Mossad: the elite women who work for the family

By Gordon Thomas Published: 7:30PM GMT twenty February 2010

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A lady declared as Gail Foliard, wearing a black wig over her blonde hair, seen on road residence CCTV at the time of the murdering

From the impulse Mahmoud al-Mabhouh checked in to his unit at the Al-Bustan Rotana hotel, he became Gail Folliards target. Mabhouh was in Dubai to buy missiles from Iran that would afterwards be smuggled to Gaza and launched on Israel. Gail Folliard was on business, too. The hotels security cameras silently noticed her as she walked by the ballroom-sized lobby, around the pool area and past the eight restaurants. Ms Folliard paid for her room in cash. It was the initial step in ensuring she left no trail.

The pass in Ms Folliards shoulder bag was an Irish one, giving her age as 26. We right away know that pass was a feign and that her lipsticked grin (right) secluded

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that she was a part of of kidon, the dialect of Mossad obliged for gangland slaying and kidnapping. She is one of 6 women in the section of 48.

Meir Amit, the director-general of Mossad in the 1960s, laid down the manners for kidon women in a request that stays in force today. It contains the following passage: "A lady has skills a man simply does not have. She knows how to listen. Pillow speak is not a complaint for her. The story of complicated comprehension is filled with accounts of women who have used their sex for the great of their country... It is not only sleeping with someone if required. It is to lead a man to hold you will do so in lapse for what he has to discuss it you."

These skills are honed during the two-year march all Mossad recruits bear at the precision school, a dun-coloured construction outward Tel Aviv. The women are taught how to shade a target; how to emanate a dead-letter box; how to mangle in to a road residence room. "Gail Folliard" would have been shown how to pack a gun inside her knickers; hidden passports and costume are additionally on the curriculum.

The disaster rate is high. Those who pass work possibly at Mossads domicile in Tel Aviv or at one of the majority abroad stations. A couple of are afterwards deliberate for offer precision as kidon. The section is formed in the Negev desert, the compensate £2,000 a month. Ms Folliard would have been told that fasten the kidon was similar to fasten a family and she would be stable and nurtured. In lapse she would offer the family in any approach it asked.

Arguably the majority important womanlike kidon was Cheryl Ben-Tov, code-named Cindy. Born in Orlando, Florida, Cheryl changed to Israel to investigate Hebrew and Jewish history. At eighteen she fell in love with an Israeli who worked for the Internal Security Service, Shin Beth.

A year after they married, Cheryl volunteered to stick on Mossad. Her motivation, she after told me, was "the disturb of the mystery".

Her precision taught her, between alternative skills, how to erect a waterproof frame of reproduce that could be left buried in the side of a stream bank. She additionally learnt how to shift her facial coming by inserting string padding in her cheeks. She became skilful at posing as a dipsomaniac and chatting up men in nightclubs, afterwards disengaging herself outward their hotel.

With an IQ of 140, and her preferred mental profile, Cheryl was invited to stick on the kidon. On the day she was trucked out to the bottom in the Negev, she was questioned about her passionate experience. Would she nap with a foreigner if her mission demanded it? She answered truthfully: there had been no one prior to her husband, but if she was assured the success of the mission depended on it, afterwards she would. "It would quite be sex, not love," she explained to me.

In 2004, Cheryl assimilated a group of 9 katsas margin comprehension officers in London. Their charge was to entice Mordechai Vanunu, who had worked at Israelis top-secret arch trickery in the Negev desert, but had fled to London to try to sell his story. Mossad had to stop him from you do so, and Cheryl was selected as the attract to trap him.

Using her betrayal skills, she "came alongside" Vanunu in Leicester Square. Their attribute fast developed, and Vanunu referred to they outlay the night together. Cheryl agreed, observant they should go to

Rome and "enjoy a couple of regretful days in the city of love", as she put it to me.

Five members of the Mossad group were passengers on the moody Cheryl and Vanunu took to Rome. In the old entertain of the city, Cheryl led the approach up to an unit she had told Vanunu belonged to her sister. Already watchful inside were the Mossad katsas from the flight. They captivated Vanunu, injecting him with a paralysing drug. Three days after he had been tranferred to Haifa in Israel. A quick hearing and a hold up judgment in unique capture followed. Cheryl Ben-Tov left behind in to her tip world.

She quiescent from Mossad after the Vanunu case. It had "burned" her as an agent, she told me. Today she lives behind in Orlando, with her father and dual daughters, using a genuine estate business.

Tzipi Livni, the head of the antithesis Kadima Party in Israel, was an additional Mossad high-flier. She was posted to Paris as a kidon, carrying out cruel operations opposite Arab terrorists. Ephraim Halevy, a former arch of Mossad, has described her as "running estimable risks to get her targets". She quiescent to launch her domestic career.

Nineteen hours after nearing in the Gulf state, Gail Folliard had left Dubai. In the debriefing in a protected residence in Tel Aviv, a Mossad clergyman would have been present. How well did she think her costume had worked? Had there been any moments when she thought she would desert her mission?

Gail Folliard, right away the theme of an general detain aver for murder, will vanish. She might bear surgery to shift her appearance. Her pass will be burned. No one not her father nor beloved nor family will be authorised to hit her for months. It should be enough for them to know that she was a brave woman to Mossad.

"Gideons Spies: The Inside Story of Israels Legendary Secret Service by Gordon Thomas is accessible from Telegraph Books at £14.99 and £1.25 p&p. Call 0844 871 1516 or revisit books.telegraph.co.uk