been previous instances of former Mossad operatives threatening to
publish some kind of story about the Mossad if they were not paid what
they considered an adequate sum. Eventually deals were struck and the
money was paid. Ostrovsky probably asked for too much.
Second, the Israeli government acted apparently unwisely in trying
to have publication of By Way of Deceptionsuppressed legally
through the Canadian courts. It would have done well to recall what
happened when the British government tried to halt legally the pub-
lication of the memoirs of Peter Wright, a former MI5 case officer, in
his book Spycatcher. The English court ruled that in a democracy the
publication of a book could not be restricted by legal means. Like-
wise, the Israeli government’s lawsuit failed, and moreover the pub-
licity surrounding the case made the book a number-one best-seller
for several weeks. Ostrovsky garnered a huge audience for his med-
ley of true and imagined stories. Fifteen thousand copies were sold
within hours of the Canadian court decision.
The alternative of assassinating Ostrovsky was raised as well in the
Israeli high echelons; however, such a course might have implied that
everything he wrote was indeed genuine, and it would damage the
Mossad’s and Israel’s interests. The idea was dropped. It might have
been best simply to ignore the book, in which case it would probably
have gathered dust on bookstores’ shelves, not even reaching the li-
braries like thousands of other almost “science fiction” books about
the Mossad.
Ostrovsky’s account is sometimes reliable but not very interesting;
he relates that intelligence agencies in Israel operate approximately as
they do elsewhere. But what made his book a sensation were his sto-
ries about Mossad dirty tricks, and these won him fame and fortune.
For example, he claims that the Mossad knew in advance about the
truck bomb that killed 241 U.S. Marines in October 1983 in Beirut,
but did not warn its American counterparts. He provides details of a
mystery division of the Mossad called “Al.” It is so “super-secret,” he
says, that most Mossad employees do not even know what it does.
How a trainee found out more than the veterans remains an open ques-
tion. Ostrovsky published his second book, Lion of Judah, in 1993 and
The Other Side of Deception: A Rogue Agent Exposes the Mossad’s
Secret Agendain 1994. In 2001 Ostrovsky published Black Ghosts.OUR MAN IN DAMASCUS.See COHEN, ELI.226 • OUR MAN IN DAMASCUS06-102 (03) H-P.qxd 3/24/06 7:25 AM Page 226