By Judi McLeod
Sunday, January 28, 2007
The living legend that shone a full flashlight beam into the secret world of the Israeli Mossad and incorporated that world into the fast-moving pages of Gideon's Spies: The Secret History of the Mossad, is back in the bookstores next week. The third update of this best-selling book now includes enticing details of post invasion Iraq, the worrisome black market in nuclear material and other timely topics.
Spellbound by the world of spies and the intelligence networks they represent, author Gordon Thomas has never met a spy he wouldn't track down.
Don't read the updated version if your share your bed with someone because your bed lamp will still be burning at dawn. Thomas's compelling stories about assassinations, tales of conversations picked up from unsuspected beams thrown onto public buildings and other turned-up-collar trench coat skullduggeries will have you racing home from the office to get back to Gideon Spies: The Secret History of the Mossad.
As his subjects were to discover, no conspiracy theory was ever safe when former Daily Express reporter Gordon Thomas was on the prowl for information for his book.
Once Thomas had gained access at a sufficiently high level within the Israeli intelligence to establish an authoritative account, there was no stopping him.
Undeterred that Mossad is among the world's most respected--and feared--intelligence services, the author wanted to know which closets were hiding the skeletons.
"As with my previous books, I came to the subject of Mossad with no baggage," he once said. "I have used information its members provided in the way any writer does when dealing with an intelligence service: checked it, checked it, checked it."
It was a job that kept Thomas closeted in his office and one that was to dominate all other aspects of his life. Some 80 hours of taped recollections were made, including repeated interviews with persons connected directly or indirectly with Mossad. Others were with persons Mossad had tried to kill. They included Leila Khaled, who came to notoriety during the spate of aircraft hijackings by the PLO in the 1970s, and Muhammed Abass, who masterminded the hijacking of the Achille Lauro, in which a crippled American Jewish passenger was heartlessly hurled over the side of the cruise liner to his death.
"I met them in May 1996 in Gaza City, where they had been permitted to visit Israel as part of its rapprochement with the PLO," Thomas recalled. "I also spoke to Yasser Arafat, himself once a prime target for Mossad assassination.
Having written on many topics in tamer worlds, Thomas, who knew Princess Diana, found researching and writing on intelligence matters his lifetime passion.
It all started back in 1960 when he was afforded the opportunity of working with Chapman Pincher, then Britain's foremost writer on the subject. The Daily Express in London employed both. A number of their stories--most notably the Burgess and Maclean debacle for British intelligence--helped to change the perception of how these matters should be reported.
"It is a position I have tried to maintain with such books as Journey into Madness, Pontiff and Chaos under Heaven," said Thomas.
Having been on the scene of secret intelligence wars being waged against Iran, Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, areas in which Mossad remains directly involved, Thomas came easily to the topic.
He wrote extensively on Mossad's relationship with the Vatican and his own contacts with the Holy See were useful in conducting further background interviews for this book.
Thomas found himself in China at the height of student unrest in 1989. "Once more I witnessed the machinations of intelligence agencies and detected the hand of Mossad over its concern that China' exporting of weapons to both Iran and Iraq could pose a serious threat to Israel.
"I went on to write about the role of Mossad in the Persian Gulf War and in the aftermath of Soviet Communism."
The rose-colored tint wore off his glasses as soon as he came to understood what he was really up against. It would take more than a glass of scotch with cronies at the club to erase the memory of men who kill other men.
"The first lesson I learned during a quarter of a century of writing about secret intelligence is that deception and disinformation are its stock-in-trade, along with subversion, corruption, blackmail and sometimes, assassination," he said. "Agents are trained to lie and use and abuse friendships. They are the very opposite of the dictum that gentlemen do not read each other's mail."
For most of them, niceties went out with lace-edged handkerchiefs. Nice just doesn't cut it when you have to know for certain which of those you trusted have traded sides.
"I first encountered their behaviour while investigating many of the great spy scandals of the Cold War: the betrayal of America's atomic bomb secrets by Klaus Fuchs, ad the compromising of Britain's M15 and M16 by Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean and Kim Philby. Each made treachery and duplicity his byword. I was also one of the first writers to have an insight into the CIA's obsession with mind control, a pre-occupation the Agency was forced to confirm ten years after my book on the subject, Journey into Madness, appeared. Denial is the black art all Intelligence services long ago perfected," Thomas recalls.
But through the maze this British author was able to hold onto his own humour and to keep his admirable perspective intact.
The characters he met along the way were as indelible as the White Cliffs of Dover.
It was the members of Israel's intelligence community who first helped him by filling in the background of Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turkish fanatic who attempted to assassinate Pope John Paul II in St. Peter's Square, Rome, in May 1981.
"Those contacts were arranged by Simon Wiesenthal, the renowned Nazi hunter and an invaluable Mossad "source" for over 40 years. Because of his fame and reputation, Wiesenthal still finds doors readily open, especially in Washington."
Throughout it all, Thomas gained a front row center seat on the legendary Mossad.
An astute student who won their respect, Mossad agents, who actually conducted the missions, gave the author the skinny on real-life incidents.
"They showed that legends attributed to Mossad paled into insignificance when placed against what really had happened," said Thomas. "I remember Rafael Eitan chuckling and saying, "Almost every published fact about the capture of Eichmann is pure bullshit. I know because I personally am the man who captured him."
Canada Free Press has a proud personal stake on the third update of Gideon's Spies: The Secret History of the Mossad. Its author is one of our regular columnists. And popular Warsaw-based CFP columnist David Dastych is the book's publisher in Poland.
Meanwhile, Hollywood's spies got nothing on the real thing.
And the real thing is a book you won't be able to put down when you have your copy of the third update of Gideon's Spies: The Secret History of the Mossad on the bookstands next week.
(Gideon's Spies: The Secret History of the Mossad, Gordon Thomas, St. Martin's Griffin, $16.95 paper (512p).
Canada Free Press founding editor Most recent by Judi McLeod is an award-winning journalist with 30 years experience in the print media. Her work has appeared on Newsmax.com, Drudge Report, Foxnews.com, Glenn Beck. Judi can be reached at: judi@canadafreepress.com
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