Spies Who Save Lives : How the Mossad cuts secret deals

Uri Lubrani, the Israeli official whose covert missions have taken him to countless countries, is reluctant to retire, though he is in his mid-60s. He is too busy bargaining for human lives.

Lubrani went public in Tel Aviv recently, to explain some details of his remarkable rescue of nearly 15,000 Jews from Ethiopia last month. Now he has again withdrawn into the secret world of covert deal-making, wearing his official hat as coordinator of Israeli policies in Lebanon.

If he succeeds this time, the 13 remaining Western hostages in Lebanon, including six Americans, might be freed. Israel would release hundreds of Lebanese Shiite Muslims and their spiritual leader, Shiek Obeid, abducted almost two years ago by Israeli commandos. The prize for the Israelis would be the return of seven soldiers--at least two known to be alive--captured by various Lebanese factions.

Speaking publicly in Tel Aviv, an unusual move, Lubrani invited Iranians, Lebanese and virtually anyone who can help to open negotiations for the release of Israel’s soldiers. Sermons at Hezbollah mosques in Lebanon have, for the first time, suggested freeing at least two Israelis.

The ice finally seems to be breaking--one reason Lubrani’s activities have again become invisible. Western negotiators and other sources have reason to hope that a comprehensive swap can be arranged by Christmas. The man who used to be Israel’s ambassador in Iran and Ethiopia, who last month bribed the outgoing Ethiopian government to permit the flight of the Jews, is a living example of the one feature that makes Israel’s intelligence and defense apparatus unique: a humanitarian commitment to rescue Jews in trouble wherever they may be.

The Mossad and the other secret agencies may be legendary for efficiency and ruthlessness, but they spend much time and money on matters not normally the stuff of espionage. The intelligence community does indeed carry out the traditional functions of spying on Israel’s Arab neighbors, combating terrorism and, occasionally, assassinating the state’s enemies.

But, with so many countries refusing to have open relations with Israel, the Mossad also handles sensitive diplomatic contacts--acting almost as an alternative foreign ministry. Many Arab and Muslim nations, including Egypt before the 1979 peace treaty, Morocco, Jordan and Indonesia, talked secretly with Israel--through the Mossad.

Mossad agents spearheaded the dramatic rescue of hijacked air passengers at Entebbe, Uganda, in 1976. And a sister agency, the Liaison Bureau, has covertly brought Jews to Israel since 1953.

The exodus from Ethiopia was only the latest example. Perceiving itself as a refuge for all Jews, and vastly outnumbered by the Arab world, Israel has always elevated immigration to much more than a moral commitment. Indeed, it is regarded as a matter of national survival: The need to increase the Jewish population--the Hebrew word for it, aliyah , literally means “going up.” Because these missions have to be secret, they are assigned to the espionage community.

So when Lubrani, as a former ambassador, was instructed to revive his contacts in Addis Ababa, all he had to do was open an old file cabinet and pull out a plan already tried and tested. Again and again, when Jews were prevented from leaving their countries of birth, Israel obtained their freedom in exchange for money and, occasionally, weapons.

The names are always changing, but the files go back to Israel’s first days as a modern state in 1948. In the Ethiopian case, the $35 million paid by Israel’s government was for “landing rights.” In other cases, the fees have been called “travel-agency commissions” or “education reimbursements.” But they have always been bribes.

Forty-one years ago, 150,000 Iraqi Jews were airlifted from Baghdad to Tel Aviv. That move set the precedent. Iraq’s prime minister, Tewfiq el-Sawidi, and other senior officials were contacted by Israeli agents, who presented themselves as international businessmen. The Sawidi family owned Iraq Tours--which was granted exclusive rights to book special charter flights to an officially undisclosed destination.

To stifle complaints from opposition politicians, they, too, were paid off--again a regular practice in Israel’s future missions. The son of one important politician was awarded the exclusive maintenance contract for Near East Air Transport Corp.--the cover for the Israeli-run charter line.

A decade later, a similar scenario was enacted in another Arab country, officially a bitter enemy of Israel: Morocco. After several unsuccessful attempts by Mossad field agents to spirit away more than 100,000 Moroccan Jews, a deal was made with the authorities. The newly crowned King Hassan and his top aides were contacted, in 1961, and, with some pressure from Western governments and Jewish organizations, an accommodation was reached.

Morocco’s Jews were permitted to leave for France, Spain and Gibraltar. The second leg of their journey was to Israel.

In exchange, as hinted by the veteran Mossad chief, Isser Harel, who ran that operation, money from Israel and Jewish charities was paid to some of Morocco’s senior circles. As an added enticement, Israeli experts also trained the Moroccan domestic-security service.

In the mid-1970s, when Israeli leaders decided training and technical advice were not enough of a bargaining chip to liberate Jews, they made a controversial decision to sell weapons. Swapping arms for people became a pattern in dealing with fascist juntas in South America--and these arms forged strange alliances. In Argentina and in Chile, anti-socialist campaigns smacked of anti-Semitism--yet Israeli intelligence operatives felt they had to buy off the regimes by arming them. Even as warplanes and ships were added to the air force and navy of both countries, hundreds of Jews, labeled left-wingers, were released from prison cells and emigrated to Israel.

The same situation prevailed in Iran after the 1979 revolution. Despite anti-Israeli invective chanted by the ayatollahs, they were willing to buy spare parts and ammunition from the hated Jewish state. As the prolonged war against Iraq made weapons increasingly valuable, the Iranians stopped persecuting Jews and allowed them to leave the country. Many went to Israel.

To puncture the ban on Jewish emigration imposed by the Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc countries, the Israeli government created the Liaison Bureau and entrusted it with preserving Judaism and Zionism behind the Iron Curtain. With the help of Jewish organizations in the West, the bureau smuggled in prayer books and Hebrew dictionaries, forbidden since the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. The Liaison Bureau’s efforts, including lobbying in Washington and other capitals, helped Soviet Jews rediscover their roots and roughly 200,000 have now been permitted to move to Israel.

In a more well-known covert operation, Romania’s notorious dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and his family were paid handsomely for every Jew permitted to leave between 1969 and his downfall in 1989. An Israeli intelligence envoy used to deliver suitcases of cash to the Ceausescus, and the payments added up to more than $35 million.

In April, when hard-line Albania suffered its communist upheavals, Israel cut a quiet deal for the emigration of 300 Jews. It was a small, relatively simple airlift.

Similar airlifts were conducted before. In the early 1980s, the Mossad learned that Ethiopian Jews--thought to be among the 10 Lost Tribes--were in danger. Labeled Falashas--or “strangers”--these Ethiopians confronted severe famine, bandits and the general instability of civil war.

Israeli agents ferried them to the Sudan, where President Gaafar Numeiri and his secret service had been bribed. The CIA provided technical support, and American Jews raised the money for the charter flights from Khartoum, via Europe, to Israel. An additional $30 million found its way into numbered Sudanese accounts in Switzerland and London. But that exodus, code-named Operation Moses, was abruptly ended due to press leaks in 1985.

What was left unfinished then was nearly completed by last month’s Operation Solomon. Col. Mengistu Haile Mariam’s corrupt regime had allowed only a slow trickle of Jews to leave Ethiopia. Instead, Mengistu used the Falashas as hostages to obtain weapons and military training from Israel. He also believed Israel’s influence in Washington would win him U.S. support.

The Israelis, fed up with the haggling, pounced on the opportunity when Mengistu fled rebel advances. Israel rapidly secured an exit route by playing both sides of the civil war: contacting the interim government and the rebels, making payments wherever necessary.

However efficient, Operation Solomon still left some Jews behind. Speaking for the new rulers of Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front, London representative Teoolde Gebru said, “Our policy is that every Ethiopian who wishes has the right to leave.”

But many more Ethiopians are claiming to be Jewish. In neighboring Somalia, other tribes claim to be among the 10.

It is far-fetched to think Israeli intelligence agents will rush to rescue them. The Mossad has a full plate, even when it comes to the agency’s humanitarian agenda. Indeed, now that diplomatic relations have been restored with most of the nations of Eastern Europe and have already reached the consular level with the Soviet Union, several Israeli politicians have suggested that the secretive Liaison Bureau can be shut down and that the foreign ministry might be able to handle certain future negotiations.

Still, Jews trapped in nations ranging from Albania to Yemen are likely to show up in Israel from time to time. Secret immigration will continue, as long as the Jewish state finds itself in a hostile Middle East, and Israeli intelligence will have to perform both traditional and humanitarian tasks. That file cabinet, filled with rescue plans, cannot yet be locked away.