False Flag: The Soviet Spy Who Penetrated the Israeli Secret Intelligence Service - Softcover

Avni, Zeev

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0953615111 ISBN 13: 9780953615117

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group, 2001

Synopsis

A "False Flag" is the most complex and dangerous of intelligence operations—it is the recruitment of an agent who believes he is working for an entirely different country. Raised in Switzerland and fluent in German, Zeev Avni's specialty in Mossad was to cultivate former Nazis employed as military advisers to rebuild Egypt's army. None would willingly have cooperated with him if they had suspected for one moment that he was a Jew and a professional Israeli intelligence officer. Nor would Mossad have promoted him if they had known that their star performer was a long-term mole who for years had hemorrhaged secrets to the Soviets. When Avni's triple life was eventually exposed, he was tried in secret and sentenced to 14 years of imprisonment. Now, for the first time, he tells the story Mossad would prefer to forget. His engrossing story of commitment, duplicity, and betrayal is the only documented case of Mossad's penetration by Soviets, and it will be regarded as a classic by aficionados of espionage.

About this title

About the Author

Triple agent Zeev Avni is the only known Soviet spy to have penetrated Mossad, his story being all the more remarkable because of his wartime activities in Switzerland. On his release from prison he became a clinical psychologist and now lives in retirement.

Review

Brain scrambling, intriguing and possibly destined to be a classic of its genre. FOCUS Avni's unique story of commitment, duplicity and betrayal will be regarded as a classic by espionage aficionados. FORCES NEWS Nigel West's introduction makes clear just how important Avni's network of German ex-Nazis spying on their Egyptian employers was. Avni tricked old enemies into spying for Mossad and spied on Mossad for the Russians. He started working for the Russians as a young man exiled from Germany to Switzerland--Russia was the best hope in the defeat of Hitler, and that made it very simple. By the time he was a commercial attache for Israel in Yugoslavia and feeding back to Mossad analyses of Yugoslav attitudes, to Kruschev's Russia useful information which might make a compromise with Tito possible, his position had become more complicated, his sense of his own bad faith ever more pervasive. Arrest was almost a release--and then Kruschev's revelation of Stalin's crimes broke his faith and his heart, made him spill every story he had to his other masters ...This is a powerful apologia for Stalinist idealism by a man who found himself deceived--it is a book that talks less about spying and more about what you do when idealism fails you; a memoir of a life rebuilt in prison. He retrained himself as a psychotherapist and his first and most successful therapy was on himself. AMAZON.CO.UK REVIEW

Edition details

• Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0953615111
• ISBN 13: 9780953615117
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 225