Victor Ostrovsky and Claire Hoy, By Way of Deception St Martin's Press, New York 1990.

{p. 130} Sympathy for the Tamils runs high in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, where 40 million Tamils live. Many Sri Lankan Tamils, escaping the bloodshed, have sought refuge there, and the Sri Lankan government has accused Indian officials of arming and training the Tamils. They should be accusing the Mossad.

The Tamils were training at the commando naval base, learning penetration techniques, mining landings, communications, and how to sabotage ships similar to the Devora. There were about 28 men in each group, so it was decided that Yosy should take the Tamils to Haifa that night while I took the Sinhalese to Tel Aviv, thus avoiding any chance encounters.

The real problem started about two weeks into the courses, when both the Tamils and Sinhalese - unknown to each other, of course - were training at Kfar Sirkin. It is a fairly large base, but even so, on one occasion the two groups passed within a few yards of each other while they were out jogging. After their basic training routine at Kfar Sirkin, the Sinhalese were taken to the naval base to be taught essentially how to deal with all the techniques the Israelis had just taught the Tamils. It was pretty hectic. We had to dream up punishments or night training exercises just to keep them busy, so that both groups wouldn't be in Tel Aviv at the same time. The actions of this one man (Amy) could have jeopardized the political situation in Israel if these groups had met. I'm sure Peres wouldn't have slept at night if he'd known this was going on. But, of course, he didn't know.

When the three weeks were just about up and the Sinhalese were preparing to go to Atlit, the top-secret naval commando base, Amy told me he wouldn't be going with them. The Sayret Matcal would take over their training. This was the top intelligence reconnaissance group, the one that carried out the famous Entebbe raid. (The naval commandos are the equivalent of the American Seals.)

"Look, we have a problem," said Amy. "We have a group of 27 SWAT team guys from India coming in."

{p. 131} "My God," I said "What is this? We've got Sinhalese, Tamils, and now Indians. Who's next?" ...

{p. 222} And just to show how nondiscriminatory the Mossad is, it trained both sides in the bloody ongoing civil unrest in Sri Lanka: the Tamils and the Sinhalese, as well as the Indians who were sent in to restore order.

Victor Ostrovsky, The Other Side of Deception HarperCollinsPublishers New York 1994.

{p. 196} But since we were not yet ready to set up the Israeli spy ring for the Jordanians as I'd promised, I couldn't put Ephraim off much longer. He felt that there was a need to inoculate Egyptian intelligence against the Mossad. That had to be done before some incident occurred that would expose the Mossad's assistance (mainly logistical) to the Muslim fundamentalists through contacts in Afghanistan.

The peace with Egypt was pressing hard on the Israeli right wing. In itself, the peace, so vigilantly kept by the Egyptians, was living proof that the Arabs are a people with whom peace is possible, and that they're not at all what the Mossad and other elements of the right have portrayed them to be. Egypt has kept its peace with Israel, even though Israel became the aggressor in Lebanon in 1982 and despite

{p. 197} the Mossad's warnings that the Egyptians were in fact in the middle of a ten-year military buildup that would bring about a war with Israel in 1986-87 (a war that never materialized).

The Mossad realized that it had to come up with a new threat to the region, a threat of such magnitude that it would justify whatever action the Mossad might see fit to take.

The right-wing elements in the Mossad (and in the whole country, for that matter) had what they regarded as a sound philosophy: They believed (correctly, as it happened) that Israel was the strongest military presence in the Middle East. In fact, they believed that the military might of what had become known as "fortress Israel" was greater than that of all of the Arab armies combined, and was responsible for whatever security Israel possessed. The right wing believed then - and they still believe - that this strength arises from the need to answer the constant threat of war.

The corollary belief was that peace overtures would inevitably start a process of corrosion that would weaken the military and eventually bring about the demise of the state of Israel, since, the philosophy goes, its Arab neighbors are untrustworthy, and no treaty signed by them is worth the paper it's written on.

Supporting the radical elements of Muslim fundamentalism sat well with the Mossad's general plan for the region. An Arab world run by fundamentalists would not be a party to any negotiations with the West, thus leaving Israel again as the only democratic, rational country in the region. And if the Mossad could arrange for the Hamas (Palestinian fundamentalists) to take over the Palestinian streets from the PLO, then the picture would be complete.

{p. 247} The Mossad regarded Saddam Hussein as their biggest asset in the area, since he was totally irrational as far as international politics was concerned, and was therefore all the more likely to make a stupid move that the Mossad could take advantage of.

What the Mossad really feared was that Iraq's gigantic army, which had survived the Iran-Iraq war and was being supplied by the West and financed by Saudi Arabia, would fall into the hands of a leader who might be more palatable to the West and still be a threat to Israel.

The first step was taken in November 1988, when the Mossad told the Israeli foreign office to stop all talks with the Iraqis regarding a peace front. At that time, secret negotiations were taking place between Israelis, Jordanians, and Iraqis under the auspices of the Egyptians and with the blessings of the French and the Americans. The Mossad manipulated it so that Iraq looked as if it were the only country unwilling to talk, thereby convincing the Americans that Iraq had a different agenda.

By January 1989, the Mossad LAP machine was busy portraying Saddam as a tyrant and a danger to the world. The Mossad activated every asset it had, in every place possible, from volunteer agents in Amnesty International to fully bought members of the U.S. Congress. Saddam had been killing his own people, the cry went; what could his enemies expect? The gruesome photos of dead Kurdish mothers clutching their dead babies after a gas attack by Saddam's army were real, and the acts were horrendous. But the Kurds were entangled in an all-out guerrilla war with the regime in Baghdad and had been supported for years by the Mossad, who sent arms and advisers to the mountain camps of the Barazany family; this attack by the Iraqis could hardly be called an attack on their own people. But, as Uri said to me, once the orchestra starts to play, all you can do is hum along.

The media was supplied with inside information and tips from reliable sources on how the crazed leader of Iraq killed people with his bare hands and used missiles to attack Iranian cities. What they neglected to tell the media was that most of the targeting for the missiles was done by the Mossad with the help of American satellites. The Mossad was grooming Saddam for a fall, but not his own. They wanted the Americans to do the work of destroying that gigantic army in the Iraqi desert so that Israel would not have to face it one day on its own border. That in itself was a noble cause for an Israeli, but to endanger the world with the possibility of global war and the deaths of thousands of Americans was sheer madness.

{p. 252} It was time to draw attention to Saddam's weapons of mass destruction.

Only three months before, on December 5, 1989, the Iraqis had launched the Al-Abid, a three-stage ballistic missile. The Iraqis claimed it was a satellite launcher that Gerald Bull, a Canadian scientist, was helping them develop. Israeli intelligence knew that the launch, although trumpeted as a great success, was in fact a total failure, and that the program would never reach its goals. But that secret was not shared with the media. On the contrary, the missile launch was exaggerated and blown out of proportion.

The message that Israeli intelligence sent out was this: Now all the pieces of the puzzle are fitting together. This maniac is developing a nuclear capability (remember the Israeli attack on the Iraqi reactor in 1981) and pursuing chemical warfare (as seen in his attacks on his own people, the Kurds). What's more, he despises the Western media, regarding them as Israeli spies. Quite soon, he's going to have the ability to launch a missile from anywhere in Iraq to anywhere he wants in the Middle East and beyond.

{p. 264} Several days later, I managed to make contact with Ephraim. I learned that the Mossad was going to let me be for now. If any steps were to be taken against me, they would be in the disinformation department and not against my person. I still knew that this was a very unstable guarantee and that if I should leave Canada and venture {p. 265} even as far as the United States, things could change rather fast.

Accordingly, I decided to publicize By Way of Deception by doing radio shows across the United States and Canada via phone. I managed over two hundred shows in less than three months, and I also did a long string of television shows by satellite.

From Toronto, I appeared on Good Morning America with Charles Gibson, and found him to be as charming an interviewer as he was a host. It was quite a treat for me, since I'd watched him every morning from the day he'd debuted on the show.

Then there was the Larry King Show, by which time the gag order was lifted, where I received somewhat rougher treatment. To build some contentiousness into the hour, the show's producers had invited Amos Perelmuter, a professor from the American University in Washington, D.C., to join King and me. From the start, it was clear that Perelmuter was an enthusiastic supporter of the State of Israel, and that what he'd heard about my book - he admitted he hadn't read it - he didn't like.

There was never enough time on such shows to put Perelmuter and other "designated champions of Israel" on the spot. How did they know that everything I was saying was lies? I was the one who'd served in the Mossad, not they. Why was it that these loyal Americans were willing to accept any mud thrown at the CIA without even giving it a second thought, but insisted on defending to the hilt an intelligence agency of a foreign country that had been known to spy on the United States (as in the Pollard case) and hadn't refrained from attacking American interests (as in the case of the Lavon2 affair in Egypt, among others)?

The first wave of fury the book caused was due to its revelation that the Mossad had advance knowledge of the notorious suicide bombing in Beirut (including the make and color of the car) but didn't pass on that information to American intelligence. In October 1983, two hundred and forty-one U.S. marines were killed when the car, rigged with explosives, rammed their barracks in Beirut. In many instances, this story from the book was taken out of context and told

{p. 277} WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 30, 1991, MADRID

Air Force One was about to touch down, followed by the second twin Air Force One. The two jumbo jets (which are identical in all but the call numbers inscribed on their fuselages; one carries the president and the second brings along the rest of the entourage and is used as a backup in case of emergency) were en route to deliver the president of the United States and a large media contingent to the Madrid peace talks that were about to start between Israel and all its Arab neighbors, including Syria and the Palestinians, who were part of the Jordanian delegation.

In the months leading up to this theatrical occasion, the American president had truly believed he'd be able to bring about a change in the hardheaded attitudes that had prevailed in the region for decades. In an effort to bring the right-wing government of Yitzhak Shamir to the negotiating table in what was to be an international peace conference, the president had applied the kind of pressure that an American president rarely has been brave enough to apply. Against the wishes of an angry Jewish community, George Herbert Bush had put a freeze on all loan guarantees to Israel, which were to come to a total of ten billion dollars over the next five years. This freeze was not intended to punish Israel for the construction of settlements in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip (regarded by the United States as illegal,) but to force the cash-strapped Likud government to the negotiating table.

Upon making that decision, the president was instantly placed on the blacklist of every Jewish organization in the United States, and regarded as the greatest enemy of the state of Israel. In Israel, posters depicting the president with a pharaoh's headgear and the inscription "We have overcome the pharaohs, we will overcome Bush" were {p. 278} pasted across the country. Shamir called the president's action "AmBush."

Israeli messengers in all the communities across the United States immediately went into high gear, launching attacks against the president. They fed the media an endless stream of criticism, while trying at the same time to make it clear to Vice President Dan Quayle that he was still their sweetheart and that what the president was doing in no way affected their opinion of him.

This love affair with a vice president was not a new thing; it had been almost standard procedure ever since the creation of the state of Israel. Any time a president was not on the best of terms with Israel, the Jewish organizations were instructed to cozy up to the vice president. That was the case with Dwight Eisenhower, whom Israel regarded as the worst president in history (although, ironically, the vice president they regarded as a friend, namely Richard Nixon, himself became an enemy once he was president). It was what lay behind the strong support Israel and the Jewish community gave to Lyndon Johnson, who almost doubled aid to Israel in his first year as president, after John Kennedy had come down hard on the Israeli nuclear program, believing it was a first and dangerous step in the proliferation of nuclear weapons in the region.

That strategy was behind their hatred for Nixon and their admiration for Gerald Ford. And then there was Jimmy Carter, whose whole administration was regarded as a big mistake as far as Israel was concerned, a mistake that had cost Israel the whole of the Sinai in return for a lukewarm peace with Egypt.

And now there was this peace process, put forth by the country club idiot. The right-wingers' silent cry was to somehow stop the process, which they believed would lead to a compromise that would force Israel to return more land. Refusing to believe that such a compromise would ever be made, settlers in the Occupied Territories had launched a new wave of construction, with the unrelenting help of Ariel Sharon, the minister of housing.

A certain right-wing clique in the Mossad regarded the situation as a life-or-death crisis and decided to take matters into their own hands, to solve the problem once and for all. They believed that Shamir would have ordered what they were about to do if he hadn't been gagged by politics. Like many others before them, in countless countries and administrations, they were going to do what the leadership really wanted but couldn't ask for, while at the same time leaving the leadership out of the loop - they were going to become Israeli versions of Colonel Oliver North, only on a much more lethal level.

{p. 279} To this clique, it was clear what they must do. There was no doubt that Bush would be out of his element on October 30 when he arrived in Madrid to open the peace talks. This was going to be the most protected event of the year, with so many potential enemies meeting in one place. On top of that, there were all those who were against the talks: the Palestinian extremists and the Iranians and the Libyans, not to mention the decimated Iraqis with their endless calls for revenge for the Gulf War.

The Spanish government had mobilized more than ten thousand police and civil guards. In addition, the American Secret Service, the Soviet KGB, and all the security services of all the countries involved would be on hand.

The Madrid Royal Palace would be the safest place on the planet at the time, unless you had the security plans and could find a flaw in them. That was exactly what the Mossad planned to do. It was clear from the start that the assassination would be blamed on the Palestinians - perhaps ending once and for all their irritating resistance and making them the people most hated by all Americans.

Three Palestinian extremists were taken by a Kidon unit from their hiding place in Beirut and relocated incommunicado in a special detention location in the Negev desert. The three were Beijdun Salameh, Mohammed Hussein, and Hussein Shahin.

At the same time, various threats, some real and some not, were made against the president. The Mossad clique added its share, in order to more precisely define the threat as if it were coming from a group affiliated with none other than Abu Nidal. They knew that name carried with it a certain guarantee of getting attention and keeping it. So if something were to happen, the media would be quick to react and say, "We knew about it, and don't forget where you saw it first."

Several days before the event, it was leaked to the Spanish police that the three terrorists were on their way to Madrid and that they were probably planning some extravagant action. Since the Mossad had all the security arrangements in hand, it would not be a problem for this particular clique to bring the "killers" as close as they might want to the president and then stage a killing. In the ensuing confusion, the Mossad people would kill the "perpetrators," scoring yet another victory for the Mossad. They'd be very sorry that they hadn't been able to save the president, but protecting him was not their job to begin with. With all the security forces involved and the assassins dead, it would be very difficult to discover where the security breach had been, except that several of the countries involved in the confer- {p. 281} ence, such as Syria, were regarded as countries that assisted terrorists. With that in mind, it would be a foregone conclusion where the breach was.

As far as this Mossad clique was concerned, it was a win-win situation.

Ephraim called me on Tuesday, October 1. I could sense from the tone of his voice that he was extremely stressed. "They're out to kill Bush," he said. At first, I didn't understand what he was talking about. I thought he meant that they were going to ruin the president. I'd already heard of several books that were in the making on the man, and there was a smear campaign regarding his alleged involvement in the Iran-Contra affair (which I knew personally to be fake).

"What's new about that? They've been out to get him for a long time."

"I mean really kill, as in 'assassinate.'"

"What are you talking about? You can't be serious. They would never dare do something like that."

"Don't go naive on me now," he said. "They're going to do it during the Madrid peace talks."

"Why don't you call the CIA and tell them? I mean, this isn't just some little operation you don't want to be involved in."

"I'll call whoever I have in the European intelligence services. I don't have friends in the American, not people I can trust, anyway."

"So what do you want me to do?"

"We are going to do what we can at our end. But nothing we will do will become public. I want you to make this thing public. If they know that the Americans know about it, there is a good chance they will not go ahead."

I knew that what he said was correct. If I could draw attention to it and make it public, that would do more to stop them than all the intelligence agencies put together. The trick would be to make it public without coming on like some lunatic with yet another conspiracy theory. I would have to say something in a relatively small forum and hope it would get out. If that didn't work, I'd contact some reporters I knew and give them the lowdown.

As it happened, I was invited to be a speaker at a luncheon held at the Parliament buildings in Ottawa for a group called the Middle East Discussion Group. It's a loosely formed think tank supported by the National Council on Canadian-Arab Relations, headed by a former Liberal MP named Ian Watson. The aim of this group is to inform members of Parliament and the diplomatic community-on issues that might not be freely accessed by the media and to promote dialog on the Middle East.

The luncheon was attended by some twenty members of the think tank and a few MPs. I made a short presentation in which I explained the goals of the Mossad and the danger it presented to any peace initiative in the region. I also said that in my opinion, as things stood, the only chance the Middle East had for peace would be the cutting off of financial aid to Israel by the United States. I emphasized that a large chunk of this aid finds its way to the West Bank and the settlements, which were probably the biggest stumbling block to the peace initiative. Then I opened the floor to questions.

I was asked what the Mossad would do to stop the process that was now taking place. I said that from sources I had, and based on my knowledge of the Mossad, I would not be at all surprised if there was a plot right at this moment to kill the president of the United States and to throw the blame on some extreme Palestinian group.

Later, I learned that one of the people at the luncheon had called an ex-congressman from California, Pete McCloskey. The substance of what I'd said was conveyed to him, and since McCloskey was an old and close friend of the president's, the caller felt that he might want to take some action.

On October 15, McCloskey called me and introduced himself. He said that he'd heard from a friend what I'd said about the president and wanted to know if in my opinion there was a real threat, or was this only a metaphor of some kind, to make a point? I made it clear to him that there was no metaphor involved and that I was dead serious regarding the threat to the president. I also said that I believed that exposing this threat might be enough to eliminate it, since to carry it out would then become too risky.

He said he could come to Ottawa within a few days and asked me if I'd be willing to meet with him. I saw no reason why not, and we made an appointment for October 19, which was a weekend.

I met Pete at the Westin Hotel, and we walked over to a small coffee shop where we sat for several hours. He asked me questions from every possible angle, trying to understand what I was talking about. I could see that he was looking for information he could present that would make the threat realistic. There was no way I could tell him that I'd gotten the information straight from the horse's mouth, but I had to let him know that I was not completely disconnected from the Mossad. That in itself was a risk; it was the first time I'd allowed this to come out. I felt compelled, however, by the stakes involved.

{p. 282} The next day, Sunday, October 20, McCloskey was in Washington to participate in the meetings of the Commission on National and Community Services. He stayed at the Hotel Phoenix Park, from which he called the Secret Service at the White House. He was referred to Special Agent Allan Dillon at the Secret Service offices, 1050 Connecticut Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C.

Pete faxed Dillon a copy of the memo he'd written after our meeting in Ottawa. The same day, he met with a former White House aide from the Ford era, named Don Penny, who gave him the spin on me. I was not at all surprised when McCloskey told me later what Penny had told him: that he'd heard about me from Senator Sam Nunn and other sources in the CIA who said that I was a traitor to Israel and totally unreliable. And that if McCloskey associated with me, he'd be putting a target on his own back. As it turned out, Pete later spoke to Nunn, but the senator could not recall talking about me. Meanwhile, a well-known Washington columnist, Rowland Evans, told Pete that he'd asked his sources in the CIA about me several months earlier, and they'd told him that I was "for real."

McCloskey had an interview on October 22 with agent Terry Gallagher from the State Department Diplomatic Protection and then, the same day, a meeting with Dillon from the Secret Service. On October 24, the Secret Service asked to speak to me. They placed a formal request via the American embassy in Ottawa through CSIS (the Canadian security service), and I met with a member of the Secret Service in the presence of a member of CSIS.

I told the man what I thought was going to take place, only omitting that I'd obtained the information from an active member of the Mossad. I did make it clear to him that I had a connection, which I mainly used to learn about impending personal danger.

The information leaked to the media, and in a syndicated column, Jack Anderson presented the whole story. So did Jane Hunter in her newsletter, which is a must for any Washingtonian specializing in the Middle East.

I was confident that by now the president was no longer in imminent danger, although the less time he spent in Madrid, the better. But the decision to eliminate him would not be withdrawn; it would only be postponed. I had pointed out to the Secret Service agent that the president was extremely vulnerable aboard Air Force One, both to attack by a surface-to-air missile and to a piece of explosive luggage that could be carried aboard by an unsuspecting reporter who didn't realize that a segment of his recording or photographic equipment had been switched for a deadly device.

{p. 283} From Ephraim, I heard later that after the president had landed in Madrid, the American embassy there received a bomb threat on the phone, and that a section of the embassy was evacuated while the president was in the building. But the rest of the plan was called off, and even though the Spanish police received the names and descriptions of the three supposed assassins, they were never let out of the holding facility in the Negev. Later, they were transferred to the Nes Ziyyona research facility, where they were terminated.

On October 31, the president was back in Washington and was about to visit his house in Kennebunkport, Maine, which had been damaged in a storm that had devastated the entire coast. The Secret Service put out a memo on November 1 that was distributed to Air Force One passengers. It said, "There is a very capable system in place to beat terrorism from sabotaging the jet. However, if there is a weak spot, it would be with the personal belongings brought aboard the aircraft from the motorcade just before departure. ..."