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Last update - 16:38 20/01/2008

Coming into the light

By Reuven Miran

Tags: books

The Volunteer: A Canadian's Secret Life in the Mossad, by Michael Ross, with Jonathan Kay; Skyhorse Publishing, 320 pages, $24.95 (Hebrew edition, "Hamitnadev," translated by Amira Segev, Yedioth Ahronoth Books)

n November 1940, Winston Churchill reportedly summed up his expectations of military intelligence in one sentence: "The great thing is to obtain the true picture - whatever it is." But to get to that true picture, if there is such a thing, requires a lot of hard and not at all conventional work by large numbers of men and women. The author of this book was for a time, apparently, one of them.

Those in the know say that serving in an intelligence agency is a fascinating life experience that compares to none, packed with incidents that remain etched in the mind until one's dying day. But the world of espionage differs from all the familiar and sunlit worlds not only in being passed over by the divine decree "Let there be light," but in being a world that will always be covered by darkness by its very nature. The laws of science most of us are familiar with are reversed in this shadowy world: The oxygen that enables life on this bizarre planet is darkness itself, and the sun is a source of death, not life. It is from this murkiness that the "spy" derives his power. Only he can distinguish between the fictional reality he creates and disseminates so as to protect his real identity, and real life. Thus, before our eyes, yet hidden from the eye, the spy or operative can secretly break all the rules in the service of a law-abiding and completely transparent political entity.

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All the rest is a product of self-confidence, a multifaceted personality, resourcefulness and the ability to adapt and cope successfully with uncertainty (such an inherent and inevitable part of this shadow world), with fears (mustering what is mistakenly called courage), natural intelligence, flexible thinking, a certain amount of adventurousness (carefully monitored and controlled), acting skill, keen intuition, some measure of ideological conviction in the "justice" of one's mission, and, of course, such essential technological support as a good cover and a safe, reliable secret communications channel. Because a counterintelligence beacon that manages to catch a spy in its searchlight soon becomes a flaming torch.

This "universal" introduction is relevant to all intelligence services, including the Mossad, the Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations, Israel's state intelligence agency for operations beyond its borders. Many Israelis - and not only Israelis − would be happy to serve in this mystery-shrouded organization, but only a select few are accepted to its ranks, and among them, even fewer are willing, or feel some uncontrollable urge, to write books about it.

I had a diverse career in the Mossad, writes Michael Ross, who arrived in Israel in 1982 as a young Canadian tourist, worked on a kibbutz and decided to make the country's destiny his own. The organization recruited him in 1988, and now that his spying days are over, he says, he decided to write a book (recently translated into Hebrew) to provide readers with insights on the war against terror that he joined 20 years ago. He notes with sadness, and not a little frustration, that all the terror organizations and axis-of-evil countries he fought against, apart from Libya, continue to view the West as an enemy. In the case of Iran, North Korea and Al Qaida, the threat has only grown.

In his ideology-packed introduction (on the simplistic side, I would say), he writes that like John Le Carre's "Circus," the world of espionage can be the stage for great human dramas requiring courage and imagination, but it can also be a place for banal human failures. "Though I am proud of what I've done, and have few regrets, the fact is that the secret life I chose comes at great human cost. Estranged children, divorce, depression, anger, compulsive behaviors, post-traumatic stress disorder and general alienation are all too common among secret agents," he continues.

Not another Ostrovsky

In the introduction to this autobiographical, non-historical but personal book, as he calls it, Ross writes that he was an undercover agent - a classic spy - for seven and a half years, during which he was sent to a number of hostile countries. After that, he spent two and a half years at Mossad headquarters as a counterterrorism liaison officer in contact with the CIA and FBI.

Many books have been written about the Mossad, most of them actually by its former chiefs rather than low-level operatives, except for Victor Ostrovsky, a cadet who defected from the Mossad and deceived his readers with great imagination and gusto. The Ross case is entirely different. Whether or not he worked for the Mossad - which presumably he did - his account is full of respect and admiration for the agency, most of its employees and its mission, as well as for the State of Israel and its battle to survive. The episodes he writes about, whether they really happened or are a figment of the author's imagination, are largely complimentary to the Israel's acclaimed secret service agency and the operatives who work for it, who pay a high personal price for their hidden glory.

The "volunteer" leads us through the maze of his adventures, in the field, in the office, in intriguing (but problematic, from Israel's perspective) countries in the Middle East, North Africa and even Southeast Asia. Ross describes the workings of the Mossad and its various operational units based on his experience: recruitment, training programs in Israel and abroad, building a cover - and spy missions, of course.

Along the way, he offers his opinion, sometimes positive, sometimes negative, about the people who work there, including some of its heads. He admires Shabtai Shavit, for example, who started out as a human intelligence operative and knew how to run a secret service, but has harsh criticism for Shavit's predecessor, Danny Yatom, whose style of management he describes as Prussian, arrogant and uncompromising. This was an approach he feels is out of place in an intelligence agency where sophistication and subtlety are prized above all.

Throughout the book, the "volunteer" tries to convince readers of two things: (a) the authenticity of the operations he describes and his personal involvement in them - operations linked to the Syrian arms race, the building of a nuclear reactor in Iran, and the pursuit and assassination of terrorists belonging to terror organizations all over the world; and (b) the purity of his intentions as someone who chose to become Israeli and aid the country in such a sensitive sphere over so many years of intensive activity.

On a personal level, one has a sense that the "volunteer" was not entirely "in his element" during these years of work, and that despite his somewhat romantic enthusiasm and basic loyalty to the unique and obligating framework for which he chose to work, and his apparently sincere efforts to belong, he never really succeeded.

Maybe that is also one of the reasons he decided to publish this book, and why one senses that a "grain of salt" is missing to put things in a more balanced, mature perspective, a kind of comic relief, to lift the dark, heavy curtain covering this whole serious, demanding, invasive business, and introduce a bit of welcome de-dramatization to this thick, glutinous mass. Also disturbing is the simplistic, populistic political rhetoric woven into the text, which creates an embarassing conflict, by virtue of its presence in the book, with the intelligence culture to which the "volunteer" purports to belong. His goal, he writes, is to convey to readers the smell, taste and feeling of the places and people he has encountered around the world, including the hollow-hearted creatures whose evil machinations he did all he could to thwart.

Here, Ross violates a major principle in the field of counterintelligence: The job of an undercover agent is to step into the shoes of the adversary and look at the world through his eyes, in order to understand his deepest motives, recruit him and become his "friend." To call one's adversary a "hollow-hearted creature" is to miss the point, because there are no hollow-hearted adversaries or enemies. There are only obtuse, heartless intelligence agents. The slyest trick of them all in this tricky profession is to get the adversary or enemy to help you without knowing it, and that can be done only by probing his character and motives to the depths, and penetrating into the most hidden capillaries of his existence.

In this respect, the "volunteer" has not accomplished the mission he set himself. The book remains a very personal one, but of anecdotal importance alone. It is just another book that purports to dispel the "darkness on the face of the deep," but does not really succeed. It is not surprising that his personal and professional life slowly disintegrated, and that after quitting the Mossad, he divorced the mother of his children (a kibbutznik he says was critical in his decision to settle in Israel) and returned to Canada. After nearly 20 years, I missed Canada, my homeland, he writes, with touching sincerity. Our sages said it first: "Whoso confesseth and forsaketh, them shall obtain mercy."

Reuven Miran, a writer, is the editor in chief of Nahar Books.

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