THE VOLUNTEER
The Incredible True Story of an Israeli Spy on the Trail of International Terrorists
Michael Ross with Jonathan Kay
“I was six months into my training as a Mossad agent. When I’d been arrested by narcs a few days before, I thought I’d stumbled into some sort of random snafu—an embarrassing screw-up that might get me kicked out of my training program. Now I realized this was my training program. The cell, the interrogation, this seaside briefing—they were all part of a test to see if I could maintain my cover under duress.” —Michael Ross, from The Volunteer
In 1982 a then-twenty-something named Michael Ross left home to backpack across Europe. Little did Ross know that his vacation would set in motion a chain of events that would hurl him into a career where the bosses are seasoned spies, and the work is tracking the world’s most dangerous terrorists.
The Volunteer follows Ross to Israel, where he works on a Kibbutz, converts to Judaism, and joins the Israeli army. Within just a few years, he is recruited by the secretive Israeli spy agency, the Mossad. After months of grueling psychological and physical training, he is sent on missions that include an attempt to destroy a Syrian-Jordanian vessel transporting Scud missiles during the Gulf War, the tracking of a Hezbollah agent working in the United States, and the capture of al-Qaeda members responsible for attacking American embassies in Africa.
This amazing, fast-paced memoir provides fascinating insight into our world, both pre- and post-9/11, told by a man on the front lines in the war against terror.
“A gripping story, filled with the stuff of spy thrillers….This book provides a unique glimpse into a shadowy world not many of us will ever see.” —Toronto Globe and Mail
“Whether or not one should tell tales out of school, “Michael Ross” tells them effortlessly. He and Jonathan Kay have produced a page-turner, filled with well-observed, convincing detail.” —George Jonas, author of Vengeance
Michael Ross was an agent in the Mossad from 1988 to 2001, tracking terrorists globally, from Tel Aviv, to Africa, to Southeast Asia, and even in the United States while working in cooperation with the FBI and the CIA. Ross has also written for the National Post and the Globe and Mail on the topics of terrorism and Middle Eastern affairs. Jonathan Kay is both the managing editor and an op-ed columnist for the National Post. Kay also contributes to the New York Post and Commentary magazine, and his reporting has earned him two National Newspaper Awards.
Preface from The Volunteer
NO NATION ON EARTH is as loved and loathed as Israel. To Jews, it is a sacred homeland; to Muslims it is a neo-colonial tumor. But the conflict extends far beyond religion. As the twentieth century’s various isms waxed and waned, history has put the Jewish state at the eye of every ideological storm. Palestine Liberation Organization terrorists of the 1960s and 1970s dressed up their manifestos with the Marxist jargon. Gamal Abdel Nasser preached pan-Arabism. The Baathists of Syria and Iraq traced their intellectual roots to Nazism. Then came the 1979 Iranian Revolution, and the worldwide awakening of the militant Islam, which in turn inspired Hamas, al-Qaeda, Islamic Jihad, and Hezbollah. Name an ideology that embraces random slaughter, and Israel has been made to fight it. This fact explains the intense devotion exhibited by many Westerners—Jew and gentile alike—to Israel’s cause: they instinctively see in the state a microcosm of the civilized world’s struggle against a murderous ideology and the people who embrace it.
The sense of solidarity was only strengthened when the Twin Towers fell, for it became clear that the world’s jihadists despised the “infidels” in New York and Washington as much as those in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. In the decades leading up to 9/11, these jihadists were regarded as a sideshow to more important geopolitical conflicts. Then the world discovered what I’d known for twenty years: Israel’s battle is everyone’s battle.
From 1988 until late 2001, I had the rare privilege of serving in the Israeli Secret Intelligence Service, better known as the Mossad. My mission during that time was to protect Israel from exactly the sort of nihilistic killers who struck the United States on 9/11. This book is the story of how I performed that mission.
I had a varied career. For seven and a half years, I operated as an undercover agent—a classic spy—deployed in a variety of hostile locales. Following that, I worked at headquarters for two and a half years as the counterterrorism liaison to the Central Intelligence Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation. Though this position lacked the glamour of a foreign posting, it coincided with a period during which the CIA became involved in the Middle East peace process and Israel was experiencing a spate of deadly terrorist bombings. The events I witnessed during that time cast much light on the jointly fought war on terrorism that continues in Israel and the United States to this day.
My story continues with my redeployment to the field in Africa and Southeast Asia, where my mission was to recruit sources and conduct covert operations aimed at weakening terrorist networks and countering the proliferation of unconventional weapons. It was a period of odd, unconnected jobs. But many of them were memorable, and these have found their way into this memoir.
I wish this book was a slice of bygone history—like the spy memoirs written by veterans of the Cold War. But sadly, this is not the case. Israel is still an unwanted presence in the Middle East. When Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared on October 26, 2005, that Israel must be “wiped off the map,” he was not delivering the opinion of a rogue hatemonger, he was giving voice to the majority view in the Muslim Middle East.
During my time in the Mossad, I did my small part to prevent the Ahmadinejads, Saddams, and bin Ladens of the world from getting their way. In the chapters that follow, I will describe my role in missions to foil attempts by Syria, Libya, and Iran to acquire advanced weapons technology. I will also tell of my part in the capture of three senior al-Qaeda operatives in Azerbaijan; a secret operation by the Mossad and Israeli special forces to prevent Tehran from assisting Sudan’s government in its genocidal campaign against the country’s non-Muslim population; a joint Mossad-FBI operation that uncovered a senior Hezbollah terrorist operating in the United States; a mission to South Africa in which I intercepted Iranian agents looking to expand their country’s military arsenal; as well as a bittersweet trip to neighboring Zimbabwe, where I helped rescue some of the country’s few remaining Jews from Robert Mugabe’s brutal regime.
If you scan the list above, it becomes depressingly apparent that all of the terrorist groups and rogue states I fought—with the singular, contestable exception of Libya—remain enemies of the West. In the case of Iran, North Korea, and al-Qaeda, the threat has only grown.
With my spying days now behind me, I want to provide readers with what insights I can into the ongoing war against terror and rogue power that I embarked on two decades ago. In so doing, I will also tell my own story and describe some of the pitfalls of my craft. As in John le Carré’s Circus, the world of spies is a place of great human drama, courage, and imagination. It can also be a place of banal human failings. Though I am proud of what I’ve done, and have few regrets, the fact is that the secret life I chose comes at great human cost. Estranged children, divorce, depression, anger, compulsive behaviors, post-traumatic stress syndrome, and general alienation are all too common among covert agents.
Few spies retire into money or fame. Speaking for myself, being a spy never got me a free beer anywhere. Aside from my collection of mementos—photos, military badges, and the odd newspaper clipping—memories are pretty much all that is left of my experiences. In the pages that follow, I will do my best to convey the smell, taste, and feel of the places and people I’ve seen around the world, and of the hollow men whose schemes I did my best to thwart.
A caveat: There have been other books written about the Mossad—some making broad, sensationalistic claims about the agency’s means and mission. As in any intelligence agency, information is tightly guarded within the Mossad, even among active agents. Anyone who claims to know more than a small slice of what the Mossad does is probably lying. I therefore emphasize that The Volunteer is intended as a personal story, and not as a comprehensive history of the Mossad. If it didn’t happen to me, it’s not in this book.
A second caveat: Not every detail of every mission I performed in the Mossad is described here. That’s because I have no wish to compromise “the Office” by disclosing sensitive information. Much of what I share on these pages is nominally secret, but I’ve left out anything that, in my judgment, would compromise my former colleagues or their allies in other intelligence services.
Before 9/11, I never gave a thought to writing a memoir. But now that the local conflict in which I willingly immersed myself two decades ago has become a global war, my attitude has changed. People everywhere now know that they are in a high-stakes war that pits civilization against a fascistic death cult. Having seen the enemy up close, I want to describe to the world the contours of its many faces.
If I am successful, I will not only arouse my readers’ interest, but also impart a few grains of a retired spy’s wisdom. The Mossad’s much misquoted motto is not “By way of deception thou shalt do war” but rather a quote from the Book of Proverbs: “Where no counsel is, the people fall, but in the multitude of counsellors, there is safety.”
Amen to that.
The Volunteer
September 2007
$24.95 / Hardcover with jacket / 978-1-60239-132-1
5” x 7”/ 320 pages
Skyhorse Publishing (distributed by Sterling)
Skyhorse Publishing Inc.
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New York, NY 10018
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www.skyhorsepublishing.com
