Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, April 1998, Pages 11, 92

The Ostrovsky Files

Poison Used in Failed Amman Assassination Attempt Could Shed Light on Mysterious Death of Robert Maxwell

By Victor Ostrovsky

Amidst all the apparent chaos since Binyamin Netanyahu became prime minister of Israel, there is a master plan. Despite all that is said about him, Netanyahu is well aware of the fact that the devil is in the details. And there is no one who can manipulate them better than he. The fact that the United States could not put together a coalition against Saddam Hussain is a result of U.S. leniency toward the madman in Jerusalem, who also has in his possession weapons of mass distruction, and who will use them if, in his somewhat delusional state, he feels the need.

From the day he took office Netanyahu wanted to control all bases of power. The fact that a Labor appointee remained at the helm of the Mossad, Israel’s CIA, was something that caused him great pain.

Therefore it was clear from the start that he was looking for an opportunity to rid himself of Gen. Danny Yatom, and hand the reins to someone Netanyahu could manipulate. Having control over the Mossad would give Netanyahu not only a powerful tool for his flaky international endeavors (assassination and insurrection), but also for internal purposes.

Whoever is in charge of the operational section of the Mossad can launch operations inside Israel with impunity. And since the Mossad is trained to work in hostile environments, doing so in Israel without raising the suspicions of the internal security apparatus is no challenge.

Therefore current changes taking place in the Mossad hierarchy fit nicely with Netanyahu’s ambitions. Mossad head Yatom has announced his resignation as a result of the findings of the Ciechanover commission of inquiry into the botched attempt to assassinate Hamas official Khaled Meshal in Amman. It was former Israeli superhawk Gen. Ariel Sharon who suggested the members for the commitee, knowing full well that Joseph Ciechanover—a mild, well-respected man who has a built-in fear of offending anyone—would never indict Netanyahu. In a worst-case scenario, he would wrap up the investigation as inconclusive. Ciechanover did better than he’d been expected to. He placed the blame partially on the head of the Mossad and then spread the blame on down to the ranks and away from the political echelon.

As this commission was an internal one, appointed by the prime minister, it had to report its findings to him. He then would decide what would be made public and what would remain secret. So there was little for Netanyahu to fear.

He made a minimum gesture of backing the Mossad chief until Yatom found himself at the end of a well-placed political plank. He had little choice but to jump into the water as food for the Israeli media sharks, who had been agitated into a frenzy for weeks with well-measured portions of his blood.

As expected, Netanyahu came out of the inquiry clean. Had Ciechanover and his team of yes men had the courage to point the finger at the man who ordered the assassination, things might have been different. However, the commission members made a point of saying they did not feel qualified to interfere with the political decisions of the country’s elected leaders.

As a means to correct such mishaps in the future, the commission members suggested appointment of an intermediary, knowledgeable in the ways of the intelligence community. The intermediary would make sure the prime minister is well aware of the potential consequences of operations as they are planned.

Once again Israel’s leaders have chosen the easy way out. Instead of realizing the stain on the national conscience a sanctioned murder has, the leaders of Israel preferred to find ways to perfect the tools with which such actions are taken.

In fact, more often than not, history teaches that violence breeds violence and a nation that believes it has a right to eliminate whomever it perceives to be an enemy wherever and whenever it wishes should not be surprised when someone—“for the sake of the country”—kills its prime minister, or when others plant bombs in public places killing the innocent.

The state of Israel was created with violence and since its inception some of its leaders have achieved their goals through such terrorist acts as the blowing up of the King David Hotel on the orders of future Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin. Until the state of Israel proves ready to take a unilateral step in outlawing all terrorism against all of its “enemies,” it will continue to legitimize the terror aimed at itself.

Coming Apart at the Seams

The Mossad, it appears, is coming apart at the seams, not as a result of any operational slack but as a direct result of a deterioration in the moral fiber of the organization. It is not how Mossad does things that is the problem, but rather the things it is asked to do.

Even after the bungled assassination attempt on Khaled Meshal in Amman, Netanyahu has once more come out on top. He has managed to rid himself of Yatom and replace him with his own pick for the Mossad leadership, Gen. Amiram Levin. The 54-year-old Levin presently heads the northern command of the Israel Defense Forces and was Netanyahu’s commander during the prime minister’s military service.

In fact Levin is a “cowboy,” and it will not be long before the so-called “long arm of Israeli justice” will strike again.

Knowing that insiders in Mossad shrink from the thought of an outsider running the organization (outsiders do not know the “rules”), Netanyahu, in a stroke of manipulative genius, will appoint as a temporary head of Mossad a widely disliked former deputy Mossad chief, but one who knows all the dirty tricks needed to keep this gang in check.

He will run the foreign relations end of the organization while Amiram Levin, who will be a deputy for the time being, will be in charge of operations. In doing this Netanyahu kills two birds with one stone. He has his own man running the operations and he is dividing the Mossad into two separate organizations.

The one that is the clandestine side will be in the hands of a man he can trust intimately and the other is in the hands of Efraim Halevy, who will not do anything to jeopardize his own personal career.

During the inquiry into the Meshal affair, a witness who was asked why there was so little preparation in the field for the assassination replied that this method had worked before. From that one can safely infer that the Mossad had used this method of assassination more then once in the past.

Therefore there is little doubt that more then one person who seemed to have died from natural causes was in fact murdered. I believe it is the responsibility of the Jordanian government to make the poison used in the Meshal affair known to the world.

In so doing King Hussein will allow investigators to determine if, when and where it has been used before, and also will enable all nations, by being prepared to apply the antidote, to make sure it cannot be used again. Should the Jordanians decide not to do this, one should look suspiciously at their motives for protecting the tools of the Mossad.

Once that chemical is no longer a secret, and assuming the Spanish authorities have kept some of the tissue from the body of the late publishing tycoon, Robert Maxwell, who died mysteriously on his yacht a few hours after an unexplained stop in the Canary Islands, another mystery might be solved.