MOSHEL, AHARON.A German-born Jew, Moshel was a journalist
working for the French edition of Jewish Observer and Middle East
Review, edited by David (Dave) Kimche. In 1961 Kimche offered
him a higher salary than that paid by the newspaper, and Moshel was
recruited to the Mossad. After a short briefing in Amsterdam by
Michael (Mike) Harariand basic training in the tradecraft of intelli-
gence, Moshel was dispatched to Cairo in 1962 as a correspondent for
German newspapers. He disguised his intelligence reports as letters to
his “aunt” in Cologne. His Mossad case officer in France was Yitzhak
Shamir, using the codename Samuel Singer. In Cairo he lived close
to the central telegraph office, which helped make his radio transmit-
ter undetectable.
It is very difficult to evaluate the importance of the information
that he delivered to the Mossad. However, he succeeded in stealing
from a hotel employee an identity card of the Egyptian secret police,
which he delivered to the Mossad. This enabled the Mossad to pro-
duce its own forged cards. Moshel and his colleague, Wolfgang
Lotz, were monitoring the German scientists working in Egypt on the
surface-to-surface missile program. Moshel used to meet the scien-
tists at parties held by the West German embassy’s press attaché and
discuss with them various aspects of their missile program. Moshel
left Egypt soon after Lotz’s arrest in 1965. He then quit espionage,
and the Mossad assisted him in starting a new life in Luxembourg. In
his book In einer Hand den Ölzweig: Jassir Arafat und die PLO,
Moshel writes that the Mossad ordered him to warn Kim Philby, the
British master spy who escaped to Moscow in 1963, that the British
were only days away from arresting him.MOSSAD.Officially the Israel Secret Intelligence Service (Mossad
Le’Modi’in Ule’Tafkidim Meyuhadim), the Mossad was established
in Israel on 13 December 1949 as the Institution for Coordination, at
the recommendation of Reuven Shiloah, adviser to Prime Minister
David Ben-Gurion. Shiloah wanted a central body to coordinate and
improve cooperation among the existing security services: Military
Intelligence(MI), the Israeli Security Agency(ISA), and the Politi-
cal Department, which was the intelligence unit of the Foreign Min-
istry. Shiloah proposed establishing the Mossad as a central institution
for organizing and coordinating the intelligence and security services.
The Mossad began life under the wing of the Foreign Ministry. For allMOSSAD• 19106-102 (03) H-P.qxd 3/24/06 7:25 AM Page 191