Inside the Mossad: Ronen Bergman in Conversation with David Sanger

it's great to be here with my old friend ronen bergman this is a truly remarkable book its hefty it's a very fast read because it's pretty dramatic targeted killings tend to be but it also raises all kinds of fascinating moral issues and so forth and we'll try to get get into those well let me um let me start with what you start with in the introduction about the impediments to reporting a book like this because as a correspondent you know I corresponds tend to read books and their friends and competitors books differently than most people do you read this and you're asking yourself how the hell did he get that right so in the opening of the book you mentioned that the intelligence services are required under Israeli law to move all their stuff to the archives after 50 years and make it public and that even with the 50 year gap which by the way is twice as long as the standard classification in the United States 25 they refused to do it and when you went to court and the court sort of covered for them and delayed and that gave the Parliament time to change the law to 70 years which is pretty remarkable because Israel is not seventy years old at this point so what's going on here how do you manage to write a 600-page book when the government has basically declared that every single page of it is classified and yet people talk to you by name in this book I smiled oh well then answers that will move on to the next question yeah first of all addressed history I would just wanted to think again tom kaplan and dear friend and why and Susan angle for arranging this and thank you for moderating this as you said they have repeatedly we fuse to obey the law give the documents to the state archive then we said at least start to declassify so they prolong the time from 50 to 70 and they promised one of the Chiefs of Israeli intelligence that when we reach 70 which is very soon they are going to prolong it to 100 said don't worry you will never get these documents and yet Israel this is something very hard to explain to non Israelis and easier to Israelis the Israel there's a very Israeli phenomenon one hand everything is top-secret when the IDF buys a chair then it's classified secret and if it says who is going to sit on that chair it's top secret but Israelis like to talk I've noticed this yeah and and I think many of the 1000 interviewees which I met for writing rise and kill first they came to a conclusion that this is the in official history of Israeli intelligence it's not authorized these were not supported by the administration but yet after so many years in the dark in secret they wanted their part in protecting Israel to be shown because you know this is a book about clandestine operations which focuses on many of these pages no targeted killings only in many other countries that would it would be seen as illegal or even if country employs these tactics people will be ashamed or embarrassed to talk about that in Israel people are proud that they took these assignments because they are seen by themselves and by at least most of the public if those is those who were defending the the peace and the safety and national security of it and I noticed is reading through it that many of the people who talk to you and talk to you by name were elderly number of them have passed away since the time that you interviewed them most of them from natural causes well yes most of them and it's striking to me that they understood when they were talking to you that this was the legacy book for them it weren't they weren't gonna get another pass at this to tell it their way and if they were not open enough then maybe coincidentally I could say something about the fact that someone else was taking credit for what something that an operation that they did but usually softly you use that technique - okay so mayor de gun for example well I was about to say let's start with mayor de GaN somebody who both of us knew you better knew him better than I did tell everybody who mayor Duggan was he just died in 2016 after but he had only left the Mossad in 2010 if I recall right so so tell us a little bit about my Erdogan what made him such a remarkable person where he came from so the gun was born to Holocaust survivors and he was born on a frozen floor of a cargo train when his parents were moving back as refugees from Ukraine back to Poland to look of him where he was born when his father came to that place where the ruins of that city he found someone who actually took photographs of the last scenes the last minutes of the Jews and when he developed that film he found the actual pics of his father meaning mayor's grin family on-air used to keep this on his desk because I may or had this these photographs there are two images of that ultra-religious guy on his knees in his hands in the air and these Gestapo and and military and German military soldiers pointing a gun at him smiling just just minutes before he was executed and he used that image he pointed out that image to everyone coming to his office subordinates as like colleagues from other intelligence agencies it said you look at this picture this is my grandfather and we are here and the Mossad is here and I am here the God to make sure that this will never happen again no more no second Holocaust and the and he and he took this very seriously something about his his young Oh being a young officer in the in the IDF he met Ariel Sharon when Sharon was general de top military commander at the south and there was a there was there were Katyusha missiles which fuses timer in inside a minefield and nobody dare to get close to them only the gun that was later described by one of his followers said the organ of fear was disconnected from the rest of his body so he was just walking through the mines and defused the the Katyusha rockets and Sharon was very impressed and then he put him in charge of a small unit of counterterrorism and targeted killing inside Gaza Strip and back in the 70s the Gaza Strip was controlled by the the PLO allegedly the idea of control did but the PLO was in fact in control and the gun developed a new doctrine and you fighting technique how to be dressed as an Arab get very close to the most wanted terrorists and before they know it showed the pistol the rifle and and killed him this is where also the Charonne came up with the famous phrase when Sharon appointed mayor the gun to be the chief of the Mossad he admired the gun and in 2002 Sharon was fed up with the more I would say diplomatic approach that the Mossad took and he appointed the gun and in the inauguration ceremony said Mayor I wanted you to do to the Mossad what you did back time back in time in Gaza I won a Mossad with a dagger between the teeth and I met with Charonne at their time and I said mr. prime minister do you really think that mayor Duggan you know have this prestige of a rogue officer trigger-happy would install back Mossad to its precise famous days of glory it's one thing to run an assassin unit in Gaza of few hundred people a few dozen people and it's a different terrine organization with practically thousands of employees and Sharon replied it said Ronen I am sure mayor will bring back the glorious times of Mossad and you know why and I asked why but I knew that some black humor is coming right it says you know what mayor's main expertise is said what is that said his mayor the gun best expertise is the separation of terrorists from his head there was a this was the politically correct version of that yes yes he had even a worse version so that made the gun sound pretty brutish and it's a pretty famous quote about him my experience with him which came more at the end of his life and after he had been out of the Mossad and as I was getting ready to write about a cyber operation in which he was deeply involved the Olympic Games the operation against against Iran I found him to be an incredibly subtle geopolitical thinker and I think one of the wonders of your book is that comes through particularly at the end where he and Netanyahu separate ways on the question of whether it's wise to go bomb Iran and so take us a little bit through how somebody who gets his start separating terrorists from their heads ends up basically saying the greater security of the State of Israel is not to go bomb Iran's nuclear facilities if mayor was sitting here he would say that he didn't change the Netanyahu changed that that his perception was the same one throughout time but he did and I'd say within a minute about that that God believed that Israel should not go to an all-out war he believed that the six-day war triumphant victory was a one-time it will never repeat itself that Israel should go to an all-out war quoting him only if the sword is on our neck and all the rest should be handled efficiently with pinpoint focused operation way beyond enemy lines sabotage installment of viruses computer viruses as you said targeted killings he said we have to have an overall policy when it came to he said you know a car has something there's a regular car has something like 25,000 different parts if you make sure that the manufacturer of that car doesn't have 100 parts it just it wouldn't move meaning we have to block the export of dual-use equipment to Iran but then he said he smiled well sometimes it's just more efficient to kill the driver and the gun thought that he would be able to stop or at least significantly delay the Iranian nuclear project by secret means political pressure prevention of export of dual-use equipment encouragement of opposition groups and special operations economic and economic boycott in economic steps he established a special unit called a sphere to the Iranian economy and he started and he launched a huge campaign of assassinations and sabotage through the Iranian nuclear project and that worked but for some reason both Ministry of Defence Errol Barak and Prime Minister Netanyahu thought it's not enough they thought that Israel should go for an all-out strike aerial strike combined with ground forces on the Iranian nuclear sites and in that point that God almost I would say prefer performing a mutiny against them he what he did was to do everything in his power and it was extremely powerful and extremely courageous and influential to stop that to the extent that in his last day in Duty he invited myself and some other journalists secretly to the Mossad headquarters now I was surprised to receive the invitation because for years I've been levering some harsh criticism on the organization but you know the chief of the Mossad invites you to come in you wouldn't say no he steps in so we came before the Mossad did whatever they could to give the atmosphere of cloak-and-dagger they put us in a special bus with black windows and they made sure that we are not carrying any devices to recruit the conversation anyway he steps in he shakes everybody's hand he comes to me he says well you are some kind of a bandit and then he start bashing the Prime Minister and says the fact that someone was elected doesn't mean that he's smart he was using a cane because he was injured in from a mind by the terrorists he was hunted in 1969 he said you know there's a there's a there's an advantage to be hit by by a mind in your spine you get a certificate from a physician that you have a spine then and we understood just it's not just just a joke but but practically what he did was to delay to further delay and delay the strike because he thought that the sword is not on our neck that we will be able to Israel will be able to hold the Iranian nuclear project and we will be able to Israel will be able to get the Iranian economy so crippled that either they would agree to a compromise to disassemble the project or it would lead to it to a regime change well welcome back to him at the end that one of the remarkable things about the book is you go pretty far back in history so let's go back a little bit to some of the the bigger moments so first of all it wasn't until I read this book that I knew that the Mossad actually recruited in the mid-60s Hitler's chief of Special Operations not somebody you would think the Israelis would be eager to employ tell us about that I think this is one of the most remarkable moments in the history of Israeli intelligence and there were remarkable moments there very briefly Nasser of Egypt recruited scientists and engineer who used to work in pinna Munda that's the base in the the secret Gestapo SS ron base in the Baltic Sea during the Second World War where the Verma developed the v1 and v2 the mother and father of the Scud missiles that later hit on weapon in London after the war these scientists had nothing to do in Germany nobody wanted to employ someone who worked for the case and so they went to work for Nasser the Mossad was hunting Nazis because some people in the Mossad thought that there might be some nuts is trying to rebuild the Reich there weren't any and the fact was that the only Nazis or the only people who work for the Reich who actually posed national security to his well we were not identified and it was not until Nasser parade the missiles in July 1962 that Israel discovered what is happening and was in shock just imagine the picture Israel in 1962 shortly after the Second World War young fresh flood with Holocaust survivors here that Nasser who is in compared to him nuclear weapon yet no nuclear weapon before the six-day war and you know some confident that that brought they here that people who used to work for the original Hitler in pinna Munda are now developing weapons of mass destruction for the new Hitler Nasser and Nasser is boasting that with these missiles he's going to hit any target south of Beirut and the voice of thunder from Cairo the Egyptian radio says this is the weapon with which we are going to destroy I'll hire a CEO as a union which means the Zionist entity they didn't say Israel imagine the hysteria and Mossad was trying to kill the scientist and it failed at that time and it didn't bring in did not bring enough fear among the the other ones because NASA was painting a lot of money and the Mossad needed someone inside the project and a german-born Mossad case officer who lost all of his family in the Holocaust said I think we should go and recruit Otto Skorzeny who was close to them he was the chief of special operations for Hitler he was running the SS battalion in Crystal knocked in Vienna an avid Nazi he was wanted for the near bail trial and fled in the right the last moment to Spain and that guy from Israeli intelligence says let's recruit him he will bring us the intelligence that we need the chief of the Mossad says you are going to recruit him when I'll grow hair in the palm of my hand and they approached him through his wife and they offered him something that no one else could life without fear it was two years after admin was was tried and executed and they approached him as Mossad meaning they didn't claim to be someone else not false flag and he agreed he had four conditions to have a news passport money a letter of immunity from Prime Minister Eshkol and to be taken off the Simon Wiesenthal spoon most-wanted list but now imagine the the the grab back and see how they get the three I'm not sure he get the fourth so the the three could be given by Israel right but the fourth they send someone to Simon vision table someone from the Mossad and he said listen mr. visitor we cannot tell you why but please take Otto Skorzeny off your list and that guy said I have a great respect to the Mossad and to Israel but there is no way I will get Otto Skorzeny he's a war criminal we will not get him off the list now Scouten was disappointed by deity cooperated and he became the most important Mossad asset in the first first part of the 60s and he solved the problem of the the German scientists working in in Egypt that's the most remarkable moment a german-born Mossad operatives and where was he really he was living in Spain living in Spain and he he died in 1976 and we have some pictures from the his funeral where everybody salute in the Nazi the Nazi way meaning he did not desert the way but but Mossad was it there was a discussion there was a debate whether to recruit him or not and at the end pragmatism prevailed Bannister said we should recruit him because he helped us to solve current problems rather than to chase goes to the of the past it's really a remarkable story because you could have imagined it going the other way more easily there was an excerpt in The Times magazine over the weekend of another remarkable story you tell in here about the moments several of them when they tried to kill Yasser Arafat one moment when they were absolutely certain he was on a commercial airliner and the orders were to go take that airliner down even though they would kill many civilians and somebody stepped in the way of that order other moments when he was within the sights of a sniper so first of all in the Mossad strategic calculation or the strategic calculation of those who were commanding the Mossad and the prime ministers at the time what was the advantage of killing Yasser Arafat wouldn't the blowback have been greater than the gain the book is not just about the Mossad it's about the whole of the Israeli intelligence community and decision-making processes in killing Arafat who was called the head of the fish that was the codename may became a personal issue for Ariel Sharon this was not a Mossad thing on the contrary Mossad recommended since 1974 you probably recall his famous speech at the UN with a gun where he tried to portray himself as a politician from that point Mossad recommended to take him off the list but when Ariel Sharon was appointed Minister of Defense by Menachem Begin 1981 he immediately put Arafat back in fact he asked the chief of staff why haven't you kill him already how come is still alive how come Mossad doesn't have a journalist among the flock of journalists escorting him with a camera that has a gun disguise in it and Sharon ordered him to be killed now there were numerous attempts just before the invasion to Lebanon in 1982 during that and immediately after and they were all either failed because Arafat was careful enough or foiled and disrupted and stopped by courageous officers who said we are not going to perform with all due respect to that obsession of Ministry of Defense Iran we are not going the the fact that he was a legitimate target was not disputed he was the number one enemy of Israel and there was no one who said he's not he's not legit it's not legitimate to kill him but yet there were people around him and these courageous officers from ground troops to them to the commander of the Air Force said we are not sure that he's duly identified in that airplane or the other and second we are not going to kill civilians and so they did everything they could they jammed the communication they stopped they stole time and one of the operations the chief of the Air Force David Avery was commanding the war room the subterranean world of the air force in Tel Aviv and he was ordered to take out an airplane a cargo airplane going from Athens to Cairo with Arafat on board Mossad identified Arafat on the ground just aborting the airplane they said the target the head of the fish has grown beard to conceal himself but yet we are sure it's Arafat something doesn't didn't sound right to every so he stole time the f16 also already intercepted the the that cargo plane but he said I want more collaboration I want more information and the Minister of Defense and the chief of staff of pressuring him give the order to engage take down this airplane and he stole more and more time until the very last minute it was finally known that it was Arafat on board but not Yasser his brother fatly the head of the Palestinian Red Crescent with 30 wounded children from the massacre in Sabra and Shatila he took them for medical treatment in Cairo and only thanks to the firmness an opinionated stand of general every what this these children were saved and Israel was not staying with this horrific incident imagine particularly after Chavez tell what that would have been like and if he is now the head of Boeing Israel yeah yeah every is the head of Boeing Israel this this story I heard first in 2000 and eleven and the one who told me that said the only way I can you can quote me on that is that if you go to another source another person and if he tells you that story that arrows are on order to take out Airlines air commercial airlines but Yasser Arafat and the F was stopped him only if he'd give that to your own record will I be able to I will give you the full story so I went to that other person and I thought how can I get him to speak I know he's like a tough general and I went from that point to the other from that angle to the other and then I asked him the question his look changed and he says you know for 30 years I have been waiting for someone to come and ask me about that he stood up this was a huge of office overlooking Tel Aviv he went to the other side of that room he opened the safe and he pulled out the file of documents from that the flying log from that operation he was keeping death waiting for someone to ask him how could reporters operate yeah and just just this morning generally we called me and said you know I just found a note a handwritten note from the chief of staff do you want it and he emailed that to me there's a note from chief of staff Eitan saying David Arafat is going to fly from Jordan to Tunisia in that airplane if he's identified take it out so it's a handwritten it's a historical documents very dramatic he's pretty dramatic there were other opportunities including a moment where Arafat was sitting in a snipers crosshairs why didn't they fire Arafat decided to accept American mediation and evacuate Beirut to prevent violence in what year was this this was August 31st 1982 after the bombardment of Beirut and the siege and he just made one condition he just he said I want the US President to guarantee my safety and the US President Ronald Reagan for Manahan bagans listen I want to have your word that you will not take this opportunity and kill effort in Arafat was on the hindsight of seven different Israeli snipers one of them Moshe Ya'alon later to be Israeli defense minister and he recalled that moment he said here on the tip of my finger on the trigger I have the the head of the fish and I asked for permission to open fire but the chief of staff says no permission Prime Minister says he gave his word and the photograph that was taken by the sniper one of them we used in that recent New York Times story was given to Philip Habib the American mediator that evening to show that Israel could take a fat out in didn't because of that promise to President Reagan just imagine the frustration from the point of view of the of the snipers and yeah long as you and I know is not the world's most patient human being no not very much and did he talk about this later on yeah well you know yellow is one of the examples of a unique Israeli phenomenon these operation targeted killing assassinations sabotage are done in very small groups of course it's extremely secret and they are being authorized in Israel only by one person the Prime Minister there is no way to go with an operation of that kind without the direct involvement of the Prime Minister so the procedure is that the chief of an organization the Mossad for example goes to the Prime Minister usually to his private house or the the home in Balfour Street in Jerusalem and bring the people from the operation with him to to convince him just imagine you have the boss but you also have very young people most of them under the age of 30 some of them under the age of 25 going to the prime minister to convince him to issue a death verdict to against someone to convince him to dead someone posing a reliable and vivid threat to national security and this is why he was he needs to be killed now in Israel only in Israel through time through history some of the people the young people in time crossed that room and become the prime minister or the Ministry of Defense yahood barach Benjamin Netanyahu Messiah alone they were all part of these young people who came to convince Prime Minister and then became the Prime Minister and you come to think you come to ask yourself so what exactly does it change their mindset to have being engaged in these operation nothing you know not I'm thinking not in knowing but actually be there with the sniper rifle pointing at the head of the of the fish and then becoming a minister of defence or Prime Minister that need to have other means like statement shape like diplomacy like negotiation does it change their mindset so Ron this gets to one of the great moral issues that runs through the book there are not many Western democracies that have a tradition of targeted assassination you could argue that the United States has done that with its drone program we don't call it targeted assassination because we do it from 15 to 30,000 feet Wow you you call it targeted killing because of legal research it's a forbidden to assassinate someone but it's legal to targeted kill some that's right you'd be a fine American lawyer you do see a lot of authoritarian states do this states that Israel would not want to emulate what makes this acceptable in a modern-day Israeli society even one that remembers the grandfather who's pictured on the desk the way Meir Dagan kept his grandfather's picture we are still a society that sees itself in a state of war the new Israelis like the gun who came from Europe and established the State of Israel its intelligence services and Armed Forces I think they drew three main lessons from the Holocaust the first is that there will always be a Goya Gentile who is after us to perform a second annihilation the second lesson is that the other going the other Gentiles are going to stand aside and do nothing to help if not help the first going and the third lesson is that we need to have safe haven we need to have homeland and protect that in all cost now when your prime nemesis every decade calls for your destruction and you have that in the back of your mind President Nasser Saddam Hussein who threatened to burn half of Israel yes sir Alfred that wrote the Palestinian covenant in which there is no place for Jews in Palestine Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and all the rest when that's your primal emesis and you feel for a second Holocaust you will say no means and you would do whatever you can with little attribution to international law if at all to protect yourself is that going to be acceptable 20 years from now if Israel continues to fight the same kind of wars and perceive itself as fighting for existence I think so I think and I and look just twenty years ago this was by far less acceptable since Israel started to use these tactics openly after the eruption of the Second Intifada and against suicide bombers and especially after the United States started to kill people after September 11 this has become I would say part of modern warfare and even accepted by international law that you can kill a terrorist even if he's not during an operation and even even if he's alone at bed at night this is a very fine and very important distinction and a change of international war law if in all times traditional law you can only kill a chair a soldier when he's fighting but he when he goes home he is not a legitimate target a terrorist can be killed wherever he is and this is accepted nowadays even by Amnesty or Human Rights Watch so there are moments where this has gone wrong or Israel has been caught and one of those moments was the beginning of the end of Merida Gon's remarkable career it was in Dubai yep tell us the story Mossad was rebuilt by the gun as Charan wanted him Mossad with a dagger between the teeth and a series of successes you know they have been able to penetrate and sabotage the Iranian nuclear project they will they disrupted the line of communication and supply of our most sophisticated equipment from Syria and Iran to jihadist movement in the Middle East they assassinated people they they were the gun created the viable secret unbelievable profound intimate cooperation with Arab intelligence services you know that gun understood they had on one hand these countries they are against Israel in the in the open fear they offer diplomatic sphere that containers in the United Nation they said nothing would happen until the Palestinian problem is solved it cetera et cetera but on on the on the face of it we share the same interest they fear they they hate the regime of they hate the regime of us and in Damascus they love Hamas and they fear most even more than Israel that Iran will get a nuclear bomb so the guns started to fly secretly in private airplanes from one capital Arab capital to another and offer them cooperation and much of the without getting into the details or not spoil the book of course but they he much of the successes that were attributed to Mossad would were thank to the cooperation with Arab countries against their brothers and then Dubai key to buy was a result of Hebrews the gun sent 27 operatives to Dubai to kill a Hamas Hamas operatives kind of a mid-level Hamas are a mid-level Hamas operative that was it didn't worth the risk even if they perform wonderful by the way he was killed twice modena poets was killed twice the first time was in September of 2000 9 they poisoned his drink but apparently poison is not an exact science he got ill he flew back to Damascus he hospitalized himself in a military hospital in Damascus they diagnosed him with as having mono and he recovered he didn't even know that he was so close close to die now imagine the extent of frustration in Mossad doing all this huge effort and that guy only got mono so next time they made sure that they see him die and the last thing he saw was Mossad operative looking at him making sure that he's closing his eyes forever then they stripped him they put him in a pajama they put him in a room they left they thought it's just gonna be a great success they didn't think that they must thought that the Dubai police would understand this is a murder and that shortly afterwards they collect they would identify the operatives and would collect the CCTV camera of videos from all over the city and soon the whole world will be watching them you saw them come in in their tennis clothes and you know some of them looked in retrospect it looked by far less James Bond stuff and more Inspector Clouseau they some of them were quite clumsy not so in shape there were people in Israel well this is comforting we can also be Mossad Oprah here not all of them highly fashioned in Israel by the way this is just a small country so in Israel everyone looked at the mug shots that were published by the Dubai police and search for a cousin or someone and they they all it's so such a small country we all found someone that we know but this this caused an enormous damage to Mossad Israel was again caught using forged passport of countries that it promised not to use and the might many operational units got shut down because of what happened there and this was a toward the end of the God's time the God later complained to me that I didn't give enough credit to Israel for elect a game well they've got now and I kept thinking that Stuxnet became his way of trying to make up for the mistakes who Dubai am i right I think that Stuxnet started before that but he wanted to to show that success to demonstrate that success as an answer to all those people who said that he failed in the last part of his of his duties you know must the the reason by the way when you go to tactics the reason why Dubai failed was because of the documentation it's very hard nowadays to be a covered operation agent Rafi Eitan long time Assad operative who captured Eichmann he said you know in all times it was so easy to forge passports sometimes we forged passport of countries that do not exist in nowadays having such a deployment of means against surest biometric everything online you know reliable passport it's very very much by as harder works it's much much harder work and they were called the the operatives in Dubai were caught because they were using the same documentation every time they followed Mahmoud Allah map hope to Dubai and the only thing that the commander of the Dubai Police had to do was to pull out the list of people who came each time before and immediately after the guy to Dubai and just met match the names and after shortly afterwards he had all the names of the people and published them and published them and said made the gun if you are a man come forward and and surrounded yourself to to custody he didn't do it well um gonna go to a few questions that we got from the audience and here's one that I only get three times a week do you think that your work may be undermining the security of Israel is that a concern of yours sure you've never been asked this question no not not in the last four hours yeah no I think that my work is helping the security of Israel I think that being in democracy is by far our number one pillar of security and that helps everything and I think mayor de gun at the end of it is time for for democracy and for Benjamin Netanyahu very hard to preserve democracy I am an Israeli citizen I think I'm a very loyal to Israel and Israel's security and I think that what I'm doing what we are doing is to put to make ourselves look in the mirror look at history to understand how profound was the impact of Israeli intelligence not just on themselves and not on tactical issues but on the history of the state and bring that truth to light and have these people tell their stories you know you just mentioned that some of the interviewees have already passed away you know the testimonies that they gave me are the only ones that exist outside the vaults and safes of the Mossad sometimes the only one exists if it was not us to collect them there are testimonies about events that are profile like at the center of Israeli history which is going away and I don't think I you know I get this complaints of course all the time I don't think that that that it has I think if it does it forces Israeli intelligence to be more subordinate to some sort of outside supervision the country the country institution do not supervise the intelligence services and in that case the press journalists historians have a a holy doubt a holy holy depth and holy duty to do that in themselves but I remind people all the time you know the difference between the United States and its Western democracy friends is we have a First Amendment and they do not mm-hm and you still have military censors who are out there you published this book today it's in the United States is being published in Israel simultaneously no just because I didn't have the time to retranslate to to Hebrew uh-huh we finished the first manuscript back in 2014 and we have been updating and editing the English version so it departs the Hebrew original now I have to translate Rebecca so it's gonna appear in Hebrew in a month or two but you will expect no difficulty distributing it particularly once it's already been published in the United States yeah of course there will be voices in Israel who will say that some of these stories should not be published already there are people you know there's a there's a paper in Israel called Israel today Israel I am owned by an American by the name of Sheldon and ozone I don't know if you heard about him and this is distributed for free this is why Tom Caplan when he said that the other Hornet is the most read paid paper he smiled because he referred to Israel a home which is free now they said they've already published an open saying why did ronen bergman publish the story in the New York Times this should not have been told a story about Yasser Arafat yeah who's been dead for some time yes very good short question what's the real story with the acquisition of the submarines Wow short story short question I can speak about this for two weeks I say this very briefly it's not in the book the Israel has has bought nine submarines from Germany these submarines are a term as the insurance policy of Israel they carry a nuclear weapon and have the ability to launch a second strike on Israeli adversaries in case of that Israeli el4 airfield and missile sites are destroyed during the war they are bought with huge subsidy subsidiary from Germany Germany government German government is paying for much of that and there are strong suspicions more than that that there's corruption that that the German dock yard Thyssen group has paid corrupt it's bait primary to officials in Israel to have a bigger and more expensive deals there are allegations against the Prime Minister and people around him that they were part of that but there are still there's still a very strong and extensive police inquiry and it will take time until they publish their their findings what are the lessons learned from Israel and Iran's nuclear program and what do they tell us about Trump and North Korea Israel was killing an Iranian scientist and that led to few outcomes one of them was that instill fear among the rest of the scientists and they started to quit their job it married a gun called that wide affection meaning they didn't leave to another country there's I said I had enough my friend there was killed the other one lost the leg I don't want any of that I'm going back to to teaching in Tehran University and the Iranians were also giving so much time into trying to prevent the next assassination and fearing from Mossad spies inside their system so they devoted so much effort into rescreening everybody prevent trying to find the viruses that they themselves delayed the project in two years without the Mossad even doing anything at the same time economic sanctions worked and it crippled Iranian economy significantly but then Errol sorry Prime Minister Netanyahu and defense minister Barak started to threaten that they are going to strike you know in early January 2012 I published a cover story with the New York Times Magazine where I had a will Barak saying we are going to strike Iran that put the American administration the Obama administration in a situation when they thought Iran is going Israel is going to strike there's going to be a war and they instead Netanyahu hoped that the Americans would strike instead of Israel but it led to the the opposite Brock Obama yeah they it led to the opposite outcome instead of striking President Obama started a secret negotiation with Iran without notifying Israel in late 2012 when the Mossad was just about to kill another scientist a young intelligence officer came to Tamia Pardo then the chief of the Messiah who is understand coming for the day of Independence to give a speech here at the Y and said to him we we just learned that the Americans are negotiating behind our back in Muscat in a man with the Iranians and I think that the Mossad should not continue have aggressive actions in Iran when our allies are negotiating with them and Pardo went to the Prime Minister Netanyahu said listen we should stop we should hold off to the aggressive actions and Netanyahu agreed and what happened was that because Netanyahu intimidated the Americans to the extent that he is going to strike Iran the negotiation started too early if it would start at too late two years later the Iranians would be in much better much worse than shape much more crippled because it started too early it led the Iranians to have a much better deal so in that sense you can say that Netanyahu is complaining about a deal that his actions actually led to be created somebody here is written the future of cyber weapons and how they will change traditional tactics and strategy not much of that in Rison and kill first but a movement toward that in the rest of Israeli intelligence yes I burr occupies Israeli intelligence very much they even created a special realm it's called you Gynt we speak about human human intelligence speak about SIGINT signal intelligence and now we speak about hugenay human intelligence for SIGINT for signal intelligence so you have a human asset and it helps you plant the virus that would enable you to have cyber penetration to the target which is a lot of how Olympic Games was done which is a lot of how Olympic is was was done and this is this is taking in a main main part in Israeli intelligence today and you know much of the training that used to be and much of the target and much of the intelligence collection can be done with you know Google Maps today and much is diverted to that issue of how you penetrate the main neither data banks of your of your opponent also how do you have enough malware that in real time in war you can his his economy and you can his main and now enough but have it in the right place which is the hard part yeah yeah but also I can tell you that the Russians are deploying everywhere Israel has found we've noticed that here yeah and Israel has found Russian imprints inside the Israeli SCADA systems it's not clear to Israelis why they have them but the Russians are everywhere and they're doing huge effort to be prepared for something for some day for something to happen well tell them they're not alone in that one given the advancements to the Israeli military and economy do you still think his real face is a 60s like existential threat or is that narrative and that fear outdated I think there's a perversion yeah I think that we do not have any existential threat from the outside I think Israel is enjoying the best time of security since its establishment I think Israel just a matter what happened twenty years ago the joint forces of Iraq in Syria together had 54 divisions of Tanks the nightmare scenario from the Israelis was that these division would just start rolling towards Israel now both of these forces do not exist anymore there is no force in the Middle East that could match or two could threaten could scratch the IDF the Israeli intelligence is by far superb so no existential threat I think the main threats are inside us inside Israel among us not-not-not from the outside you know I agree with you completely and that's been the case I think for eight or ten years but I'm always struck when I come to Israel that that's not what you hear when you sit down for those briefings because I think there is still a developed mindset in the Mossad in unit 8200 which does a lot of the cyber work certainly among the military that if they don't have that overhang of the existential threat that they heard about from their father and their grandfather and mother and grandmother that somehow they've lost a bit of the national identity they need a big enemy they need an existential threat as you say in order to maintain their existence but also it all the Prime Minister of Israel is developing the sense of these of these of these enemies you know at the end of the day Israeli intelligence this maybe should be a point it see a real threat nowadays with the possible deployment of Iranian crisabel of forces in Syria and in Lebanon and circling back to the United States they are in deep frustration for what the American has done on that sphere or to be exact for what the American has not done because the Iranians are deploying their forces and they are creating a different another front for Israel Israel even have an a name for the next war they will call it the first no third war so we had the first Lebanon War in 1982 we had the Second Lebanon War with the confrontation with Hezbollah in 2006 and now the Israelis expecting the first northern war which we which will be cross-border Israel against Iran and Hezbollah in both Syria and Lebanon now Israelis appealed they begged the Trump administration to have to exercise leverage on Russia and have the Russians who are controlling Syria in fact prevention preventing Iranian deployment in Syria and the Trump administration did nothing that created a lot of resentment and frustration from Israel not to say about leaks of information that Israel sensitive information that Israel gave to the Americans and now being leaked to to several places and then Israel appeal to to Russia because it didn't work with the with the Americans and so Prime Minister Netanyahu the Kremen a few times and asked put in to intervene and Putin has his own interests he did not and so at the end of the day in January 2008 Israelis are left that goes back to what you said about the mindset that you meet again and again Israelis are left with the mindset that they are alone again and let me remind us just what happened ten years ago when Israel discovered the secret Northern Korean North Korea nuclear reactor in Syria and they Prime Minister Olmert asked President Bush to intervene and bomb it and Bush refused and Israel was left alone and bombed and destroyed the reactor history does not repeat itself but nowadays exactly now today we are close to that same situation Israel is again feeling alone and that is the worst my situation in the feeling alone not close situation and the Syrians getting ready to have a nuclear capability they at this point once it was bombed it was pretty well that program was pretty well over the Israelis these are if this if this is not solved the Israelis will destroy the Iranian deployment in Syria this will happen soon and then later so you raise the destruction of the Syrian reactor it was a story that my colleague bill brought and I broke but boy it took a long time for us three or four weeks so in this they get at it and understand it because the Syrians were covering it up out of embarrassment but the Israelis were covering it up for reasons I've never completely understood because I could imagine I could have been to their advantage to say yeah you bet we blew it up the way we blew up Osaka Lee the Iraqi reactor what was the difference the Israelis are still covering up because the censorship still forbid everybody to speak about that but let me quote Michael Hayden the chief of the CIA at that time he said I had that discussion candid the most candid meeting I had with the gun which basically said that they were arguing he said I thought in my analysis and analysts thought that if the US or Israel all together strike that reactor acid put with his back to the wall would not give up on his damaged prestige and he would strike back and start a war and Mayer said if we do it secretly and he's not embarrassed then he would do it nothing because his allied the Russians and the Iranians they didn't know that he's building a nuclear weapon and he would try to conceal it and the gun was right so where Israel was betting was that if it destroys the reactor and maintained and the thick veil of secrecy then Assad would not react because he wouldn't feel any way to you know preserve his image as a as a strong leader and that worked that was the reason and there's still the reason why the Israelis do not talk about this but I think that soon something will be published in Israel because Israel is trying to send a message that as in ten years ago when Israel was left alone it did not hesitate to act it will not hesitate to act this time as well well I'll ask you just one more question because even audience of people who want to buy your book remember that's why we're here get your book signed and then they want to race home to hear the State of the Union so the question is this when the history of Israel is written four or five decades from now we'll will Mossad and the kind of techniques you describe in rise and kill first be as central to the next 50 years of Israeli history as the word in the last 50 more central because we could tell more they are still secret and the closet the Mossad agenda is the most unique agenda of the most unique task list of any intelligence service in the world there is no other intelligence service that needs to protect not just its people but you know Mossad is protecting Israelis not just in Israel but worldwide and not just Israelis it protect all Jews Mossad kills targeted or assassinate people worldwide and sabotage etc but also save Jews from road countries he deals with refugees there's not there is no other Intelligence Service intelligence community of that kind in the world and that intelligence community in its turn secretly but profoundly had a serious significant impact and on the history of Israel and the region and the whole world and in retrospect I think we will see more and more we will understand hopefully would help this book as well we well understand how much of Israeli history was carved and changed and altered and shaped by the secret warriors of the of the the people of the Jews well Ron verbum thank you very much thank all of you you're great [Applause]

Channel: 92nd Street Y

Views: 92,398

Rating: 4.5853353 out of 5

Keywords: 92Y, 92nd Street Y

Id: wlEp6iPwosA

Length: 59min 41sec (3581 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 01 2018