In 1957, Mossad received the electrifying news that Eichmann had been seen in Argentina. Rafi Eitan, already a rising star in Mossad as a result of astute forays against the Arabs, was selected to capture Eichmann and bring him to Israel to stand trial.
He was told the outcome would have a number of significant benefits. It would be an act of divine justice for his people. It would remind the world of the death camps and the need to make sure they never happened again. It would place Mossad at the forefront of the global intelligence community. No other service had dared to attempt such an operation. The risks were equally great. He would be working thousands of miles from home, traveling on forged documentation, relying entirely on his own resources and working in a hostile environment. Argentina was a haven for Nazis. The Mossad team could end up in prison there or even be killed.
For two long years, Rafi Eitan patiently waited while the first tentative sighting was confirmed—that the man living in a middle-class suburb of Buenos Aires under the name of Ricardo Klement was Adolf Eichmann.
When the go order finally came, Rafi Eitan became “ice-cold.” He had done all his thinking of what could go wrong. The political, diplomatic, and, for him, the professional repercussions would be enormous. He had also wondered what would happen when, having captured Eichmann, the Argentinian police intervened. “I decided I would strangle Eichmann with my own bare hands. If I was caught, I would argue to the court it had been the biblical eye for an eye.”
El Al, the national airline, had specially purchased from the Mossad slush fund a Britannia aircraft for the long flight to Argentina. Rafi Eitan remarked:
“We just sent someone to England to buy one. He handed over the money and we had our plane. Officially the flight to Argentina was to carry an Israeli delegation to attend Argentina’s one hundred fiftieth independence day celebrations. None of the delegates knew why we were going with them or that we had constructed a cell in the back of the aircraft to hold Eichmann.”
Rafi Eitan and his team arrived in Buenos Aires on May Day 1960. They moved into one of seven safe houses a Mossad advance man had rented. One had been given the Hebrew code name Maoz, or “Stronghold.” The apartment would act as the base for the operation. Another safe house was designated
With everything in place, Rafi Eitan’s manner became settled and determined. Any doubts of failure had lifted; the prospect of action had replaced the tension of waiting. For three days he and the team conducted a discreet surveillance on how Adolf Eichmann, who had once been chauffeured everywhere in a Mercedes limousine, now traveled by bus and alighted on the corner of Garibaldi Street in a suburb on the outskirts of the city, as punctual as he had once been in signing the consignment orders for the death camps.
On the night of May 10, 1960, Rafi Eitan chose for the snatch a driver and two others to subdue Eichmann once he was in the car. One of the men had been trained to overpower a target on the street. Rafi Eitan would sit beside the driver, “ready to help in any way I could.”
The operation was set for the following evening. At 8:00 P.M. on May 11, the team’s car drove into Garibaldi Street.
There was no tension. Everyone was long past that. No one spoke. There was nothing to say. Rafi Eitan looked at his watch: 8:03. They drove up and down the empty street. 8:04. Several buses came and went. At 8:05, another bus came. They saw Eichmann alight. To Rafi Eitan, “he looked a little tired, perhaps how he looked after another day of sending my people to the death camps.
“The street was still empty. Behind me I heard our specialist snatchman open the car door. We drove up just behind Eichmann. He was walking quite quickly, as if he wanted to get home for his dinner. I could hear the specialist breathing steadily, the way he had been taught to do in training. He had got the snatch down to twelve seconds. Out of the door, grab him around the neck, drag him back into the car. Out, grab, back.”
The car came alongside Eichmann. He half turned, gave a puzzled look at the sight of the specialist coming out of the car. Then the man tripped on a loose shoelace, almost stumbling to the ground. For a moment Rafi Eitan was too stunned to move. He had come halfway across the world to catch the man who had been instrumental in sending six million Jews to their deaths and they were just about to lose him because a shoelace had not been properly tied. Eichmann was starting to walk quickly away. Rafi Eitan leaped from the car.
