The Intelligence Officer’s Bookshelf
Intelligence in Recent Public Literature
Compiled and Reviewed by Hayden B. Peake
This section contains brief reviews of recent books of interest to both the intelligence professional and the student of intelligence.
Robert Maxwell, Israel’s Master Spy: The Life and Murder of a Media Mogul. By Gordon Thomas and Martin Dillon. New York, NY: Carroll and Graf Publishers, 2002. 448 pages.
Czech immigrant and British media tycoon Robert Maxwell drowned alone at night while yachting off the Canary Islands in November 1991. The autopsy listed heart failure as the cause of death. Maxwell’s monumental financial obligations suggested to others that skull-duggery had been involved. Authors Gordon Thomas and Martin Dillon agree. Maxwell, they argue, was blackmailing his former employers—the Mossad—and they decided to eliminate the source of unwelcome pressures.
To show the plausibility of their position, the authors do their best to establish Maxwell’s links to the Mossad and several other foreign intelligence services. They quote author Victor Ostrovsky—a one-time Mossad officer—who wrote in his book, By Way of Deception, that Maxwell was a Mossad agent. [8] Author Seymour Hersh said even more in his book, The Sampson Option. [9] Rupert Allason (aka espionage author Nigel West), then a Member of Parliament in Britain, implicated Maxwell and a key member of his staff in the nefarious dealings mentioned by the others. Allason did not, as Thomas and Dillon claim, rely on his parliamentary privilege to avoid Maxwell’s lawsuits. When Maxwell sued Allason, outside of Parliament, Allason produced documentary evidence supporting his charges and won.
Maxwell’s American activities are covered, and, according to Thomas and Dillon, they include setting up the publishing house Pergamon-Brassey, Inc., in McLean, Virginia, as a Mossad front. Also in the mix is author David Kimche, a source for this book, who was at one time deputy head of Mossad and a close friend of Maxwell. Broadening the scope, British author and MI-6 turncoat Richard Tomlinson wrote that MI-6 had monitored Maxwell and his links to the KGB. Thomas and Dillon also document Maxwell’s frequent meetings with KGB chairman Vladimir Kryuchkov, as well as his connections with the Bulgarian security service.
Surely Maxwell was in a position to embarrass a number of people. But why assassinate him? There is much in this biography to stimulate the conspiracy theorists, and possible answers to this question feed them all. Thomas and Dillon conclude that Maxwell wanted the Mossad to pay the $600 million in interest due on his debts.
In reaching this judgment, they review his humble beginnings in Czechoslovakia, the anti-Semitism he endured, his move to Britain, and his service in the Army in World War II. The authors describe his ambitious, though embellished, battle for status in Britain, his sad family life, and his unsavory years in the world of international business and finance that led to his death.
The 18 pages of notes on sources are intended to convince the reader of the book’s veracity, despite not providing many specific sources for specific facts. What the authors do not say, not surprisingly, is that one of their sources, Ari Ben-Manashe, is a well-known liar. [10] Similarly, author Gordon Thomas in his earlier book, Gideon’s Spies, linked the Mossad to the death of Princess Diana and claimed to have a source inside the Clinton White House. [11]
That Robert Maxwell was a ruthless, corrupt, tax-dodging international businessman who served as an Israeli agent is highly probable. But Thomas and Dillon have not established the relationship with high confidence, nor the corollary that he was murdered.
https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol47no3/article08.html