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By Way of Deception

By Way of Deception

By Way of Deception

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BY WAY OF DECEPTION 307time I saw it, it didn't make a lot <strong>of</strong> sense to me, either. Listen,when do you have your holidays?""In three weeks.""Great. Rather than trying to sort this out over the phone, whydon't you come to France at our expense? I'll send you the tickets.You've already worked out so well for us that we'd love to give yousome time in the south <strong>of</strong> France, and we can combine a littlebusiness with pleasure. And I'll be honest with you, it's better forour tax situation for you to come here."The recruit was thrilled. The Mossad was paying him only about$1,000 a month, while during the time they had him on the string,he made at least three trips to France. He was useful, but he hadno real connections beyond his knowledge <strong>of</strong> the ships in theharbor, so the idea was not to endanger him. After meeting him inperson, it seemed the best plan would be to gently drop theattempt to have him do other things, but to continue using him forinformation on PLO ships.At first, they asked only about some <strong>of</strong> the ships entering theharbor, on the pretext that they were the ones being underwrittenby their company. Then they devised a plan whereby theharbormaster would provide the full lists <strong>of</strong> all ships docking. Theypromised to pay him accordingly. That way, they said, they couldsupply this information to other insurance underwriters whowould be only too happy to pay for the information; they, in turn,could share the proceeds with him.And so he went happily back to Tripoli where he continuedsupplying them with information on all harbor traffic. At onepoint, a ship owned by Abu Nidal, the hated head <strong>of</strong> the PFLP-GCfaction <strong>of</strong> the PLO, was in the harbor being loaded with militaryequipment — including shoulder-carried antiaircraft missiles andmany other weapons the Israelis did not want to see ending up inthe hands <strong>of</strong> Palestinian fighters on their borders.They knew about Nidal's ship through their tie-in with PLOcommunications, thanks to a slip in Nidal's normally carefulspeaking habits, and all that remained was to ask their

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