By Way of Deception

80 BY WAY OF DECEPTIONThe first half hour each day in class was now devoted to a cadetgiving an exercise called Da, or "to know." This involved making adetailed analysis of a current news topic. It was yet anotherburden, but they wanted us to be very aware of what was goingon. When you're into all this you can easily get disconnected fromthe real world, and that could be fatal — literally. It also gave uspractice in public speaking and forced us to read the newspapersevery day. If someone brought up a subject, we could show thatwe were aware of it and, maybe, if we got lucky, prove his storywrong.Before long, we moved into what was called a "green" exercise —an activity in liaison designed to establish a particular approach toa problem. Suppose we knew there was a threat, a PAHA threatagainst an installation in a country. Discovering how to analyzeand evaluate that threat involved a lot of discussion. Basically, ifthe threat was against a local installation that had nothing to dowith Israel, and you could divulge it without jeopardizing yoursource, you would transfer the information to the relevant parties,usually through an anonymous phone call, or directly from liaisonto liaison. If it was a case where you could give them theinformation without divulging a source, however, you could alsotell them who you were, so they would owe you a favor later on.If the target was Israeli, you had to use every means at yourdisposal to prevent harm, even if it meant disclosing your source.If you had to burn an agent in a target country in order to protectan installation of your own in a base country, then you would doso. That was a sacrifice you had to make. (All Arab countries arecalled "target countries," while anywhere the Mossad has stationsis called a "base country.")If the target was not your own and you had to endanger a sourceof any kind, then you just left it alone. It was not Mossad businessthen. The most you could do was offer a low-key warning, a vaguewarning that they should watch