ISRAEL CENTER HONORS SPIES WHOSE NAMES WERE AS SECRET AS THEIR MISSIONS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000302120039-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 21, 2012
• Sequence Number: 39
• Publication Date: August 25, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
\, Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/09/21 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000302120039-5
ARTICLE APPEARED NEW YORK TIMES
25 August 1985
ON PAGE As 4N
Israel Center Honors Spies Whose Names
Were as Secret as Their Missions
9
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
-i Special to tbe Now York Timm
TEL AVIV, Aug. 24 ? Some of them
wens killed by double agents; others
were hanged in the central squares of
Damascus or Baghdad, and still others
diet- years ago in circumstances so
abraded in mystery that even today no
onenwill speak about them.
What they all had in common was
that, they were Israeli spies, secret
agents or intelligence analysts who
lived and died in anonymity. No longer.
Today, all MO of their names have
been carved into the walls of a me--
morial center in north Tel Aviv that
honors the fallen members of Israel's
Intelligence agencies, the one branch of
thet. Israeli security forces that has
nevrr had a monument.
An Interesting List
site was recently opened to the
pu ? c, and for anyone interested in es.
the list of names is fascinating
. The names of some people
fore exposed as intelligence
offilters are on the wall. The curators of
the Memorial, former intelligence offi-
cer* themselves, are tight-lipped about
the ' histories of many of the
with a little research in the
of books about the Israeli secret ,
, it is possible to put together
the es with some of the more capti-
vat spy stories of the postwar era.
Tin story behind the Center for Spe-
ciaI Studies in the Memory of the I
Fallin of Israel's Intelligence Corn-
ty, as the memorial is called,
several years ago when the rela-
tivds of the dead intelligence agents got
tog.her and decided to build a monu-
m to their loved ones, a place to
whi they could bring their children
an4et least lay a wreath once a year.
'jverybody had some kind of me-
mo ? the signal corps, the artillery
? we had nothing," said Meir
who was the head of the Mossad,
Is 's ultrasecretive foreign Intel-
arm, from 1963 to 1968. He is
of the center.
i. 'A Living Memorial'
'The families came to us and said,
'Lai*, not only during their lives did no
=w what they did, not even their
and certainly not their neigh-
boa, but now, even when they are
dee, no one knows,'" Mr. Amit said.
" gave in to their demands, but we
t over the project. We didn't want a
pil of cement. We wanted a living me-
m
Amit and his intelligence col-
drawing ED their extensive
g41 contacts, gathered $700,000 from
and $1.3 million from Jews
who, for a $50,000 -donation,
cold become "honorary members of
thd intelligence community."
Prom the beginning, it was decided
by' _ the center's board that the me-
Mind would honor fallen members of
alPthree intelligence serrices in Israel:
wvvallelprope.
gages in in foreignrathe Shin
tr,Tir-Tir-s1 nvestiurea
gation, and Military Intelligence.
Although the name of Brig. Gen.
Ehud Barak, the chief of Military Intel-
ligence, is public, the heads of Shin Bet
and Mowed, whose chief is known as
"No. 1," are secret.
The center's complex is already
being hailed as one of the most taste-
fully appointed and innovatively de-
signed memorials in Israel. Built of
huge, angular sandstone blocks, the
core of the memorial consists of a maze
broken into five different alcoves, each
representing a period in the history of
Israel's intelligence operations. The
names of the agents who died during
each period are engraved on the stone
walls.
Why It's a Maze
"The idea of the labyrinthine maze,"
said Yeshayahu Daliot, a veteran of the
Israeli security establishment and the
director of the center, "was to create
an impression of interminable search,
of changing direction, of complexity
and infinity, which is what intelligence-
gathering is all about."
Showing a visitor through the maze,
Mr. Amit, the former Mossad "No. 1,"
pointed out name after name of friends
and colleagues, some of whom he had
sent on their missions.
"People. always are asking me
whether I read John Le Carre's spy
novels," Mr. Amit said. "I always tell
them no. Reality was much more inter-
esting for me and went far beyond
whatever anyone could develop in a
novel."
One of the most interesting names
listed here is in the second alcove,
covering 1949 to 1957. It is Jacob Bokai,
the first agent to die after the nation of
Israel was established.
A Syrian-born Jew, Mr. Bokai was
assigned by Israeli intelligence to enter
Jordan with a stream of Palestinian
refugees on May 4, 1949. He carried the
forged indentity card of "Najib Ibra-
him Hamuda" and was prepared for
his mission by being put into a prison
with Arab captives, where he was occa-
sionally beaten by his Jewish guards.
Jew Given Moslem Burial
But the Jordanians somehow sus-
pected him and arrested him as soon as
he crossed into their territory. Despite
hours of interrogation, the Jordanians I
never discovered that he was an Israe-
said Mr. Amit. Mr. Bokai was exe-
cuted on Aug. 3, 1949, for spying and
was given a Moslem burial as "Mr.
Hamuda."
Before he was hanged, Mr. Bokai
managed to send some letters back to
his superiors affirming, "I did not com-
mit treason," Mr. Amit said.
In the same section are the names of
two who died on Jan. 72, 1952? Shalom
Salah Shalom and Joseph Bash. They
were Israeli agents in Baghdad helping
Iraqi Jews to arm themselves against
Arab rioters and to escape from the
country, Mr. Amit said. They were
caught by the Iraqi security services
and hanged side by side in Baghdad's
central square.
The next alcove, 1957 to 1968, con-
tains the name of probably the most fa- I
mous of Israel's secret agents, Eli
Cohen, known as "Our Man in Damas-
cus." Mr. Amit was his boss. Mr.
Cohen was infiltrated into Syria under
the identity of "ICamil Amin Taabes,"
supposedly a Syrian ?gr?eturning
home from Argentina after having
amassed a fortune.
He penetrated the top echelons of the
Syrian Government and Army, throw-
ing lavish parties and dispensing ex-
pensive gifts. He was so effective at in-
gratiating himself with the Syrian elite
that he was considered as a possible
candidate for Defense Minister.
But he was caught after the Soviet
Union shipped Syria sophisticated
homing equipment, which led the
Syrian secret service to Mr. Cohen's
apartment as he was making his daily
transmission to Mossad headquarters.
He was hanged in a Damascus square
on May 15, 1965, for spying.
A Few Surprises on the Wall
Also in the second alcove is Shalom
Dani, who died of natural causes an
May 21, 1963. A painter, Mr. Dani was
the unrivaled master forger for Israeli
intelligence, according to a former
Mossad chief, Isser Hare!. Mr. Dani
traveled around the world with his
brushes and paints and could make
passports, driver's licenses or other
identity cards on the fly in any lan-
guage. Working. in Buenos Aires in
1960, he forged all of the documents
used by the Israeli Mossad team that
captured Adolf Eichmann.
Mr. Amit said there were still a few
tmlissi
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/09/21 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000302120039-5
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/09/21 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000302120039-5
(:)\
names, some of them foreigners, who
had died in the service of Israeli intelli-
gence on operations so secret that they
could not be listed. Still, there are a few
surprises on the wall. One is Yacov Bar
Siman-Tov, who was gunned down as
he walked out of his Paris home on
April 3, 1982. He had been stationed as a
diplomat at Israel's Paris Embassy
and had never before been confirmed
as an intelligence agent.
One of the most colorful people on the
list, according to Mr. Daliot, was Zeev
Biber Bar Levi, wEo died of cancer last
February. Known to everyone as "The
Jordanian," Mr. Biber was the chief
military intelligence expert on King
Hussein.
"They used to say of Colonel Biber
that he knew what King Hussein was
thinking before King Hussein did," Mr.
Sailot said. "Once during the Six Day
War, Biber received a radio intercept
in which a Jordanian artillery officer
was complaining that he had lost his
ammunition. Biber shouted, 'You idiot,
it's in such and such a place!' He Imelf
where all the Jordanian ammunition
was."
After visitors have walked through
the maze, they can go to a pan out-
door amphitheater or attend talks in
the lecture hall. There is also a library
and computer rooms that will be
hooked up eventually to the Massed
and Shin Bet intelligence libraries for
limited information retrieval.
That is not all that remains unfin-
ished. There is one alcove with a blank
wall.
"We have a spare court," Mr. Amit
said.
"You mean," a visitor began, "in
case someone else?."
"No," the former 1Viossad chief said,
cutting his guest off, "not in case. We
know we are going to need it, unfortu-
nately."
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/09/21 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000302120039-5