The journalist Henrik Kruger examined the Ben Barka killing back in 1980 while the case remained open. He observed that it held "unexploded fireworks."

Even after partial clarification involving the Moroccan ruler along with his security personnel, French political leaders and their criminal associates, plus Israel's Mossad directed by Meir Amit, doubts lingered over possible U.S. participation.

Thousands of CIA files on the matter continue to be withheld today on national security grounds. Numerous unexploded fireworks remain as well.

The complex French role has received extensive analysis and inspired dramatic movies (J'ai vu tuer Ben Barka; L'Attentat). Yet Israel's part requires fresh assessment against the global context of the mid-1960s and senior-level contests over state authority and policy direction.

Mossad positions on political killings and atomic arms carry equal or greater weight in the present. At the time the fireworks stayed hidden from outsiders and even from most Israelis. The cover on the Israeli Ben Barka matter contained the volatile mixture inside the pressure cooker for decades, yet it has now burst open.

Israel's two strongest and most resolute Mossad chiefs of the era, Isser Harel and Meir Amit, held sharply contrasting principles and temperaments. During the 1960s they were destined to clash over the Conquest of Canaan. The results shape our world today.

Isser Harel entered the world as Yisrael Natanovich Halperin inside the Russian Empire. His father served as a rabbi and the household ran a successful vinegar enterprise. The Bolshevik Revolution upended their existence and they relocated to Latvia.

As a young man "Isser" moved to Palestine to labor as a pioneer on a citrus kibbutz. He earned recognition for ethical steadfastness, careful methods, determination and simple habits. Some viewed him as a puritan.

In 1942 he entered the pre-state military force, the Haganah, and received an intelligence posting.

His initial government service inside Shin Bet domestic security focused on pursuing Irgun and Lehi (Stern gang) militants. Consistent with his approach, he pursued them without pause, yet owing to their abilities he invited the reformed militants to join his service.

Yitzhak Shamir, whose group dispatched letter bombs to leading politicians including President Harry Truman, numbered among the militants he enlisted.

In 1950 Israeli founder David Ben-Gurion and Reuven Shiloah (born in Jerusalem as Zaslansky) conferred with Allen Dulles and the CIA on establishing an agency for national intelligence and covert actions, the Mossad. After 1951 James Jesus Angleton served as Israel's singular liaison inside the CIA and Mossad collaborated closely with him.

Harel attracted favorable notice from Ben-Gurion and soon received appointment as Mossad chief together with Shin Bet, placing him essentially second in command of the state. Ben-Gurion referred to him as Memuneh (Responsible). He backed Ben-Gurion. On occasion he employed his position to advance Ben-Gurion's political party. Beyond loyalty, resolve and integrity, Harel possessed exceptional instinct. He was regarded as a "great detective" who produced refined work in the style of Sherlock Holmes.

In 1956 Shin Bet, led by Amos Manor (born Arthur Mendelowitz in Romania), supplied its CIA partner Angleton a major prestige boost when it obtained Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev's so-called "secret speech" denouncing Stalin and passed it to Angleton for release in the West.

Angleton and the CIA returned the favor by permitting Rafi Eitan to divert highly enriched uranium from a U.S. firm, NUMEC, founded by American Zionists David Lowenthal and Zalman Shapiro. Harel himself did not endorse employing nuclear material for weapons.

The Military versus the Mossad

The same year, 1956, the Suez conflict between Israel and Egypt was managed by Meir "Amit" Slutsky.

The young officer was born on a kibbutz to parents who arrived from Ukraine. He displayed what was viewed as a characteristic kibbutz outlook: self-reliant, haughty, dismissive of urban dwellers, bold and practical. Somewhat resembling a cowboy, he matured fighting Arabs.

As a company commander in the War of Independence he drew criticism for accepting excessive casualties, yet IDF Chief of the General Staff Moshe Dayan (born of Ukrainian parents on a kibbutz in Ottoman Syria) valued his bravery and tenacity and advanced him.

At the close of the Suez conflict Soviet Premier Nikolai Bulganin warned Israel of existential destruction unless it returned territory seized from Egypt. Mossad Director Harel convinced Ben-Gurion to yield to the warning. Amit never forgave him.

Harel favored remaining unknown and his image did not appear in newspapers. He could not escape recognition, however, when his eleven-member unit seized Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Argentina in 1960.

The widely publicized action was carefully prepared and Harel oversaw it in Buenos Aires, positioned behind his unit in case of difficulty. Consistent with his principles he instructed his unit that under no conditions were they to kill Eichmann: he had to reach Israel for trial. Harel described it as a "humane and national mission...acting in accord with the dictates of my conscience."

Some considered Harel lenient toward Israeli Communists who might spy for the Soviet Union. Yet he uncovered a senior IDF intelligence officer serving as a Soviet agent.

Amit was anticipated to rise eventually to head the IDF. A serious parachute injury however confined him to hospital for more than a year. Though Harel may not have realized it the military was preparing Meir Amit to succeed Harel as national intelligence chief. When Amit left hospital he was dispatched to Columbia University to study contemporary business organization methods.

Almost certainly he also conferred with Angleton at the CIA. His thesis contrasted military hierarchy with its directives and chain of command against the kibbutz practice of operating through individual choice. When Amit returned to Israel in 1960 his mentor Dayan nominated him as head of IDF intelligence, Aman.

From the outset Harel resisted Amit as military intelligence chief. Amit was only forty. He possessed no Israeli intelligence preparation or background. He was entirely military in outlook. Aman chiefs were known for generating scandals through reckless boldness (most notably the so-called Lavon Affair) and Amit appeared to share that temperament. A contest for supremacy was certain to follow if Amit led IDF intelligence.

After the Eichmann capture Harel expended substantial effort tracing a kidnapped Israeli boy. The child was located in Brooklyn in 1962. Harel collaborated with Attorney General Robert Kennedy to secure approval for returning the boy to Israel. Harel, like Foreign Minister Golda Meir (born Golda Mabovitch in Ukraine), maintained good relations with the Kennedys and shared their conviction that nuclear weapons should not enter the Middle East. They held that it was not in Israel's security interest to pursue them.

Prime Minister Ben-Gurion differed from his veteran security chief in that he was fixated on obtaining a nuclear weapon and regarded Arab neighbors, not Nazis, as the true adversaries of the state. The prime minister maintained important secret understandings (such as Operation Business Friend) with Konrad Adenauer, chancellor of West Germany. Germany would regain acceptance as a "normal" country through Israeli recognition and Israel would receive financial and military support indefinitely.

The French were likewise assisting construction of a "peaceful" nuclear reactor in Israel. The CIA provided substantial assistance as well. President John Kennedy, Premier Khrushchev and President Charles de Gaulle posed major barriers with their anti-nuclear proliferation efforts and demands for inspections. Ben-Gurion drew nearer to the military and farther from the socialist principles of his party as the existential basis of his Jewish state.

In March 1961 an OAS colonel in Paris attempted to enlist Israelis in an assassination of de Gaulle. They were requested to supply an "Israeli Arab" to train as a shooter and pose as an Algerian Arab so the act could be attributed to the FLN (National Liberation Front).

The proposal reached Ben-Gurion and his advisers. Harel was incensed that it was even under consideration. Ben-Gurion reportedly exclaimed, "Israel is not a land of assassins!"

Although de Gaulle had received warnings about the coup from multiple sources he conveyed appreciation and goodwill toward Israel for both declining to join the plot and for disclosing it.

Ben-Gurion, despite urging from Harel, accepted that the military should select its own intelligence head. Amit received the appointment and, as anticipated, ties between Mossad and Aman grew more competitive than collaborative. Like a troubled family each organization withheld information from the other and both withheld information from Israeli society.

First Battle of Harel and Amit

In 1959 President Gamal Abdel Nasser, leader of the United Arab Republic, had advanced Egypt's rocket program under General Khalil and recruited former Nazi rocket scientists from Peenemunde (site of the V-2).

Former Nazi military personnel were already developing Egyptian military and intelligence capabilities with help from Hitler's preferred commando, Colonel Otto Skorzeny. Germany and the Arab world maintained positive relations during World War II largely because both opposed British and French colonialism.

At the same time Aman under Amit was secretly cooperating with former Eastern Division head of Nazi intelligence and current chief of the German Federal Intelligence Service (BND) Reinhard Gehlen to fabricate a cover for a German-Israeli agent, Wolfgang Lotz, to be dispatched to Cairo to collect military intelligence by posing as a German horse breeder.

The month after John Kennedy was elected president of the United States Lotz arrived in Egypt. His IDF handler was Yosef Yariv (born Rivkind in Haifa) in Paris.

In July 1961 Israel launched its first rocket. Ben-Gurion secretly persisted with work on a nuclear weapon at Dimona despite Kennedy's opposition and that of many Israelis.

When Egypt launched its own rockets the following year the Mossad was taken by surprise. (Harel had devoted considerable time to the abducted boy.) The "crisis of the German scientists" in Egypt became the arena for the first major contest between Harel and Amit. (For details see my three-part series for CAM, "Who Killed Heinz Krug.")

Mossad superspy Rafi Eitan likened the fierce power contest between the intelligence chiefs to the biblical battle of Gog and Magog. (Eitan was Harel's cousin yet his personality resembled Amit's far more.)

Amit stated Israel should not target Germans but instead prepare for war with Arabs. Amit possessed battlefield experience and his U.S. training. He derided Harel as an outdated investigator and the Mossad for failing in its Egypt mission.

Attacking Harel meant challenging a living legend. Harel, like most Israelis, feared and detested Nazis. He hurried to regain momentum and succeeded. He wished to approach Adenauer directly and instruct him to remove the scientists.

Yet Ben-Gurion did not wish to endanger his secret partnership with Germany. Harel then launched Operation Damocles to be led by Yitzhak Shamir. The operation aimed to persuade, intimidate or even eliminate German scientists to extract them from Egypt.

Lotz was moved to Mossad (with the same handler) to assist the operation.

Shamir obtained information on the scientists by intercepting their mail with equipment donated by U.S. organized crime figure Meyer Lansky. The mail-opening device revealed an Austrian engineer who appeared to be acquiring nuclear weapons material for the Egyptians.