Isser Harel, 91; Israeli Spymaster Led Hunt for Eichmann

Isser Harel, the spymaster who presided over Israel’s long manhunt for Nazi fugitive Adolf Eichmann, which culminated in the SS mastermind’s being captured, spirited to Israel for trial and hanged, died Tuesday at the age of 91.

Harel died at the Beilinson Medical Center in the Tel Aviv suburb of Petah Tikva, where he had been hospitalized for an undisclosed ailment for several days, officials said.

Israel’s daring 1960 abduction of Eichmann, who had dropped out of sight in 1945 and was living in Argentina under an assumed name, was one of the great intelligence coups for the nascent Mossad, which Harel helped build from scratch. He served as the spy agency’s chief from 1951 to 1963.

Harel wrote a best-selling book about the capture of Eichmann, titled “The House on Garabaldi Street,” after the address in the San Fernando quarter of Buenos Aires where the Nazi leader was run to ground. The account was made into a Hollywood movie.

In his account, Harel described the difficult task of hunting down Eichmann, who had done all he could to obliterate his dark past. Only blurred prewar photographs of him existed; investigators had no record of his fingerprints. Eichmann had even removed his SS tattoo.

After the war, Israeli agents -- known in Hebrew as Nokmin or avengers -- tracked down and captured or killed hundreds of former SS men. But Israel’s founding leader, David Ben-Gurion, wanted Eichmann, who was considered among the primary architects of the Holocaust, to stand trial for his crimes, if he could be found.

Once Israeli agents shadowing Eichmann in Buenos Aires had determined his identity, there was urgent and worried debate about how to proceed. Israel believed that Argentina would block his extradition. So Mossad agents set their sights on kidnapping their quarry, who had become a balding, bespectacled, failed businessman. Eichmann was living under the name of Ricardo Klement.

Harel flew to Buenos Aires to oversee the abduction by a handpicked team of more than 30 Israeli agents. They snatched Eichmann off the street, held him in a safe house for a week, drugged him and bundled him aboard an El Al flight disguised as an injured member of the plane’s crew.

Eichmann’s capture, trial and execution in 1961 for genocide and crimes against humanity were defining moments for the Jewish state, and the trial served as the intellectual touchstone for Hannah Arendt’s powerful meditations on the nature of evil.

Harel did not savor his triumph for long; three years after the abduction, he resigned as Mossad chief in a bitter policy clash with Ben-Gurion. He served briefly as an advisor to Prime Minister Levi Eshkol in the mid-1960s, and later served four years in Israel’s Knesset, or parliament.

Like many of Israel’s early leaders, Harel -- who was born Isser Halperin in Vitebsk, Russia -- immigrated to British Mandate Palestine in the 1930s. He helped found a kibbutz, embracing the ethic of communal labor and fierce political debate.

In 1942, he joined the Haganah, the pre-state military force, and quickly rose in the ranks of its intelligence wing. He continued his work for the Haganah while fighting with British auxiliary forces. In 1951, when Ben-Gurion created the Mossad, Harel was named its chief.

No information about funeral arrangements was immediately available.