Historical Focus
Historical Focus
Preface
Do you know who are the top four intelligence agencies in the world? One is the CIA, the second is the KGB of Russia, the third is the British MI6, and the fourth is Israel's Mossad.
Although Hamas's attack was not known in advance some time ago and was knocked out, since the founding of Israel in 1948, in their 75-year history, it can be said that it is invincible in the Middle East. So today I will reveal their insidious cunning.
The first question: Why does this agency engage in intelligence so much?
The key is not in science and technology, nor in financial resources, but in "people".
The Mossad sprinkled elite agents all over the world, and every spy who was singled out was a talent with unique skills, and even the United States and Russia could not find them all. Two of the spies are the most legendary.
One was Wolfgang Lotz, who had single-handedly destroyed the entire Egyptian Air Force, and the Mossad did not hesitate to use 9 generals and 5,000 prisoners of war to exchange him back. The other, Ely Cohen, was almost always a close confidant of the enemy's defense secretary and president when he was captured!
The excitement of these two people in the past, if they were used to make a movie, they might not even be able to make a tenth.
Let's start with Wolfgang Lotz.
He is actually a German whose parents were theater actors, so he inherited a talent for acting from an early age, and is good at capturing the emotions and psychological states of others.
When World War II broke out in 1931, Mustache carried out a brutal mass murder of Jews, and Wolfgang had to flee to Palestine for refuge. Later, he fought in World War II and later in the Israeli War of Independence in 1948. Years of wandering have exposed him to a wide variety of people, and he has mastered English, Arabic, and Hebrew dialects.
These traits were so well suited to becoming an agent that Wolfgang quickly became noticed by the Mossad after returning from the battlefields of Israel. After training, he has mastered almost all the skills that a spy needs to have perfectly.
In 1954, the contradictions between Islam and Jews in the Middle East were intensifying, and the Arab countries, with Egypt as the leading brother, launched an anti-Jewish campaign against Jews. The Egyptian leader at that time was Nasser, and in order to improve the combat capability of the Arab coalition forces, he specially hired many Nazi officers to provide technical guidance, which gave Israel the opportunity to infiltrate.
As a result, Wolfgang, who had participated in World War II, joined the British army, and was proficient in four Chinese languages such as English and German, was sent to Egypt by the Mossad. With blonde hair and blue eyes, he is ostensibly a former Nazi German officer, but in fact he is an Israeli spy.
The task was not easy, and it took Wolfgang a whole year just to disguise himself as a Nazi officer in the early stages. He went to Germany with a large sum of money, worked as a retired soldier in business, broke into high social circles, and then went to Australia, where he ran a thoroughbred breeding base and equestrian center. At the time, horses were only affordable for the wealthy and aristocracy, and as a result, Wolfgang was able to build many connections.
In social activities, he deliberately forged his identity as a "former officer", and through the horse trade, he established friendships with many important members of the Egyptian military, through whom he was repeatedly invited to attend the gathering of celebrities in the upper echelons of Egypt, and obtained a lot of information.
In 1961, Wolfgang came to Egypt to do field research in the name of establishing an equestrian center branch in the Middle East, and soon entered a horse breeding club, whose members were almost all Egyptian celebrities and aristocrats and even military executives. Wolfgang, who had served in the army, knew the virtues of soldiers, and often generously invited guests to drink, chatted and bragged with people, and won the favor of these people without a trace.
In just half a year, he made a home here, married a wife to cover up, and received a hellish task from the Mossad organization - to obtain the military defense deployment of the regular Egyptian army. This is the highest level of state secret, and it is extremely difficult for him to achieve it alone.
However, Wolfgang did just that! He set the distribution of equestrian centers on the banks of the Nile, near the training base of the Egyptian Air Force, so he often walked several peerless horses on the horse farm alone at the same time, so that it was convenient for him to observe the situation of the nearby bases at all times, judge the movement of the Egyptian army by the armament of weapons, the size and movement of vehicles, and at the same time attract the attention of some officers, and then go to make friends with the other side. Many officers took the initiative to open the barracks stables to him, and allowed him to put good horses into the base to take care of them.
In this way, Wolfgang got a pass to the base and observed the various settings inside. The Egyptian side would not have thought that this seemingly amiable horse breeder would be able to accurately capture the secret movement of Egyptian armored forces in the Sinai Peninsula with just a few observations and chats, and also set up a national defense secret that only the military can grasp!
When he repeatedly transmitted the core information back to Israel, the crushing defeat of Egypt and the Arab coalition in the Middle East war was a foregone conclusion.
However, often walking by the river without getting his shoes wet, Wolfgang went on many missions, and was finally discovered. In February 1965, a telegram signal sent by him and his wife was spotted by the vigilant Egyptian military. The soldiers burst into the bathroom of the two and found a miniature radio station inside, and it stands to reason that Wolfgang was doomed by the stolen goods.
However, with the help of racial and linguistic advantages, he insisted on deviating from the direction of the Egyptian investigation, and admitted his identity as a spy when recording a confession, but not an Israeli spy, but a German spy. The Egyptian military, which was fooled, did not have much hatred for Germany at that time, but still had a good impression, so Wolfgang, who should have been sentenced to death, only worked hard for 3 years to save his life.
Even in hard labor, Wolfgang still had the ability to take advantage of the opportunity to transmit information to Israel many times, and it was not until 1968 that the Egyptian military finally determined that he was actually an Israeli spy. After learning that his identity was completely exposed, the Mossad immediately launched a rescue operation, and on February 3 of that year, the organization was even willing to pay the price of 9 Egyptian generals and 5,000 prisoners of war in exchange for the imprisoned Wolfgangs, which shows how much Israel values their value!
Later, when Wolfgang returned to Israel safely with his wife, he was fed up with the fear of life, so after completely emptying his stomach of information, he emigrated to West Germany and the United States, and since then he has lived a comfortable retirement life. Even if he left, his legend still circulates in the rivers and lakes, and the name "Wolfgang Lotz" has always been the most legendary king of spies in the Israeli Mossad organization.
With that out of the way, let's talk about Ely Cohen again.
Cohen was a pure-bred Jew whose parents were merchants, so he traveled with caravans to Egypt, Syria and other Arab countries since he was a child, and was familiar with Islamic language and culture. As a young man, he was involved in the Zionist movement and joined an underground organization. In 1957, at the age of 32, he officially became an IDF translator.
This was followed by a major event, the outbreak of a large-scale conflict between Israel and Syria, which had greatly deteriorated the situation, and in such a state of hostility, the Mossad organization urgently needed to obtain intelligence on the Syrian side.
As a Jew who was familiar with Arab culture and was very religious, Cohen was chosen!
The Mossad immediately began two years of intense training for him, and in 1961, Cohen was sent to Buenos Aires, Argentina, for an undercover operation. It was chosen because it is home to 500,000 Arabs, most of whom are from Syria.
Syria has provided a lot of aid to people in the region in order to absorb these people, and Cohen has taken the opportunity to return home as a "Syrian" who has been left behind. During that period of war, many families were destroyed, so Cohen's identity was not suspected.
During this time, he came into contact with a well-connected arms dealer named Alkhishin, and through this person's connections, Cohen gradually broke into the Syrian military circle, and also met an army lieutenant named Ma'azi.
Ma'azi was a very hot-blooded fighter with a fanatical attachment to his motherland, so Cohen made an appearance of losing his home and relatives while still insisting on patriotism, and easily won Ma'azi's trust. The other party took him to the front line of the battlefield, and kindly let him also experience the "revenge" battle against the Israeli soldiers.
Maazi also excitedly revealed important information such as the firepower deployment, ammunition depots, and weapons equipment of the Syrian Self-Defense Forces in the frontline positions to Cohen, but he did not expect to be sold to Israel by this good brother.
In this way, Cohen transmitted information and socialized with the Syrian army, from the grassroots fighters to the commander of the paratrooper department, all of whom became Cohen's close friends, so he had access to more and more high-level secrets.
In 1963, when the Syrian Baath Party staged a coup d'état, Cohen was the first to get the news and transmitted all the information related to the "Jordan River Plan", which posed a mortal threat to Israel, back to Israel, resulting in many Syrian operations ending in failure.
During this period, no one ever recognized Cohen's identity, and he went all the way to Syrian President Hafez and became one of his henchmen. Since then, the whole of Syria has had almost no secrets in front of Cohen, and their firepower arrangements, fighter and weapon models, commanders and pilots' information, have all been packaged and sent back to Israel by Cohen.
This is equivalent to putting all the hole cards on the bright side when playing mahjong, and later the famous "Six-Day War" between Syria and Israel, the crushing defeat of the Arab camp, and the intelligence conveyed by Cohen can be said to be indispensable.
What's even more outrageous is that until he was recognized by the "Soviet technologist" invited by Syria, Cohen was like a fish in water in the Syrian high-level, and even became the second seed of the Baath Party, and almost became the new defense minister of Syria!
The Israelis of course did everything they could to rescue such a brilliant agent, but Syria did not give it a chance, and on May 18, 1965, the legendary spy was finally hanged in public in the square of Damascus, Syria.
Although the legendary spy king came to an end, the name "Ely Cohen" is still engraved in the textbooks of Israel's Mossad intelligence organization, and has also been listed as a classic case study by secret services around the world.