The King of Oil: The Secret Lives of Marc Rich

1949–50, forty-nine thousand Jews had been flown out of the country and taken to the newly founded nation of Israel in the clandestine Operation Magic Carpet. By the mid-1990s there were only a few hundred Jews living in Yemen. They were not allowed to leave the country, although they repeatedly suffered from anti-Semitic attacks.
    “Marc gave me contacts in Yemen, very high officials,” Azulay said. Again, he wanted to avoid getting into details for reasons of security. “It’s too delicate,” he explained. “I don’t want anyone who helped in these activities to be hurt. They don’t deserve it.” Azulay negotiated with the Yemeni officials. They were willing in principle to allow the Jews to leave the country, but they wanted money in return for their consent and services—a per head fee. “Marc was willing to fund whatever was necessary to help the project,” Azulay said. The former Mossad agent first wanted to ensure that these officials would keep their promise. He decided to carry out a trial run and chartered an airplane with which he intended to fly out two large Jewish families of fifteen persons each. It worked—Rich’s contacts, the Yemeni officials, escorted the two families past the Yemeni customs agents, who had not been informed of the plan. The families were able to fly to Israel by way of Rome.
    “We saved thirty people. It was a big success, but in the end it was a very sad story,” Azulay said while regretfully shaking his head. The operation should have been the beginning of an even larger operation aimed at evacuating the entire endangered Yemeni Jewish community. However, the operation was sabotaged by the Satmar, an ultra-orthodox Jewish sect that refuses to recognize Israel or any form of Zionism. When the Satmar got wind of the evacuation of the Yemeni families, the sect threatened Azulay and Rich: “If you continue to do this, we will make public that there are traitors in the Yemenite government.” This put an immediate stop to the operation.
    Years later, Rich’s involvement in the evacuation of Yemeni and Ethiopian Jews was finally confirmed by high-ranking officials. In a very unusual step, Shabtai Shavit, the head of the Mossad from 1989 to 1996, actively campaigned for President Clinton to pardon Rich, thus breaking the Mossad’s code of silence. In a letter to the president, Shavit explicitly wrote, “As head of the Mossad, we [
sic
] requested his assistance in looking for MIA’s [soldiers listed as missing in action] and help in the rescue and evacuation of Jews from enemy countries. Mr. Rich always agreed and used his extensive network of contacts in these countries to produce results sometimes beyond the expected. Israel and the Jewish people are grateful for these unselfish actions which sometimes had the potential of jeopardizing his own personal interests and business relations in these countries.” 9 Shavit knew what he was writing about—he had been personally involved in some of these operations.
    “It’s not healthy to get into this,” Azulay said to me and paused for a moment. He obviously wanted to avoid answering my question. I had asked him about information that I had received stating that Rich had helped in the search for missing soldiers (who had been captured by Shiite militias) in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Iran. According to my sources, Rich used his contacts in Iran and Syria to this effect. Azulay would only confirm that Rich had provided him with “some contacts with senior officials.” These “senior officials,” he told me, were able to bring him together with people who knew more about the fate of the missingsoldiers. “Marc funded my travel, not the government,” he explains. “It was dangerous for him and dangerous for them.” Azulay then said that he would prefer not to discuss these operations. “Every time the press mentions Marc’s name in connection with the Mossad, this makes him a target.” According to one article in the British
Observer
, Rich “routinely allowed agents to use his offices around the world as cover”—a claim Azulay says is just a rumor spread by the Americans to “under-mine” Rich’s business. 10
Informal Mediator Between Israel and Iran
     
    Rich himself also wishes to avoid getting into details when I ask him about the assistance he provided the Mossad. When I ask him why he was eager to help, Rich takes a sip of Diet Coke and hesitates before answering. “First of all, I’m