The Book Recommendation Thread

[Razor]

Interesting book by a former katsa (Mossad Operative): By Way of Deception (by Victor Ostrovsky)

By Way of Deception - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Link for free ebook: http://vho.org/aaargh/fran/livres11/OSTROVbywayofdecep.pdf

I started reading it, haven't completed it. But seems very interesting to me.

I started making a note of some excerpts after a while.

Some excerpts:

BY WAY OF DECEPTION 67
The next major course lecture was given by Amy Yaar, department
head of the Far East and Africa in Tevel (liaison). His story was so
fascinating that when it was over, everybody said "How do we sign
up?"
Yaar's department had people positioned throughout the Far East
who did little real intelligence; instead they set the framework for
future business and diplomatic ties. They had a man with a
British passport living in Djakarta, for example, working under
cover. That meant the Indonesian government knew he was with
the Mossad. He had an escape route ready, and a gold coin belt if
he needed it, among other security measures. His main task was
to facilitate arms sales in the region. They also had a man in
Japan, one in India, one in Africa, and occasionally, people in Sri
Lanka, and in Malaysia. Yaar's annual convention for his staff was
in the Seychelles. He was having a lot of fun with very little
danger.
Yaar's officers in Africa were also dealing in millions of dollars in
arms sales. These liaison men worked in three stages. First, they
made contact to find out what the country needed, what it feared,
whom it regarded as enemies — information gathered through
their on-site activities. The idea was to build on those needs,
create a stronger relationship, then make it known that Israel
could supply the government in question with weapons and
training — whatever they needed. The final step in the process,
once a country's leader had been hooked on the arms, was for the
Mossad man to tell him that he must take, for instance, some
agricultural equipment as well. The leader was then put in the
position of saying he could expand ties with Israel only if they set
up formal diplomatic relations. It was essentially a way of creating
those relations through the back door, although in most cases the
arms deals were so lucrative, the liaison men never bothered to
follow up with the next step.
They did in Sri Lanka, however. Amy Yaar made the connection,
then tied the country in militarily by supplying it with substantial
equipment, including PT boats for coastal patrol. At the same
time, Yaar and company were supplying the warring Tamils with
anti-PT boat equipment to use in fighting the government forces.
The Israelis also trained elite
forces for both sides, without either side knowing about the other,*
and helped Sri Lanka cheat the World Bank and other investors
out of millions of dollars to pay for all the arms they were buying
from them.
The Sri Lankan government was worried about unrest among the
farmers — the country has a long history of economic problems —
so it wanted to split them up somewhat by moving them from one
side of the island to the other. But it needed an acceptable reason
to do this. That's where Amy Yaar came in. He was the one who
dreamed up the great "Mahaweli Project," a massive engineering
scheme to divert the Mahaweli River from its natural course to dry
areas on the other side of the country. The claim was that this
would double the country's hydro-electric power and open up
750,000 acres of newly irrigated land. Besides the World Bank,
Sweden, Canada, Japan, Germany, the European Economic
Community, and the United States all invested in the $2.5 billion
(U.S.) project.
From the beginning, it was an overly ambitious project, but the
World Bank and the other investors did not understand that, and
as far as they are concerned, it's still going on. Originally a 30-year
project, it was suddenly escalated in 1977 when Sri Lanka's
president, Junius Jayawardene, discovered that with a little help
from the Mossad, it could become most significant.
In order to convince the World Bank especially (with its $250
million commitment) that the project was feasible — and would
also serve as a convenient excuse for moving the farmers from
their land — the Mossad had two Israeli academics, (looks like Israeli academics can lie and can be bought ) one an
economist from Jerusalem University, the other a professor of
agriculture, write scholarly papers explaining its importance and
its cost. A major Israeli construction company, Solel Bonah, was
given a large contract for part of the job.
Periodically, World Bank representatives would go to Sri Lanka for
spot checks, but the locals had been taught how to fool these
inspectors by taking them on circuitous routes —
* See Chapter 6: THE BELGIAN TABLE
easily explained for security reasons — then back to the same,
quite small area where some construction actually had been
carried out for just this purpose.
Later, when I was working in Yaar's department at Mossad
headquarters, I was assigned to escort Jayawardene's daughter-
in-law — a woman named Penny — on a secret visit to Israel. She
knew me as "Simon."
We took her wherever she wanted to go. We were talking in general
terms, but she insisted on telling me about the project and how
money for it was financing equipment for the army. She was
complaining that they weren't really getting on with it. Ironically,
the project had been invented to get money from the World Bank
to pay for those weapons.
At that time, Israel had no diplomatic relations with Sri Lanka. In
fact, they were supposedly embargoing us. But she was telling me
about all these secret political meetings going on. The funny thing
was that when news stories were leaked about the meetings, they
claimed Israel had 150 katsas working in Sri Lanka. We didn't
have that many katsas in the entire world. In fact, at that time
there was only Amy and his helper, both on a short visit.

there was barely a move the PLO could
make anywhere in the world that didn't end up on the Mossad's
giant screen.

Note: PLO=Palestine Liberation Org

Experience showed, in fact, that seemingly innocuous things often
tipped off major activity. On one occasion, before the war in
Lebanon, word came back from an agent that
a shipment of good-quality beef had been brought into a PLO
camp in Lebanon, something these camps normally didn't have.
The Mossad knew the PLO had been planning an attack, but they
had no idea when. The beef shipment tipped them off. It was for a
celebratory dinner. Acting on this information, Israeli naval
commandos made a preemptive strike, wiping out 11 PLO
guerrillas as they were getting into their rubber boats.
This was another example of how important little bits of
information could be — and how essential it was to report
everything properly.

Even before reading this book I had read that Mossad's passport counterfeiting dept was probably the best on the planet.

The next lecture was more to the point. It was delivered by Pinhas
Aderet and had to do with documentation: passports, ID cards,
credit cards, driver's licenses, and so on. The most important
Mossad documents are passports, and there are four qualities:
top, second, field operation, and throwaway.
Throwaway passports had either been found or stolen and were
used when you needed only to flash them. They weren't used for
identification. The photo would have been changed, and
sometimes, the name, but the idea is to change as little as
possible. But such a document would not withstand thorough
scrutiny. Neviot officers (the ones who did break-ins, cased
houses, and such) used them. They were also used in training
exercises inside Israel, or to recruit inside Israel.
With every passport issued, there was a folio page giving the name
and address, complete with a photocopy of the section of the city
where that address was. The actual house was marked on the
map, and there was a photograph of it and description of the
neighborhood. If you happened to run into someone who knew the
area, you wouldn't be caught offguard by some simple question
about it.
If you were using a throwaway passport, you'd be told in the
accompanying folio where it had been used before. You wouldn't
use it at, say, the Hilton if someone else had recently been there
with it. In addition, you had to have a story to cover all the stamps
that appeared inside such a passport.
74 BY WAY OF DECEPTION
A field-operations passport was used for quick work in a foreign
country. But it was not used when crossing borders. In fact,
katsas rarely use false ID at all in going from one country to
another, unless they are with an agent, something they always try
to avoid. The false passport would be carried inside a diplomatic
pouch sealed by a "bordero," a wax seal with a string on it,
ostensibly to show it can't be opened without detection. It is used
to carry papers between embassies, and recognized around the
world as something that is not to be opened at border crossings.
The carrier has diplomatic immunity. (The passports, of course,
could also be delivered to a katsa in another country by a bode!, or
messenger.) The wax seals were made so that these envelopes
could easily be opened and closed without appearing to affect the
seal.
Second-quality passports, actually perfect passports, were built on
katsas' cover stories, but there were no real persons behind them.
A top-quality passport, on the other hand, had both a cover story
and a person behind it who could back up the story. They would
stand up completely to any official scrutiny, including a check by
the country of origin.
Passports are manufactured on different types of paper. There is
no way the Canadian government, for example, would sell anyone
the paper it uses to make Canadian passports (still the favorite of
the Mossad). But a phony passport cannot be manufactured with
the wrong paper, so the Mossad had a small factory and chemical
laboratory in the basement of the Academy that actually made
various kinds of passport paper. Chemists analyzed the paper of
genuine passports and worked out the exact formula to produce
sheets of paper that duplicated what they needed.
A large storage room was kept at a precise temperature and
humidity to preserve the paper. Its shelves contained passport
paper for most nations. Another part of this operation was the
manufacture of Jordanian dinars. These have been used
successfully to trade for real dollars and also to flood Jordan with
currency, exacerbating that country's inflation problems.
BY WAY OF DECEPTION 75
When I visited the factory as a trainee, I saw a large batch of blank
Canadian passports. They must have been stolen. It looked like an
entire shipment. There were over 1,000 of them. I don't think the
shipment was ever reported missing — not in the media, anyway.
Many immigrants to Israel are also asked if they will give up their
passports to save Jews. For instance, a person who had just
moved to Israel from Argentina probably wouldn't mind donating
his Argentine passport. It would end up in a huge, library-like
room, containing many thousands of passports divided by
countries, cities, and even districts, with Jewish- and non-Jewish-
sounding names, also coded by ages — and all data computerized.
The Mossad also had a major collection of passport stamps and
signatures that they used to stamp their own passports. These
were kept in a log book. Many of them were gathered with the help
of police who could hold a passport temporarily and photograph
the various stamps before returning it to the owner.
Even stamping a false passport was done methodically. If, for
example, my passport bore an Athens stamp on a certain day, the
department would check their files for the signature and stamp
from that day at the correct flight time, so that if someone should
check with Athens as to which officer was on duty, that would be
correct. They prided themselves on this work. Sometimes they'd fill
a passport with 20 stamps. They said no operation had ever been
bungled by a bad document.
In addition, I'd receive a file with my passport, which I had to
memorize, then discard, with general information about the day I
was supposedly in Athens: the weather, the local headlines, and
the current topics of discussion, where I stayed, what I did there,
and so on.
With each assignment, katsas received little reminder slips about
previous work; for example, don't forget that on a certain date you
were at this hotel and your name was suchand-such. These also
listed all the people we met and saw, another reason to include
every detail, no matter how tiny it seemed, in the reports.

@pmaitra @Dovah @cobra commando @Mad Indian @Free Karma

 

[Razor]

Interesting book by a former katsa (Mossad Operative): By Way of Deception (by Victor Ostrovsky)

By Way of Deception - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Link for free ebook: http://vho.org/aaargh/fran/livres11/OSTROVbywayofdecep.pdf

I started reading it, haven't completed it. But seems very interesting to me.

I started making a note of some excerpts after a while.

Some excerpts:




Note: PLO=Palestine Liberation Org



Even before reading this book I had read that Mossad's passport counterfeiting dept was probably the best on the planet.


@pmaitra @Dovah @cobra commando @Mad Indian @Free Karma

More excerpts:

These attitudes were engraved in our minds. We were to do what
was good for us and screw everybody else, because they wouldn't
be helping us. The further to the right you go in Israel, the more
you hear that. In Israel, if you stay where you are politically, you're
automatically shifting to the left, because now the whole country
seems to be rapidly heading right. You know what Israelis say: "If
they weren't burning us in World War II, they were helping, or if
they weren't helping, they were ignoring it." Yet I don't remember
anybody in Israel going out to demonstrate when all those people
were being murdered in Cambodia. So why expect everybody to
get involved just for us? Does the fact that Jews have suffered give
us the right to inflict pain and misery on others?
As part of Tsomet, we were also taught how to brief an agent being
sent out to a target country. The basic agent — they are quite
common — is called a "warning agent." Such an agent could be a
male nurse in a hospital whose assignment is to notify the Mossad
if they're preparing extra beds, or opening new wings, or
stockpiling extra medication — anything that looks like
preparation for war. There are warning agents at the harbor who
report if extra ships come in; agents at the fire department to
notice if certain preparations have begun; at the library, in case
half the staff is suddenly recruited because their work is non-
essential

Among the lectures in this second segment of the course was a
two-hour dissertation from Zave Alan, the boy wonder of liaison
between the Mossad and the CIA. He spoke on the United States
and Latin America. Alan explained that when you deal with a
liaison person from another organization, he regards you as a link,
and you regard him as a link and a source. You transfer to him
the information your superiors want transferred, and vice versa.
All you are is a connector. But since you are both people,
chemistry is important.
For that reason, liaison people will be changed if necessary. Once
the chemistry is right, you can create a personal relationship
between yourself and the other side. As the relationship grows,
your contact develops sympathy for you. He understands the
dangers your country faces. The idea is to bring the intelligence
down to such a personal level that now you're dealing with a
friend. But you must remember that he's still part of a big
organization. He knows a lot more than he's allowed to tell you.
Sometimes, however, you may be in a situation where you need
information that he might volunteer to you as a friend, knowing it
can't harm him and also knowing you won't leak it. That
information is very valuable and, in terms of writing your report, is
classified as "Jumbo." Alan, peering out at us through his John
Lennon glasses, boasted that he got more "Jumbo" information
than anyone else in the Mossad.
On the other hand, we, as Mossad officers, did not give out
Jumbo. We would prepare make-believe Jumbo, information to be
given on a personal level in return for personal information from
the other side. But passing along real Jumbo was regarded as
outright treason.
Alan told us he had many friends in U.S. intelligence. "But I
always remember the most important thing," he said, pausing for
effect. "When I am sitting with my friend, he's not sitting with his
friend."
Alan's lecture was followed by one on technical cooperation
between agencies, in which we learned that the Mossad had the
best capability of all for cracking locks. Various lock
manufacturers in Great Britain, for example, would send new
mechanisms to British intelligence for security testing; they in
turn sent them on to the Mossad for analysis. The procedure was
for our people to analyze it, figure out how to open it, then send it
back with a report that it's "impregnable."

Sayanim

The next day Ran S. delivered 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 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.

88 BY WAY OF DECEPTION

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. (External Link: Secret NSA Docs: Israel Intelligence in Top 3 Most Aggressive Against US
)
Most of the Arab
countries don't manufacture their own weapons. Most don't have
high-level military colleges, for example. If you want to recruit a
Syrian diplomat, you don't have to do that in Damascus. You can
do it in Paris. If you want data on an Arab missile, you get that in
Paris or London or the United States where it is made. You can get
less information on Saudi Arabia from the Saudis themselves than
you can from the Americans. What do the Saudis have? AWACs.
Those are Boeing, and Boeing's American. What do you need the
Saudis for? The total recruitment in Saudi Arabia during my time
with the Institute was one attaché in the Japanese embassy. That
was it.

Interesting one this below @pmaitra

96 BY WAY OF DECEPTION
It was close to midnight when we left the room and locked it
up. We'd left our car in the parking lot near the dining room, and
we were heading out that way when we heard a lot of noise from
the pool area.
"What the hell is that?" I asked Michel.
"Let's go and see," he said.
"Wait. Wait," said Heim. "Let's go quietly."
"Better yet," I suggested, "let's just go back up to that second-floor
window and see what's going on."
The noise continued as we stole back into the Academy, up the
stairs, and over to the window in the little bathroom where I had
once been held during my pre-course test.
I'll never forget what I saw next. There were about 25 people in
and around the pool and none of them had a stitch of clothing on.
The second-in-command of the Mossad — today, he is the head —
was there. Hessner. Various secretaries. It was incredible. Some of
the men were not a pretty sight, but most of the girls were quite
impressive. I must say they looked much better than they did in
uniform! Most of them were female soldiers assigned to the office,
and were only 18 or 20 years old.
Some of the partiers were in the water playing, some were
dancing, others were on blankets to the left and the right having a
fine old time vigorously screwing each other right there. I've never
seen anything like it.
"Let's make a list of who's here," I said. Heim suggested we get a
camera, but Michel said, "I'm out of here. I want to stay in the
office." Yosy agreed, and Heim conceded that taking photos was
probably unwise.
We stayed there about 20 minutes. It was the top brass all right,
and they were swapping partners. It really shook me. That's sure
not what you expect. You look at these people as heroes, you look
up to them, and then you see them having a sex party by the pool.
Mind you, Heim and Michel didn't seem surprised.
We left quietly, went to our car, and pushed it all the way to the
gate. We didn't turn it on until we were through the gate and on
down the hill.
We checked up on this later and apparently these parties were
going on all the time. The area around the pool is the most secure
place in Israel. You don't get in there unless you're from the
Mossad. What's the worst thing that could happen? A cadet sees
you. So what? You can always deny it.
The next day in class, it was strange to sit there and take a lecture
from Hessner after what we'd seen him doing the night before. I
remember I asked him a question. I had to. "How's your back?" I
said. "Why?" he replied. "You walk like you strained it," I said.

 

[pmaitra]

@Razor, what is this "Sayanim?" What does "100% Jewish" mean? If a person is 100% Jewish, then he is simply a Jew. Why add that "ish" and act impish on the definition?

BTW, there is no such thing as "100%" anything. This is just an invention meant for brainwashing. Just like the Saudis use brainwashed Arab youth as their cannon fodder, so does Mossad. Nothing religious about it. Nothing ethnic about it. Certainly, nothing holy about it. This is plain and simple politics.

 

[Razor]

@Razor, what is this "Sayanim?" What does "100% Jewish" mean? If a person is 100% Jewish, then he is simply a Jew. Why add that "ish" and act impish on the definition?

BTW, there is no such thing as "100%" anything. This is just an invention meant for brainwashing. Just like the Saudis use brainwashed Arab youth as their cannon fodder, so does Mossad. Nothing religious about it. Nothing ethnic about it. Certainly, nothing holy about it. This is plain and simple politics.

Yes, there isn't probably any 100% pure anything out there.

But probably what he means is, both parents are from jewish families and therefore roots, but when you say jew it could be give a little leeway.
And yes the mossad does use arabs, but only in the lower levels, at least i think that is what the author implies.
And yes, as you say it is business as usual, nothing about ethnics, not so sure about religion though.

 

[pmaitra]

Yes, there isn't probably any 100% pure anything out there.

But probably what he means is, both parents are from jewish families and therefore roots, but when you say jew it could be give a little leeway.
And yes the mossad does use arabs, but only in the lower levels, at least i think that is what the author implies.
And yes, as you say it is business as usual, nothing about ethnics, not so sure about religion though.

I meant Mossad uses Jew(ish) people just like the Saudis use Arab(esque) people.

A crude analogy:
Jew-ISH would probabaly mean the Nazi loving Jews who are believed to be Khazars, and are not Semites.
Arab-ESQUE would probably be the Pakis, who are Indians, and not Arabs.

 

[Razor]

I meant Mossad uses Jew(ish) people just like the Saudis use Arab(esque) people.

A crude analogy:
Jew-ISH would probabaly mean the Nazi loving Jews who are believed to be Khazars, and are not Semites.
Arab-ESQUE would probably be the Pakis, who are Indians, and not Arabs.

Oh, okay, got it.

 

[anoop_mig25]

@Razor

as like Shrilanka story is there any story related to India,pakisatn,china in By Way of Deception

 

[Razor]

@Razor

as like Shrilanka story is there any story related to India,pakisatn,china in By Way of Deception

I haven't read the entire book, just the first few chapters.
Must read the rest when I get the time.

I'll tag you, if I find anything about the countries you have mentioned in your post.

 

[ghost]

Interesting book by a former katsa (Mossad Operative): By Way of Deception (by Victor Ostrovsky)

By Way of Deception - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Link for free ebook: http://vho.org/aaargh/fran/livres11/OSTROVbywayofdecep.pdf

I started reading it, haven't completed it. But seems very interesting to me.

I started making a note of some excerpts after a while.

Some excerpts:




Note: PLO=Palestine Liberation Org



Even before reading this book I had read that Mossad's passport counterfeiting dept was probably the best on the planet.


@pmaitra @Dovah @cobra commando @Mad Indian @Free Karma

Sir @Razor,

This explain the reports of Israeli supplying arms to Pakistan.British report reveals Israel’s arms exports to Pakistan - Pakistan - DAWN.COM

Every country play games but some are cunning to a whole new level,Israeli seem to be among those.We should not be surprised if we get to know that Mossad sponsored few of the terror attacks on India,to create insecurity and force India to be more dependent on Israel for its security needs .This will not only earn tons of money to Israel through arms sales but also increase Israel clout inside India and strengthen its support base in international politics.

 

[Razor]

Sir @Razor,

This explain the reports of Israeli supplying arms to Pakistan.British report reveals Israel's arms exports to Pakistan - Pakistan - DAWN.COM

Every country play games but some are cunning to a whole new level,Israeli seem to be among those.We should not be surprised if we get to know that Mossad sponsored few of the terror attacks on India,to create insecurity and force India to be more dependent on Israel for its security needs .This will not only earn tons of money to Israel through arms sales but also increase Israel clout inside India and strengthen its support base in international politics.

Agreed. And I wouldn't be surprised either.

I mean Israel is aggressive against even the US, which is its major sponsor and supporter.
I read the book "Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency" by James Bamford a few years back (so memory is kinda sketchy; it is an awesome book about the NSA.)
But I remember that Israel had no qualms in killing amerikan soldiers and the american intel agencies knew very well it wasn't an accident but they forced to say that it was an accident because they did not want public opinion in the US to go against israel.

I think the thing about Mossad is it is extremely efficient and has a (relatively) strong connection & support base in the Jewish diaspora.

 

[Vishwarupa]

Friends Read this book

 

[anupamsurey]

wasnt Ice station written by Matthew reilly, it an action novel.
sorry unable to see the picture so just asked.

ICE STATION ZEBRA (Thriller)

One of the best books of Alistair MacLean

 

[anupamsurey]

I am fan of Fiction and I love fast paced action- check matthew reilly and you will be hooked to his books.

 

[SPIEZ]

wasnt Ice station written by Matthew reilly, it an action novel.
sorry unable to see the picture so just asked.

Ice Station Zebra, was written by Alistair Maclean. Please see the link

Ice Station was written by Mathew Reilly.

Bot are very good books. Ice Station Zebra, an old one, looks to be more realistic compared to the other book