[Spooks] Isser Harel's death at the age of 91

[jmm]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20030218/ap_wo_en_ge/me_gen_israel_obit_harel_2

Isser Harel, Mossad chief who captured Nazi official
>Adolf Eichmann, dies at 91 
>Tue Feb 18, 3:39 PM ET


>By MARK LAVIE, Associated Press Writer 

>JERUSALEM - Isser Harel, the Israeli spymaster who directed the capture
>of Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann in 1960, died Tuesday, hospital officials said.
>He was 91. 

>Harel was one of the founders of the Mossad 
>an intelligence agency that achieved
>international renown and served as its head
>from 1952 to 1963. He was also the first
>director of the Shin Bet internal security
>agency. 

>One of the tasks of the Mossad in its first years
>was to track down leaders of the German Nazi
>regime, responsible for the killing of 6 million
>Jews in the Holocaust of World War II. 

>A prime target was Adolf Eichmann, Nazi
>leader Adolf Hitler's top aide, responsible for
>implementing what the Nazis called the "final
>solution," murder of all of the Jews of Europe. 

>In his 1975 book, "The House on Garibaldi Street," Harel related how Israeli
>agents tracked Eichmann to Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he was living
>under the identity of Ricardo Klement, a businessman. 

>When Eichmann's identity was verified, Harel drew up a plan to kidnap
>Eichmann and fly him to Israel. He used Abba Eban, a young Israeli
>diplomat, to bring an Israeli plane into the country under the cover of Eban's
>meetings with government officials. Eichmann was abducted by Mossad
>agents, spirited aboard the plane and flown to Israel before Argentinian
>authorities were alerted. 

>Eban, who was unaware of the plot, went on to become Israel's foreign
>minister. He died in November. 

>In his book, Harel wrote, "I didn't know what sort of man Eichmann was. I
>didn't know with what sort of morbid zeal he pursued his murderous work ...
>I didn't know that he was capable of ordering the slaughter of babies and
>depicting himself as a disciplined soldier." 

>Arriving in Israel, Harel went to the office of Prime Minister David Ben
>Gurion. "I told him, 'Ben Gurion, I've brought you a present,'" he recalled in
>an interview rebroadcast Tuesday on Israel TV. 

>In 1961, Eichmann was put on trial in Israel, a cathartic experience for a
>people battered physically and spiritually by the Holocaust. Sitting
>unrepentant in a glass enclosure, Eichmann heard Holocaust survivors
>relate the horrors of the Nazi concentration and death camps. Convicted of
>mass murder, Eichmann was executed. 

>A diminutive, slight, balding figure, Harel said that part of his motivation for
>seeking out Eichmann was revenge for the deaths of so many of his people. 

>Born Isser Halperin in Vitebsk, Russia in 1912, he immigrated to Palestine
>in 1930, where he changed his name to Harel. 

>After leaving the Mossad in 1963, he served briefly as an adviser to Israeli
>Prime Minister Levi Eshkol in 1965. 

>In 1969, he was elected to the Israeli parliament, where he served until
>1973. 

>Officials at Beilinson Hospital in Petach Tikvah, outside Tel Aviv, said Harel
>was hospitalized for six days in the geriatric unit before he died Tuesday. No
>information about his survivors or funeral arrangements was immediately
>available. 

>ml