Chapter Fifteen
A Honey Trap for the Atom Spy

Except for carrying a sign that read I AM A SPY, Mordechai Vanunu seemed to have done all he could to expose his secret life.

He was a technician at the Dimona atomic reactor, the most secret and secure installation in Israel. The foreign press, as well as many governments, was convinced that Israel was building nuclear weapons in that top-secret facility. Anybody who applied for a job at Dimona had to go through a long, rigorous process of filling out forms, submitting to interrogations, undergoing background checks by the Shabak and other security specialists, until—at the end of the exhausting procedure—they were cleared to enter the secret compound. The intensive surveillance and close scrutiny continued throughout one’s employment at Dimona.

Vanunu applied for a job at Dimona after he saw an ad in a daily newspaper. He filled out a form at the “nuclear research facility” office in nearby Beersheba, was subjected to a routine security investigation, and got the job without any problems.

How was this possible? He was a left-wing radical, his friends were Arab members of the Communist, anti-Zionist Rakah Party; he participated in protests at their side, was photographed in extreme pro-Palestinian rallies, carried signs, made speeches, and gave interviews to the media.

He also hosted Rakah militants in his small Beersheba apartment, and asked to join their university cell, exclusively composed of young Arab radicals, openly hostile to the State of Israel. In Ben-Gurion University, where he was registered as a student, he was known for his extreme views.

He was a gifted but unstable young man. Before he became a Rakah supporter, he had been a right-wing extremist and an admirer of the racist Rabbi Kahane. He later supported the extreme right-wing party Hatechiya (Revival), voted for the Likud, and finally landed in the extreme left. He claimed that the controversial 1982 Lebanon War had made him change his political opinions. A loner, with almost no friends, he firmly believed that he was discriminated against because of his Moroccan origins. That conviction grew when he failed the admission tests for the Air Force Academy, and was posted to the Engineer Corps. After his discharge from the IDF, he started engineering studies in Tel Aviv, changed his mind and moved to Beersheba, where he started studying economics, changed his mind again and switched to philosophy. He became a vegetarian, then a vegan.

His classmates were impressed by his lust for money. He boasted that he did not have to work, just to invest smartly in the stock market. In his diary, he gave the stock market “top priority,” before philosophy and English. He drove a red Audi, made some money as a nude model, and, at a student party, pulled down his drawers to win a prize.

His way of life was his own business, of course, but his political activity as a Rakah sympathizer and a Palestinian supporter should have sounded a thousand alarms. Instead, he was called to a meeting with Shabak officials, who told him to stop these activities and asked him to sign a document stating that he had been warned. He did not sign and did not stop.

The Shabak described Vanunu’s activities in a routine report to the director of security in the Ministry of Defense. The director conveyed the report to the director of security at the Dimona reactor, who filed it in one of his folders, and that was it. No action was taken, and no surveillance of Vanunu was initiated. A remarkable oversight. A whole chain of people—Shabak officials at local and national levels and the directors of security at the ministry and Dimona—had failed to do their duty.

Vanunu continued his political activities and was not bothered anymore.

He was an “operator” at Institute 2, the most secret department in the Dimona compound. Out of the 2,700 employees at Dimona, only 150 were allowed entrance into Institute 2. Vanunu had two badges: 9567-8 for entering the Dimona facility, and 320 for entering Institute 2.

From the outside, the institute looked like a modest two-story building that could be a storage facility or a marginal utility unit. But people with inquisitive minds would notice an elevator cabin on the flat roof, and wonder why a two-story house needed an elevator. The key to this mystery was the real secret of Institute 2: the elevator was needed to go not up but down, to the six underground floors that were artfully concealed. Vanunu was in charge of the night shift and knew the building well. The first floor was divided between several offices and a cafeteria. A few gates on the ground floor were used for the transfer of uranium rods used in the reactor; on the same floor were some more offices and some assembly labs. On the first underground floor were pipes and valves. On the second, the central control room and a sort of terrace, called “Golda’s balcony.” Important visitors with maximum clearance could watch the production hall beneath from that balcony. On underground floor three, technicians worked on the uranium rods that were lowered from above. On level four was a large underground space, rising to the height of three floors for the production plant and the separation facility, where the plutonium produced in the reactor was removed from the uranium rods. The fifth floor housed the metallurgic department and the lab where the components of the bombs were produced; and on the sixth underground floor, chemical waste was loaded into special containers.

Vanunu knew that during the normal operation of the nuclear reactor, the chain reaction produced plutonium that accumulated on the uranium rods. After being “shaved” from the rods, it was used on levels four and five, and in the assembly of Israel’s atomic weapons.

One day, for no particular reason, Vanunu took a camera to Institute 2. He brought it in his bag, stuck among the books that he would take later to class at Ben-Gurion University. If he was asked by the security screeners why he had brought a camera to Dimona, he intended to say that he had taken it to the beach and forgotten it in his bag. But nobody checked his bag, nobody asked questions, and he stored the camera in his personal locker. During the lunch and evening breaks, when nobody was in the building, Vanunu would wander in the underground floors; photograph the labs, the equipment, and the halls; draw detailed sketches; enter the empty offices; and peruse documents in open safes. Nobody saw him and nobody suspected him. The security guards seemed to have evaporated into thin air. Vanunu’s superiors had no idea about his dangerous hobby, and evaluated him as a quiet, serious, and diligent technician.

 

At the end of 1985, Vanunu was fired after nine years in Dimona. His dismissal was not connected to his political activities but was part of budgetary cuts at Dimona. He was let go like many others. He received a 150 percent severance package and eight months’ wages as an “adaptation grant.” Yet, again, he was angry and frustrated. He decided to go abroad for a long trip—and perhaps never return, if he could find a new home, like 12 million Jews who lived outside Israel. He sold his apartment and his car and liquidated his bank accounts.

The thirty-one-year-old Vanunu shouldered his backpack and set off on his trip. He had gone on long trips before—once to Europe and once to the United States. Now he headed for the Far East. In his bag he carried the two films he had shot at Dimona.

His first stop was Greece, then Russia, Thailand, and Nepal. In Kathmandu, he met an Israeli girl and courted her bashfully. He introduced himself as “Mordy” and openly admitted that he was a left-wing pacifist, and perhaps he would not return to Israel. He visited a Buddhist temple and toyed with the idea of becoming a Buddhist himself.

After Kathmandu, Vanunu traveled the Far East and finally landed in Australia. For a few months, he worked at odd jobs in Sydney, but most of the time he was lonely and miserable. One evening, he strolled through one of the most disreputable neighborhoods of the city, a haven for prostitutes, petty thieves, and drug dealers. From the darkness, in front of him, emerged the spire of the St. George church, a known refuge of tormented souls—desperate people, criminals, homeless wanderers, poor and oppressed men and women. He walked in and met the Anglican priest John McKnight. The good priest immediately realized that Vanunu was looking for a home and a family. He established a close and warm contact with his shy, insecure guest. In the next weeks, the two of them had long and sincere conversations, and finally—on August 17, 1986—Vanunu was baptized Christian, and chose a new name: John Crossman.

It was a huge transition for an observant Jew, born in Marrakesh, who had spent his youth in the Talmudic schools and yeshivas of Beersheba. True, his religious zeal had waned years ago, but his conversion was more a product of his instability and confusion than of his disappointment with Judaism. If he had not walked into St. George church and met Father John, he might have converted to Buddhism or some other religion. But by turning his back on Judaism, he also turned his back on Israel. His aversion to his country gradually became one of the major motives for his future actions.

During a social meeting at the church, Vanunu told his new friends about his work in Israel, described the Dimona reactor, and offered to make a slide show with the photographs he had taken. They gazed at him vacantly; they had no idea what he was talking about. But there was one man in his audience who became intrigued by his words: Oscar Guerrero, a Colombian wanderer and an occasional journalist. The two of them had painted the church fence, and had lived in the same apartment for a while. Guerrero realized the importance of the photos and fired up Vanunu’s imagination with promises of fortune and glory.

Vanunu badly wanted money, but he also thought he could use the promised glory to promote peace between Jews and Arabs. This was not his original plan: peacemaking had not been the reason why he left Israel and carried the two rolls of film around the world for many months. But making peace and saving the world from Israel’s atomic bomb became an allegedly noble motive for his actions. His private war against the Israeli nuclear project gained steam as the days went by, and turned into a major reason for publishing the Dimona photographs. But Vanunu also understood that if he did so, it would be his end as an Israeli. He would never be able to return to Israel, where he would be branded as a traitor and enemy of the state.

Still, the temptation was great. Vanunu and Guerrero went together to a photo lab in Sydney. They developed the pictures he took of Institute 2, and tried to peddle them to the local offices of American magazines and Australian television stations, but in vain. They were regarded as either oddballs or swindlers trying to make an easy dollar. Nobody believed that the shy, ascetic young man held Israel’s most guarded secret in his hands.

Finally Guerrero flew to Spain and England, and this time he struck gold. The editors of the London Sunday Times, who heard his story, realized the dramatic potential of an article on Israel’s nuclear reactor, based on exclusive photographs and drawings. Yet they had to be extremely cautious. Not long ago they had been badly hurt by buying “Hitler’s diaries,” which turned out to be a second-rate hoax. Therefore, they asked to thoroughly examine the material that Guerrero had brought over.

In the meantime, an official of Australian television got in touch with the Israeli embassy in Canberra and inquired if the strange man who had offered them the photos of the Dimona reactor was indeed an Israeli citizen. The story came to the attention of an Israeli journalist, who reported it to his newspaper in Tel Aviv.

Like a thunderbolt, a stunning blow shook Israel’s secret services: a former operator at Institute 2 in Dimona was trying to sell Israel’s most vital secret. “The system failed, we did not get to him in time,” helplessly admitted Haim Carmon, then director of security at the Ministry of Defense.

The news was rushed to “The Prime Ministers’ Club”—Prime Minister Peres and former prime ministers Rabin and Shamir—who were members of the National Unity government. They decided to find Vanunu at once and bring him to Israel. Some of their aides suggested killing Vanunu instead of bringing him back, but that idea was dismissed. The prime minister picked up the phone and called the ramsad.

 

Since 1982, the Mossad had had a new director: Nahum Admoni. After almost twenty years of generals parachuted from the IDF to the helm of the Mossad, the organization finally had a new chief, one who had worked his way up from the inside. Nahum Admoni, born in Jerusalem, was a veteran of the Shai and of Aman. He had been Yitzhak Hofi’s deputy, and reached the coveted post of ramsad after Hofi retired in 1982. He was to spend seven years as ramsad, but these were not to be the best years of the intelligence community. Between 1982 and 1989, several incidents embarrassed the Mossad: the Pollard Affair, which erupted when a Jewish civilian intelligence analyst was arrested in Washington for spying for a secret Israeli intelligence unit; the Iran-Contra affair, in which Israel was involved; arrests of several Mossad agents in foreign countries because of careless blunders; but the worst damage to Israel was certainly caused by Mordechai Vanunu. As soon as Peres called him, Admoni launched an operation for capturing Vanunu. The Mossad computer spewed out the operation’s code name: “Kaniuk.”

 

Nahum Admoni urgently sent a Caesarea unit to Australia to find Vanunu. But on their arrival, the agents found out that they had come too late. The bird had flown the coop—to England.

Shortly after interviewing Guerrero, the Sunday Times editor sent Peter Hounam, a star of the Insight section of the weekly, to Australia, to meet Vanunu. When he boarded his flight, Hounam already knew that British scientists had examined some of the photos brought by Guerrero and confirmed their authenticity. The meeting with Vanunu in Sydney convinced Hounam, as well, that his story was true. He was particularly impressed by Vanunu’s denial of Guerrero’s exaggerated claims that he was “an Israeli scientist.” Vanunu told him the truth: he had been only a technician at Dimona.

Vanunu and Hounam flew to London, leaving Guerrero behind. In London, Vanunu was subjected to several intensive interrogations by the Sunday Times people. He told them everything he knew, and revealed to the British that Israel was also developing a neutron bomb, capable of destroying living things but leaving buildings and structures intact. He also described the process of assembling the bombs at Institute 2. Yet, all along, he seemed scared and nervous. He feared being killed or kidnapped by the Israeli services. The Sunday Times people tried to calm him down; they moved him to another hotel, and recruited all their staff to serve, in turns, as “babysitters” for their precious guest. They insisted—in vain—that he not walk the streets alone.

When the interrogations were over, they offered him a fantastic deal: $100,000 for his story and photos, 40 percent of the distribution rights of the newspaper articles, and 25 percent of the book rights—if there were to be a book. They told him that the Sunday Times owner, Rupert Murdoch, also owned the film company Twentieth Century Fox, and he was thinking of making a movie about his life and times. The role of Vanunu would be played by Robert de Niro.

Vanunu’s hosts in London offered him all the possible temptations except one: a woman. Vanunu hungered for sex and for a woman’s warmth, and could not get them. When Insight staff member Rowena Webster kept him company, he desperately tried to convince her to have sex with him, but she refused. Sex was Vanunu’s Achilles’ heel, but the smart editors of the Sunday Times failed to realize this.

They also failed to realize that Vanunu’s fears of the Israeli services were justified. One of the Insight reporters was sent to Israel to find out if Vanunu indeed was who he claimed to be. He spoke about him with an Israeli journalist, who immediately alerted the Shabak. A few hours later, several members of the Mossad operational team landed in London. The team was headed by the ramsad’s deputy, Shabtai Shavit. The operation was commanded by the ramsad’s second deputy and Caesarea’s head, Beni Ze’evi.

Two Mossad agents, posing as press photographers, lingered by the Sunday Times building and took pictures of protesting workers, who happened to be on strike. After a few days, they saw and photographed Vanunu and followed him on London’s streets, using the “comb” method developed by veteran Mossad agent Zvi Malkin. Besides following their “mark,” the agents combed the areas that he might visit, and were in place even before he arrived. And so, on September 24, Vanunu arrived at Leicester Square, a favorite site for tourists and visitors. By a newspaper stand, he saw a girl “that looked very much like Farrah Fawcett, the star of the TV show Charlie’s Angels.”

She was a pretty blonde and to him she looked “beautiful and angelic.” He stared at her longingly while she stood in line in front of the newsstand. She turned her head and looked back at him, a long and meaningful look. Their eyes locked for a moment, but her turn came, she bought her paper, and went her way. He turned to go in another direction, but gathered all his courage, came back, and asked her if he could talk to her. She agreed with a smile. A casual conversation followed between the two of them. She introduced herself as Cindy, a Jewish beautician from Philadelphia, on a vacation to Europe.

Vanunu was suspicious. The last few days had been nerve-racking for him. The Sunday Times people kept interrogating him endlessly, and postponed the publication of his story. His fears of the Israeli services increased after he learned that the Sunday Times was going to ask the Israeli embassy in London for their comment on the story. They explained to him that a respectable paper like the Sunday Times always had to ask for the other side’s comments. He was not convinced. He felt lonely, angry, and impatient.

And all of a sudden—Cindy.

 

Are you from the Mossad?” he asked, half-jokingly.

“No, no,” she said. “No. What is Mossad?”

She asked him for his name.

“George,” he said. That was the name he had used when he checked into the hotel.

She smiled. “Come on,” she said. “You’re not George.”

When they settled in a café, he revealed his real name to her, and told her about the Sunday Times and his problems. She immediately suggested that he come to New York, where she could find good newspapers and good lawyers for him.

But he did not listen, not really. Mordechai Vanunu fell in love at first sight. He met with Cindy several times in the next few days, and, according to him, these were the best days of his life. They walked in the parks, holding hands, went to the movies and watched Witness with Harrison Ford and Woody Allen’s Hannah and Her Sisters. They also saw a musical, 42nd Street, and kissed a lot. The warm hugs and the sweet kisses he would never forget.

Cindy gave him her sweet kisses—but firmly refused to sleep with him. She told him she could not invite him to her hotel, because she shared a room with another girl; she also refused to come to his hotel room. You are tense and edgy, she kept saying, it won’t work. Not in London.

Then she had an idea. “Why don’t you come with me to Rome? My sister lives there, she’s got an apartment, we can have a real good time, and you’ll forget all your troubles.”

At first, he refused. But she was determined to go to Rome, and bought a business-class ticket, and when she finally convinced him, she bought him a ticket, too. “You’ll pay me back later,” she said.

And he succumbed to temptation.

If he were a more serious and reasonable man, he would have realized right away that he had fallen into a “honey trap”—the secret services’ term for a seduction by a woman. Just like that, he meets a girl in the street, and she falls for him head over heels, and is ready to do anything for him—take him to her sister’s home in Rome, buy him a plane ticket even though she barely knows him. She cannot sleep with him in London, but she can sleep with him in Rome. A sensible man would have concluded that Cindy’s story was suspicious, even ridiculous. But the Mossad psychologists had done an excellent job this time: they knew exactly what Vanunu wanted, and predicted that he would be driven blind by the sweet kisses and the even sweeter promises of a gorgeous, sexy woman.

Peter Hounam of the Sunday Times was a sensible man. As soon as he heard about Cindy, he felt something was very wrong. He tried his best to persuade Vanunu not to see her, but in vain. Vanunu had swallowed the bait already and nothing in the world could make him change his mind. Once, he asked Peter to drive him to the café where Cindy was waiting for him, and Peter caught a glimpse of the young woman (later he would be able to sketch her face, based on their brief encounter). When Peter learned of Vanunu’s intention to leave town “for a couple of days,” he again tried to talk him out of it, but to no avail. Still, he warned Vanunu not to leave England and not to leave his passport with the reception clerks at the hotel. But even Peter Hounam could not imagine that Vanunu would fly to Rome so he could, at last, sleep with his Cindy.

Cindy had agreed to sleep with Vanunu in Rome for a totally different reason. Israel did not want to abduct Vanunu on British soil. Prime Minister Peres did not want to confront the formidable “Iron Lady,” Margaret Thatcher. The Mossad did not feel comfortable in Great Britain, either. Only a few months before, the German authorities had found in a telephone booth a case containing eight false British passports. Unfortunately, the case also carried a tag announcing the identity of its owner and his connection to the Israeli embassy. The British government was furious; the Mossad had to promise not to infringe on British sovereignty again. Therefore, neither Peres nor the Mossad could even think of launching a covert operation in Great Britain.

Rome became the best possible choice. The relations between the Mossad and the Italian secret service were close and solid. The ramsad Nahum Admoni and Admiral Fulvio Martini, the head of the Italian secret service, were good friends. And with chronic chaos reigning in Italy, it was almost certain that the Italians could never prove that Vanunu was abducted on their soil.

 

Cindy and Mordy, hand in hand, boarded British Airways flight 504 to Rome on September 30, 1986. When they landed at nine P.M., the two lovers were met by a jolly Italian holding a huge bunch of flowers. He took them in his car to Cindy’s sister’s place. During the trip, Cindy kept hugging and kissing her blissful Mordy.

The car stopped by a small house, and a girl opened the door. Vanunu was the first to enter. Suddenly the door was slammed shut behind him, and two men jumped him, hit him hard, and threw him to the floor. He noticed that one of them was blond. While they tied his hands and feet, the girl bent over him and plunged a needle in his arm. Everything became a blur, and he sank into a deep sleep.

A commercial van carrying the unconscious Vanunu headed to the north of the country. The vehicle traveled for several hours; on Vanunu’s side sat two men and one woman. After a few hours, Vanunu got another injection. Cindy had vanished. The car reached the port of La Spezia; Vanunu, strapped to a stretcher, was put aboard a fast speedboat that sailed to the open sea, where an Israeli freighter, Tapuz, was waiting (according to another source, it was SS Noga). The ship’s crew members were ordered to enter the crew lounge and stay inside. But those on duty saw the speedboat arrive. A rope ladder was thrown overboard and two men and one woman cautiously climbed aboard. They were carrying an unconscious man and brought him to the first mate’s cabin, locking the door behind them. The ship immediately sailed toward Israel.

Vanunu spent the entire trip locked in the small cabin. He did not see Cindy anymore. He was worried about her and did not know what had happened to her. He did not realize that she was a member of the Mossad team; she had left him at the threshold of the safe house and probably left Italy that same night. The woman who accompanied Vanunu aboard the ship was the doctor that kept shooting him with anesthetics during the trip.

The ship dropped anchor not far from the Israeli shore, and Vanunu was transferred to an Israeli Navy missile boat. He was met there by police officers and Shabak agents, who formally booked him and took him to the Shikma prison in Ashkelon.

 

During his first interrogation, Vanunu learned that while he was on his way to Israel, the Sunday Times had started publishing the series based on his revelations. The articles, enhanced by photographs and drawings, were reproduced in scores of papers all over the world. The Sunday Times revealed that all the previous assessments of Israel’s nuclear strength had been mistaken. So far, the experts believed that Israel possessed between 10 and 20 primitive atomic bombs. But the information brought by Vanunu proved that Israel had become a nuclear power, and its arsenal contained at least 150 to 200 sophisticated bombs; it also had the capability of producing hydrogen and neutron weapons. Vanunu got scared by the sensational revelations. He feared that the Israelis would kill him; he also feared for Cindy, and could not believe that she was a part of the plot against him.

For about forty days, the world did not know what had happened to Vanunu. The press published sensational reports that had nothing to do with the truth. The British papers described in full detail how he had been kidnapped in London and smuggled to Israel inside a “diplomatic crate.” Others quoted “witnesses” who had seen him with a young woman boarding a yacht that had taken him to Israel. Members of Parliament in London demanded an investigation and severe measures against Israel.

Vanunu was officially indicted in mid-November, and appeared in court several more times. He decided to outwit his jailers. He knew exactly where the reporters were waiting when he was brought to court. In one of the trips to the courthouse, Vanunu sat in the backseat of the police car and waited for it to stop in front of the crowd of reporters and photographers. Then, suddenly, he stuck the palm of his hand to the car window. And the reporters and photographers of the world press could read the phrase he had written on his palm:

 

vanunu m was hijacked in rome, itl, 30.9.86. 21:00. came to rome by fly ba 504.

 

That revelation did not harm Jerusalem’s relations with London, as it made clear that Vanunu had left Britain of his own free will, on a regular commercial flight. In Rome, however, the chiefs of the secret services were angry and frustrated, but after a while the Israelis repaired the damage.

Vanunu was charged with espionage and treason. He was sentenced to eighteen years in prison. But overseas, he was not considered a spy or a traitor. Associations and leagues in his name appeared in Europe and America almost overnight, and he was depicted as a bold fighter for peace, a martyr who risked his life to stop Israel’s nuclear project.

Vanunu, of course, was nothing of the kind. The heroic, ideological slogans were used only to cover the confused actions of the frustrated Institute 2 operator. He did not try to rise against the Israeli nuclear project while he worked at Dimona. If he had not been laid off, he might be working there this very day. Even when he left the country, he did not hurry to start his holy war, he traveled the world, toured Nepal and Thailand, got baptized in Australia; had he not met Guerrero, he might have kept the photos of “Golda’s balcony” and the bomb-assembly labs at the bottom of his rucksack.

But good and naive people throughout the world saw him as a fighter against the Israeli atomic danger. A sweet American couple adopted him as a son—even though his family was still alive—and other good Christians keep nominating him as a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize.

When he was released from jail, after eighteen years, Vanunu chose to live in a Jerusalem church. Today he keeps displaying his hatred for Israel, refuses to live there, refuses to speak Hebrew, calls himself John Crossman, and publishes ads in the Arab newspapers, looking for an Arab or Palestinian bride (“Non-Israeli Only”).

And Cindy? It turned out that because of the urgency of the operation in London, the Mossad had no time to build a solid cover for her; she used her sister’s name, Cindy Hanin, and her passport, and that helped British and Israeli reporters to discover her real identity. They found out that her real name was Cheryl Ben-Tov, née Hanin, the daughter of an American millionaire who had made his fortune in the tire business. She was a devout Zionist, and immigrated to Israel at the age of seventeen. She served in the IDF and married a former Aman officer. A Mossad agent recruited her to the organization. Her IQ was high, her motivation intense, and her American passport helpful. She went through an exhausting two-year training course before being urgently flown to London with the other members of Operation Kaniuk. After Vanunu’s abduction and the burst of publicity surrounding her, she had to resign from operational activity.

Today Cheryl Hanin Ben-Tov lives in Orlando, Florida. She and her husband are in the real estate business, and lead the life of a model Jewish-American family. The Vanunu affair burned Cheryl as a Mossad agent, and her colleagues sincerely regret that the smart, pretty, and resourceful woman is no longer one of them. It is because of her that Israel got Vanunu out of England without breaking any laws.

Margaret Thatcher easily reined in her tumultuous members of Parliament once it was clear that no illegal act had been committed on British soil.

But it did not take long for the Mossad to get up to its old tricks again. Two years later, Mossad agents Arie Regev and Yaacov Barad planted a Palestinian as a double agent in London. The Palestinian was caught and arrested, but Thatcher closed the Mossad station in London and expelled Regev and Barad.

The Mossad again promised to behave. And they did—until the Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh affair . . .