Israel is operating a spy in a very senior position in an Arab state without knowing that he is providing invaluable intelligence to Israel, the Yedioth Ahronoth daily said in a front page report published on Thursday.
The spy, who has been code-named Torpedo by Israeli intelligence, thinks he works in a civilian capacity, and has unknowingly been transmitting information to Israel for the last five years, it said.
The newspaper released an excerpt of a longer piece that will be published over the weekend, after Unit 504 of Military Intelligence obtained the approval of Israel’s military censor.
“In the course of gathering the information, I discovered that he had an acquaintance, a distant relative, who lives abroad and who in the past had contact with a certain industry,” Torpedo’s handler, whom the paper identified as D., told Yedioth.
D. made contact with the acquaintance, who eventually brought up Torpedo’s name and mentioned how well-connected he was. D. said he would give it some thought and get back to the acquaintance.
“Here too, my aim was to convey the sense to him that I wasn’t enthusiastic, wasn’t in a hurry. I wanted to create expectations from him so that he would check his emails every day and wait for my reply,” D said.
That was to be followed by the initial contact with Torpedo at a fancy office building on a lake, though the paper did not say in which country.
