Israel Spymaster Scandal Rocks Agency

Yehuda Gil used to teach young agents of Israel’s Mossad intelligence service about the craft of lying.

Now, revelations that Gil, a former Mossad spymaster, fabricated information about Syria over a period of years have rocked the intelligence agency. And they have raised questions about the potential danger of the false information and its effect on the agency’s future.

The scandal, parts of which began to leak through censored newspaper reports last week, is only the latest trouble for the Mossad, which is already under investigation for a failed attempt in September to assassinate a leader of the extremist Palestinian group Hamas in Amman, Jordan.

The new allegations revolve around Gil, 63, and his role as a veteran Mossad officer responsible for monitoring Syria. According to accounts in the Israeli media and various official assessments, Gil for as much as 20 years faked reports that were purported to have come from a mole in the Syrian military.

The reports suggested that President Hafez Assad was not fully committed to peace with Israel.

Government officials have downplayed the significance of the faked accounts, saying Gil’s disinformation was balanced by other assessments and did not ultimately influence critical actions or policy.

However, in August 1996, tensions grew here over Syrian troop movements in Lebanon near the Israeli border. The Mossad officer’s accounts, supposedly from his source in Syria, helped give credence to the idea that Syria was preparing to mount an offensive on the Israeli-held Golan Heights.

Israel’s military intelligence service disagreed, and U.S. intermediaries also dismissed the account, saying they believed the Syrian troop movements near the Golan were defensive in nature. Defense Minister Yitzhak Mordecai resisted calls to mobilize the nation’s reserve units, and the tensions dissipated.

On Sunday, Israeli commentators and talk show hosts speculated about whether Gil’s erroneous information may also have played a role in the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s decision to shift Israel’s peacemaking emphasis from Syria to the Palestinians. Some observers said that now, with the doubts about Assad’s interest in peace at least partly removed, Israel should try to revive dormant peace talks with Syria.

In Damascus, the English-language Syria Times, a state-run newspaper, said in an editorial Sunday that it hoped Israel will be more open to peace with Syria in light of the revelations.

Meanwhile, Gil, who was arrested a month ago and has been jailed ever since, has been indicted on charges of fraud, embezzlement and passing information with the intention of damaging state security.

The Yediot Aharonot newspaper on Sunday quoted Gil as telling a close associate that he was not motivated in the affair by his right-wing political beliefs or by hope for financial gain but by a desire to “prove” himself after his retirement from the Mossad in 1989. He was later called back as a consultant.

Gil, who for years taught a course titled “Lying as an Art” to Mossad cadets, is expected to go on trial in the case this month.

His attorney, Yigal Shapira, has said the affair has been overblown and that Gil will plead innocent. “He did things that are wrong,” Shapira told reporters Sunday. “But between this and a criminal offense, there is a distance.”