Nuclear Whistle Blower Mordechai Vanunu Talks Mossad
On Wednesday Israel’s nuclear whistle blower Mordechai Vanunu relented on his thirty-year vow to not speak with Israeli media by breaking his silence on Israeli Channel 2.
Snippets have been released regarding the Mossad agent who trapped Vanunu and the full interview will be broadcast in Israel on Friday night.
By Eileen Fleming
Ten years ago, while in e. Jerusalem, Mordechai Vanunu informed this American writer that he refused to speak with Israeli Media because “Israel is only a democracy if you are a Jew.”
In his interview with Channel 2 Vanunu related how he met “Cindy,” the Mossad operative, in London, stating:
The following excerpt from “Heroes, Muses and the Saga of Mordechai Vanunu” by this Senior Correspondent for The Arab Daily News provides details Vanunu may not even know about the Mossad agent who trapped him.
In 2006, after this reporter had run out of tape [but not questions] in the YouTube interview known as “30 Minutes with Vanunu” [taped a few weeks after Vanunu’s Freedom of Speech Trial began] I asked Vanunu what was he thinking when he flew to Rome with Cindy-who he had thought was an American beautician on holiday in London.
Vanunu looked me in the eye and readily replied:
It wasn’t like THAT! When Maxwell’s paper published my photo without ever talking to me and some of the stolen Dimona photos with a very bad story against me, I knew the Mossad was after me. Cindy said she had a sister in Rome and I thought I would be safe there until I could return to London.
We went to movies and art galleries, I trusted her. But, as soon as I got into the apartment, I was hit on the head and drugged. When I woke up and they took me for interrogation, they threw the Times article on the table and said, ‘Look, what you did.’
What Vanunu did was shoot two rolls of film from Top Secret locations within Israel’s 7-story underground WMD facility at Dimona.
What London’s Sunday Times did was to publish a front-page photo of the Dimona reactor and a story that spread over three pages revealing Israel’s arsenal of upwards of 200 nuclear warheads on 5 Oct. 1986 – five days after the Mossad kidnapped Vanunu.
Also, after I ran out of tape Vanunu told me:
Many journalists come here to the American Colony from CNN and NY Times. They all want to cover my story, but their EDITORS say no.
CNN wants to interview me; but they say they can’t do it because they don’t want problems with the Israeli censor. BBC is doing the same thing.
Sixty Minutes from the United States from the beginning they wanted to do a program, but because of the censor situation they decide not to do it. Also big media from Germany, France, Italy, Japan. None of them wants problems with the Israelis.
Not having any problem with making problems for Israel, I tracked down Vanunu’s ‘honey trap’ Cindy/Cheryl Hanin Ben Tov and learned:
Cheryl and family were living a two hour car ride away in “Alaqua” an exclusive gated community of golf course homes in central Florida, purchased in Cheryl Hanin’s name in 1998 at $528,000.00.
Photo of Cheryl Hanin Ben Tov’s 4,000 square foot home in an exclusive gated suburb of Orlando, Fl. Copyright Susan Taylor Martin
While Cheryl deceived Vanunu with a Judas Kiss, she also deceived her sister-in-law Cindy, whose Passport and identity she stole.
Cheryl grew up in Pennsylvania and Orlando in a Jewish family that owed its affluence to tires.
I moved to Orlando in the mid 1970’s and still can recall her father, Stanley Hanin, the founder and pitchman for the Allied Discount Tires chain stores, self-produced cheesy TV commercials with the refrain, “Tires ain’t pretty, but you gotta have them!”
While her parents went through an acrimonious divorce, Cheryl embarked upon a long love affair with the Zionist State.
In 1977, she spent a semester in Israel, studied Hebrew and Jewish history and threw herself into her academic and religious studies in a three-month residential course funded by the World Zionist Organization. Upon graduation in 1978, she joined the Israeli army and was soon recruited by the Mossad.
In 1986, “She left Israel to flee the media and the people who burrowed into her life,” a friend in Florida told the Israeli daily, Yedioth Ahronoth.
“This bothered her a lot. She was terrified. She felt the need to run. Since this affair Cheryl only wants one thing: a normal quiet life.”
In 1996, The St. Petersburg Times reported that Cheryl continues to work for the Mossad.
It is illegal under American-Israeli diplomatic protocols for the Mossad to operate in America.
The St. Petersburg Times also reported that in 1985, Hanin married Ofer Ben Tov, six years her senior and soon after she attracted the attention of the Mossad.
Photo of Ofer and Cheryl Ben Tov, (c) www.danheller.com 2003
Beginning in 1951, [three years after Israel became a nation] the Mossad ranked as one of the world’s most skilled and lethal intelligence agencies.
Gordon Thomas wrote in “Gideon’s Spies: The Secret History of the Mossad” that Cheryl was sent on practice missions – breaking into an occupied hotel room, stealing documents from an office. She was roused from her bed in the dead of night and dispatched on more exercises: picking up a tourist in a nightclub and then disengaging herself outside his hotel. Her tutors observed every move she made.
“As a Mossad recruit, Hanin would have gone through a regimen designed to test an agent’s mettle under the most challenging of circumstances. She learned to draw a gun while sitting in a chair. To memorize as many names as possible as they flashed across a screen.”
After her training, Hanin joined the Mossad unit that worked with Israeli embassies, where she posed as the wife or girlfriend of other agents.
In 1986, she got the Vanunu assignment ordered by then Prime Minister, Shimon Peres to “bring the son of the bitch back here.”
When construction of the Dimona “Textile Plant” began in 1958 so did the rumors that the center’s true purpose was to make nuclear weapons.
Vanunu was hired as a trainee in 1976 and began a crash course in nuclear physics.
All employees were required to sign the Official Secrets Act, which forbid disclosure of sensitive material.
Because he was a good worker, Vanunu was cross-trained in many areas and spent nine years on the night shift at the center.
In the daytime, Vanunu graduated with a degree in Philosophy and Geography at Ben-Gurion University, where he also became active in politics and supported Palestinian human rights causes.
Vanunu was repeatedly warned by officials at Dimona to halt his political activities but he ignored them.
In 1985, Vanunu was told he would be transferred or laid off.
Vanunu had already spent a few harrowing hours photographing top-secret locations courtesy of a careless supervisor who had left the keys in the shower room.
Vanunu returned the keys and stashed the film and camera in his locker for a few days before smuggling out the film and then the camera in his backpack, which was checked by Dimona Security before entering and departing the nuclear facility.
Vanunu quit Dimona in October 1985 and left Israel in early 1986 with the still undeveloped film.
He traveled through Europe and wound up in Sydney, Australia, where he worked as a taxi driver and began to attend a social justice Anglican Church.
Vanunu was born into an Orthodox Zionist home, but had become an atheist in early adolescence.
The welcoming he received from parishioners who were engaged in the struggle to get the Church to oppose nuclear weapons was the catalyst for Vanunu to tell about life as a mid-level technician within Israel’s WMD Facility at Dimona.
Among Vanunu’s new friends was Oscar Guerrero, a Colombian who had been painting the church.
Guerrero, realizing an expose of Israel’s nuclear program could be a gold mine, told Vanunu he was an ‘international journalist’ who could help get the story published.
Guerrero began shopping the story to news organizations and was rejected by all until he approached London’s Sunday Times in August 1986.
Peter Hounam was assigned to determine if his story was credible.
He dismissed Guerrero but a physics professor said the Dimona photos appeared genuine.
Hounam then flew to Australia to interview Vanunu who described a far more extensive weapons production program than anyone had imagined.
Hounam wrote, “These were weapons that could obliterate a major city – they had no sensible battlefield application. I was utterly absorbed in the wealth of detail he was able to supply.”
The Sunday Times would not and did not pay for any information, but they did offer Vanunu $100,000 for a book deal and serialization in a German magazine.
However, Vanunu never had a chance to sign that contract before being kidnapped by Mossad.
On 5 October 1986, a front-page photo of the Dimona reactor and a three-page spread revealed Israel had an arsenal of 200 nuclear warheads.
Israel did not deny the story and refused to say anything about Vanunu.
The Press was denied access to Vanunu, but he reached them without speaking a sound!
On way to the courthouse Vanunu asked a Security officer for a pen, which he used to ink his palm:
“Vanunu M was hi-jacked in Rome. ITL. 30.9.86. 21.000. Came to Rome by fly BA504”.
A photographer caught Vanunu’s inspired move as he pressed his palm to the car window.
Hounam was then able to piece together the story of Vanunu’s kidnapping which led to a confrontation with the Mossad agent who had purchased the business-class tickets on British Airways Flight 504 flight to Rome.
Hounam eventually tracked Cheryl Hanin Ben Tov to Netanya, a city on Israel’s Mediterranean coast and asked her if she was Cindy?
“I deny it, I deny everything,” she shouted as Hounam snapped a few photos. By that night, the house was deserted.
During Vanunu’s closed-door trial, he was denied the right to speak in his own defense and was convicted of espionage and treason.
Vanunu’s lawyer argued he didn’t commit treason because he did not share information with a hostile foreign government but went to The Media in a case of the public’s right to know.
In 1997, another Sunday Times reporter found Cheryl back in Orlando living in a secluded villa.
Her only concern was that any story about her should not “harm her position in America.”
According to the paper, the couple also had a villa in Israel in an area that is home to many security officials.
Cheryl “continues to work for Mossad, according to her Israeli neighbors,” the Sunday Times said. She and her husband, they believe, have rented out their house, while she is engaged in an overseas assignment, and were expected to return.
Until recently, Florida state records showed Cheryl had an active real estate sales license and was employed by CFI Sales & Marketing of Orlando.
But CFI, whose Westgate Resorts is one of the world’s largest timeshare companies, said she was terminated in 1997, the same year the Sunday Times found her in Orlando.
After the St. Petersburg Times began looking into Cheryl Hanin Ben Tov’s background, the State records were changed to show her license was inactive and there was no reference to CFI.
Officials could not say who requested the change.
CFI says it did not.
It is illegal under American-Israeli diplomatic protocols for the Mossad to operate in America, but it does not make it impossible.
Three days after I snail mailed Cheryl Hanin Ben Tov my OPEN LETTER to the MOSSAD regarding Vanunu the visits from Israel to my website increased dramatically and continued for many weeks afterwards…
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B00IZA7460
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Eileen Fleming
Producer "30 Minutes with Vanunu" who founded WeAreWideAwake.org in response to her first of 8 trips to both sides of The Wall in Palestine Israel.
In 2012, Eileen ran for US House of Representatives District 5, in Fl.
Read her FREE eBooks and more at:http://www.eileenfleming.org/
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