Volunteer by Michael Ross

How does a Canadian end up working for Mossad?

Well, you start by traveling, and settling down in Israel for a while, and falling in love with an Israeli woman. If you convert and become a citizen to marry her, and distinguish yourself in the right ways during your stint in the army, you might get a phone call. And if you pass the battery of tests, you might become an apprentice. And then…

It turns out to be rather difficult to make a story about spying exciting. A successful spy gets information and nobody finds out. And even when he manages to arrange for some kind of violent action, sometimes the game gets called off for worries about political fallout.

I assume that Ross ran the book by his former employers before trying to publish it. It is therefore impossible to say whether the picture is quite accurate, and whether it was sanitized. I suspect it wasn’t sanitized very much. And he’s pretty hard on himself when describing his efforts to scare a couple of Iranian agents out of South Africa.

Iran is very much on the scene throughout the book, and you get an agent’s eye view of what they’ve been doing—not revelations to anybody who’s been paying attention, though.

For several years he was liaison to US intelligence agencies, and his assessment of the CIA and FBI is harsh. The CIA is solidly careerist, home-based, and insular, the FBI is worse than useless, and inter-service interference is scandalous and a national liability.

When I began work with the Mossad in 1988, my instructor Oren told me that each agent is like a box of matches. One by one, the matches are burned up, and there is nothing left but ash. Some of us have more matches than others. But we all have a finite number

And he retires. But..

Whatever they say, however, I believe that the world needs to hear these stories. A storm is coming, and it would appear that those of us who cherish life, liberty, and the goodness in our way of life will have no choice but to endure it.

I decided not to wait for the inevitable. I volunteered.

Read it. Especially read it if you’ve never heard a good word about the Mossad—you need the education.