MOSSAD

My dear Nadia, my dear family,

I am writing to you these last words, hoping that you’ll remain united forever. I ask my wife to forgive me, to take care of herself and give a good education to our children . . . My dearest Nadia, you may remarry, so that our children will have a father. You are absolutely free in that respect. I ask you not to mourn the past but turn to the future. I am sending you my last kisses.

Please pray for my soul.

Yours, Elie.

This letter reached the desk of the new ramsad, Meir Amit, in May 1965. Elie Cohen, one of the boldest spies in the history of espionage, had written it with a trembling hand, just a few minutes before his life came to an abrupt end on the gallows of Damascus.

The secret life of Elie Cohen had begun more than twenty years before. A young, handsome Egyptian Jew, Cohen was on his way home one humid afternoon in mid-July 1954. He was thirty, of medium height, sporting a neat black mustache and a disarming smile. On a Cairo street he bumped into an old friend, a police officer. “Tonight we’ll arrest some Israeli terrorists,” the officer confided. “One of them is called Shmuel Azar.” Elie faked awe and admiration, but as soon as he parted with his friend, he ran to his rented apartment and removed the handgun, the explosives, and the documents he kept there. Elie was deeply involved in clandestine activities. He planned escape routes and prepared false documents for Jewish families that wanted to emigrate to Israel. He also was a member of the Jewish underground responsible for an ambitious operation known as the Lavon Affair.

In early 1954, Israel’s leaders learned that the British government had decided to pull out of Egypt completely. Egypt was the strongest of the Arab countries and a sworn enemy of Israel. As long as the British Army was present in Egypt and maintained scores of army bases and military airfields along the Suez Canal, Israel could count on its moderating influence over the military junta that governed the country. With the decision to evacuate Egypt that influence would evaporate at once; besides, modern bases, airfields, and huge stores of equipment and war materials would fall in the hands of the Egyptian Army. Israel, then only six years old, could be the target of an aggressive attack by a larger, better equipped Egyptian Army that wanted to avenge its shameful defeat in the 1948 Israel Independence War.

Could the British decision be revoked? Ben-Gurion was not at the helm of Israel anymore; he had retired to kibbutz Sdeh Boker. He had been replaced by a moderate but weak leader, Moshe Sharett. Minister of Defense Pinhas Lavon openly disputed Sharett’s authority. Without Sharett’s knowledge, and without informing the Mossad, Lavon and Colonel Benyamin Gibli, the head of military intelligence (Aman), concocted a dangerous and foolish plan. They found a clause in the British-Egyptian agreement that allowed Great Britain to return to its former bases in case of a grave crisis, and naively concluded that if several terrorist bombings were to sweep Egypt, Britain would conclude that Egypt’s leaders couldn’t maintain law and order. Therefore the British would cancel their decision to pull out of the country. Lavon and Gibli decided to carry out several bombings in Cairo and Alexandria, targeting American and British libraries and cultural centers, cinemas, post offices, and other public buildings. Aman’s secret agents in Egypt recruited some young local Jews, fervent Zionists, who were ready to give their lives for Israel. By doing that, Aman broke a sacrosanct rule of Israel’s intelligence community: never use local Jews in hostile operations, as that could cost them their lives and place the entire Jewish community in grave danger. In addition, the young men and women had no preliminary training for such operations.

The bombs were rudimentary, made out of eyeglass cases in which a chemical substance had been placed. Another substance was poured into a condom introduced into the case; highly corrosive, the chemical would burn its way through the condom and come into contact with the other substance inside the case, producing a minor burst of fire. The condom was used as a timing tool, to allow the person placing the incendiary device to escape before the explosion.

The plan was doomed from the start. On July 23, after a couple of minor operations, one of the bombs exploded in the pocket of Philip Natanson, a member of the Zionist network, at the entrance of cinema Rio in Alexandria. He was arrested by the police, and in the following days all the network members were caught.

Elie Cohen was arrested as well, but the search of his apartment failed to discover any incriminating evidence; he was released, but the Egyptian police opened a file on him. It included three photos and the record of Elie Shaul Jundi Cohen, born in 1924 in Alexandria, to Shaul and Sophie Cohen who had emigrated to an unknown destination in 1949 with Elie’s two sisters and five brothers. The suspect was a graduate of the French college, and a student at the Cairo Farouk University.

The Egyptians didn’t know that Elie’s family had emigrated to Israel and settled in Bat Yam, a suburb of Tel Aviv.

In spite of the arrests, Elie decided to stay in Egypt and not run away. Fearing the worst for his friends, he collected every bit of information about their incarceration, beatings, and torture in Egypt’s jail.

In October, the Egyptians publicly announced the arrest of “Israeli spies,” and on December 7, their trial opened in Cairo. Max Bennet, an Israeli undercover agent who was arrested with the group, killed himself by cutting his wrists with a rusty nail he had pulled out of his cell door. At the trial, the prosecution asked for the death penalty for some of the detainees. Pleas for mercy streamed from the papal nuncio, the French foreign minister, the U.S. and Great Britain’s ambassadors, members of the British House of Commons Richard Crossman and Maurice Auerbach, the chief rabbi of Egypt . . . All was in vain. On January 17, 1955, the Extraordinary Military Court announced the sentences: two of the accused were found not guilty; two were sentenced to seven years of prison with hard labor, two to fifteen years, and two to life. The two leaders of the network, Dr. Moshe Marzuk and the engineer Shmuel Azar, were sentenced to death and hanged, four days later, in the courtyard of Cairo prison. In Israel, a tremendous political scandal shook the government. Who had given the stupid, criminal order for that operation? Several boards of inquiry failed to reach a clear-cut answer. Lavon and Gibli pointed fingers at each other. Minister of Defense Lavon was forced to resign and was replaced by Ben-Gurion, who came back from retirement; Colonel Gibli was never promoted and after a short while had to leave the army.

In Egypt, Elie Cohen had lost some of his best friends. Although still a suspect in the eyes of the authorities, he stayed in Cairo and pursued his clandestine activities. Only in 1957, after the Suez War, did he immigrate to Israel.

The Cairo Martyrs is the name of a quiet, shady street in Bat Yam. Elie walked that street every day when coming to visit his family. His first steps in Israel were not easy. For a few weeks he was looking for a job. Thanks to his fluency in languages (Arabic, French, English, and even Hebrew) he found a position: translating weekly and monthly magazines for Aman. His office on a Tel Aviv street was camouflaged as a commercial agency. Elie was paid a modest salary: 170 Israeli pounds ($95) a month. After a few months he was fired. One of his friends, also an Egyptian Jew, found him a new job: accountant at the department store chain Hamashbir. The job was boring, but the pay was higher. At that time his brother introduced him to a pretty, smart young nurse of Iraqi origin. A month after meeting her, Elie wed Nadia, the sister of a rising intellectual Sami Michael. One morning, a man walked into Elie’s office. “My name is Zalman,” he said. “I am an intelligence officer. I want to offer you a job.”

“What kind of job?”

“Quite interesting, actually. You’ll travel to Europe a lot. Perhaps you’ll even have to go to Arab countries as our agent.”

Elie refused. “I just got married,” he said. “I don’t want to travel to Europe or to any other place.”

That was the end of the conversation but not the end of the affair. Nadia got pregnant and had to leave her job. Hamashbir had to restructure and fired a few employees, Elie among them. He couldn’t find another job. And then, as if by chance, an unexpected visitor knocked on the door of his rented apartment.

It was Zalman again.

“Why do you refuse to work for us?” he asked Elie. “We shall pay you 350 pounds ($195) a month. You’ll train for six months. Then, if you like it, you’ll stay. If not—you’ll be free to go.”

This time, Elie didn’t say no. And he became a secret agent.

Some of the Aman veterans tell a different version. They maintain that when he arrived in Israel, Elie didn’t get a job at Aman, because the psychological tests he underwent showed him to be overconfident. He was gifted, courageous, and had an excellent memory, but had the tendency to overestimate himself and take unnecessary risks. These character traits, combined, made him unsuitable for Aman.

But in the early sixties, things changed. Aman’s Unit 131, the special operations unit of the IDF intelligence branch, urgently started looking for a highly qualified agent in Damascus, the capital of Syria. In the last few years, Syria had become the most aggressive Arab country, and the sworn enemy of Israel. It never missed a chance to attack. Syria confronted Israel in bloody battles at the Golan Heights and on the shores of the Lake of Galilee; it dispatched squads of terrorists across the Israeli border. And now, it planned to carry out a grandiose engineering project, intended to divert the waters of the Jordan River tributaries and deprive Israel of water.

In the late fifties, Israel had launched a project of huge pipelines and canals that would carry a part of the Jordan water to the arid Negev region. The water was taken from the part of the river that passed through Israel’s territory. The water project triggered a series of Arab summit conferences. The Arab nations solemnly decided to divert the Jordan tributaries and kill the Israeli project; the job itself fell to Syria.

Israel could not survive without Jordan’s water. It could not let Syria succeed, and started planning a response. It needed an agent in Damascus, somebody trustworthy, confident, and daring. The same characteristics that had forced Aman to reject Elie before made him perfect now for Unit 131. (Fifty years later, it was revealed that Aman had tried to recruit somebody else for that job—Sami Michael, Nadia Cohen’s brother! Michael refused, stayed in Israel, and became one of its great poets.)

Cohen’s training was long and exhausting. Every morning, under some pretext, Elie would leave home and head for the Aman training center. For several weeks, he had only one instructor, a man named Yitzhak. First, he learned how to memorize things. Yitzhak would throw a dozen objects on the table—a pencil, a bunch of keys, a cigarette, an eraser, a few pins. Elie glanced at them for a second or two. Then he had to close his eyes and describe what they looked like. He also learned to identify the type and make of tanks, aircrafts, and cannons. “Let’s go for a walk,” Yitzhak would say. The two of them would stroll in the crowded Tel Aviv streets. “Do you see the newspaper stand over there?” Yitzhak would whisper. “Now, go there and pretend to be looking at the papers, but at the same time try to find out who is following you.” When they returned to the center, Yitzhak would listen to Elie’s report and then throw a batch of photos on the table. “You were right about this one; he followed you indeed, but what about that one, by the tree? He was also shadowing you.”

One morning, Zalman introduced him to another instructor, Yehuda, who taught him how to use a small, sophisticated radio transmitter. He then sent Elie to undergo physical exams and psychological tests. After the tests were over, Zalman introduced Elie to a young woman, Marcelle Cousin.

“It’s time for the decisive test, Elie,” he said. “Marcelle will give you a French passport in the name of an Egyptian Jew who has immigrated to Africa and now has come to Israel as a tourist. With this passport you’ll go to Jerusalem and stay there ten days. Marcelle will give you full details about your cover—your past in Egypt, your family, your work in Africa. In Jerusalem you’ll only speak French and Arabic. You have to meet people, make friends, and establish new contacts without revealing your real identity. You must also make sure that you’re not followed.”

Elie spent ten days in Jerusalem. On his return he got a few days of leave. Nadia had just given birth to a daughter, Sophie. After Rosh Hashana—the Jewish New Year—Zalman introduced him to two other men, who didn’t identify themselves. “You’ve passed your test in Jerusalem, Elie,” one of them said with a smile. “It’s time to get to more serious matters.”

In a bare room at the Aman facility, Elie met a Muslim sheikh who patiently taught him the Koran and the Muslim prayers. Elie tried to concentrate, but kept making mistakes. “Don’t worry,” his instructors told him. “If somebody starts asking you questions, tell them that you’re not a devout Muslim, and you only have vague religious memories from your days at school.”

Now Elie was given a foretaste of his mission: he would soon be sent to a neutral country abroad, and after additional training he would proceed to an Arab capital.

“Which one?” he asked.

“You’ll be told in due time.”

Zalman went on. “You’ll pose as an Arab, create local contacts, and establish an Israeli espionage network.”

Elie agreed without hesitating. He felt confident that he could carry out the mission.

“You’ll get papers of a Syrian or an Iraqi,” his handlers told him.

“Why? I don’t know anything about Iraq. Get me Egyptian papers.”

“That’s impossible,” Zalman said. “The Egyptians have updated records of their population and of all the passports they have issued. That’s too dangerous. Iraq and Syria don’t have such records. They can’t track you down.”

Two days later, Zalman and his colleagues revealed to Elie his new identity. “Your name is Kamal. Your father’s name is Amin Tabet, so your full name will be Kamal Amin Tabet.”

Elie’s case officers had prepared a detailed legend—a cover story—for their new agent. “You’re the son of Syrian parents. Your mother’s name is Saida Ibrahim. You had a sister. You were born in Beirut, in Lebanon. When you were three, your family left Lebanon and moved to Egypt, to Alexandria. Don’t forget, your family is Syrian. A year later your sister died. Your father was a textile merchant. In 1946 your uncle emigrated to Argentina. Shortly after, he wrote to your father and invited your family to join him in Buenos Aires. In 1947 all of you arrived in Argentina. Your father and your uncle established a partnership with a third person, and opened a textile store, but it went bankrupt. Your father died in 1956 and six months later your mother died, too. You lived with your uncle and worked at a travel agency. You later went into business and were very successful.”

Elie now needed a cover story for his family as well. “I got a job with a company that works with the Defense and Foreign Ministries,” Elie told Nadia when he came back home. “They need somebody to travel in Europe, buy tools, equipment, and materials for Ta’as (Israel’s military industry) and find markets for its products. I’ll come home often, for long leaves. I know that the separation will be hard—for both of us—but you’ll get my full salary here, and in a few years we’ll buy furniture in Europe and set up the apartment.”

In early February 1961 an unmarked car brought Elie to Lod Airport. A young man who identified himself as Gideon handed him an Israeli passport in his real name, $500, and a plane ticket to Zurich.

On his arrival in Zurich, Elie was met by a white-haired man, who took his passport and gave him a passport from a European country, in another name. That passport carried an entry visa to Chile and a transit visa to Argentina. “In Buenos Aires our people will extend your transit visa,” the man said, slipping into Elie’s hand a plane ticket to Santiago, with a stopover in Buenos Aires. “Tomorrow you’ll arrive in Buenos Aires. The day after, at eleven A.M., you should come to Café Corrientes. Our people will meet you there.”

Elie arrived in Argentina’s capital and checked into a hotel. The following morning, at eleven o’clock on the dot, an elderly man came to his table at Café Corrientes, and introduced himself as Abraham. Cohen was instructed to settle in a furnished apartment, already rented for him. A local teacher would get in touch with him and teach him the Spanish language. “You’ll have no other concerns,” Abraham said. “I’ll take care of your finances.”

Three months later, Elie was ready for the next stage. He spoke passable Spanish, knew Buenos Aires well, dressed and behaved like thousands of Arab immigrants living in Argentina’s capital. Another tutor trained him to speak Arabic with a Syrian accent.

Abraham met him again in a café, and handed him a Syrian passport in the name of Kamal Amin Tabet. “You must change your address by the end of the week,” Abraham said. “Open a bank account in that name. Start visiting the Arab restaurants, the cinemas where Arab movies are shown, and the Arab cultural and political clubs. Try to make as many friends as possible, and establish contacts with the Arab community leaders. You are a man of means, a merchant and a brilliant businessman. You are in the import-export business, but you also are involved in transports and investments. Make generous contributions to the charity funds of the Arab community. Good luck!”

The Israeli spy, indeed, had plenty of good luck. In a few months, Elie Cohen successfully penetrated the core of the Arab-Syrian community in Buenos Aires. His personal charm, confidence, common sense, and fortune attracted quite a few Arabs, among the most important in Argentina. He soon became a well-known figure in Arab circles. His breakthrough came in the Muslim club one evening when he met a dignified gentleman, well dressed, balding, his face adorned with a bushy mustache. He introduced himself as Abdel Latif Hassan, editor in chief of the Arab World magazine published in Argentina. Hassan was deeply impressed with the serious personality of “the Syrian immigrant,” and the two of them became close friends.

The cultural events at the clubs were followed by more intimate gatherings in the company of the Arab community leaders. Elie made it to the Syrian embassy guest list, and was invited to posh parties and receptions. At an official reception at the embassy, Hassan steered his friend Tabet to an imposing-looking officer, dressed in the uniform of a Syrian general. “Allow me to introduce a real and devoted Syrian patriot,” Hassan said to the general. And then, turning to Elie, he added: “Meet General Amin El-Hafez, the military attaché at the embassy.”

Elie seemed to have completed the final stage in establishing his legend. Time had come for the real espionage mission. Elie was briefed in a short, surreptitious meeting with Abraham in July 1961. The next day he came to Hassan’s office. “I am sick and tired of living in Argentina,” he admitted. He loved Syria more than anything, and wanted to go back. Could Hassan help him with some letters of recommendation? The editor immediately wrote four letters: one to his brother-in-law in Alexandria, two to friends in Beirut (one of them a highly influential banker), and the fourth to his son in Damascus. Elie visited his other Arab friends, and his briefcase was soon full of enthusiastic letters of recommendation, written by the leaders of the Buenos Aires community.

At the end of July 1961, Kamal Amin Tabet flew to Zurich, changed planes, and proceeded to Munich. At the airport of the Bavarian capital, an Israeli agent approached him. His name was Zelinger. He handed Elie his Israeli passport and a plane ticket to Tel Aviv. In early August, Elie came home. “I’ll spend some months at home,” he said to Nadia.

The following months passed in intensive training. Elie’s cover was perfect and he completely identified with his new character. His radio instructor, Yehuda, was back, and trained him in radio transmission in code. After a few weeks he was able to receive and transmit between twelve and sixteen words a minute. He compulsively read books and documents on Syria, its army, weapons, and strategy. After myriad briefings by specialists, he himself became an expert on Syrian internal politics.

In December 1961, Elie flew to Zurich again; but his final destination was Damascus, the lion’s den.

The tension on the Syrian-Israeli border had grown as the Syrian regime had weakened. Since 1948, a long series of military coups had shaken the country. Very rarely did a Syrian dictator die a natural death anymore—they died on the gallows, in front of a firing squad, or by the good services of an assassin. The unstable country was in constant turmoil. Quite often, eager to distract the public’s attention from inner problems, the Syrian leaders deliberately caused border incidents. Public executions were a common sight in Damascus’s squares. One after the other, the hangmen put to death people labeled as conspirators, spies, enemies of the state, and supporters of the former regime. Not long before Elie arrived, there had been yet another coup, on September 28, 1961; it had put an end to the short-lived Syrian-Egyptian union, pompously named the United Arab Republic.

Before setting out on his mission, Elie met the ubiquitous Zalman, who gave him detailed instructions: “You’ll get your radio transmitter from Zelinger, our man in Munich. After you arrive in Damascus, you’ll be contacted by an employee of the Syrian broadcasting corporation. He, too, is an ‘immigrant’ like you, who has settled in Syria not long ago. He doesn’t know your real identity. Don’t try to find him! He’ll find the right moment to establish contact with you.”

In Munich, Zelinger had for him an impressive package of spying equipment: sheets of paper, on which the key to the transmission code was written with invisible ink; books serving as transmission codes; a special typewriter; a transistor radio, in which a transmitter had been inserted; an electric razor whose cord served as an antenna for the transmitter; dynamite sticks hidden in Yardley soap and cigars; and some cyanide pills for suicide, just in case . . .

Elie wondered how he would introduce all this equipment to Syria, where customs and immigration controls were thorough and severe.

Zelinger had the answer. “You’ll buy a passage on the SS Astoria that sails from Genoa to Beirut in early January. Somebody will get in touch with you on the boat. He’ll help you pass the border controls in Syria.”

Elie set sail aboard the Astoria. One morning, when he was sitting close to a group of Egyptian passengers, a man approached him and whispered: “Follow me.” Elie got up and strolled away from the group. The man told him: “My name is Majeed Sheikh El-Ard. I’ve got a car.” That was a hint that he would drive Elie to Damascus.

El-Ard, a short, mousy man, was an international entrepreneur and a well-known—and shady—businessman in Damascus. He was married to an Egyptian Jewess, and yet he had chosen to pass the World War II years in Nazi Germany. His fickle and greedy character made him seem an unsavory partner, which attracted the Israeli services’ attention; they soon made him their agent, even though he didn’t realize it. He believed he was working for right-wing Syrian extremists who were acting undercover. He truly believed in Kamal Amin Tabet’s legend, and in the coming years was to be of great help to the Israeli spy.

His first task was to make sure that Tabet’s baggage would safely go through Syrian controls.

January 10, 1962. El-Ard’s car, coming from Beirut, was stopped at the Syrian border. In the trunk were Elie Cohen’s bags, full of transmission equipment and other incriminating items. Elie was sitting in the passenger seat, beside Sheikh El-Ard.

“We are going to meet my friend Abu Khaldun,” El-Ard told Elie when they approached the border. “He happens to be in financial trouble. Five hundred dollars would certainly improve his situation.”

And so, $500 quickly made their way from the Israeli agent’s wallet to the pocket of Abu Khaldun, the Syrian customs inspector. The barrier was raised and the car sailed into the desert. Elie Cohen was in Syria.

In bustling Damascus, strewn with crowded mosques and colorful souks, it was not difficult to melt into the crowd. But Elie wanted the exact opposite. He wanted to be noticed, and fast. He rented a luxurious villa in the classy Abu Ramen neighborhood, close to Syrian Army Headquarters. From the villa’s balcony, Elie could watch the entrance to the Syrian government’s official guesthouse. His house stood among foreign embassies, rich businessmen’s homes, and the official residences of the nation’s leaders. Elie immediately concealed his secret equipment in various hiding places throughout the house. In order to avoid the risk of informers or traitors in his own household, he decided to refrain from hiring servants, and lived alone.

He was lucky again. He had arrived in Damascus at the right moment. The United Arab Republic collapse was regarded by President Nasser in Cairo as a personal affront and a humiliation to Egypt. The Syrian leaders, both politicians and military, were obsessed with the possibility of an Egyptian-inspired coup, and Israeli espionage was not on their agenda. On the other hand, they badly needed new allies, supporters, and sources of funding, both in Syria and among the Syrian émigrés overseas. Kamal Amin Tabet, the staunchly nationalist millionaire, armed with excellent letters of recommendation, was the right man at the right time.

Cohen established his contacts quickly and effectively. His letters of recommendation opened the gates to the high society, the banks, and the commercial circles that had inspired the coup of September 28. His new friends introduced Elie to top government officials, senior army officers, and leaders of the ruling party. Two rich businessmen courted the young and handsome millionaire, hoping he would marry one of their daughters. In a display of generosity, Tabet contributed a substantial sum of money to the building of a public kitchen for the poor of Damascus. His new popularity paved his way to the governing circles; yet he refrained from identifying with Syria’s new rulers, because he intuitively felt that this was only temporary. Syria was still to go through major internal aftershocks following the separation from Egypt.

A month after his arrival in Damascus, Elie was visited by George Salem Seif, a radio-show host in charge of Radio Damascus broadcasts for Syrians abroad. He was the man whom Zalman had mentioned at Elie’s last briefing in Israel. Seif had “returned” to Syria a while before Tabet. Because of his position, he could supply Elie with inside information about the political and military situation. Seif also showed Elie the secret guidelines by the Ministry of Propaganda, outlining what he could broadcast and what he had to conceal from his audiences. At the parties held in Seif’s house, Elie met several senior officials and well-known politicians.

Seif, like El-Ard, had no clue about Elie Cohen’s real identity. He, too, believed Tabet was a fanatical nationalist who had his own political agenda.

Elie Cohen realized that he had become the loneliest spy in the world—with not even one friend and confidant; he didn’t know if there was another Israeli network operating in Damascus. He needed nerves of steel to withstand the stress of his terrible solitude, and to play a dangerous role twenty-four hours a day. He knew that even during his rare visits home he couldn’t share his secret with his wife, and had to mislead her, too.

He started transmitting his messages to Israel daily, at eight A.M.—and sometimes in the evening as well. His broadcasts were carried out under a foolproof cover. His transmitter was located in his villa, very close to the army headquarters, which was the source of endless transmissions. Nobody could discern the difference between Elie’s broadcasts and the myriad messages emanating from the army communications center.

Six months after arriving in Syria, Kamal Amin Tabet had become a well-known figure in Damascus high society. He then decided to go abroad “for business.” He first flew to Argentina, where he met several of his Arab friends, then traveled to Europe, changed planes and identities, and, on a hot summer night, landed in Lod Airport. Laden with presents, the “traveling salesman” arrived in his modest apartment in Bat Yam, where Nadia and Sophie were waiting for him.

At the end of fall, Elie Cohen flew to Europe. A few days later, Kamal Amin Tabet arrived in Damascus. During his stay in Israel, his superiors in Aman had equipped him with a miniature camera so he could photograph sites and documents. He had to conceal the microfilms in expensive boxes containing backgammon pieces. The boxes were made of polished wood embellished with a mosaic of nacre and ivory. The mosaic ornament could be dug out of the polished wood, and reinserted after the microfilm had been placed in the cavity. Tabet would send the backgammon sets to “friends in Argentina,” who would dispatch them to Israel with the diplomatic pouch.

Some of the first documents sent by Elie were reports on the growing unrest in the army and the rising power of the Ba’ath (Resurrection) Socialist Party. Elie felt a profound change of mood in Syria, and let his intuition guide him. He established close contacts with the Ba’ath leaders and contributed large sums of money to the party.

He had done the right thing. On March 8, 1963, a new coup shook Damascus. The army deposed the government and the Ba’ath Party seized power in Syria. General Hafez, Elie’s friend from Buenos Aires, was appointed minister of defense in Salah Al-Bitar’s cabinet. In July a new coup took place, this time inside the regime. Hafez became president of the Revolutionary Council and head of state. Tabet’s best friends were appointed to key positions in the cabinet and the military hierarchy. The Israeli spy was now a member of the inner circle of power.

A glamorous party in Damascus. One after the other, the luxury cars of ministers and generals arrive at the sprawling villa. A long line of guests in evening attire and resplendent uniforms proceeds into the house, where the host is warmly welcoming his guests. The guest list reads like a Who’s Who in Damascus: several ministers, including the minister of defense and the minister for agrarian reform, a large number of generals and colonels, the top leaders of the Ba’ath Party, businessmen, and tycoons. Many of them are standing around Colonel Salim Hatum, the officer who led his tanks into Damascus on the night of the coup and actually handed General Hafez the presidency. President Hafez himself arrives later and warmly shakes the hand of the host, his friend Kamal Amin Tabet. He is accompanied by Mrs. Hafez, stunning in the mink coat presented to her by Tabet as a token of the Syrian emigrants’ admiration for the president and his wife. She is not the only one to have received expensive gifts. Quite a few women wear the jewelry, and senior officials drive the cars, given them by Tabet. Important political dealers have deposited his money into their accounts.

In the living room, a group of officials and army officers, back from the Israel border, discuss the military situation; they are joined by entrepreneurs and engineers who work on the ambitious project of diverting the tributaries of the Jordan River. In the spacious hall, the directors of the government-sponsored Radio Damascus and the heads of the Ministry of Propaganda stand together. Tabet is one of them now—the government has asked him to run some radio broadcasts to emigrant communities overseas. Tabet has another radio show, where he analyzes political and economic issues.

That party, as many others, costs Tabet a fortune, but he doesn’t even blink. He has reached the apex of success, and it seems that there is no door he can’t open. He has good friends in the army headquarters, and he regularly participates in policy-making meetings of the Ba’ath Party.

Elie kept transmitting reports of military character, names and functions of senior officers, top-secret military orders, and other items to Israel. He photographed and dispatched military maps, mostly the detailed blueprints of the fortifications along the Israeli border, to Aman. He sent reports on new weapons introduced in the Syrian Army. He also described the Syrians’ capacity to absorb new weapons. Months later, a Syrian general bitterly admitted: “There was no army secret that remained unknown to Elie Cohen . . .”

Elie transmitted every morning to Israel and didn’t fear capture, thanks to the protective umbrella of the Syrian Army broadcasts from the nearby headquarters. But once, a friend, the army lieutenant Zaher Al-Din, paid him a surprise visit. Elie succeeded in hiding the transmitter, but a sheaf of papers with the secret code, in the form of grids filled with letters, remained on the table.

“What’s this?” Zaher wanted to know.

“Oh, just crosswords,” Elie said.

Besides the transmissions and the backgammon boxes for his “Argentinean friends,” Elie developed a third way of communicating with Israel: Radio Damascus. He worked out with his superiors in Tel Aviv a code of words and phrases, which he inserted into his radio broadcasts and which were duly decoded by Aman.

He now took another step in his efforts to obtain top-secret information. A rumor started running in the governing circles in Damascus that Tabet held illicit sex parties in his villa. Only his close, intimate friends were invited to these parties, where the guests met a large number of pretty women. Some of them were street hookers; others, girls from good families. Tabet’s guests enjoyed wild sex, but their host was the only one who did not lose his cool.

Tabet also supplied sexy—and generous—secretaries to his high-placed friends. One of these friends was Colonel Salim Hatum, whose mistress passed to Tabet every word she heard from her colonel.

Tabet showed extreme patriotic fervor when he spoke about Israel, which he defined as “the vilest enemy of Arab nationalism.” He urged the leaders of Syria to increase their anti-Israeli propaganda and open a “second front” against Israel, besides Egypt. He even accused his friends of not doing enough against the Israeli aggressor. In doing so, he achieved his goal. His military friends were determined to prove him wrong, and to show him they were ready for battle with the enemy. On three occasions they took him to visit the Syrian positions along Israel’s border. They let him see the fortifications and the bunkers, showed him the weapons concentrated in the area and described their defensive and offensive plans. Lieutenant Zaher Al-Din took him to the El-Hama military camp, where large quantities of new weapons had been stored. On his fourth visit to the Israeli border, Tabet was the only civilian in a group of Syrian and Egyptian high-ranking officers. The group was headed by the most respected Arab military leader, the Egyptian general Ali Amer, head of the United Arab Commandment, who commanded—at least on paper—the combined forces of Egypt, Syria, and Iraq.

Right after Amer’s visit, the Ba’ath leaders charged Tabet with a vital assignment: he was sent on a mission of reconciliation to the elderly Ba’ath leader Salah Al-Bitar, who had been deposed by General Hafez, and was since “on a cure” in Jericho. Tabet traveled to Jordan and spent a few days with the former prime minister. Back in Damascus, Tabet accompanied to the airport the ailing President Hafez, who was on his way to get medical treatment in Paris. When Hafez returned a few weeks later, Tabet was once again in the welcoming line, waiting on the tarmac, his mission successfully completed.

In 1963, an important change took place in Israel. The new ramsad who replaced Little Isser, Meir Amit, had been for a few months in charge of both Aman and the Mossad. Amit decided to abolish Unit 131 and transfer all its men and operations to the Mossad. One morning, Elie Cohen learned that his employer had changed, and he was now a Mossad agent.

That same year, Nadia gave birth to a second daughter, Iris. But in November 1964, during his second visit to Israel that same year, Elie saw his secret dream come true: Nadia had a third child, a son! He was named Shaul.

“During that visit we noticed that Elie had changed,” his family members said later. “He was withdrawn, nervous, and grim. He lost his temper several times. He didn’t want to go out, didn’t want to meet friends. ‘Soon I’ll quit my job,’ he said to us. ‘Next year I’ll come back to Israel. I won’t leave my family anymore.’ ”

At the end of November, Elie kissed his wife and three children good-bye and flew away again. Nadia didn’t know that this was the last good-bye.

November 13, 1964, was a Wednesday. Syrian positions at the Israeli border, close to Tel-Dan, opened fire on Israeli tractors that were working in the demilitarized zone. The Israeli reaction was formidable. Tanks and cannon riposted with heavy fire, and minutes later Mirage and Vautour aircraft joined the battle. The aircraft pounded the Syrian positions, then dived toward the site of the deviation of the Jordan waters and blasted the canals dug by the Syrians. Heavy mechanical equipment, bulldozers, tractors, and shovels were systematically destroyed. The Syrian Air Force didn’t interfere, as it had not yet mastered its newly acquired Soviet MiG fighters.

The world press almost unanimously validated the Israeli response to the Syrian aggression. Months later, Syrian officers would say that one of the Israeli attack’s architects had been Elie Cohen, who was in Israel during the battle. Thanks to Cohen, the Israelis were fully aware of the poor state of the Syrian Air Force and its inability to go to battle at that stage. The Israelis also had detailed knowledge of the Syrian fortifications and the water deviation works. They knew exactly what kinds and quantities of weapons were positioned in each base and bunker.

But Elie Cohen knew much more than that. He had succeeded in befriending a Saudi entrepreneur who had been contracted to plan and dig the first canals of the Syrian project. Thanks to that friendship, the Israelis learned, months in advance, where the excavations would take place, how deep and wide the canals would be, what equipment would be used, and other technical details. The contractor also divulged to his friend Tabet the capacity of the canals to withstand bombing from the air and the full extent of the security measures. The name of Cohen’s good friend was bin Laden, little Osama’s father. Thanks to the detailed information he shared with the Israeli spy, Israel attacked the project several times, until the Arab countries decided to abandon it completely in 1965.

In mid-January 1965, a few weeks after Elie had left Israel, a beautiful postcard landed in Nadia Cohen’s mailbox. “My dearest Nadia,” Elie wrote in French. “Just a few lines to wish you a Happy New Year, which I hope will bring happiness to the whole family. Lots of kisses to my darlings—Fifi (Sophie), Iris, and Shaikeh’ (Shaul), and to you, from the bottom of my heart—Elie.”

When Nadia received that postcard, Elie was lying, beaten and tortured, on the rough stone floor of a Damascus prison.

For several months already, the Syrian Mukhabarat—the secret services—were on high alert. The alarm had been sounded by Chief Tayara, head of the Palestinian Department of the Mukhabarat. Tayara noticed that since the summer of 1964, almost every decision taken by the Syrian government in the evening—or even during the night—was broadcast the following day in the Arabic-language programs of Kol Israel—Israel’s government-sponsored radio. Furthermore, Israel had made public some top-secret decisions that had been taken behind closed doors. Tayara was stunned by the precision of the Israeli bombings during the November 13 incident. His logical conclusion was that the Israelis had exact knowledge of the Syrian Army deployment at the front lines, and knew precisely where to hit and how. He became certain that Israel had a spy at the highest levels of the Syrian government. The spy’s information was broadcasted by Kol Israel in a matter of hours. This meant he was transmitting his reports by wireless. But where was the transmitter?

In the fall of 1964, Tayara and his colleagues made great efforts to locate the secret transmitter with Soviet-made equipment, but failed.

And then, in January 1965, they got lucky.

A Soviet ship unloaded in Latakiyeh port several huge containers filled with new communications equipment. It was to replace the Syrian Army’s obsolete instruments. The equipment upgrade took place on January 7, 1965. In order to put in place the new devices and check them out, all army communications were suspended for twenty-four hours.

When silence fell over all army communications throughout the country, an officer on duty by an army receiver discerned a single, faint transmission. The spy’s broadcast. The officer reached for the telephone.

Mukhabarat’s squads, equipped with Soviet locators, set out at once to find the transmission source. Unfortunately, the transmission stopped before they reached the place. But the technician’s feverish calculations pointed in one direction: the home of Kamal Amin Tabet.

“That’s a mistake,” a senior Mukhabarat officer ruled. It was unthinkable that Tabet, whom the Ba’ath leaders wanted to appoint minister in the next cabinet, could be a spy. Tabet was above suspicion.

But in the evening, the transmission was there again. The Mukhabarat again sent its cars, and again got the same result.

At eight A.M. precisely, on a sunny January day, four Mukhabarat officers broke into the splendid house in the Abu Ramen neighborhood. They smashed the entrance door, tearing it from its hinges, and then darted toward the bedroom, guns in hands. The spy was there, but he was not sleeping. He was caught red-handed, in the middle of a transmission. He jumped on his feet and faced the officers; he didn’t try to run away and didn’t resist his captors. For once, the odds were against him. “Kamal Amin Tabet,” thundered the commanding officer. “You are under arrest!”

The news spread through Damascus like wildfire. Fantastic, absurd, impossible, nonsense! There were no words to express the shock and the disbelief of Syria’s leaders when they heard the news. Could one of the leaders of the ruling party, a personal friend of the president, a millionaire and a socialite, be a spy?!

But the evidence was irrefutable. The transmitter that Tabet would conceal behind the window shutters, the tiny reserve transmitter hidden in the large chandelier in the living room, the microfilms, the dynamite-stuffed cigars, the code pages . . . The man was a traitor indeed.

Panic-stricken, the heads of the regime ordered a thorough investigation. What exactly did Tabet know? Could he incriminate them? President Hafez himself came to interrogate him in his cell. “During the interrogation,” Hafez later testified, “when I looked in Tabet’s eyes, I was suddenly assailed by a terrible suspicion. I felt that the man before me wasn’t an Arab at all. Very cautiously I asked him a few questions about the Muslim religion, about the Koran. I asked him to recite the Sura Al-Fatiha—the first chapter of the Koran. Tabet could barely quote a few verses. He tried to defend himself by saying that he had left Syria while still very young, and his memory was betraying him. But at this moment I knew: he was a Jew.”

Damascus’s torturers did the rest. While Tabet was still lying in his dark cell, unconscious, his face and body covered with ugly wounds, his nails pulled out, his confession was rushed to General Hafez. The man was not Tabet. He was Elie Cohen, an Israeli Jew.

On January 24, 1965, Damascus officially announced “the arrest of an important Israeli spy.” A senior officer, livid with rage, roared at a press conference: “Israel is the devil, and Cohen is the devil’s agent!”

Panic spread throughout Damascus. Was Cohen a lone wolf or the head of a spy ring? One after the other, sixty-nine people were arrested; twenty-seven of them women. Among the suspects were Majeed Sheikh El-Ard, George Salem Seif, Lieutenant Zaher Al-Din, senior officials of the Ministry of Propaganda, prostitutes, and other women whose identities were not revealed. Four hundred people who had been in contact with Tabet were questioned. The investigation exposed some serious problems. Many of Syria’s political, military, and business leaders were among Cohen’s closest friends. The investigators couldn’t touch them. Their names couldn’t be mentioned, as any public allusion to them could create the impression that they were complicit in Tabet’s spying. The Syrians also found that Tabet had made every possible effort to prevent the publication of any contact between his various informants; therefore it was very difficult to establish the extent of the spy ring.

In Israel the military censorship imposed total blackout on any mention of Cohen’s arrest. The Israelis still hoped to save him and were determined to prevent the news about him from reaching the local media. But there were some people who had the right to know. One evening a stranger visited Elie’s brothers. “Your brother has been arrested in Damascus, and accused of spying for Israel,” the man said. The brothers were stunned. One of them, Maurice, rushed to his mother’s home in Bat Yam. “Mother, you should be strong,” he said. “Elie was arrested in Syria.”

The old woman was speechless. Finally, she managed, “In Syria? How? Did he cross the border by mistake?” When Maurice explained to her what Elie was doing in Damascus, the poor woman collapsed.

Nadia stood among her three children, astounded. Even though she had suspected all along that her husband didn’t reveal everything to her, she never had guessed what his real line of work was. Elie’s colleagues tried to calm her down. “You’re flying to Paris right away,” one of them told her. “We shall hire the best lawyers. We’ll do everything possible to save him.” Meir Amit personally took charge of the efforts to rescue Cohen.

On January 31, one of France’s greatest lawyers, Jacques Mercier, came to Damascus. Officially, he had been hired by the Cohen family; actually, it was the State of Israel that covered his expenses and his fees. He came to Syria on a mission impossible. “From my first day in Damascus,” he said later, “I realized that Elie Cohen’s fate was sealed. He would hang. Now all I could do was try to gain time and work out a deal that could save his life.”

At first Mercier tried to prevent a trial. He met with the regime’s leaders and asked to be allowed to see Cohen in order to make him sign Mercier’s appointment as his attorney.

His demand was flatly rejected.

Yet Mercier found out very soon that he had some allies in certain governing circles who treated the world public opinion with respect. They wanted a trial where the rights of the accused would be protected. They were supported—for a totally different reason—by the “hawks” in the military establishment, sworn enemies of Hafez, who wanted to expose the president’s close ties with Tabet in open court. Such a trial, they thought, would make public the corruption of the regime and undermine its position.

But this approach was bitterly opposed by another group—all those who had maintained close ties with Tabet. They knew that a public trial could send them to the gallows as well. That faction had one single goal: to prevent a public trial at all costs and eliminate Cohen as soon as possible.

The trial finally took place before a special military court, behind closed doors, in front of an empty room; only some portions, duly selected, were broadcast on the state television. There were no prosecuting and no defending attorneys. When Elie Cohen asked the court for a defense attorney, the presiding judge exploded: “You don’t need a defender. All the corrupt press is on your side, and all the enemies of the revolution are your defenders.” The presiding judge assumed the functions of interrogator, prosecutor, and judge. But the worst of it was that the presiding judge was Brigadier General Salah Dali, formerly Tabet’s good friend. Another close, even intimate, friend of Tabet, Colonel Salim Hatum, was among the judges. In order to disprove any rumors of his ties with Cohen, he asked him: “Do you know Salim Hatum?” And the accused, like an actor who follows a detailed script, turned to the empty courtroom, then looked Hatum in the eye, and answered: “No, I don’t see him in this room.”

That portion was shown on television. “All of Damascus was laughing at this episode,” Mercier said. “That was not a trial. That was a tragicomedy, a circus.”

The television cameras showed Elie Cohen’s codefendants: El-Ard, Al-Din, Seif, a few prostitutes. But who were the other women? Senior officers’ wives? “Secretaries”? Friends of Tabet and of the Ba’ath leaders? And what were the secrets that Cohen had communicated to his Israeli handlers? He was accused of espionage, but throughout the trial not one word was said about the things he did and the contents of his transmissions. The only thing the cameras couldn’t hide was the nervous tremor of a muscle in Cohen’s left cheek, and a repeated sharp tilting of his head. These were results of his torture by electrodes attached to his body and head.

Israel followed the trial in silence. Every evening, Elie’s family met by the television set the Mossad had loaned them. The children, Nadia, the brothers, were softly crying at the sight of Elie’s face on the screen. His mother, on an impulse, kissed the screen and pressed to Elie’s face the small Star of David she was wearing on a chain. Sophie called: “This is my daddy! He is a hero!” Nadia wept in silence.

In Damascus, Mercier would wake up in the middle of the night, bathed in cold sweat and haunted by horrible nightmares. His inutility depressed him deeply. On March 31, the military court published its verdict: Elie Cohen, Majeed Sheikh El-Ard, and Lieutenant Zaher Al-Din were sentenced to death.

Mercier launched a new effort. In April and May of 1965, he visited Damascus three times. He brought substantial offers from Israel. The first one was a deal: Israel was ready to deliver to Syria medicines and heavy agricultural equipment, estimated worth millions of dollars, for the life of Cohen. The Syrians rejected the offer. Israel then made another offer: to send back to Syria the eleven Syrian spies that had been captured and jailed in Israel. The Syrians rejected that offer, too, but hinted that a presidential pardon wasn’t out of the question.

On May 1, El-Ard’s sentence was commuted to life in prison. On May 8, Elie Cohen’s sentence was officially published. The Mossad braced for a last effort. In Paris, Nadia Cohen presented an appeal for clemency at the Syrian embassy. Other appeals came from all over the world. They were signed by world-famous figures like Pope Paul VI and British philosopher Bertrand Russell; statesmen like France’s Edgar Faure and Antoine Pinay, Belgium’s Queen Mother Elisabeth and politician Camille Huysmans, and Canadian John Diefenbaker; Italian cardinals and ministers; twenty-two members of British Parliament; the Human Rights League; the International Red Cross . . . If Elie had heard about them, he would have remembered the similar appeals that tried in vain to save his friends’ lives in Cairo eleven years before.

On May 18, in the middle of the night, Elie Cohen was awakened by his jailers. They dressed him in a long white gown and took him to the Damascus marketplace. They let him write a letter to his family and exchange a few words with the Damascus rabbi, Nissim Andabo. Syrian soldiers then fastened to his chest a huge poster where his sentence was written in large Arabic letters, the television and newspaper cameras focused on the lone man who went up the stairs to the gallows between two rows of armed soldiers.

The hangman was waiting, and quickly fastened the noose around Elie’s neck. He made the condemned man stand on a low stool.

Elie faced the crowd, silent, resigned, but not defeated. The crowd held its breath. They distinctly heard the thump when the stool was pulled out from under his feet; men and women yelled with delight watching the death throes of the Israeli spy.

Large crowds of Damascenes, mysteriously awakened in the wee hours, passed by the gallows, for the next six hours, to view the body. In Israel, the heavy veil of silence was removed in a single moment. In a few hours, Elie Cohen became a national hero. Hundreds of thousands participated in his family’s grief. Schools, streets, and parks were named after him. Articles and books described his feats. Nadia did not marry again.

Even today, forty-six years after Elie Cohen’s death, Syria refuses to return his body for burial in Israel. Elie Cohen is considered one of the Mossad heroes. But there are many who point an accusing finger at the Mossad. His family and various writers contend that the Mossad used Elie with extreme recklessness by having him transmit his reports daily, sometimes twice a day; the Mossad even ordered Elie to transmit regularly the debates of the Syrian parliament, even though their importance was almost nil. A pointless task that made Elie run unnecessary risks.

Elie Cohen was a great spy; and his end was the end of all great spies.

Their overconfidence, and the exaggerated demands of their handlers, led them to their deaths.