Not one serious newspaper made any attempt to follow up those revealing responses.
It turned out that Mossad was not the only organization that had taped the sex phone calls. The Republican senator for Arizona, Jon Kyl, a member of the Select Committee on Intelligence, told his local newspaper
Kyl refused to identify to the newspaper who the agency or agencies were: “That’s something I absolutely can’t get into in any greater detail.” Of his sources he said, “By virtue of who they are, they have credibility. You can assume that they are people who at some period in time have been in the employ of the federal government.” He went on to compare the existence of the tapes to the “smoking-gun” evidence in the Watergate scandal.
These explosive allegations from a respected politician were never pursued into the public domain.
According to at least one well-placed Israeli intelligence source, Rafi Eitan had received a phone call from Yatom reinforcing the need to stay well clear of the United States for the foreseeable future.
Rafi Eitan did not need to be told how ironic it would be if he fell victim to the very technique that had made him a legend—the kidnapping of Adolf Eichmann. Even worse would be to be quietly killed by one of the methods that had burnished his reputation among men who saw assassination as part of the job.
On a warm afternoon in mid-October 1995, a technician of Mossad’s internal security division, Autahat Paylut Medienit (APM), used a hand-operated scanner to check an apartment off Pinsker Street in downtown Tel Aviv for bugging devices. The apartment was one of several safe houses Mossad owned around the city. The search was an indication of the sensitivity of the meeting shortly to take place there. Satisfied the apartment was electronically clean, he left.
The apartment’s furniture could have come from a garage sale; nothing seemed to match. A few cheaply framed pictures hung on the walls, views of the Israel tourists liked to visit. Each room had its own separate unlisted telephone. In the kitchen, instead of domestic appliances, were a computer and modem, a shredder, a fax, and, where an oven would be, a safe.
Usually the safe houses were dormitories for trainees from the Mossad school for spies on the outskirts of the city while they learned street craft: how to tail someone or themselves avoid surveillance; how to set up a dead-letter box, or exchange information concealed inside a newspaper. Day and night the streets of Tel Aviv were their proving ground under the watchful eye of instructors. Back in the safe houses, the lessons continued: how to brief a
An important part of the seemingly endless hours of training was how to form relationships with innocent, unsuspecting people. Yaakov Cohen, who worked for twenty-five years as a
“Everyone and anyone became a tool. I could lie to them because truth was not part of my relationship with them. All that mattered was using them for Israel’s benefit. From the very beginning, I learned a philosophy: Do what was right for Mossad and for Israel.”
Those who could not live by that credo found themselves swiftly dismissed from the service. For David Kimche, regarded as one of Mossad’s best operatives:
“It’s the old story of many think they are called, few are chosen. In that way we are a little like the Catholic church. Those who remain, develop bonds which will carry them through life. We live by the rule of ‘I help you, you help me.’ You learn to trust people with your life. No greater trust can ever be given by one person to another.”
By the time every man or woman who had access to the safe houses graduated to the next group, that philosophy had been engraved on their minds. They were now
