The Volunteer (Michael Ross)
Today we are bringing you a rare, inside account from a Christian-born Canadian soldier, who moved to Israel, joined the Mossad, and now claims he did everything from trying to stop Iran getting nuclear bombs - to killing suspected terrorists. His name is Michael Ross, and his story is extraordinary. The question is: how much of it is really true?
Evan Solomon: It’s great to talk to you again. How long did it take you to make the transition from Mossad agent back to ordinary Canadian citizen living here in Canada?
Michael Ross: That’s a really great question. It’s been a process. It wasn’t something that happened overnight. It probably took me a good three, four years before I felt that I’d actually reintegrated myself into, you know, Canadian society.
Evan Solomon: Like when you and I met - you and I met six years ago in Toronto - and you approached me and it was just after 9/11 and you had just literally come back from Israel. What was that like?
Michael Ross: That was probably one of the worst times of my life because ah I was burnt out, stressed out. I’d just gone through a divorce. I’d just come back from living in Israel and overseas for a long period of time. I was affected by the events of 9-11 as many of my colleagues were. And it was probably, yeah, I would say probably one of the darkest moments of my life because I didn’t know what I was going to do with myself, I didn’t know where I was going to go. I did have an inkling of the fact that ah I wanted to speak about my experiences. I wasn’t exactly sure how that would manifest itself but I think that’s one of the things that prompted me to, to approach you and say, you know, maybe I can help you out with sort of making at least some sort of semblance of all these things that have gone on before 9-11 and perhaps afterwards.
Evan Solomon: Pretty unlikely story, yours.
Michael Ross: Oh yeah.
Evan Solomon: Canadian boy, sleepy Victoria, BC, (to) Mossad agent.
Michael Ross: It is.
Evan Solomon: Almost implausible.
Michael Ross: Almost. But not.
Evan Solomon: Tell us, just give us your background. You’re born here in British Columbia, right? What was your background that you decided to take this route?
Michael Ross: Well yeah, I was, I’m from Victoria. I’ve got family going back here several generations. I’ve got family buried in Ross Bay Cemetery, which is about the best sort of street credible you can get as far as a pedigree in this town is concerned. Um yeah I grew up here, you know, in the same place I’m living now in the same district. Loved sports, pretty decent in school, fairly popular guy. Ah my family was going through a divorce. My parents were going through a pretty, you know, sort of not very pleasant divorce at that time. I was in my final years of high school. And ah I’d always had this idealistic sort of ah slant to my personality to serve and to experience and to have adventure. And so yeah, I joined the army and ah did three years in the army in what was then the special service force in Petawawa, which was disbanded after the Somalia debacle. And realized that this wasn’t the life for me. I’m sure there’s no life like it but it wasn’t the life for me. So ah decided to do the whole let’s go Europe drill. Put on a backpack and just kind of you know do what 20-somethings do.
Evan Solomon: But, now you have a military background in your family, though. I mean, you joining the military is not crazy time right? You’re not, there’s lineage there.
Michael Ross: There’s a lineage. I mean it’s not something everybody does in Canada. Canada doesn’t have a, a militaristic society as we know. Ah my great grandfather on my mother’s side fought at Vimy Ridge and survived and lived down on Joseph Street which is really not too far from here. My grandfather was ah – my father’s father served also in World War 1 and was quite highly decorated. He was a motorcycle dispatch rider amongst other things and was mentioned in dispatches. Received a citation or whatever you want to call it, an award from the king and from Winston Churchill and also survived. And the interesting thing, both of them having fought together at Vimy Ridge although not knowing each other obviously and both of them surviving. But that was something that I was always cognisant of and something that I’d always felt strongly about. So yeah it wasn’t a huge leap for me to, to serve in the military.
Evan Solomon: But, now you go into the Canadian Special Forces. What’s your experience like in the Canadian Special Forces?
Michael Ross: Well, I think that your Canadian soldier is one of the best soldiers around for quality and motivation and skill and training. And I think that’s because basically we’re a pretty poor – or at least in that period we were a pretty poor military. Ah we didn’t have a whole lot of equipment. I mean I remember an exercise we were supposed to be picked up by helicopters and they showed up in deuce and a half trucks and said, pretend it’s a helicopter. And you know driving on bumpy road for 3 and a half hours after you haven’t slept for a few days. And yeah, but there was almost a Korean War mentality. I always believe armies sort of live in the world of the previous war that they’ve fought. And that attitude sort of was all pervasive and – but I mean for the Canadian soldier I have, yeah, incredible admiration.
Evan Solomon: Did you get posted overseas?
Michael Ross: No, I did not. No.
Evan Solomon: So, you spent three years in the Canadian military in Canada.
Michael Ross: That’s right.
Evan Solomon: In the special forces?
Michael Ross: Well I did do an exchange with a similar unit down in the United States for a period of time. Our role was really air mobile quick reaction type unit. And the only time we ever went on alert was in 1980 when the Russians invaded Afghanistan and that was when we were sort of kitted up and they were thinking of perhaps dispatching us somewhere to Europe or whatever. But no, we were not that sort of NATO type unit.
Evan Solomon: Were you a dangerous guy? Did you learn how to shoot? And, do all the Special Force kinds of things?
Michael Ross: Well yeah. I mean I was in an armoured reconnaissance unit. We, you know, learned all the different kinds of weapons and navigation and concealment and ah building observation posts so that the enemy doesn’t see you. Because that was our role for the brigade to be out sort of being the eyes and ears of the brigade out front. And yeah, I mean the training was great. It was very hard. But the mindset is very different than what I encountered later on when I served in the Israel defence force.
Evan Solomon: But, did you have a university education?
Michael Ross: No I did not.
Evan Solomon: So, you graduate high school. You go in the army. Are you a good soldier?
Michael Ross: Yeah, very good soldier. Ah I didn’t have – I was probably the only guy in my platoon that never got charged under their – you know all the arcane and strange military rules and regulations. And either that’s because I’m a really sneaky guy and I was able to get away with stuff or because I was actually, you know, fairly disciplined at the same time.
Evan Solomon: But, you clearly are a really sneaky guy.
Michael Ross: Well yeah, but not in a, you know, not in a sort of devious ah try to get out of things kind of way.
Evan Solomon: But, were you? I mean, you might be disciplined but did you get away with stuff there? Were you exhibiting traits that might have helped you in later life?
Michael Ross: Oh yeah. I mean that would have started back when I was, you know, 10 years old and ah you know, doing ambushes on my friends in the woods and forests around where I live and, and doing those kinds of things. So yeah, I’ve always had that sort of mindset where ah you know, when you’re playing chess and out outsmarting the other guy. And I think a couple of times I tried to outsmart my superiors and sometimes I got away with it and a lot of times I didn’t.
Evan Solomon: Now, you didn’t grow up as a Jew.
Michael Ross: No, I did not. I grew up as an Anglican.
Evan Solomon: You’re an Anglican?
Michael Ross: I’m a confirmed Anglican. I’m confirmed in the Anglican Church of Canada.
Evan Solomon: So, you’re confirmed in the Anglican Church of Canada. You join the Canadian military. Why when you get out of the Canadian military, why didn’t you pursue that as a career? What was it?
Michael Ross: Um – I don’t know. I mean it’s you know, I – it was not something that I could see myself doing for the rest of my life, being a career sort of soldier and ah like I said there was a mindset I think at the top of the military which permeated down to the command level which really worked against a lot of the things that us sort of ground pounding soldiers were, you know, trying to accomplish. And ah I felt, for instance, you know, serving – having the opportunity of serving in other militaries, I had a lot of experience with dealing with my commanders and how they would treat us, how they would interact with our soldiers and I was somewhat disappointed. And I understand this has changed quite a bit in the Canadian military, especially seeing what’s going on in Afghanistan. But the officers were not in tune with the soldiers. They were not interested in being in tune with the soldiers. And I found that to be something that really was detrimental.
Evan Solomon: Just out of interest, I have no idea what that means. What does that mean, ‘not being in tune?’ Like, give me an example so I can understand what that means.
Michael Ross: I think the – you know, they were very distant. You hardly saw them. You’d go on an exercise for 2 and a half months at a time to somewhere, you know, down in New Brunswick or up in northern Quebec. And you wouldn’t see your officer in between the exercise time. He’d be in the officers mess doing his thing or pushing paper in the, in headquarters buildings and things and we’d be doing our training. But he was this remote figure who would show up every once in a while, sort of take charge. You know, usually wet behind the ears. The sergeants sort of treated them with a fair amount of derision. And yet, I mean tried to take over. And you can’t take over a military unit unless you bond with your men in some way or they’re just not going to listen to you.
Evan Solomon: So, you decide to become a backpacker – classic Canadian kid, but you’re a Special Forces soldier. Why do you go to Israel of all places?
Michael Ross: Um well I, I didn’t start off going to Israel. I started off going to Europe and you know, I wanted to experience life that was not as ah you know, strict and full of so much discipline as there is in the army. I wanted to, you know, cut loose and travelled around Europe. And I heard through the sort of grapevine that you could volunteer in a kibbutz in Israel. You could stay there for you know, 3, 4 months at a time. You work a little bit but it’s a great way to tour and see the country because the room and board is paid for. And I thought that’s a great idea. And I was planning on sort of doing that. I wanted to go down to Africa and then go back to university. And ah as things happened, I went off to Israel and that’s where everything sort of changed.
Evan Solomon: So, what happens when you get there?
Michael Ross: Well initially I really had a really very positive impression of the country. I mean the people were friendly. It was a little bit – a little bit more vibrant than what I was used to, you know, growing up in Canada. People were, you know, very passionate. They spoke loudly. You know, but you knew where you stood with everybody. They were straight talking people and I believe they still are. And I just – I loved the country, I loved the history. I loved, you know, there I was standing about 5 kilometres from the Jordanian border looking over at the Gilad mountains thinking how much history is going on, you know, has gone on around where I’m standing.
Evan Solomon: (It’s) funny that you connect with that. There’s nothing in your past, from Victoria, an Anglican boy, from the Canadian army, that says ‘boy the holy land is a place that I’m feeling passionately about.’
Michael Ross: Well, I did feel – I felt the – I felt the energy. It was really quite palpable at that time. And you know, being – looking out over the, you know, looking over, for instance, the Gildboa mountains and seeing, you know, and having some fellow who’s guiding you around saying, well this is where King Saul and Jonathon his son were killed by Philistines and their heads were hung on the walls of Beshon. And Beshon of course is a town right next door. And you know, I just had this feeling of all this history kind of welling up. And then you know, wandering around Atel which is one of those archaeological sort of digs and finding Roman coins and Roman glass and hearing about a guy who wandered around a couple of months earlier and found Emperor Hadrian’s breastplate, you know, just an amateur kind of archaeologist. And just getting a feel of that, feeling the weight of that history on you was really something that ah - I think at that stage of my life also being a 20-something I was open to all kinds of spiritual and emotional kind of experiences and it affected me deeply. And I fell in love with the place, you know, flat out. I mean it wasn’t, it wasn’t a slow seduction and I wasn’t a sort of, you know, ah you know, kind of shy, furtive flirtation. It was a full on – I just fell in love with the place on the spot.
Evan Solomon: And, you fell in love with a girl?
Michael Ross: I did. Yes I did. Yeah that came later. But I, that was all part of that whole thing. I fell in love with an Israeli girl who’s seventh generation Israeli. And you know, I was fascinated by, by her and her culture and her language. And you know, her stories of growing up in a bomb shelter in northern Israel in the ‘70s during, you know, the really sort of harsh time. The Six Day War, the Yom Kippur War and just meeting someone that had experienced that was just an unbelievable experience.
Evan Solomon: So, you decide that this place, you know, you’re falling in love with it and with this woman. What do you tell your dad back home?
Michael Ross: Well my parents are pretty used to me being – marching to the beat of a different drum, doing my own thing and you know, reading books that kids my age didn’t read and taking interest in kinds of topics that maybe other kids didn’t. So they weren’t shocked. But of course I don’t know what they felt inside but I do know that they were sort of, well you know, this is kind of expected from you and it’s not a huge surprise to us. But I still think they were, you know, wow, he’s far away and you know –
Evan Solomon: So, you’ve got to make the jump, though, from being a tourist to being an Israeli. How does that transition take place?
Michael Ross: Well that was very fateful in a way and it was unusual because there was a woman on the kibbutz that I was living that was in touch with a fellow from ah the Ministry of Religious Affairs who told her about this ah you know, orthodox conversion program that they had. And it wasn’t in any relation to me, it was just she’d heard about it. So you know, she spoke to me about it and was I interested. And you know I was 20, you know 21 at the time or so and I thought, I’m really interested. I’d like to learn more. You know, let’s see where this leads. And she set up a meeting with him and it turns out very, very difficult to get on such a thing. And of course being Jews and not wanting to proselytize anyone the first thing they did was look at me with suspicion and then say, why ever would you want to be Jewish? I mean, you know, you get on an airliner, it gets hijacked. The first thing they do is they say, Jews to this side and everybody else over here and they put it in those terms to me. And I soldiered on and said, you know, I’m going to go through with this. And ended up on this ah conversion program, Orthodox conversion program which was run with the ah rabbinate – chief rabbinate’s office in Jerusalem, the Ministry of Religious Affairs and Bar Ilan University. And yeah I did that for a whole year. And that was, that was a ride of a lifetime and one of the hardest things I’ve ever, ever had to do.
Evan Solomon: So, you have to learn Hebrew?
Michael Ross: I have to learn Hebrew.
Evan Solomon: And you decide to convert to Judaism. Are you circumcised?
Michael Ross: I was. Thank God my parents had the foresight to do that when I was born because there was a fellow who wasn’t and ah the horror stories were pretty, yeah, pretty awful.
Evan Solomon: So, you decide to become a Jew.
Michael Ross: Yeah. And –
Evan Solomon: Do you remember, just describe that moment when you converted and what that entailed.
Michael Ross: Yeah. The conversion lasted over a year and it entailed a lot of hard study learning Hebrew at the same time and also working in the afternoons out in the fields, you know, getting in touch with your Jewish roots. I mean I’m out there working the soil and getting the sense of what – and it’s funny because you’re sitting in class and you’re reading about the Bible, about all these things. And yet in the afternoon you’re standing out in the hot sun on the same dirt doing the same sort of working fields like they were doing and seeing, you know, Jews as they were, you know, 3,000 years previous. And it was just ah overwhelming and it just kept developing. And I realized this is going to be really tough but I want to stick it out. I’m committed and I’ve always believed – it was funny because I’ve had people say to me, oh you must have done it because you wanted to get married.
And I thought if anybody does such a thing just to get married they’d drop out within 2, 3 weeks because it’s not worth it. You can go to Cyprus, have a civil wedding and become an Israeli citizen.
Evan Solomon: Which is what many Israelis did.
Michael Ross: Which is what many foreign born do. I think what I did was relatively unique. There were about 26 of us. We were from all over the world – Australia, Sweden. There was a guy from Hawaii on my conversion course. And yeah, they dropped out, you watched, like flies, over a period of time. They just couldn’t hack it. And I think there was about three of us that finished. And it was tough. The exams were tough. We had oral exams. And then we had –
Evan Solomon: Jews aren’t great marketers to get people in, right?
Michael Ross: Oh no. They did everything I think they could to discourage because I wasn’t allowed home for weeks at a time. And I was living in a religious, Orthodox religious environment. I was going to synagogue three times a day. All the high and holy days and anyone who knows anything about Judaism, there’s a lot of rules and regulations and yeah.
Evan Solomon: So, it was like going back in the army.
Michael Ross: It was way worse than being back in the army. It was yeah, and the thing about it was it was a totally individual thing. There was no teamwork involved because how do you team up with someone to convert. You have to undergo this process that ah is such a personal thing.
Evan Solomon: So now you’ve converted. You’re in love with a girl. You’re working on a kibbutz. Now you’re essentially going to become an Israeli. You’re going to make – the term of course is aliyah. You’re going to become an Israeli citizen, come home, return. So what happens to you there? What do you decide to do in Israel?
Michael Ross: Well I go back to working in the kibbutz and managing a section of the cotton plantation and driving around in a jeep in sandals and shorts and nothing else and drinking beer and having barbecues. And you know, having the time of my life. And then of course I get that funny letter that every Israeli does saying, you’re hereby requested to show up at the nearest induction centre for your military service. And I have to say, I wasn’t – I wasn’t happy about it because I was going to be leaving my wife behind again. And again, I’d just come off this conversion program where I hardly was at home. And ah yeah, ah I got this letter and ended up going into the army –again.
Evan Solomon: Back to the army.
Michael Ross: But I was curious and I was young enough and still gung-ho enough to want to know what it was all about. And of course one of the great cohesive things about Israeli society is serving in the army. And I knew as a right of passage that I could never be accepted as an Israeli citizen if I didn’t get out there and you know, pick up a weapon and serve in the military.
Evan Solomon: Now do you tell them, hey, ‘ I’ve been in the Canadian military, I’m a special forces guy, I’ve got a bit of a head start here, I don’t want to start with every grunt?’ Why don’t you do that?
Michael Ross: Absolutely not. That was the last thing that was on my mind. Because I was smart enough to know back then if I had done such a thing, I either would have been singled out and there would have been so much pressure put on me to perform or I would have been the source of derision.
Because the IDF has a very proud and strong ethos about the fact that it’s a very fierce fighting army. And all other armies, while they may have respect for them, are not treated with the same amount of respect. So I wanted to just kind of get in there and yeah have the inside scoop on what it was when I picked up a rifle. How to zero it and how to shoot it and everything else.
But I didn’t want anyone to know that ah that I’d done any previous military service.
Evan Solomon: Well couldn’t they figure it out? I mean you were a pretty highly trained guy.
Michael Ross: Yeah. But ah their methods, their training methods were very different. So it was easy for me to ah, you know, go along with the training and it was different. And I learned – it wasn’t that I showed up and I had this PhD in how to be a soldier and I can show you guys everything. They showed me a lot. I mean I learned – my first two weeks in the Israeli defence force I learned a hell of a lot about what it is to be a soldier.
Evan Solomon: So what was the difference between being a Canadian soldier and training for Special Forces in Canada and just being a regular Israeli Defence Forces soldier?
Michael Ross: Well the first thing I was insistent about when I was, when I was, when I was inducted into the IDF was that I wanted a combat unit because I could have gone, I don’t know anywhere. It’s a huge military, they’ve got a lot of branches. And I was insistent that I – because I wanted to come back to the kibbutz to all my friends who’d served in all their, you know, para-troop units and the Golani brigade. And I wanted to say, you know, I’ve always been there, done that. So you know, I’m part of the society. So yeah, ah I mean it was way more intense. It’s a much more combat oriented military. There’s no dress uniforms, there’s no polishing your boots. There’s no – I mean you put your gear together. You stitch, hand stitch your webbing so it’s form fitting on your body. You’re always carrying ammunition. You carry a weapon from the first week that you’re there and you’re trained on it. Ah it’s just totally, totally – I mean you’re told you need your weapon because if you’re taking the bus home and you end up going through some dodgy area and the bus comes under attack, you’ve got t be able to get off the bus and fight back. And I mean that was really an eye-opener for me. Because in the Canadian military when we went on exercise they gave us our weapons, we did our training and we gave them back. When I was given my weapon in the IDF, I mean the thing was glued to me. I wasn’t allowed to take it off. I had to have the shoulder strap around me at all time. Went to eh mess hall to eat, it had to be on me. And God forbid you didn’t have that weapon with you because yeah, you’d get punished.
Evan Solomon: So tough training and did you enjoy your training?
Michael Ross: I did. But physically it was excruciating. And I was a pretty fit 20-something at that point in my life. I mean even on a kibbutz I’d been, you know, I was running around and I was, you know, I was keeping fit and I was outdoors and I was getting up at five in the morning. It wasn’t like this huge shift in lifestyle. But the training was brutal. I mean carrying huge amounts of weight up hills and running and going all night. The Israeli defence force prides itself on its night fighting. So daytime yeah, you’re doing stuff, you’re training. But then you think, oh great, they’ll let us go back to our tents and yeah, and I was sleeping under canvas on rocks. I wasn’t going into any barracks. I was right in the middle of the West Bank.
I mean there were hostiles all around and here I was just being trained to be a soldier. And yeah, ah at night we’d head out and then we’d start the real work. And I thought, my God, I’m never going to sleep again for the rest of my life. And it was, yeah, really, really tough.
Evan Solomon: So what unit do you get into?
Michael Ross: I got into a combat engineering unit which basically our job was to be first in, destroy enemy fortifications, take out enemy defences and enemy forces and clear the way for ah infantry, armour and all the other sort of units that would show up behind us.
Evan Solomon: And did you ever experience combat when you were in the IDF?
Michael Ross: Yeah, I did. My - but it wasn’t during my sort of regular service. It was right after I’d left and ah joined what they call a milluim unit, a reserve unit which belonged to the Golani brigade. And I was seconded to this demolitions platoon, which is where all the sort of combat engineers ended up. And ah we went up to Lebanon. This was during the withdrawal period when Israel had withdrawn to the security zone. And we would clear roads, we’d make sure roads are clear and things like that. And yeah one night we were sent out as a large force unit to take out a convoy of vehicles that belonged to Hezbollah. Ah you know, based on the intelligence that we’d received. And yeah, we set up an ambush and they drove right into it. And yeah, it was just a lot of noise, explosion and it was over – we waited so long for them to show up and then it was over in seconds.
Evan Solomon: Did you ever kill anyone in that unit?
Michael Ross: I didn’t see. It’s like a lot of people tell you in combat. They run into – we set these explosive devices for the vehicle to run into. The explosion happened. My platoon commander gave us the order to open fire. I pointed my weapon and I let loose with everything I had. And ah was just exchanging magazines and my second magazine and got the order to cease fire. So it was over so fast.
Evan Solomon: Who set the explosions? You were part of that?
Michael Ross: We were part of the – well I wasn’t part of the smaller team that went and set the explosions. We were securing them and went up the road to ah to just kind of scout out what was happening up there while they were setting the explosives on the road.
Evan Solomon: So that was your first and only real…
Michael Ross: That was my first and only and I never served in the army after that. I mean I came back and we did our usual routine stuff and then that was –
Evan Solomon: You didn’t do any – you didn’t pull patrol duty in either Gaza or any parts of West Bank or in Lebanon?
Michael Ross: No. My West Bank was before the first Intifada and I spent a lot of time there doing patrols and sometimes, you know, chasing after small units of Palestinian terrorists and things like that but not having any combat action with them. I was just kind of looking for them and doing protection and security type duties but not having any full on confrontation.
Evan Solomon: How were you treated as a Canadian? Here you are, you’re a pretty brand new Israeli. You’ve still got – you’re pretty fresh. How did the Israelis treat a guy whose Hebrew is obviously pretty fresh? How were you treated?
Michael Ross: Well they were very forgiving of my – of my language skills. I mean I picked – I think where I really picked up a lot of Hebrew was in the army and a lot of it was all these weird slang terms and what not they use. They used to call me hey Canadi all the time, you know, Canadi. I was Canadi. I was always a Canadian. And it was funny because there you, you know, you learn Hebrew, convert to Judaism and serve in the military but you’re still called Canadi because for them you always will be. And native- born Israelis, one never look at someone born overseas as anything but someone that came from the Diaspora. And there’s this kind of ah, not really – nothing – it’s not an animosity, it’s kind of this – they sort of tend to look at Diaspora born Jewry with a little bit of scorn, good natured scorn. But they see them as soft and privileged and in many ways they’re right. They were toughing it out there when, you know, people here were, you know, going to Harvard University and becoming investment bankers and doing all those kinds of things. And for them it’s a source of derision.
Evan Solomon: Did you feel like an Israeli?
Michael Ross: I did. Ah and I think it really happened once I sort of completed my military service. I felt integrated and even though they did, you know, call me that once in a while in good fun, they also treated me like I was one of their own, you know.
Evan Solomon: Was your name then Michael Ross?
Michael Ross: No, it was something else. But I’m not going to say what it as.
Evan Solomon: So you weren’t Michael Ross then?
Michael Ross: No.
Evan Solomon: So?
Michael Ross: I did change my name when I was there. I Hebraicized my name.
Evan Solomon: Why?
Michael Ross: Because that was, I mean you go through the conversion program, you live in the country, you marry someone. You serve in the military and then walk around, you know, with a name like Irving Schwartz. It just doesn’t – it’s sort of the last step in your integration into society was to take a Hebraicized name. And it was really quite an easy thing for me to do to adopt, you know, a new name and a new persona, so to speak.
Evan Solomon: That’s interesting how easy it is for you to take a new name and a new persona and a new culture because this plays out into your life which ends up with different personas.
Michael Ross: It does, yeah. In many respects it was a precursor for that ah later period of my life where I actually had to do it as a means to survive.
Evan Solomon: So you get out of the military. How do you make the transition into the mossad which is, you and I both know it’s the most the outside maybe the CIA the fictional – there’s more myths about the Mossad. How do you become an agent, a combatant in the Mossad?
Michael Ross: Well it’s a very long process. It doesn’t happen overnight. Um it was after I’d finished my military service that I received this letter from this very sort of ah obscure ah semi-government department inviting me for an interview ah for you know, work overseas, not stipulating exactly what the work was. So I was very curious. And ah I knew I didn’t want to be growing cotton for the rest of my life, as interesting as that was. And it was an interesting, given Israel’s advanced agricultural sort of techniques in science. But this was really – this really kind of piqued my interest and I went down for the interview. And while nothing was really revealed to me I kind of had a feeling that we were talking about something that was a little bit deeper than what I originally had read in the letter. And it was an interview process and really trying to get to know who I was an –
Evan Solomon: But you just received this letter. It says we need to talk to you. Do you think – you tell your wife, I think, I’m being recruited by the Mossad? I mean you served in two armies. You can’t be completely naïve.
Michael Ross: No, no, I’m not naïve and I didn’t – I don’t think I thought it was the Mossad but I had a feeling it was something clandestine. Because when you read the letter you understood that we were talking about – but it could have been, you know, rescuing Jews from the Soviet Union. It could have been ah something to do with a domestic security situation. It could have been sitting as an aviation specialist on an El Al aircraft. You don’t know.
Evan Solomon: But aren’t you a perfect candidate for this already. You can blend in. You speak with no accent. You can be anybody in the world. I mean, aren’t – don’t people think – whatever your name was back then, but Michael Ross, this kid is perfect for undercover work?
Michael Ross: Well yeah but you’re working on the assumption that you know what they’re looking for and that’s the thing. I didn’t see myself as being so, you know, special in terms of the criteria that they would want. I saw myself as yeah, my language skills could probably help out. But I didn’t see any other quality that I had besides any other Israeli that served in the military that made me, you know, particularly attractive to them.
Evan Solomon: Okay so one of the things in the book is you’re revealing how Mossad recruits people.
Michael Ross: Yes.
Evan Solomon: How does the Mossad recruit? Reveal how the Mossad recruits a potential combatant.
Michael Ross: Well there’s a lot of interviews. Because people that are not sincere and people that are trying to deceive you will change their story at some point or you know, dissemble basically. And I think there’s a lot of discussion about who you are, what you are. There’s meetings with psychologists. I mean I went through a battery of testing like I’ve never had, you know, before or since that lasted a whole day and a half and night.
Evan Solomon: What kind of testing?
Michael Ross: I mean it was every imaginable psychological test I think there is. And I don’t know if that was a bright thing to do to tire me out but maybe they wanted to tire me out to see how I would continue to function. But it was a lot of cognitive testing, a lot of psychometric testing, a lot of emotional intelligence testing. Ah –
Evan Solomon: Give me an example of something if you were…in other words what were they trying to find out?
Michael Ross: Well I think they’re trying to find out how your mind works and if you have really strong cognitive skills. Because for a spy this is – this is extremely important. How a spy looks at the world and perceives things and how he sees things through a different set of eyes than the average person who’s walking down the street is really the essence of what spying is all about. It’s also how you interact with people and how you conduct yourself. Your core identity, are you an insecure person? Do you, you know, do you crack under pressure in you know, the sort of easiest of circum- are you an overly emotional person? Do you get worked up over – and all these things they have to find that personality type that works out for them.
Evan Solomon: Well what is it? In other words what – if that’s the set of criteria what fits the bill and what were you?
Michael Ross: I would say that ah it’s a personality type. Someone that can think on their feet, is a calm, assertive personality. Not someone that is overbearing and someone that’s so shy that you can’t bring them out of their shell. Someone that has such a strong sense of their core identity that if they’re asked to adopt another identity it’s not going to turn them into, you know, a raging bipolar type person who doesn’t know, you know, who they are. Um you have to be, you know, grounded and you have to be a person that can also learn. And I’ve always said that great spies are not made – really good spies are made but great spies are born because they’re born with a sense – an intuitive sense of just knowing ah innately or instinctively what’s going on without someone having to tell them what’s happening.
Evan Solomon: What about the requirement to deceive, to tell lies to people, to befriend people when you’re going to betray them? I mean if you have to know yourself do you have to know that you’re able to actually be a liar?
Michael Ross: Well this is the great dichotomy and a huge misconception about the intelligence world. Spies have to be the most honest people in the world, but they only have to be honest to their headquarters. And this is a huge part of our testing, I think, when you’re going through the recruitment phase is to test your ability to tell the truth to your headquarters. Because spies are on their own, they make mistakes. And if you come back and say, oh yeah, everything is great and they send someone else out to do some work in the same sort of area you are and he gets killed or caught or whatever because you lied, then, you know, that’s a huge major disaster.
And in your reporting you have to be as truthful and honest as possible.
Evan Solomon: But you still have to use people.
Michael Ross: You have to use people and you have to get close to people. And like you said, there’s no way of candy coating it, you have to deceive them at times. And you have to remember though that this deception is part of your survival. If I don’t deceive that guy, if I don’t make him think I’m somebody else and he cottons on to the fact that I’m trying to, you know, be someone I’m not, and my life is a lie, then you know, you’re behind bars, you’re dead, you’re tortured.
Evan Solomon: What I’m getting at is what quality do you have and does every spy have that allows you to a) you have to recruit sources so you’ve got to manipulate people. You’ve got to essentially seduce people. You’ve got to form friendships where really you don’t want to be their friend, you want their information.
Michael Ross: Right.
Evan Solomon: So you’re using people. What I’m getting at is what quality in you did they see when they said this guy Michael can use people for a purpose. What is that quality?
Michael Ross: I think it’s – you know that’s a tough question for me to answer because I’m talking about, you know, for me those were tools and those were tools and things in your arsenal. You have to look at it like you again are almost a soldier. These are your weapons, these are your tools. Yeah they’re unpleasant and yeah we’re talking about, instead of – well I think it’s unpleasant to shoot at someone but when you interact with someone and you have to tell them a lie, ah it’s not something that you wake up in the middle of the night and say, oh I’m so sorry I lied to that guy. They looked at me probably as someone that could do it because I was task oriented, I was focused. I realize that these are only tools in my arsenal and when I went home and I was with my friends, I didn’t try to cheat them and deceive them and trick them which is –
Evan Solomon: You did have to lie to them about what you did.
Michael Ross: Well I did but I didn’t have a lot of friends and acquaintances that were outside of the system, as we call it. Ah you learn that the people that you hang out with are the people that do the same work with you.
Evan Solomon: Were you surprised that the Mossad found something in you that they thought could – they’re recruiting ten guys and they say ‘this guy doesn’t have it, this guy doesn’t have it, this guy can’t handle it, this guy, he can do it?’
Michael Ross: Yeah, I think every phase I pass and it was really a series of phases, I was more surprised than anybody that I’d passed. I mean so many times I was sitting at my home in my kibbutz. I remember I passed one phase and I – or I’d sort of gone through this phase and I said to my wife, there’s no way that I passed that and I was just waiting for the phone call to say, you know what, you’re a nice guy but you’re out of there. And sure enough, you know, they phoned up and they said, well you did fine and so we want you to come back for the next phase. And I was so surprised. And I think it was a huge – I learned about myself more than anything through this recruitment phase. I learned about my strengths, my weaknesses and so many things.
Evan Solomon: So first they check you up on a psychological battery of tests. what other – what’s the training to make a good spy for the Mossad?
Michael Ross: Well once you are found to be more or less the right stuff then they are not quite finished with you. They want to run you around on the streets and see how you put your cognitive, you know, intuitive skills in action in the field. So they run you around the streets of Tel Aviv for two days and they run you off your feet and give you a whole series and battery of these very strange and weird tasks that you have no idea what they’re about.
Evan Solomon: Like what?
Michael Ross: Well the first thing you have to do is build a cover for yourself because no spy does anything without cover. So you have to build for yourself an identity, a very rudimentary identity but that’s – you’re somebody else for a couple of days. So you do that. Then they take you out and they’ll say, go into that store and get the guy who owns the store to come out on the street. So you have to think, how am I going to do that? And you have to think fast because you don’t – it’s not like you can do it tomorrow. You have to do it like within the next five minutes. So you think, okay I’ve got – he’s got something in his shop window that I’m really interested in and looking like I really want to buy it. So I pull him out and I say there’s this thing in your window and you drag the guy out and you show him. And then, you know, you finish that task and you go back and they’re – the people that are watching you are sitting in sort of a café nearby and they’re just observing and taking notes and doing what they’re doing. And you come back and then they fire another one at you. And they made this one famous in the movie The Spy Game where Brad Pitt goes out on to the balcony where Robert Redford sends him in this hotel. But that was one I was actually asked to and I couldn’t do it. I got to the door, knocked and the guy opened his door and he had a huge cage on his door. So I guess he’d had a home invasion or two. And I tried everything to get in and you know – but you have to think, how am I going to convince this guy to let me into his house, you know. Ah go to that hotel and get me not the first name at the top of the registry, the third name on the registry of the hotel’s guest list. So how are you going to go into that hotel and convince them because they guard those things, you know, very, very closely.
Evan Solomon: How do you get it?
Michael Ross: Well I came up with a story that I’d met this girl that was staying at the hotel the night before. She left her camera at the restaurant we were eating at. And well she told me her last name. I couldn’t quite remember it and I really liked her and I’d like to see her again. I’d also like to return the camera. And so the clerk, you know, if you give a little you get a lot. And if you share a little bit of humanity with someone they’ll kind of go the extra smile. And sure enough without saying anything she turned the register in my direction and she just kind of walked away and I got the third name. And I have to tell you I quite surprised my instructors because I think that’s one that isn’t accomplished very much. So there’s a whole series. I mean ah a taxi ah, take that taxi and get all the details from the taxi driver and then, you know, get his registration number.
Evan Solomon: But this doesn’t sound – Ii mean honestly with all due respect to the Mossad these are – these sound like sort of cub games, you know like…
Michael Ross: They are.
Evan Solomon: You know it doesn’t sound, i mean if the Mossad is supposed to be one of the great secret intelligence forces in the world and part of your training is to sit in a café and grab a third name off a hotel – is there not something that will prepare you more than what really sounds like kind of frat boy games?
Michael Ross: Well, frat boy games. It was not ah – that wasn’t my training. That was just to see how my head worked. How did my head work on the street? Could I think on my feet? Would I freak out? Ah would I, you know, get so discouraged that I’d just say, I’m out of here. It’s all those kinds of things. It wasn’t – it wasn’t to make me into a spy because they were very almost silly and rudimentary and inexplicable tasks. But they I think were enough to tell someone if someone could handle himself on the street, if he could think on his feet.
Evan Solomon: Did you have to learn how to memorize things?
Michael Ross: Yes. You know, they would ask you to go and get ah – I remember I had to stick this little disk into a telephone in a hotel lobby at the Hilton Hotel on Hayarkon Street. And there’s a thousand people milling around in that lobby. It’s a big hotel lobby. And you’ve got to realize, how am I going to take the phone thing apart and stick this in without anyone noticing it? And do I care if someone notices me and how do I cover it? And then I had to phone, you know, like three different telephone numbers that they’d given me to memorize to tell them that the device was inside the phone. And putting someone under stress and making them memorize things at the same time is a very well known trick in determining if someone can still function while they’re under stress.
Evan Solomon: So once you passed that, where is the hard training? What happens in the hard Mossad training?
Michael Ross: Well the hard training, and that was still part of the selection process because anyone who doesn’t get into that doesn’t get any training. And then when you get through that then you start the training and that’s when it gets really heavy.
Evan Solomon: What happens?
Michael Ross: Well you start learning about the whole concept of cover and that means cover under foreign documents. That means really living as a different person for long periods of time and interacting with your surroundings and maintaining your cover. Ah it’s ah doing a number of exercises that are extremely complicated using equipment, photography, communications, navigation skills and doing all that stuff and also at the same time providing cover for everything you’re doing. There’s two types of cover. There’s the cover that says – explains who you are but there has to be cover for what you’re doing. You know, you can be an ophthalmologist and that’s a great cover but if you’re taking pictures of a secret military installation somewhere you better explain that away because it’s not really connected to ophthalmology. So ah you have to – you have to think all the time. Why am I doing what I’m doing and how am I explaining to what I’m doing.
Evan Solomon: So there’s cover. Do you learn how to kill people?
Michael Ross: You don’t learn to kill people in a sense that ah you learn the tools that would be required if you had to engage in some sort of violent operation against someone, yes. I did learn weapons training, I did martial arts training, some specific explosives training, those kinds of things, yes. So I mean to answer you question, yes. But it was never like ah killing people 101, this is the section of your course. It’s one of the many things that sometimes covert operatives who are engaged in a wartime scenario can be asked to do.
Evan Solomon: But I mean do they train you? They say you’re going to go overseas. You might have to work in some place like Africa and we may ask you to kill someone, to assassinate someone, which was part and has been part of the Mossad’s modus operandi. So do they train you to do that? Do they say could you handle it? could you handle it if there are civilian casualties? What are the rules of engagement for assassination?
Michael Ross: Well the rules of engagement, first of all it’s a tiny, tiny percentage of what the Mossad does. It’s a tiny percentage. But of course because it’s so sensational it becomes what everyone thinks the Mossad’s paramount, you know, ah raison d’etre. It’s not.
Evan Solomon: But we know it’s happened. I mean…
Michael Ross: It’s happened, oh yeah.
Evan Solomon: In 1972, the Lillehammer affair, the death of an innocent Moroccan waiter there.
Michael Ross: That’s right.
Evan Solomon: So we know Mossad is involved in it. You’re in Mossad so they must…
Michael Ross: My unit was the unit that was responsible for the post-Munich retaliatory strikes. Ah having said that, the rules of engagement are very strict. If a person is selected as a target, the scrutiny that they undergo in terms of are they viable target, it has to be someone – you can’t just kill someone for the sake of killing them. You have to kill someone because they’re running a terrorist organization. They are really the brains behind everything that’s going on and they’re planning to conduct, you know, bus bombings and embassy bombings and you know, things where lots of people are going to get killed. And as far as what they, you know, call collateral damage is concerned, you know, innocent bystanders, if there’s going to be innocent bystanders ah they will 99.9% of the time scrub the mission. It happened to me over a few occasions during the course of my career that we were very close to reaching the point where a certain person would, you know, reach their – the end of their life and because of the potential fallout or ah chance of loss of innocent life that it was cancelled. And they’d say, you know what, we’ll get them another day in another way.
Evan Solomon: You mentioned that your unit was the unit that was in charge of the so-called vengeance killings.
Michael Ross: Right.
Evan Solomon: I use that word because the Canadian author George Jonas
Michael Ross: Right.
Evan Solomon: And of course people have seen the Spielberg movie, Munich. It’s all come into great dispute by Israeli intelligence sources. Was that an accurate portrayal of your unit?
Michael Ross: No, it was not at all. I don’t think so. The methodology, the personnel, the trade craft was all, you know, I mean you’re talking about the post ‘70s era so things were probably a little less sophisticated than they were today. But there were many things that I found to be, you know, factually inaccurate and just the whole ah way they conducted themselves in the field was wrong. I mean going to some mafia boss who passes on the names of the targets and locations is, you know, ah insane. I mean you would never operate outside of anybody that was connected to your unit.
And the unit I belonged to was almost a Mossad within the Mossad. So you know, any sort of tasking or targeting would have come from your headquarters. You wouldn’t be just thrown into the field and said, you know, dig up the local mafia boss who’s super connected and he’ll provide you with all the intelligence. I mean that’s just not the way it works.
Evan Solomon: George Jonas’s book, when you read it, is it an accurate portrayal of…
Michael Ross: I think George Jonas did an admirable job. But it was George Jonas that was doing those activities in the field. He had to rely on the person that – Avnare who was telling him the story. And –
Evan Solomon: But is that – people say Avner is a phoney.
Michael Ross: He could – he could well be.
Evan Solomon: … in that unit. Is that the way it would function. A group of people led by Avner that is freelancing revenge?
Michael Ross: No. It’s not the way it would work. And the way it was portrayed in the movie is that they were the only team and they were taking on everybody. It was several teams. You can’t – you can’t operate like that.
Evan Solomon: So Jonas got it wrong?
Michael Ross: I don’t think Jonas got it wrong because I think he ran Avner through a very, very ah strict ah you know, process of scrutiny and testing to see if he was dealing with the real guy. And Avner may have provided the right details but when it came to that he was either perhaps involved but covering things he didn’t want other people to know.
Evan Solomon: How was this regarded within your unit? Everyone must know about this. It’s the most famous book…
Michael Ross: Yeah.
Evan Solomon: How did folks in your unit who are actually there, did they think these guys, this is classic: the author got it way wrong, you know nothing, or oh my gosh, he’s on to us?
Michael Ross: No. I think his story was viewed with a certain amount of entertainment. Not anything more than that. It’s almost surreal for me because I watched Munich when it came out. But I’ve met some of the people that are portrayed in the movie from the headquarters aspect, the old guys who were then sort of running things. And I’ve met a couple of the old-timers if you’ll excuse the term, who were involved at that time. And it was very strange for me to see the people that I’d met portrayed on screen and knowing that, you know, it was not an accurate depiction of what happens.
Evan Solomon: I mean part of the reason you wrote this book is to give a different picture of Mossad. Is this the mythology of the Mossad you see in movies like Munich and the mythology that Mossad is super powerful, sending out teams of people to assassinate people. I mean what do you make of the popular image of Mossad versus what you saw?
Michael Ross: Well Mossad, first of all it’s a very small organization in comparative terms to other intelligence services. It’s not a, you know, CIA with 20,000 employees or whatever they have. It’s a small – a small unit. It has to be very focused, very task oriented. It has to have very set intelligence goals. It can’t afford to know, you know, if someone has been overthrown in East Timor or what are the ramifications of whatever in South America. It’s got to focus on the Middle East and its own security. And ah it is not this all powerful organization. I mean some of the conspiracy theories are absolutely ludicrous and it’s funny, I actually wrote a chapter which I pulled out of the book called Myths of the Mossad where I listed off all these things that I thought were nothing short of farcical in their portrayal of how the Mossad can, well things like the ah Princess Diana, for instance, that the Mossad was somehow involved with British intelligence and you know, this whole conspiracy theory. I mean an absolute ridiculous notion that even Israel would even, you know, would even take an interest in the Royal family let alone, you know, join forces with British intelligence and some other darker forces in the British government or the royalty to get rid of Princess Diana. I mean and the 9-11 conspiracies that you know, the Mossad called up all the, you know, all the Jews living in Lower Manhattan and told them not to go into work that day. I mean can you imagine how sore your finger would be. You haven’t even reached the Cohens yet in the phone book and you’re phoning everybody not to show up for work on 9-11.
I mean it’s things like that. The Mossad is very maligned. It’s ah – it’s the subject of a lot of suspicion and ah conspiracy theories. But it’s because it’s a very secret intelligence service when many are not. I mean a lot of secret intelligence services have forgotten that’s what it’s all about. They are also not fighting a war, for all intents and purposes, in this. You have to look at the Mossad like the old MI6 during World War II. It’s a wartime intelligence service. It has to get out there and be another arm of this, you know, right against terrorism and the acquisition of ah, of ah non-conventional weapons.
Evan Solomon: So you become – when you become a Mossad agent give us an idea of what kind of missions you’re on.
Michael Ross: Well the first thing I had to do is establish myself in Europe undercover.
Evan Solomon: They move you from Israel. You’ve got kids now. You’ve got a wife. Now you’re a Mossad agent and they flip you over to Europe.
Michael Ross: That’s right. And my family stayed behind at first and I disappeared for long periods of time. I had to establish my cover and build a whole new life for myself but not make it look like I’d just shown up yesterday.
Evan Solomon: What was your cover?
Michael Ross: I was a commodities broker and operated out of a safe house, which was basically my apartment where I lived, and I had an office services who did all my sort of administrative office cover. Like you know you can have someone answer the phone in the name of the company you establish and provide phone numbers and faxes and everything else you need. And that’s your sort of infrastructure. And that enables you from that point, you can be tasked with any number of missions. And the thing about us combatants is that we are the sort of spear point of the Israeli intelligence community and by way of we can do whatever mission they throw at us. And we get the really strange and weird and dangerous ones that they can’t give to other people that can’t live undercover.
Evan Solomon: So just so people understand this, basically you invent a new identity. Do you actually have to have a business? I mean do you actually do some trading? I mean how thick does the veneer go?
Michael Ross: Well you, you know what you’re talking about because if you’re sitting in a roomful of you know, Iranians, for instance, and they’re all businessmen and they start talking shop you better know what you’re talking about. But did I have to conduct any real business? No because –
Evan Solomon: What if someone said ‘hey, let us go back to your office or can you buy something for me?’ Can you buy something? Can you buy commodities to show that you’ve actually got a buyer?
Michael Ross: Sure. You can buy and sell commodities. There are logistical problems involved in that. But you can take ah international transactions to a certain point where you have, you know, open letters of credit, you’re discussing shipping terms. But you know, maybe the price wasn’t right. Maybe the goods weren’t deliverable in the specified time that whoever wanted them. And it’s a question of keeping that massaged and going and you know, you are doing in a way real business but you can’t take it any further. Like your relationships with people, you can take them so far but you can’t go any further. Because if you do, you’re opening yourself up to scrutiny.
Evan Solomon: And how does Mossad headquarters tell you who to target and how are you – how do you go from nobody – you show up in Paris. Now you’re a commodities broker. Who do you – in other words how do you recruit a source?
Michael Ross: Well, basically you work through an intermediary. Because you’re operating under such deep cover you can’t walk into the nearest Israeli embassy and say, ah you know, can I have my mission briefing and let’s get going. You’ve got to work through intermediaries that can only meet you in very secure situations so that ah you’re not detected. And really headquarters provides you with all the knowledge. They will give you the mission specifics of what is needed. And it’s really up to the combatant and in many ways his intermediary to decide how they’re going to carry out the mission.
Evan Solomon: Who’s your intermediary?
Michael Ross: He’s usually a diplomatic figure, not necessarily, who operates on official documents as most spies do. It’s rare that spies operate on non-official documents. And he has access to all the facilities – cable, traffic, diplomatic pouch, all those kinds of things that you don’t have that allow him to bring everything to you so that you can work on stuff and –
Evan Solomon: Where do you meet this person?
Michael Ross: In safe houses. It depends on what you’re doing. If you’re just meeting for a, a quick meeting, you can meet in a café. I mean there’s millions all over Paris, hotel lobbies. But if it’s something serious where you have to look over satellite imagery, you have a ton of intelligence reports to read, you have to get complicated equipment and all kinds of things, that you would do in a safe house.
Evan Solomon: Are there drops and things like that?
Michael Ross: You don’t do drops.
Evan Solomon: Give us an idea of what you do as a Mossad agent over your career and what were some of your most dangerous assignments?
Michael Ross: I think Iran for us was the most dangerous. We were the platform that basically ah – we were the first platform to enter Iran since the Iranian revolution. And the Iranians are very sophisticated. They were, I mean it used to take three hours to make a phone call from Damascus to Europe and the Iranians were already computerizing. And so we knew we were dealing with a very different mindset and a very strong counter intelligence aspect to the, to the security apparatus they have there. So that for us I think was probably the most – I would say that was the most dangerous and nerve-wracking of all the things we had to do.
Evan Solomon: And what did you do there?
Michael Ross: Well our mission was to really make the initial foray, pioneer. If ah our other combatants could or intelligence people could get into Iran first of all. It was just a complete black hole for us. We knew nothing. We didn’t know if you could rent a car, how foreigners were regarded in hotels, all kinds of things. And we also had to do the preliminary investigation into some of their nuclear ah weapons program locations. So, I was dispatched south to the Natanz area and ah had to ah you know, determine if what they were doing was what they were really doing. So it was really, it was like 1993 and nobody even was talking about Iran or nuclear weapons at that point. We were already in there trying to dig them up.
Evan Solomon: But, obviously, there was things going on with Iraq and a nuclear program there. Why would they send you and not use satellite imagery?
Michael Ross: Because one of the things that you need to do is ah you know, take soil samples. You need to- they need to get photographs of the area from the ground. And again this is one of the Mossad’s great strengths is its lack of reliance on this uber technology that the Americans do. And I think that’s really what has hurt the CIA over the last ah you know couple of decades and leading up to 9/11 especially was this reliance on if we get keyhole satellite imagery we can, you know, we can solve all our intelligence needs. And the Mossad isn’t like that at all. It’s all about being on the ground, getting up close and personal, taking pictures and giving a real picture of what’s going on in the operational environment.
Evan Solomon: In your book you describe your life. You work with a guy named Charles who basically you despise.
Michael Ross: Well, it’s a lot more complicated than that.
Evan Solomon: This is your intelligence partner and he’s a pain in the butt.
Michael Ross: He’s a pain in the butt. I have sort of ambivalent feelings towards him. I have the highest admiration possible because he’s an absolutely superb professional and probably one of the top combatants that the Mossad has ever produced. And he’s a super smart guy but also saddled with a personality that ah, you know, was very difficult to deal with. I found myself having to swallow a lot of things that I didn’t want to swallow over a long period of time because he was just such a domineering, ah you know, sort of egocentric personality. And yet he’s a very smart guy, great sense of humour but could be extremely manipulative and very difficult to work with.
Evan Solomon: Now during your time in the Mossad let’s go over some of the missions that you outline. You tried to put explosives on a boat.
Michael Ross: Yeah we actually wanted to – we actually wanted to put a marker on the boat so that somebody else could sink it but we had to get close to the boat to put the marker on it so that they wouldn’t sink the wrong ship.
Evan Solomon: Right, you had to sneak into a shipyard, put a marker on a boat that was supposedly delivering missiles.
Michael Ross: Right.
Evan Solomon: You had to take photographs of Iran’s developing nuclear program. You snuck in there. I mean when I read the book there’s a bunch of things. But none of them were intelligence operations that were – I mean they seemed very – how do I put this? – they weren’t that – nothing happened. You marked the boat. You took a few photos. They weren’t that significant.
Michael Ross: Well –
Evan Solomon: What the heck were you doing for so long? In the book, when I read it, I thought, ‘gee this guy really didn’t do much.’
Michael Ross: Well I did but I’ve only probably put 30% of what I’ve done in the book because there’s a 70% I’m not willing to – to discuss and I’m not willing to compromise other people and other operational type things that I’m, you know. So I’ve stuck to stories that I thought were personal stories and I think it’s important for people to know that it’s not like the movies. You can do all this work and do all this stuff and at the end of the day the prime minister or the director general of the Mossad or whoever says, ah, well we’re not going to do it. And that’s it. And if you can’t take disappointment then don’t do this job because there’s a lot. There’s a lot of disappointments.
Evan Solomon: But you’re saying only 30%. You only told us – because what you tell us, we don’t learn – you didn’t blow up anybody. You didn’t stop – well?
Michael Ross: There is. If you read the chapter, ah where I took the ferry, I took the ship from ah Venice to Ismir the fellow who was driving that car met a fiery blasted end somewhere either in northern Syria or southern Turkey.
Evan Solomon: Well, describe that mission.
Michael Ross: Well that was a mission where my task was to basically get on the same ship that he was on this three day voyage. Get down to his vehicle when he was not on it. Transfer a device from my vehicle to his vehicle, arm it and then yeah drive off into Turkey and head back home.
Evan Solomon: So you planted a bomb in a car.?
Michael Ross: That’s right. And he would be, you know, other people would remotely detonate the device. So I had to figure out how I was going to get down into his vehicle and we ran into a – and this is the sort of thing that happens. The car deck was completely padlocked and we didn’t know that. So I had to find a way to get – and this again goes back to how combatants have to think on their feet. I couldn’t ask anyone for help. I couldn’t get someone to give me the answer. I had to think how am I going to get down there? And I remembered I had some cold medicine. I just had like pneumonia and I had some medicine I left in my car. They were just over the counter ah sort of throat lozenge chest decongestant type things. But I told the – I got the purser to tell the captain that it was my, you know, chest medicine and if I didn’t get it I was going to expire on the voyage kind of thing. And sure enough they let me down there. But then I had the problem is somebody going to follow me to the car. And it was just lucky that the guy stood at the doorway and just kind of smiled at me and looked off into space and I was able to get to my car, detach the device and put it on his car in the space of you know, seconds flat.
Evan Solomon: Now you’re driving a BMW right?
Michael Ross: Right.
Evan Solomon: Was it a Mercedes.
Michael Ross: Mercedes, yeah.
Evan Solomon: A Mercedes. He was driving a Mercedes. But I mean that story is a really interesting story because you’ve got to basically arm – you’ve got to plant a bomb in a guy’s car to kill him, but who gives you the bomb?
Michael Ross: The, you get the bomb before you leave. I mean it was attached to my – I had it attached to my car with technicians that flew out and they showed me everything. How to, you know, detach it, how to arm it, how to do everything.
Evan Solomon: Tell us. What kind of bomb?
Michael Ross: Well it’s – it’s a small device. You don’t need a whole lot of – it’s a shaped charge that goes up, you know, into the – it’s a lot like what the Americans are experiencing in, in ah Iraq right now with the explosively formed projectiles. That’s basically what it is. A small device that will send a directed blast through him. You don’t want to send, you know, this vast explosion all over the place. And ah yeah, how to attach it magnetically to his, his vehicle and basically –
Evan Solomon: What’s it made of? Is it, I mean give us an idea what it’s like to kill someone.
Michael Ross: It’s like a, ah, I’m not – I don’t know the exact technicalities of it because it wasn’t my job. But it’s a, sort of hardened shaped charge with a soft – softer surface like copper or something on the top and an arming device. And some other components attached to it for, I guess for the remote detonation capability. And yeah it’s just a question of really sticking it into the right place under the driver’s seat and finding the right kind of place to attach it and ah setting it off remotely through whatever means – aerial drone or however they do it.
Evan Solomon: How does that make you feel to plant a bomb in a guy’s car?
Michael Ross: Well, you understand that the person that’s getting the bomb in his car is a guy that ah, you know, he’s ah, he’s someone that’s got a lot of blood on his hands.
Evan Solomon: Who was it?
Michael Ross: I don’t know. It was ah, I don’t even know if he was a senior – I believe he was a senior Hezbollah guy but he could have also been ah you know, Palestinian Islamic jihad. He could have been Hamas. He could have been - anybody that hangs out in Damascus there’s a whole, you know, group of terrorist organizations that are headquartered there.
Evan Solomon: So they don’t even tell you who you’re killing.
Michael Ross: No. And it’s not my job to know. Because if I do know then that’s, you know, I don’t need to know.
Evan Solomon: So you’re in a cell.
Michael Ross: Totally. Oh I’m totally compartmentalized. I don’t go – I don’t know the names of the people that I’m meeting, my headquarters intermediaries. I know them by their first name. I don’t know if they’re married, I don’t know if they have kids, I don’t know where they live. I don’t now anything. Because if I’m caught then I can just, you know, I can blurt it all out and give all the secrets away and that wasn’t my job.
Evan Solomon: Obviously there’s another mission that you go on in South Africa where you end up capturing two people and then you describe how you beat them with a rubber hose.
Michael Ross: Yeah, yeah. That’s exactly what happened.
Evan Solomon: What happened?
Michael Ross: That was later in my career. I wasn’t a combatant at that time. I was a case officer working in Africa and Southeast Asia at the time. And yeah the Iranian revolutionary guards, the same guys that are in Iraq now helping out with the insurgency, they are a global unit. They’re everywhere. And they’re down in South Africa looking for arms and equipment through the Dinel company, which is a huge South African arms manufacturer. And we had to send the message that they’re not welcome down there. And I actually stole a plan that I’d heard from the CIA how they’d used against the Iranians worldwide, an operation called Operation Shock Wave. And I stole it by getting a local asset and myself to pretend that we were part of the South African security establishment, the national intelligence organization I think they’re called. And yeah, putting the fear of God in these guys so that they know that they’re not welcome down there.
Evan Solomon: You pose as South African police officers. You take these guys to a warehouse and then you beat them.
Michael Ross: Yeah, pretty much. I mean we – it’s a little more subtle than that but it’s also the end result was having to send a clear message that ah we mean business.
Evan Solomon: So what’s it like? You taking a rubber hose, two guys are tied to a chair. You’re threatening to kill them. You’ve got your gun to their head and you are whipping them, you’re torturing them.
Michael Ross: Yeah, I’m beating the crap out of them and it was probably…
Evan Solomon: Beating the crap out is torture right?
Michael Ross: It is because – well it is and it isn’t. I mean, I probably could have used enough threat of violence to, to scare them. Ah but ah, yeah I…
Evan Solomon: But you wrote about it. I’m asking because under every convention on paper, and I don’t want to be too high and mighty here but –
Michael Ross: No, I know.
Evan Solomon: That qualifies. When you tie people up, you threaten to kill them, you beat them with a rubber hose that qualifies as torture. So raising the question: is torture a method that the mossad uses…
Michael Ross: No.
Evan Solomon: …in the field because you are not reprimanded for that?
Michael Ross: No this was a totally almost unilateral operation. I was really given the mission guidelines of what to do, the operational order was to – but I definitely strayed very far from what I was –
Evan Solomon: There’s no accountability and you can stray…
Michael Ross: Yeah, no, no.
Evan Solomon: …by putting it in the book you raise the question that Mossad will let its guys stray and torture people in the field. So what does that do to the image of Mossad?
Michael Ross: I don’t think that’s the message at all and I think anybody that does, ah take their work a little too far is probably ah, you know, would not last long in the job. Ah – the circumstances of that particular operation were so unique that I doubt there’s ever been anything similar to it. You know, foiling the acquisition of ah, of non-conventional weapons or even conventional weapons as we were doing in this case, usually involves a lot more subtle means. It’s either recruiting the people that are trying to acquire the technologies involved or it means preventing them from getting the technology by simply in many cases going to law enforcement of a certain country and saying, hey, these Iranians are trying to buy centrifuges.
Evan Solomon: I understand that, but the point is that you know, you’re giving us a picture no the ground of what really happens.
Michael Ross: Yeah. It’s dirty and it’s ugly and it’s messy and if people don’t understand that that’s how an intelligence covert war is fought, then they really are deluding themselves.
Evan Solomon: Well this is the key question. The whole debate about the CIA, the black sites, the use of torture - here you are, a guy that says, ‘I’m in the Mossad, i did it too, it’s dirty, it’s business, wake up, world, the Geneva convention doesn’t apply. Question: does it apply in the dark world of spies?
Michael Ross: It does. Personally I’m against the rendition process, the extraordinary renditions. I got personally screwed by it in my career by the Americans. The rendered three people we’d captured to Egypt without – we gave them to them on a plate and they rendered them without even consulting with us. And I mean it was a huge ah source of contention.
Evan Solomon: …bigger issue…
Michael Ross: But the bigger issue –
Evan Solomon: What is allowed under not the stated rules of engagement but as you say it’s a dirty war and people are deluding themselves if they don’t think that’s going on.
Michael Ross: They do. They do. And it is a dirty war and it is a war. I mean the difference is we don’t walk around with guns and we don’t, you know, have an enemy that wears a uniform that we shoot at or not a uniform and we shoot at. We are, you know, the absolute underworld as far as fighting the covert war. And it is ugly. I mean people get killed and people, you know, resort to violence. And ah we’re human beings and we have moments where yeah, it’s not. But, but a policy of torture is not an integral part of the intelligence collection (overlap)..
Evan Solomon: But may be a policy of torture but if in the field people get killed, people kill, people beat up people, people torture people, if this is part of the world, you know, the classic question and you read the book is if that’s what’s going on preserve the state of Israel and whatever other state…
Michael Ross: Oh yeah everybody is employing the same thing.
Evan Solomon: Okay. What separates you from them? How do you start drawing the line?
Michael Ross: Well I, I’ll tell you what separates us from them. If I was sitting in that chair down in a warehouse in South Africa and there were two Iranian IRTC guys –
Evan Solomon: That is the question, what separates you from them?
Michael Ross: Well you know, if I was – if I was sitting in that chair in that warehouse in South Africa I wouldn’t be sitting in this chair that I’m sitting now. Those two guys, yeah they got a few welts and bruises and they probably got the absolute crap scared out of them – At the end of the day we took them to the airport and put them on, you know, a plane home. And they –
Evan Solomon: Let me start again. So what is the difference then?
Michael Ross: The difference is that…
Evan Solomon: You guys are going to torture, you guys are going to beat up, what is the difference between you and them?
Michael Ross: The difference between us and them is that what I did was extremely extreme, if I can say such a thing. But ah for them it’s a routine happen- it’s a routine occurrence. We don’t – that was – like I said that was such a unique and unusual circumstance and that’s why I put it in the book because it’s not a routine thing. It’s not – it’s an extreme illustration of what happens under those circumstances. And again it was a personal thing that I probably took too far. For them it’s a matter of policy. I mean if I’d been caught by two members of the IRGC I mean I can’t even imagine the sort of things they’ve undergone. We’ve all heard what happened to Zara Kazemi. And she was a Canadian journalist who was in prison in Iran. And yet the way she was treated was absolutely, you know, unbelievable. What makes me different from them? That I knew when to stop, that I knew that what I was doing was a mission. That I knew that ah I could not take it beyond a certain point and it was theatre. It was painful theatre but it was theatre nonetheless.
Evan Solomon: But all propaganda is theatre. That’s why I’m just going to give you the arguments here.
Michael Ross: Okay.
Evan Solomon: Some would say when you behead someone and put it on the internet that’s a form of theatre to scare people. I mean the question is I mean are we really at the point where we’re drawing a line. It’s okay to tie someone, stick a gun in their mouth, beat them with a rubber hose. But not actually to break their bone or not, so where do you draw the line?
Michael Ross: Yeah. Well you draw the line at not going beyond, you know, a situation like that. That’s about as far as you can take it or as far as you’d ever want to take it. And yeah, I mean this whole covert war and this war on terror, if you want to call it that, is a really dirty war. I mean this is not a gentleman’s game like it was in the Cold War days when ah you know, you recruited a spy, you showed up with a suitcase full of money and an enticement of coming to the West. And you know, did a recruitment and oh you got caught and you were expelled because you were on diplomatic papers. And there was, you know, big talks between the foreign ministries of such countries and whatever. It’s not like that anymore. It’s really dirty down there. And like all things that get taken to those ah you know, types of environments and circumstance, you know, nasty things happen.
Evan Solomon: But, Michael, I’m just telling you as a reader, if on one hand you say I’m only telling you 30% of what happened…
Michael Ross: Right.
Evan Solomon: And in the 30% you admit that this happened, then you say, hey that was the extreme even though you know that the Mossad will actually assassinate people it does make the reader think, hey, it’s open season out there. That intelligence services, in this case the Mossad, from a guy who says I was in the Mossad says basically the ends justify the means and anything goes.
Michael Ross: I don’t think anybody in the Mossad says that. I think – I can’t speak for any other intelligence service who, by the way, you know, the Americans ah, the CIA special activities division is launching, you know, hellfire missiles from drones at suspected terrorist vehicles. The British are, you know, out-sourcing to the SAS all their sort of dirty work. I don’t think anybody – it’s going to sound really strange to you but the most moral, ah sort of straight shooting people I ever met were the people that I worked with in the Mossad. In other words, people who believe in due process, people who believe in the rule of law, people who believe in democracy, but yes have been given these (overlap) really dirty jobs that sometimes have to be done and –
Evan Solomon: This is the Oliver North, I mean I’m just saying this is where the logic and again I’m not trying to be high and mighty because you’re in the spy game. But you can’t have it both ways. You can’t say I believe in democracy, due process and at the same time say actually I planted a bomb in a car, I beat people up in chairs. you know, I mean, hey, I’m really a moral guy but I do immoral things.
Michael Ross: Yeah. No I – look it does it is a very hard pos-
Evan Solomon: How do you square the circle?
Michael Ross: It is a very hard position to explain because it’s again one of those things that unless you’re actually in the, in the depths of it that you don’t really get a grasp of what you’re saying. But it’s not – it’s not a case that people don’t believe in democracy and the rule of law and due process. It’s just that the circumstances do not always lend to the fact that you can arrest someone and put him on trial. It doesn’t allow for it just like it doesn’t on the battlefield. Soldiers don’t go into battlefields and arrest the enemy and try them, right? A lot of these people –
Evan Solomon: I understand that, again although what I’m trying to get at here is it fair then to say that the intelligence community, the Mossad specifically since you worked there…
Michael Ross: Right.
Evan Solomon: …essentially says in the name of protecting democracy we will engage in virtually anything, any means to justify the end? Just so, in other words am I naïve to think, oh no, they’re really actually doing it all right. they follow Geneva Conventions and they’re good moral people or it’s a dirty war. I have to accept that they’re doing immoral things for the larger good.
Michael Ross: But the premise that they’re doing – you’re saying they’re doing to protect democracy. What I would say – I would turn that around and say what they’re doing is protecting people’s lives. Because what we’re talking about here is a) the survival of the state of Israel and b) protecting innocent civilians from terrorist attacks. Now if a guy gets blown up because he’s planning any number of terrorist attacks which are going to be conducted against innocent civilians, then yeah I will plant the bomb today and I’ll plant it tomorrow because I’m not allow- I’m not going to stand by and allow this kind of thing to happen to people. And you know, the number one task of the Mossad isn’t to kill terrorists and it’s not even to ah you know, beat up Iranians. It’s to prevent the first strike capability that will annihilate the state of Israel. And whatever we have to do to protect ourselves and defend ourselves in this, you know, absolute psycho cul de sac in which we reside, we’ve got to do it. And you can’t – I mean we live in such a dirty neighbourhood in Israel. It’s a dirty, ugly neighbourhood and we’re not living next to Switzerland and we’re not living next to France and it’s not a gentleman’s game. The forces out there are really you know, the kinds of forces that you can’t go after, you know, using the sort of gentlemanly rules that people think we should.
Evan Solomon: But I guess, I guess the key, I guess the question and I’m going to put this argument. Some – the great critique of the state of Israel is that it has violated the human rights of people like Palestinians and many other people in that area all in the name of its own security. That in the name of security, sorry, innocent civilians will die. Sorry, we’ve got to do it to protect us from terrorism and that argument has become so blunt that it has allowed Israel to excuse itself from serious human rights abuses…how do you as someone who fought respond to that critique?
Michael Ross: Well I think there’s a huge double standard at play here because I mean anyone from Israel, and having lived there for a long period of time, you get the sense of how much you are singled out by every multilateral forum, every country, every whatever, seems to put you in a different ah you know, seems to judge you by a different set of standards than they do other countries. Having said that, I don’t think you need to run around saying, well you know, we’re not Saudi Arabia. We don’t, you know, cut people’s heads off and we don’t – we let women drive cars and all the rest of it. I do think there is a sense of singling out and people are losing a sense of historical perception as far as the Jewish people are concerned. It’s an existential threat. Ah it’s not, you know, like Canada losing New Brunswick. It’s the first - the first nuclear weapon that hits Israel is the last. I mean we’re done for. And you know, when it’s put in those terms and you realize what an existential threat that is then you know, you’re – you have to get out there and do things that sometimes are not going to make you, you know, the top of the pops with the guys who run Human Rights Watch or whatever. Having said that I think everything – one message I carry throughout my book is a moral message. That a lot of things about innocent bystanders getting killed, ah rules of engagement when I was in the military, discussions with my platoon commander about, you know, what are the moral ramifications of shooting at someone that’s not carrying a weapon even though it looks like they’re, you know, doing something. All these kinds of things where something that were really a tradition in the Jewish people that were carried down. And I can’t excuse the excesses. I mean I put that chapter in my book because I wanted people to see, guess what, I’m a human being. I had a moment of extreme weakness, a moment of anger, frustration that welled up and came out in an explosive thing. But that’s not the Mossad, that’s me. That’s Michael Ross. That’s not the Mossad. And you know, you can judge the Mossad and the CIA and the British and everyone else who does these kinds of things on a daily basis 365 days of the year they’re out there fighting this war, you know, however you want. But I take responsibility for what I did.
Evan Solomon: Do you feel that there’s a righteousness in judging what Israel does in terms of what happens to the Palestinian people or I mean are people right to say, hey those are abuses that have to be documented. We can’t allow people like you no matter how frustrated you are, to go around beating people if it’s against the law. We’ve got to punish it.
Michael Ross: You know, who’s one of – who’s like one of the top human rights watchdogs in Israel is Beth Salam which is an Israeli organization. I mean that says a lot about Israel. And you know, I am very much ah, I’m not a sort of right wing, let’s build settlements, let’s kick all the Arabs out. I mean it’s unrealistic to think that way. And many of my colleagues, the most I think left wing views I met were people in the Israel security agency, the domestic security service who deal with the Palestinians every day because they see up close and personal how futile this whole situation becomes and how we have to reach some sort of agreement or settlement or situation where at least we can both co-function. But the Palestinians are as big a victim of their Arab neighbours and the people that have been supporting them all these years and their own leaders. I mean Yasser Arafat, I mean in my book I stipulate how he’s giving – he’s talking Oslo with Dennis Ross on one hand. On the other he’s dispatching Azi Jebali to tell his police officers to shoot Israelis in their cars. I mean how do you function in that sort of situation? How do you, you know, the guidelines for, for ah human rights kind of situations are, are you know, impossible to comprehend. So you know, I don’t pretend to have any answers to the conflict. To be honest, I’m sick of the whole conflict. Every time I hear someone say cycle of violence I want to, you know, slap them on the side of the head because it’s so – it – because it’s just become such a, you know, everybody tosses this phrase around. This conflict has become a kind of ah entity unto itself that everybody just, you know, runs around with all these hackneyed phrases about, you know, cycle of violence, the peace process and all of that stuff.
None of that stuff is really – it’s not relevant, it’s not viable until things on the ground will reach a situation where both ah societies, and particularly – I mean the average age of the Palestinian in Gaza is 15 years old. Do you think those guys are into nation building? They’re not. I have a 16-year-old son. The last – he’s a nice kid, he’s bright and he’s very capable about a lot of things but he’s not into nation building. And this is what you’re dealing with. This is the reality on the ground. And the education system in, in you know, in the Arab world is so anti-Semitic and so inciteful and this poisonous atmosphere just pervades the whole region. And it infects everybody after a while. And keeping your head up and keeping, you know, trying to remain moral and trying to adhere to the rule of law and democracy and all those things, it’s a struggle in that part of the world. It’s not here but it’s a struggle in that part of the world.
Evan Solomon: Tell us about something about Mossad that we don’t know, I mean in terms of the kind of existential threat, as…who are the most dangerous neighbours now for Israel?
Michael Ross: Well Iran definitely is number one. I mean it’s no secret that Iran is playing this game of both trying to acquire weapons of mass destruction and with a state policy aim of wiping Israel off the map. But at the same time using their ah agents and proxies on a worldwide basis to ah you know, project themselves as a new regional superpower. I mean I’m predicting that within two, three years Lebanon will be completely ruled from stem to stern by Hezbollah or some sort of Hezbollah type political entity.
Evan Solomon: Hezbollah being the group that many say is controlled by Iran…
Michael Ross: I don’t – I would – My contention is that it’s not and this is from my own –
Evan Solomon: They’ve broken…
Michael Ross: -inside knowledge. No is that they are really in many ways just an arm of the Iranian intelligence security ah apparatus or services, as it will. There’s no distinction between the two. The guy who runs Hezbollah and his Iranian sort of masters, they’re all the same people. They’re all –
Evan Solomon: Nasrallah?
Michael Ross: Nasrallah is more of a political spiritual type figure. But Imad Monia who is the ultimate arch terrorist and in my view makes Osama bin Laden look quite amateurish, is the real brains behind the organization. He lives in Tehran and he lives – and he travels to Damascus and he coordinates everything that has to do with Hezbollah, IRGC, insurgency groups, ah missiles, oversees procurement operations, reconnaissance and terrorist attack planning. I mean he’s the nexus point of all this activity.
Evan Solomon: So your career, let’s just go back, so you get fed up and you take a desk job. You end up becoming a liaison officer between the CIA and the Mossad. There’s all sorts of myths that they work hand in hand and of course there’s the case of the Mossad supposedly spying on the u.s. How close to the CIA does Mossad work?
Michael Ross: They have a very intimate relationship and ah it’s a funny – I give a sort of ah example of a metaphor of the working relationship where ah the Mossad’s liaison with the ah CIA works through a secured telephone ah through their embassy, their station in Tel Aviv. This is when we’re not having face to face meetings and a secure telephone system. And the secure telephone system is – belongs to the Americans. They gave it to the Mossad. The Mossad put it in a soundproof box with a lock on it in a soundproof room and the Americans put holographic stickers on the – on the telephone itself so no one in the Mossad could take it apart and see what the guts are inside to sort of see what their technology is. And so the relationship is extremely intimate. The sharing and the joint operations and the ah just general exchange of intelligence is phenomenally intimate. But there’s a level of distrust between two organizations that really hampers and in my day really cut the legs out from under us in the counter terrorism field.
Evan Solomon: Obviously 9-/11 happened. You were just leaving the mossad. You decided to leave. Why didn’t you see it coming as someone who worked in the intelligence field for years?
Michael Ross: None of us did. I mean there’s always – they’re always talking about planning attacks. There’s always operatives around the world that are picking up phones and using cell phones and calling other people that we know. And we’re picking up all kinds of talk about – and they use word codes like for a wedding is a, is a, a terrorist attack. But they don’t say where, they don’t say when. .They don’t give the details and we’re trying to figure all this out. And yeah, it came out of nowhere. I mean we didn’t have a damn clue what was going on as far as 9-11 was concerned.
Evan Solomon: Why?
Michael Ross: Because we – they –
Evan Solomon: … I mean now it comes out that the CIA knew but didn’t share their intelligence within their own organization. That it was a failure of intelligence not just a point of ignorance.
Michael Ross: No there’s a number of factors. It’s never one thing. But part of it was the dysfunctional relationship that they maintain with the FBI who had pieces of the puzzle. They had pieces. They didn’t share, they didn’t talk to each other. They hated each other’s guts. ah could have potentially put something together that would have given them at least an indication, right?
Evan Solomon: Why, I mean so you decide to leave. I thought nobody leaves this intelligence world, you know.
Michael Ross: They do all the time.
Evan Solomon: So people walk out. Now it can’t be – you can’t be a good Mossad veteran if you’re writing a book about it.
Michael Ross: Well you can be a good one but not a popular one I guess.
Evan Solomon: Why did you do it?
Michael Ross: Um I did it because I came to the realization of the fact that ah if I wanted to enter the real world, the normal world that I hadn’t been living in for the majority of my adult life at any rate, that I had to bring people into my world. And this was really a vehicle for allowing people to get an insight into what it really means to live and exist in this kind of world and how the rules are very different from the real world that we live in. And also the stresses, stains and human side of what it means to – you know, it’s not Hollywood, it’s real life and there’s a lot of ah –
Evan Solomon: You got divorced.
Michael Ross: I got divorced. Ah yeah, ah –
Evan Solomon: You left your kids behind.
Michael Ross: I’ve got kids in Israel that I don’t see as often as I’d like, that I have to make, you know, these long distance visits to see and they have to travel far and all that logistical thing. And yeah –
Evan Solomon: Life as a spy – good, exciting, boring, dangerous? how would you describe it?
Michael Ross: It’s ah a bit of everything that you just mentioned. I mean it’s ah – it can be intensely rewarding at moments and it can be – the disillusionment can be devastating as it was for me when I was standing in my hotel room watching the second plane hit the tower on September 11th. It was just, you know, what have I been doing for the last whatever period of my life? If this is what happens, if this is what they do to us then you know, what happens? And it was very, it was a very demoralizing moment for me.
Evan Solomon: But why did you – is it an act of betrayal of your colleagues to write a book about the Mossad?
Michael Ross: I’ve tried to be as circumspect as possible without ruining the flavour of the book and making it something very bland and boring. I’ve tried to keep it, you know, as exciting enough giving a taste of the real McCoy without having to expose people, names and you know, compromise ongoing operations and especially more importantly, the means in which we obtain things.
Evan Solomon: What has Mossad said to you?
Michael Ross: They haven’t said anything. Ah the Mossad is very different from the CIA in that someone can leave the CIA and do, you know, the same sort of work I did and say, guys, I’m going to write a book. And they’ll say, okay, well maybe we’ll take a look at it, maybe we won’t. But you know, they’re very, they have a very, sort of almost blasé attitude about it.
Evan Solomon: Well Robert Baer, the famous CIA agent, wrote a book called see no evil. When you read his book it’s all blacked out…passages because the CIA said you can’t say that. That stuff – but in your book there’s nothing blacked out. Why didn’t you run it by your Mossad masters?
Michael Ross: Interestingly enough the redacted sections of Baer’s book are really the kind of – there are things that relate to, you know the CIA’s relationship with things like Saudi Arabia and what not. They’re not – the exciting part of Baer’s book and trade craft and his training and his work is very similar to mine. And I’m quite surprised when I read it that they signed off on a lot of what – plus the target that he was working were very similar to the targets that I was working.
Evan Solomon: Why didn’t you run it by Mossad?
Michael Ross: Because I know they don’t have the same culture of openness that the CIA does. In other words ah there’s no way in – there’s no way they would have allowed me to write a book about my experiences. And so it as left to me to write an unauthorized ah you know, version of events. And I’ve opened myself to – the thing with Behr is that the CIA will say, okay, well we’ve read your book so it’s okay. The Mossad hasn’t read my book. I don’t know how they’ll react. It can be very negative.
Evan Solomon: But your wife still lives in Israel?
Michael Ross: She does.
Evan Solomon: Your former wife. Your kids live there. They are in the military, one of them is anyway. I mean how could you – isn’t this the ultimate act of betrayal?
Michael Ross: I think it – it’s only betrayal if you take – if I’d taken, you know, everything that I know and I’d shown up at say, you know, the Iranian embassy and spilled my guts and told them, you know, everything I know for whatever purpose. That to me is a betrayal. I think if you – when you read the book you understand that I’ve been pretty circumspect and kept the story personal, not –
Evan Solomon: But that’s your definition.
Michael Ross: That’s my definition.
Evan Solomon: Their definition is one word is one word too much.
Michael Ross: probably yeah. And this is the, this is the price that every intelligence professional pays when he leaves. And there’s been numerous books written –
Evan Solomon: Why do you do it? In other words why can’t you just retire, you come home to your new life in Canada. Michael, wipe your hands, you did a good job. Your kids still live there. Why do you have to now come out and I mean you leave one country, you work for another country? You’ve been a spy, you’ve deceived people. Now why this? What motivates a guy like you to do that?
Michael Ross: Well like I said, in order to enter, you know, the real world or a world I want to enter, I have to let people into my world. And if I want to write about terrorism and I want to write about Middle East affairs and I want to write about, you know, ah what it’s like – what goes on behind the scenes and a lot of the geopolitics of the region, um you’ve got to show up with some credentials. And if you don’t have those credentials you’re not going to be taken seriously. And I have to say, one of the things that I really noticed after 9-11 and one of the motivating factors was the absolute dearth of people who really know what’s going on and who know what’s going on behind the scenes.
Evan Solomon: Was it part of the psychology? When I met you, I’ll be honest with you, you were going through what looked to me like a mid-life crisis.
Michael Ross: Oh I’m sure I was.
Evan Solomon: You were falling to pieces.
Michael Ross: Oh it was a really bad period of my life.
Evan Solomon: You were all over. You had different – I’ll be honest. I met you, you had a different name.
Michael Ross: Right.
Evan Solomon: You were – your story flipped all over. It was hard to trust you.
Michael Ross: Oh I’m sure it was. I mean I’d come – I’d come fresh out of this world where ah you know, the rules are very different from the real world. I’d just come through a divorce. And really in many respects had, you know, almost a breakdown of sorts. I mean I’ll say it flat out. I mean there’s no doubt that it was, I was stressed out beyond ah you know, beyond words. And didn’t know what I was going – where I was going, what I was doing, what I was going to do with myself. I just knew I didn’t want to be where I was. I knew –
Evan Solomon: A spy.
Michael Ross: Yeah. If I’d stayed in Israel I would have been really – I probably would have reached the point where I would have been looking at my glock as something to maybe chew on at some point and not –
Evan Solomon: You thought of committing suicide.
Michael Ross: I didn’t think about it but I knew – there’s a point where you could – I could see where I could reach that point. I don’t want to say I was at that point because I wasn’t.
Evan Solomon: But you were cracking up.
Michael Ross: I was far from it. I was cracking up for sure.
Evan Solomon: Why should i trust you? you’re a hard guy to verify.
Michael Ross: Impossible.
Evan Solomon: You could be the biggest liar I’ve ever met.
Michael Ross: I could be.
Evan Solomon: You’re a professional liar.
Michael Ross: I could be and I actually, when I published the book I said to – I explained all this to my publishers and I said, you know, this is, this is one of the risks you guys are taking and they knew it. And I said, you know, we could maybe entitle my book A Million Little Pieces of Mossad Code. And we all laughed about it. But I said, you know, this is who I am. I can’t produce a membership card and –
Evan Solomon: What can you produce?
Michael Ross: If you read the book –
Evan Solomon: What can you make me –
Michael Ross: Easily. If you read the book carefully (overlap)
Evan Solomon: That says trust me, I am a member of the Mossad.
Michael Ross: I was a member of the Mossad. If you, if you read my book carefully there’s enough people I met with that are now public figures or semi-public figures or even retired. Ah there’s enough incidents, places, ah props as it were, that would ah, you know, very easily with a phone call you could determine. Some of the people I met in the FBI are no longer – Dale Watson was a former counter terrorism czar at the National Security Division of the FBI. I met him, you know, a couple of times. I took him to MEI Alonz’ office, the head of the NSA. I took him out for dinner. The guys who worked out of the embassy station. I mean there’s a lot of –
Evan Solomon: Do you have doc- do you have…my retiree card from the mossad? Do you have a number?
Michael Ross: I have a – the last thing I have is an invitation from the director general’s office to my retirement ceremony. And I have my last sort of pay slip which you know, sort of says what it says on it about my – but those aren’t things I’m like flashing around and I don’t have any intention of flashing around. They’re personal mementos. My whole thing is if you buy – if you read the book and you think it’s all a bunch of tripe then you know, there’s nothing really I can say or do to convince you otherwise. You have to draw your own conclusion. (overlap) It’s very tough. And but it’s beyond my control. And I can’t control things that are not within my control.
Evan Solomon: So now you’re an ex-Mossad agent, your kids live in Israel. what are you doing in the middle of Victoria in one of the quietest streets where so little from the international world is going on.
Michael Ross: Well it’s –
Evan Solomon: How did you end up back here?
Michael Ross: Well I, you know, I’d reached that point where I was, you know, getting near the end of my rope. I was so desperately unhappy. I knew I needed to come home. And it’s a funny thing to say because it hadn’t been my home for, you know, a long period of my life. But it was something that I’d always kind of held throughout all my career as somewhere precious that, that I felt safe and secure and felt that I could sort of rehabilitate myself, as it were, as a person. And ah that’s what happened and it was the right thing to do.
Evan Solomon: Do you still consider yourself an Israeli?
Michael Ross: I’m not because I don’t live there and I don’t – I don’t travel with an Israeli passport and I don’t, you know, I’m a Canadian – I’m a Canadian citizen through and through. And I have to admit coming back here has really established a lot of my sense of identity as a Canadian and it was a hard road. It didn’t happen overnight. I mean it took a few years but – It’s become very important to me. But I do consider myself Jewish. I mean that’s nothing I would ever be – you cannot wake up one morning and say, well I’m not Jewish anymore.
Evan Solomon: So you’re still a Jew.
Michael Ross: Of course I am and I always will be and my sense of identification will never diminish on that.
Evan Solomon: Do you ever feel like you’d like to go back to Israel?
Michael Ross: I do. I do have moments where I really would like to go back. But ah I just kind of want to see which way the wind blows before I make that decision. And ah –
Evan Solomon: Can I ask you a personal question. Do you take medication to calm down?
Michael Ross: No. No.
Evan Solomon: You’re not a guy that has post-traumatic stress?
Michael Ross: I’m not an addictive personality type. And I don’t ah I don’t take any medication and I don’t need to – I shouldn’t say I don’t need to – nobody should say that. But I haven’t required any sort of counselling or anything like that.
Evan Solomon: Is it weird to talk about your life now to open your kimono, as it were, because you spent 20 years trying to hide it and now I can just ask you anything.
Michael Ross: Well not anything. But it’s, the thing that’s difficult for me I think when people question the veracity of my story or my credentials is that, man, I sure am paying a big huge personal price for being, you know, some guy with a Walter Mitty complex. I mean it just, you know, it seems bizarre to me that people don’t realize the sort of price I’ve had to pay to sit here today where I am. It’s been a long hard road. And ah yeah not something that just, you know, happened overnight.
Evan Solomon: Now that you’ve admitted that you were a Mossad agent do you have fear for your life or your safety at all?
Michael Ross: Um there are moments where I have some anxieties. I’m obviously taking counter measures that are both visible and not visible ah to protect my family and my identity and ah –
Evan Solomon: Who are you scared of Mossad or –
Michael Ross: No. I have nothing to fear from the Mossad except, you know, character assassination is about the worst thing that I could expect from them in terms of a reaction, although my gut instinct is that they won’t react because that’s the best reaction in these instances, or deny who or whatever that I exist or whatever you want to call it. Um yeah, I ah, it is a risk. But I live also in an environment which I have a fair amount of control over where I am. For instance if I was in the middle of a big urban centre with ah, you know, the possibility of encountering hostile forces that would be something else. But I’ve kind of put myself in an environment which I have a certain amount of control over. But it is something I’m conscious of, yeah. I’m not paranoid.
Evan Solomon: Do you consult now with CSIS, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service? You obviously would have a lot of information for them. why haven’t – why haven’t they recruited you?
Michael Ross: Um that’s a good question. I – I am in touch with someone who is a former ah member. We’ve done a radio program together and ah and what not. But we don’t have a working relationship as it were. I think again they’re looking at me as someone that’s probably connected to the world of journalism and someone that they need to avoid. Ah if it was a question of them coming to me and saying, you know, well what can you tell us, ah I doubt there’s very much I could tell them. I’ve been out of it for you know, six years now. Ah they’re pretty – a pretty clever outfit. They’re still – they have a great relationship – liaison relationship with the Mossad.
Evan Solomon: Does CSIS work closely with Mossad?
Michael Ross: Yes it does. It has a representative that meets with them just about on a daily basis. And ah that’s the whole key.
Evan Solomon: CSIS and Mossad work side by side?
Michael Ross: Not side by side but they do have a liaison relationship which is a very healthy, fruitful relationship. They share, they share. You have to today. No intelligence service can go alone. Nobody can fight this battle on their own. Everybody needs- there’s more and more joint operations. There’s more and more sharing. There’s much more openness.
Evan Solomon: … were there any other Canadians in Mossad? Are you the only Canadian born guy that becomes….
Michael Ross: I’m the only one that I, I met, and pretty rare.
Evan Solomon: Were there any other people that came and converted like you?
Michael Ross: No. I’m the only converted – my colleagues didn’t know I converted. I never told them. They never asked and they just assumed obviously. It wasn’t something I, I declared out loud because I didn’t want to be thought of as being sort of different from everybody else. So –
Evan Solomon: Can anyone ever trust you? I mean…anyone know you?
Michael Ross: Well I hope so because, you know, I have ambitions about writing and journalism and – Well not so much a public figure but I would like to enter that world because it interests the hell out of me and it’s not that huge a, a difference from what I was doing in the past in many respects. I mean it’s being on top of things and knowing what’s going on in the world and, and seeing things before they happen. And ah yeah I volunteered. I have no regrets. I volunteered for everything I did. I never asked how much money I was going to get out of it. I never asked what was in it for me. I volunteered because I have an innate deep sense of service. And if people don’t, you know, don’t buy that what I’m writing in the book is true that’s totally beyond my control. I cannot – I cannot force someone to believe what I’m saying. And I know that, you know, journalists are – it’s their job – due diligence to ask the hard questions. And you know, I’m prepared to take the hard questions and give the hard answers.
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