He had previously done a stint in Washington as number two of a three-person Mossad station and had a good feel for the Americans. His favorite expression was “This is a carnival of insanity !” which was so weird that it always made me laugh.

He had his critics within the department, but Uri was highly intelligent, and led by example as one of the most diligent individuals I'd ever met. He also was forced to work under immense pressures. Both the Mossad director general and the division head had him at their beck and call whenever they needed information the United States might find valuable. Because of the enormous importance of the CIA-Mossad relationship to U.S-Israel relations in general, he was even faced with urgent requests passed down directly from the prime minister's office. Finally, he also had to contend with Stan Moskowitz, a self-important Beltway climber who drove around Tel Aviv in the back seat of a white Mercedes sedan. There was no love lost between the two men. And the mere mention of Moskowitz's name usually was followed by some malediction uttered by Uri.

Moskowitz was a Jew from the Bronx. But odd though it may seem, Israelis do not cheer when a Jewish person is appointed to a top job like chief of station Tel Aviv. There's always a feeling that the Jewish appointee might need to overcompensate to dispel any doubts about his or her loyalty to the United States. We'd seen it many times: being a badass to the Israelis was presented as evidence of being a fair broker.

The number two at the CIA station was a very personable and hardworking case officer named Mike who did all the real administration tasks. I liked Mike, an athletic, fifty-something former marine officer who'd become a successful case officer in Africa (and elsewhere) in the Agency's clandestine service. He looked about thirty-five years old, and I often told him that his portrait was aging in someone's attic. The moment I met him at Mossad HQ in 1996, I could tell he was from the operational side of the fence, and he knew the same of me. We both regarded our respective HQs' bureaucracy and power plays with the eyeball-rolling disdain that all field men share.

There was also Pete, an old boy from Oklahoma who had served with the CIA during the Vietnam era. He was full of down-home sayings like “It's colder than a well digger's ass.” When he got together with Roscoe, the station's admin officer, they sounded like characters from a
Hee Haw
sketch.

When I started off at Tevel, I was sharing an office with Guy. But soon after I started, he moved upstairs a floor to take over the nuclear weapons branch of the counter-proliferation department, and was replaced in the North America department by Danny, a newly minted twenty-something graduate of the Mossad's case officer course. He'd come to Israel from the United States with his family in the mid-1980s, and had also spent some of his adult years in east Asia.

Every year on the Fourth of July, our CIA colleagues would invite members of Tevel's North America department to the U.S. ambassador's party at his seaside residence on the sandy cliffs of Herzliya, north of Tel Aviv. In keeping with the crudest anti-American stereotypes, the ambassador's staff would set up food stands sponsored by such worldwide culinary legends as Burger King, McDonald's and Dunkin' Donuts. Danny and I loved the stuff. One year, he and I brought garbage bags and filled them up with this valuable loot. The Marine guards laughed at us, but when I got home I was a hero with my kids, for whom the Fourth of July was synonymous with an all-you-can-eat feast of Whoppers and chocolate donuts. (They normally ate a healthy Mediterranean diet, so we didn't mind indulging them once a year.)

A few months after I joined the team, Uri decided I would also take on liaison duties with the newly opened FBI station in Tel Aviv (which was formally described as the office of the FBI's legal attaché, or “Legat” for short). Legat was manned by two FBI agents named Paul and Wayne. Like an inordinate number of FBI agents, Paul was a Mormon, and hailed from sin-filled Las Vegas. He was tall, distant, and patrician. His wife suffered from health problems, but she was a lovely and engaging woman who had mothered half a dozen sons. This was to be Paul's last posting before retirement.

His deputy, Wayne, was a Jew from Chicago, a Ph.D. who considered himself an expert on Persian and Arabic culture. He was short, bespectacled, and somewhat timid—what Yiddish-speakers would call a
nebbish
. Neither he nor Paul gave me any reason to doubt their professional competence, but in an organization like the FBI individual skills don't count for much: both men had been ground down by their agency's bureaucratic bungling and petty turf wars.

This
Odd Couple
pair were often undermined by their own HQ, which seemed to take a sadistic pleasure in keeping foreign FBI offices in the dark on key files. In many cases, key information about FBI activities in Israel would come to me through my colleagues in Washington before it would come to Wayne and Paul. Wayne, in particular, was humiliated by this treatment, and vented his anger to me with extraordinary candor. One time, he called me in such a froth that Paul had to physically wrestle the phone away from him. I felt bad for both of them. Whatever petty slights I'd endured in the Mossad, it was nothing compared to what these men had to go through. Even more bizarre was the fact that FBI HQ sometimes failed to communicate at all with its Legats and field offices. Often the Mossad officer in Washington would meet with his FBI counterpart and receive updates and memos about joint operations, meetings, and visits to take place in Israel and Washington as part of the bilateral relationship between the services. After such a meeting, he would cable me a report detailing the various topics discussed. But the FBI never bothered to tell their own Legats anything, which meant it would fall to me to update them about things they should have heard through their own FBI channels—including basic information like what their HQ was planning and who would be visiting from stateside. On more than one occasion, I found myself playing amateur psychologist to Legat staff members who would complain bitterly about this state of affairs.

If anything, I thought I was being given
too much
authority. In particular, I argued with Uri that the relationship with the FBI really belonged to the Israel Security Agency, our domestic security service. The ISA had been lobbying hard to have a direct relationship with the FBI independent of the Mossad, and I was sympathetic. Although the Mossad is supposed to handle all liaison with foreign intelligence services, the FBI is essentially a glorified law enforcement agency. At the time, moreover, there already was an ISA officer in Washington who was part of the Mossad's D.C. station. And by all accounts, he was managing the liaison relationship between his shop and the FBI quite well.

I also pointed out that the Mossad is a foreign intelligence service that on occasion operates in breach of other nations' sovereignty. The strait-laced Joe Friday types at the FBI were paranoid that the Mossad was trying to spy on the U.S., and putting the two agencies in liaison contact was not exactly a match made in heaven.

Eventually, my view prevailed; the FBI file did pass over to the ISA. The only caveat was that the ISA update the Mossad on their joint goings-on. It was a fair and logical arrangement, a triumph of common sense over bureaucratic inertia and turf squabbles.

Before that happened however, the Mossad and the FBI had one last hurrah together, an operation centerd around a Hezbollah agent operating in the U.S.

His code name: “Ramez.”

I didn't like the play. But I saw it under unfavorable circumstances—the curtains were up.

GROUCHO MARX

I
t was surreal to watch Ken Williams on CNN as he bounded up the Capitol Building steps on his way to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee. This was May of 2002, and the last time I had seen him was in person during a scorching hot Jerusalem day in 1998. The devout Catholic FBI agent from the Phoenix field office was kissing the “Stone of Unction”—a slab of very old looking and polished veiny rock where Jesus' body lay after his crucifixion in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. I had taken him there after a round of meetings and after visiting the sites of previous suicide bombings where U.S. citizens had been killed. I'd learned that these side trips were a pleasant, almost necessary distraction from being in a place that had very recently been the site of much death and carnage.

I wasn't surprised Ken had, in some way, seen the precursors to 9/11 while the rest of the intelligence community was either preoccupied or asleep at the wheel. His mere presence before the Committee must have been very embarrassing for the FBI mandarins as they nervously hid under their desks in their D.C. headquarters (also known as the bureau's “black hole”). Ken wrote a memo in July 2001 warning that al-Qaeda operatives taking flight lessons in Arizona could be part of a broader scheme, based on his theory that al-Qaeda terrorists could infiltrate the airways as pilots or ground staff.

He wrote:

“Phoenix believes that the FBI should accumulate a listing of civil aviation universities/colleges around the country. FBI field offices with these types of schools in their area should establish appropriate liaison. FBI HQ should discuss this matter with other elements of the U.S. intelligence community and task the community for any information that supports Phoenix's suspicions.”

That's an incredible recommendation, and a damning indictment of how FBI HQ didn't take its field offices seriously. Every field agent I have known or worked with always complained about the disconnect between HQ and its operatives in the field. It's an axiom that is true of every intelligence service, but in this particular instance, it was nothing short of catastrophic.

To say Ken Williams is a dynamo is an understatement. I met him in the fall of 1996 when he came over on a trip to co-ordinate a joint operation with the Israel Security Agency (also known as Shin-Bet), Israel's domestic security-intelligence service. Ken and his soft-spoken Mormon partner, Jim, were running a source in the U.S., known by his cryptonym of “Galaxy-Quest.” The idea was to infiltrate this source into Gaza as a means to gather intelligence on Hamas and their fund-raising infrastructure in the U.S. Stopping the money flow was a big part of the ISA's strategy in combating Hamas terrorism. As it turned out, a lot of the money being canvassed across the U.S. was finding its way into the operational coffers of Hamas' Izz-al-Din al-Qassam terrorist cells. Ken and Jim made numerous visits to co-ordinate the joint operation and engage in an intelligence exchange on Islamist terror groups, and I was tasked to work with them and the local FBI station, or Legat.

Ken was tallish, fair and bespectacled with neat short hair. He looked very wholesome in that way that many police officers do (as it turned out, he spent some time in the San Diego PD before joining the Bureau). He had a quick smile and was extremely courteous and deferential. It was difficult to remain unaffected by his almost boyish enthusiasm and his even-temperedness, which made it seem almost physically impossible for him to blow his cool. He was a real pro with an encyclopaedic mind and knew his Islamic terrorism inside and out. I liked him, but the Hamas section of the Mossad's counterterrorism section absolutely adored him. I put him together with Gordo, the Hamas section's head, and they got along so well that I casually remarked, “You two should get a room.” They poured over files on every Hamas terrorist operating in the disputed territories and the U.S. Gordo was in some ways Ken's opposite. He was portly and something of a bon vivant. He and his buddies often organized restaurant crawls in Rome over the weekends. They'd hop a three-hour flight to Italy, check into a hotel, eat themselves through the city, and be back at their desks by the beginning of the week. Gordo was a brilliant intelligence officer and was juggling his Mossad duties while getting an advanced degree (many of us did our university studies while working in HQ).

As the Mossad's liaison officer mandated coordinating all terrorism-related intelligence exchanges between the Israeli intelligence community and their U.S. counterparts, I had to facilitate joint operations between the FBI and ISA. This didn't go over very well with the ISA and they probably thought that they didn't need supervision from some Mossad staffer. My role in these ISA-FBI exchanges was really one of go-between, and I had better things to do than hand-hold some surly ISA officers and baby-sit their FBI brothers-in-arms, but until the rules were changed, I had to be involved.

It was around this time that the ISA was granted authorization to send one of their officers—the first of his kind—to Washington as part of the Mossad station housed in the Israeli embassy. Mossad's move was seen as dangerous, and an incursion on our turf overseas, but the ISA's chief, Ami Ayalon, had lobbied the Prime Minister hard and the Mossad acquiesced. The ISA was lobbying to take over the terrorism mandate in its entirety within the intelligence community, and this was seen as a maneuver to gain more control. Even though we had our internal squabbles from time to time, we always shared intelligence with each other, unlike our American counterparts.

The officer dispatched was named Udi. He was a perfect choice for the job. Tenacious as a bulldog, and in some ways resembling one, Udi was chosen for his doggedness by his masters in ISA HQ. While the new rotation of Mossad officers were decamping in D.C., looking for cars and getting their kids into school, Udi passed the non-work related reins to his wife and promptly showed up at FBI HQ a day after arriving in the beltway. I liked Udi and took part in some of his preparation for an overseas posting. He was no fan of the Mossad however, and worked vigorously to make sure that the FBI knew that he was a kindred spirit. He had served previously in a counter-intelligence role in the ISA and I think he instinctively loathed “spies” of the sort the Mossad deployed, seeing as in his eyes we were poachers and he was a former gamekeeper. He worked hard and it was due to his efforts (and my bitching to him) that the ISA eventually took over the liaison relationship with the FBI—except on matters that fell under our mandate, such as Iranian intelligence, al-Qaeda and Hezbollah.

One day in 1997, Udi sent me a cable stating that Ken and his partner Jim were soon to be arriving in Israel from the Phoenix field office with their source, “Galaxy-Quest.” “Galaxy-Quest” was an older man of dubious Islamic credentials who had ingratiated himself with Hamas fundraisers in the U.S. He had arranged, through the gentle handling of Ken and Jim, to visit Gaza and meet with members of both the Palestinian Authority and Hamas regarding fundraising. I then contacted the FBI Legat and let Paul and Wayne know that their HQ was dispatching two of their officers and a source for a joint operation with the ISA. At these moments, Wayne justifiably went ballistic at the news. He frothed and fumed at his HQ's duplicity and to be honest, I think he was embarrassed that he was finding out about his HQ's intentions from someone in the Mossad sitting in Tel Aviv. I knew before the Legat because when Udi left his meetings with the FBI brass, he cabled me right away with the details of the operation. The FBI “black hole” seldom took the time to update their Legats and field offices, and it was a sorry testament to their way of doing things.

I set up the meetings with Ken and Jim and their ISA co-handlers, as well as the two from the Legat. I even managed to get Gordo involved, seeing as he was dealing with Hamas in our counter-terrorism department. The ISA didn't mind, seeing that Gordo was popular and knew a lot about Hamas' overseas networks. I also knew that Ken would have been disappointed not to have the chance to share notes with Gordo.

I set up a pre-meeting without “Galaxy-Quest” at a local restaurant in Herzliya, located just north of Tel Aviv. The Mossad picked up the tab because our mandate to liaise between the Mossad and foreign intelligence services came with the appropriate expenditures. To my chagrin, when ordering our meals, the ISA officers would always tell the FBI to order the most expensive items because “it was on the Mossad.” For my part, I wanted the pre-meeting because I needed to explain to all the parties concerned that I had no intention of meeting “Galaxy-Quest,” to avoid compromising my security and having him be able to identify me as a Mossad officer. I was a former combatant, and these were things we had to worry about. It was something that I couldn't always explain - not even to the ISA. They thought me paranoid and we all agreed that the handlers and Gordo would meet and prepare “Galaxy-Quest” for his descent into Gaza without me. I would receive updates as the mission progressed.

After dinner, Gordo took me aside and said, “This isn't the first jointop between these two outfits. Be careful not to get overly associated with it.” His words sounded ominous. What did he mean?

“Well, last year before you joined our little party, the FBI and ISA ran a Lebanese source in Detroit called ‘Wishing-Well' with their local field office. He was the FBI's man and, oh boy, what a fucking train wreck he turned out to be.” I pressed him further.

“This guy freaked out and tried to kill himself once he figured out he was supposed to spy on Hezbollah activity near where he lived. He grew more and more paranoid and mentally unstable as time progressed until we had to cut him loose because we were sure he'd go postal.”

“Where is he now?” I asked.

“Lost, dead, in an asylum . . . who knows?” Gordo said. The subject of a source's fate, after he has been of use to us, is not something intelligence officers care to discuss.

After establishing communications and procedures protocols with his FBI and ISA handlers, “Galaxy-Quest” was deployed into Gaza. Ken and Jim returned to Phoenix and I asked to receive updates of his progress.

A few weeks later, Gordo came into my office holding a stack of papers and handed them to me. He looked like he was trying to suppress his laughter. The report was a summary of “Galaxy-Quest's” activities in the field. He started off fine, doing his best to ingratiate himself with Arafat's crowd and meet with Hamas leaders, but it was becoming apparent that he was starting to get bored with life in Gaza. I couldn't blame him - he had been living comfortably in Arizona and was now thrust into one of the world's grimmest places. “Galaxy-Quest” was not only chasing after the local women, he had managed to become acquainted with a female Chinese diplomat who the ISA revealed was an operative with Chinese intelligence. The rather observant Muslim residents of Gaza do not take kindly to overtures—no matter how seemingly inoffensive—from American males towards the female population. Not only was he getting into mischief, he had a number of male family members looking for him presumably determined to shoot, stab, hang or perform all three actions at once on his person. He never reported his shenanigans, but we found out about his behavior through other source reports and by listening to his cell phone conversations (sources are never sent into the field without some form of oversight that they are not privy to). “Galaxy-Quest” was told to leave immediately, but he insisted on staying two more weeks, directly disobeying his handler's instructions. Needless to say, Ken was on the next flight out to sort his asset out. Later, it emerged that “Galaxy-Quest” was also drinking Muslim-forbidden alcohol that he had secreted on his person and smuggled with him into Gaza. I began to wonder who was really more suicidal, Wishing-Well or “Galaxy-Quest.” Of course, “Galaxy-Quest” was quite unaware of the fact that he had an obvious deathwish. I said as much to Gordo and he only laughed.

“Galaxy-Quest” was finally exfiltrated safely and found himself on the next plane home to Phoenix, or perhaps the nearest Betty Ford clinic. The next time Ken and I met at a dun-coloured and sandy seaside hotel north of Tel Aviv, I could see that he was embarrassed.

“I think he was there a little longer than we actually needed to send him,” Ken said, and I agreed. I secretly questioned the wisdom of anyone going to Gaza for more than a week or two.

I asked if “Galaxy-Quest” had told the Chinese intelligence agent anything about his real identity and purpose, and Ken said that he needed to talk with him back in Phoenix and get the whole story. I was sure that “Galaxy-Quest” had slept with her and told her something but I didn't press the matter.

The next time I saw Ken was on television. I know that he never sought the limelight nor tried to place blame on anyone at the FBI for ignoring his now prophetic memo, but he came the closest to anyone I ever met who could have potentially prevented the fateful attacks of that clear September morning. I heard that Ken went right back into the field after his testimony and continued to work unabated at his usual breakneck pace. I can honestly say that he was one of the finest Americans I ever had the pleasure of working with. The President should make him the FBI's next Director.

While “Galaxy-Quest” and his suicidal predecessor were the source of much humor and U.S.-directed schadenfreude at the hands of the ISA, as luck would have it, the last joint-operation with the ISA and FBI turned out to be just as big—if not bigger—an embarrassment for the ISA.