The King of Oil: The Secret Lives of Marc Rich

shortcomings.” The report explicitly mentioned “limited intelligence collection and strategic analysis capabilities” and “a limited capacity to share information both internally and externally.” 8
    In light of such criticism, there is only one rational approach for the U.S. government when it comes to using a network of informants like Rich’s, even though they viewed him as a fugitive from justice. The word for this approach is “realpolitik.”
Helping Israel’s Mossad
     
    Realpolitik is one of Israel’s greatest strengths. The Jewish state was completely surrounded by its enemies, which had imposed a boycott on the country. None of the Arab states maintained official diplomatic relations with Israel, but there were, of course, a number of clandestine contacts—sometimes quite close. It was the Mossad’s duty to establish and maintain such contacts, for Israel’s intelligence service was the very master of realpolitik. Had the Mossad ignored Rich and his contacts in Iran, Syria, and the Persian Gulf states, the agency would not have been doing its job. The Mossad established its first contacts with Marc Rich back in the 1970s.
    “I’m not giving any names,” Avner Azulay said flatly when I asked him for details. “This would be much too dangerous.” We had been talking about Rich for several hours in a hotel in downtown Lucerne. Azulay explained to me that the Mossad is much more than a traditional intelligence service. It also helps Jews who live in countries wherethey are in danger or even subject to persecution. It supports Jewish communities in their efforts to organize and defend themselves from anti-Semitism. “We have this duty of solidarity,” Azulay told me. “We have been persecuted. History has not been very kind to us. We have a duty to help each other, especially since the Holocaust. Had the State of Israel existed then, perhaps history would have turned out differently.” Wherever Jews are living under threat, the Mossad helps them to leave the country by covert means and settle in Israel or wherever they wish. Azulay explained how Rich had helped the Mossad with his business contacts as well as with money during such evacuation operations. Thanks to Rich, Jews from Ethiopia, Yemen, and Israel’s enemies could be rescued and brought to Israel in the 1980s and 1990s.
    After Azulay left the Mossad in 1983 and went to work as a security expert for Marc Rich, his former colleagues began to ask him if Rich would be willing to help them in the evacuation of Ethiopian Jews—known as the Beta Israel or Falasha—who had been separated from other Jewish communities for centuries. This was before the famed Operation Moses that rescued tens of thousands of these Jews and flew them to Israel in 1984–85. Many of them had fled to the north of Ethiopia—now Eritrea—and to neighboring Sudan in the early 1980s in the wake of civil war and catastrophic famine. The Mossad believed it had a duty to save them.
    The Israeli government knew it would have to do the Ethiopians a favor if they were to consent to the evacuation. Yitzhak Rabin met with Ethiopian president Mengistu Haile Mariam. “What do you need?” he asked the Marxist, who had ruled the country with an iron hand since 1974. “Medical assistance,” Mengistu answered. “Fine,” Rabin said. “We will build a complete emergency unit for you in Eritrea.” The Israeli government did not have the money to finance the emergency facility, so Azulay asked Rich if he would be willing to take on the costs. Rich agreed immediately. Azulay soon met with the Israeli minister of health at Rabin’s request. The plan was for Azulay to fund the purchase of used medical equipment in good condition from various Israeli hospitalsand have the Israeli air force transport it to and install it in Ethiopia. “We set up a full emergency department in Eritrea,” Azulay recounted to me. “This was a wholly humanitarian operation funded by Marc. All these activities had nothing to do with espionage,” Azulay is keen to point out. The trade-off was that a number of Ethiopian Jewish families were allowed to emigrate to Israel. They were thus able to avoid the famine of 1985 that brought Ethiopia such tragic fame.
Escape from Yemen
     
    Ten years after the rescue of the Beta Israel of Ethiopia, Rich agreed to finance a similar operation at the behest of the government of Israel—this time in Yemen, in the south of the Arabian Peninsula. In