This is a ZGram I wanted to do for some time - to alert my readers to this more than just a little controversial fellow called Victor Ostrovsky.
Ostrovsky is a former Mossad agent who did a turnabout. He tells Mossad tales that send shivers down your back. His former "colleagues" do not seem to like him very much and have set his house afire and done other mischief to let their displeasure about the "cross-over" be known. I see the Ostrovsky name crop up again and again in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, and what he writes is always, always interesting. To say that I trust him would not be the truth - but there are many others in our camp who think very highly of him.
The friend who sent me this excerpt wrote thusly:
_By_Way_of_Deception_, a spy-and-tell exposé on Mossad methods by onetime Mossad caseworker Victor Ostrovsky, defines the role of what he calls the _sayanim_:
[A] lecture on the _sayanim_, a unique and important part of the Mossad's operation.
Sayanim - assistants, must be 100 percent Jewish. They live abroad, and though they are not Israeli citizens, many are reached through their relatives in Israel. An Israeli with a relative in England, for example, might be asked to write a letter saying the person bearing the letter represents an organization whose main goal is to help save Jewish people in the diaspora. Could the British relative help in any way?
There are thousands of sayanim around the world. In London alone, there are about 2,000 who are active, and another 5,000 on the list. They fulfill many different roles. A car sayan, for example, running a rental agency, could help the Mossad rent a car without having to complete the usual documentation. An apartment sayan would find accommodation without raising suspicions, a bank sayan could get you money if you needed it in the middle of the night, a doctor sayan would treat a bullet wound without reporting it to the police, and so on. The idea is to have a pool of people available when needed who can provide services but will keep quiet about them out of loyalty to the cause. They are paid only costs. Often the loyalty of sayanim is abused by katsas [handlers] who take advantage of the available help for their own personal use. There is no way for the sayan to check this.
One thing you know for sure is that even if a Jewish person knows it is the Mossad, he might not agree to work with you - but he won't turn you in. You have at your disposal a nonrisk recruitment system that actually gives you a pool of millions of Jewish people to tap from outside your own borders. It's much easier to operate with what is available on the spot, and sayanim offer incredible practical support everywhere. But they are never put at risk -nor are they privy to classified information.
Suppose during an operation a katsa suddenly had to come up with an electronics store as a cover. A call to a sayan in that business could bring 50 television sets, 200 VCRs - whatever was needed - from his warehouse to your building, and in next to no time, you'd have a store with $3 or $4 million worth of stock in it.
Since most Mossad activity is in Europe, it may be preferable to have a business address in North America. So, there are address sayanim and telephone sayanim. If a katsa has to give out an address or a phone number, he can use the sayan's. And if the sayan gets a letter or a phone call, he will know immediately how to proceed. Some business sayanim have a bank of 20 operators answering phones, typing letters, faxing messages, all a front for the Mossad. The joke is that 60 percent of the business of those telephone answering companies in Europe comes from the Mossad. They'd fold otherwise.
The one problem with the system is that the Mossad does not seem to care how devastating it could be to the status of the Jewish people in the diaspora if it was known. The answer you get if you ask is: "So what's the worst that could happen to those Jews? They'd all come to Israel? Great."
Katsas in the stations are in charge of the sayanim, and most active sayanim will be visited by a katsa once every three months or so, which for the katsa usually means between two and four face-to-face meetings a day with sayanim, along with numerous telephone conversations. The system allows the Mossad to work with a skeleton staff. That's why, for example, a KGB station would employ about 100 people, while a comparable Mossad station would need only six or seven.
People make the mistake of thinking the Mossad is at a disadvantage by not having stations in obvious target countries. The United States, for example, has a station in Moscow and the Russians have stations in Washington and New York. But Israel doesn't have a station in Damascus. They don't understand that the Mossad regards the whole world outside Israel as a target, including Europe and the United States...
(_By_Way_of_Deception_ was published by the Toronto Stoddart Publishing Co. Ltd., in 1990. The excerpt above comes from page 87)
Thought for the Day:
"A skewed New World Order"
(Title of an article by MICHAEL HARRIS in the Toronto Sun, May 23, 1999)