Review: By Way of Deception: The Making and Unmaking of a Mossad Officer

By Way of Deception: The Making and Unmaking of a Mossad Officer by Victor Ostrovsky
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

...there were sensational details about
secret messages in invisible ink, a mysterious document signed with the
letter N. (standing for Nin), and so on and so forth.

- Homage to Catalonia

I began reading this shortly after finishing The CIA And The Cult Of Intelligence. Besides being both about spies and spying, the books are more closely aligned as they purport to be whistleblower documents; a sort of act of civil disobedience to protest intelligence agency overreach. However both now -- and more so this one -- strike me as having a small fig leaf of good intention selling a package of salacious revelations of spies on the job. Don't get me wrong, I am all for responsible citizens publishing books to point out any government wrong, plus I would read the salacious details told just to sell books.

Some of the operational details here that seems to be just juicy insider stuff and maybe really unnecessary to reveal to support the overreach argument include

* only Saudi Arabian source is "in the Japan Embassy"
* surveillance and infiltration techniques, including "methods of dealing with a dangerous agent"
* Mossad training academy maps
* psychological approaches to recruiting and agent
* A sort of 'order of battle' of how Mossad operatives are deployed

However, maybe much of this was widely enough known at the time of publication, like the details of the Panama-Israel connection.

Possibly most revelatory and in the overreach area is Mossad activities in the U.S.

...... organizing, and carrying out covert activities — mainly in New York and Washington, which they refer to as their “playground” — belong to a special, super-secret division of the Mossad called simply Al, Hebrew for “above” or “on top."

and Mossad causing problems leaking things ab0ut the NYC account of Rabin's wife. Apparently, by googling it seems this is still not a widely known Mossad action.

...according to [CIA liaison] Efraim, when Margalit flew to the United States to check out the story, he had supplied him with all the necessary documentation on the account. The subsequent story, and scandal, were instrumental in helping Begin defeat Rabin. Rabin was an honest man, but the Mossad didn't like him. So they got him.

Also, there is the Iraq-Iran war reporting to each side on the on each other's ships to "keep the war hot" and also enabling arms deals that would otherwise have been prevented.

Interesting historically is the inside dope on the American-PLO meetings contravening publicly stated U.S. policy and being a career-limiting problem for . There is also the large-scale yet secretive airlift of Ethiopian Jews. Really, a very impressive operation but one of only a few lengthy narratives here that is actually gripping reading.

There is a paperback postscript here about Mossad pressuring the author in Toronto so that he felt he could be kidnapped, as well as court documents on the failed attempt to block publication including details on embarrassing to Denmark and Israel are they details here about Mossad working through (not with) Danish intelligence.

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