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By Way of Deception

By Way of Deception

By Way of Deception

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BY WAY OF DECEPTION 235search department earlier and had seen a photo <strong>of</strong> a man withthat name standing next to Syrian President Hafez alAssad. ManyArab names are similar, but it's always worth checking. There wasnothing on the computer regarding Magid, so Ami called researchand asked his friend on the Syrian desk to bring a copy <strong>of</strong> thephoto to lunch in the ninth-floor dining room so that he couldcompare it with Magid's on the Danish visa form.After lunch, with the photo <strong>of</strong> Jadid on hand, Ami searched thecomputer for more details, checking whether Jadid had anyrelatives, which is how he discovered that he did have a brotherwhose description and history matched Magid's.This opened the possibility <strong>of</strong> a "lead": recruiting one person to getat another, so Ami wrote his report and placed it in the dailyinternal mail. In the meantime, the Danish form would beattached to the file with no reply on it, meaning the Danes wouldassume there was no problem with the visa application, or theMossad would have let them know.In Tsiach, the Mossad's annual book <strong>of</strong> "need to knowinformation," Syrian military data has remained a top priority formany years. As a result, the Mossad had AMAN, Israeli militaryintelligence, prepare a list <strong>of</strong> what they needed to know aboutSyrian military preparedness, graded from the most important ondown. The AMAN's resulting 11-page questionnaire* included: thenumber <strong>of</strong> available Syrian battalions; the status <strong>of</strong> ArmoredBrigades 60 and 67 and <strong>of</strong> Mechanized Brigade 87; the number <strong>of</strong>brigades in Special Forces Division 14; and a whole series <strong>of</strong>related questions, such as details <strong>of</strong> the then-rumoredreplacement <strong>of</strong> Ahmad Diab, head <strong>of</strong> <strong>of</strong>fice for national security, byFefat Assad, President Assad's brother.The Mossad already had a number <strong>of</strong> sources in place in Syria —what they called their early-warning system — in hospitals and inconstruction work, for example, wherever people could obtain andpass on snippets <strong>of</strong> information that cumulatively could tip Israel<strong>of</strong>f about war preparations.* See: APPENDIX III for full questionnaire

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