JERUSALEM.
EPHRAIM HALEVY, former head of Israel’s Mossad spy agency, has no doubt Colin Powell is right about Iraq playing host to al Qaeda terrorists.
Halevy, speaking on Israeli state radio last week, said he could not believe anyone would question the terror ties Powell outlined recently to the United Nations Security Council.
“I assume Secretary Powell has a bagful [of information] he simply could not present,” Halevy said.
“It is unimaginable that within the U.S. system, the secretary would say something that hasn’t been checked deeply in all its aspects.”
Halevy, 68, knows this system. He served as the Mossad’s representative to the U.S. administration in the late 1970s, when he worked closely with the CIA.
Last October, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon presented Halevy to President Bush, who remarked that the Mossad was among the best intelligence services in the world.
“I responded that this compliment would be the only words from the meeting that could be published,” Halevy recalled.
Halevy, who served in the Mossad for 40 years, is now Sharon’s national security adviser and helps maintain the secrecy of information between Jerusalem and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice.
On Iraq, all he was willing to say was, “When the war takes place and is over, it will create gigantic shock waves throughout the region. It is a major, historical event without precedent in the Mideast in the last 50 years.”
Halevy explains that the disarming and removal of Saddam Hussein may reduce Palestinian-Israeli violence, cause Syria to reconsider allowing many terrorist groups to remain in Damascus and encourage positive developments with Israel’s Arab neighbors.
“One should look with optimism, even when it comes to a possible war,” he said.
Halevy started his career under Isser Harel, the Mossad’s founding father, who died last week.
It was Harel who established close cooperation with American intelligence after he obtained, through an agent in Poland, a transcript of Nikita Khrushchev’s secret speech to the Communist Party’s Central Committee in 1956 and sent it to CIA chief Allen Dulles.
The CIA circulated the speech, in which Khrushchev denounced Stalin’s crimes, as part of its well-planned psychological war against the Soviet empire.
“No American commander will sign a commitment that everything will work according to plan.”
“But once serious people consider the risks and prepare themselves for less-favorable scenarios, the chances of success become better.”