“Maxwell was Mossad’s high-level Mr. Fixit. He opened the doors to the highest offices. The power of his newspapers meant that presidents and prime ministers were ready to receive him. Because of who he was, they spoke to him as if he was a de facto statesman, never realizing where the information would end up. A lot of what he learned was probably no more than gossip, but no doubt some of it contained real nuggets. Maxwell knew how to ask questions. He had received no training from us, but he would have been given guidelines of areas to probe.”
On September 14, 1986, Robert Maxwell called Nahum Admoni on his direct line with devastating news. A freelance Colombian-born journalist, Oscar Guerrero, had approached a Maxwell-owned Sunday tabloid newspaper, the
Like all telephone calls to and from the Mossad chief, this one was automatically recorded. That member of the Israeli intelligence community would later claim the tape contained the following exchange:
Admoni: What is the name of this technician?
Maxwell: Vanunu. Mordechai Vanunu.
Admoni: Where is he now?
Maxwell: Sydney, Australia, I think.
Admoni: I will call you back.
Admoni’s first call was to Prime Minister Shimon Peres, who ordered every step be taken to “secure the situation.” With those words Peres authorized an operation that once more demonstrated the ruthless efficiency of Mossad.
Admoni’s staff quickly confirmed Vanunu had worked at Dimona from February 1977 until November 1986. He had been assigned to Machon-Two, one of the most secret of all the plant’s ten production units. The windowless concrete building externally resembled a warehouse. But its walls were thick enough to block the most powerful of satellite camera lenses from penetrating. Inside the bunkerlike structure, a system of false walls led to the elevators that descended through six levels to where the nuclear weapons were manufactured.
Vanunu’s security clearance was sufficient to gain unchallenged access to every corner of Machon-Two. His special security pass—number 520—coupled with his signature on an Israeli Official Secrets Acts document ensured no one ever challenged him as he went about his duties as a
A stunned Admoni was told that almost certainly for some months, Vanunu somehow had secretly photographed the layout of Machon-Two: the control panels, the glove boxes, the nuclear bomb-building machinery. Evidence suggested he had stored his films in his clothes locker, and smuggled them out of what was supposedly the most secure place in Israel.
Admoni demanded to know how Vanunu had achieved all this—and perhaps more. Supposing he had already shown his material to the CIA? Or the Russians? The British or even the Chinese? The damage would be incalculable. Israel would be exposed as a liar before the world—a liar with the capability of destroying a very large part of it. Who was Vanunu? Whom could he be working for?
Answers were soon forthcoming. Vanunu was a Moroccan Jew, born on October 13, 1954, in Marrakech, where his parents were modest shopkeepers. In 1963, when anti-Semitism, never far from the surface in Morocco, spilled once more into open violence, the family emigrated to Israel, settling in the Negev Desert town of Beersheba.
Mordechai led an uneventful life as a teenager. Along with every other young person, when his time came he was conscripted into the Israeli army. He was already beginning to lose his hair, making him appear older than his nineteen years. He reached the rank of first sergeant in a minesweeping unit stationed on the Golan Heights. After military service he entered Ramat Aviv University in Tel Aviv. Having failed two exams at the end of his first year in a physics-degree course, he left the campus.
In the summer of 1976 he replied to an advertisement for trainee technicians to work at Dimona. After a lengthy interview with the plant’s security officer he was accepted for training and sent on an intensive course in physics, chemistry, math, and English. He did sufficiently well to finally enter Dimona as a technician in February 1977.
