By then, Mossad had deepened its own relationship with BOSS. While never able to wean the bureau’s agents from their brutish methods of interrogation, Mossad instructors introduced them to a range of other methods that had worked in Lebanon and elsewhere: sleep deprivation; hooding; forcing a suspect to stand at a wall for long periods; squeezing genitals; a variety of mental torture ranging from threats to mock executions. Mossad
Both Mossad and BOSS were driven by an obsessive belief that Africa was lurching leftward toward a revolution that would eventually engulf both their countries. To avoid that happening, any method was permissible. Feeding off each other’s fears, both services gave no quarter and shared a self-perpetuating concept that only they knew how to deal with the enemy. Between them, BOSS and Mossad became the two most feared foreign intelligence services in Africa.
This alliance did not sit well with Washington. The CIA feared it could affect its own efforts to maintain a hold on the black continent. The decolonization of Africa in the early 1960s had produced a new interest in Africa within the Agency—and a huge increase in its clandestine activities. An African division was formed, and by 1963, CIA stations had been established in every African nation.
One of the first to serve in Africa was Bill Buckley, later to be kidnapped and murdered by Hezbollah terrorists in Beirut. Buckley would recall, shortly before his capture, “These were really crazy times in Africa with everybody jockeying for position. We were late to the party, and the Mossad looked at us as if we were gate-crashers.”
In Washington, the State Department made discreet but determined efforts to reduce Israeli influence in Africa. It leaked details of how several hundred Jews from South Africa had flown north to help Israel during the Suez War. Twenty black African nations broke off diplomatic relations with Jerusalem. Among them was Nigeria. The severance could have been a severe blow to Israel: Nigeria provided over 60 percent of Israel’s oil supplies in return for arms that had originally been supplied by the United States to Israel. Despite the diplomatic breach, Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir agreed to continue secretly arming Nigeria in return for the continued flow of oil. To Buckley it was a “prime example of realpolitik.” Another was how Mossad set about shoring up its longtime partner BOSS. In the aftermath of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, Mossad found a substantial quantity of documents revealing close links between the PLO and the ANC, long BOSS’s bête noire. The incriminating material was turned over to the bureau, enabling its agents to arrest and torture hundreds of ANC members.
The eighties were halcyon days for Mossad’s great African safari. As well as playing off the Chinese against the Russians, it made matters difficult for the CIA, MI6, and other European intelligence agencies operating on the continent. Whenever one threatened Mossad’s own position, Mossad exposed its activities. In Kenya an MI6 agent was blown. In Zaire, a French network was wrecked. In Tanzania a German intelligence operation was hurriedly aborted after being uncovered by Mossad through a tip to a local reporter.
When terrorist leader Abu Nidal—who had masterminded the assassination of Israel’s ambassador to Britain, Shlomo Argov, on June 3, 1982, outside London’s Dorchester Hotel—tried to seek shelter in Sudan, Mossad promised the regime Israel would pay one million U.S. dollars for his capture, dead or alive. In the end Nidal fled to the safety of Baghdad.
In a dozen countries, Mossad exploited newfound African nationalism. Among agents who had served in several of those countries was Yaakov Cohen, who would recall: “We gave them an intelligence capability to remain on top of the opposition. In countries like Nigeria, tribal rivalries had led to civil war. Our policy was to work with anyone who would work with us. That enabled us to know everything that was happening in a country. The slightest mood change which could affect Israel was reported back.”
Before going to Africa, Cohen had distinguished himself in undercover missions in Egypt and elsewhere. As part of his disguise, Mossad had changed Cohen’s physical appearance by arranging for a plastic surgeon to alter his distinctive ethnic feature—his nose. When he returned from the hospital, his own wife barely recognized Cohen and his new nose.
