Robert Maxwell, Israel's Superspy: The Life and Murder of a Media Mogul

by Gordon Thomas and Martin Dillon

Book Overview

Robert Maxwell -- ruthless, volatile, defiant; a man of gargantuan appetites, for food, wine, women, power, money -- unabashedly bared his ambition to the world, as he strove to build a publishing... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0786710780
• ISBN13: 9780786710782
• Release Date: November 2002
• Publisher: Da Capo Press
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 1.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 7.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

A Politically Informative Mystery Thriller

This book ties together many pieces of the Israeli puzzle from Post-World War II until the early nineties. If you enjoy reading about the Jews and revel in mysteries; the book is for you. S.R.Erickstad

Awesome Book

One of the best spy/Mossad books. you will not be able to put down this book once you start it.

Spy Thriller

Through British citizen Robert Maxwell, vain, gross, brilliant and criminal, Thomas and Dillon paint a picture of corruption and decadence in the West, Eastern Europe and the Middle East today. Maxwell's loyalties are to himself and to Israel; Senator John Tower is in his pocket; and so forth. The United States, apart from furnishing the likes of Tower, furnishes the intelligence stolen by Israel and the subsidies that keep that country in business stealing from its patron. Maxwell is a kind of super "sayanim," and the book to some degree is an expose of the extent to which these volunteers-for-Israel around the world do damage to their host countries. The Maxwell-Mossad team steals spy software PROMIS from the United States, Mossad puts an undetectable trap door in it so Mossad can track the activities of anyone using it, then Maxwell sells it around the world (including back to the U.S. -- with the trap door). When Maxwell finally goes bankrupt, the losses are passed on to "the little people," while Israel and Maxwell's protected heirs remain in the black, at least materially. Thomas/Dillon present, in thrilling mystery adventure mode, the theory that Maxwell became a loose canon to his beloved Israel, among other things hitting on Mossad for a bigger pay-off, and its agents assassinated him. The authors, both top-notch investigative journalists, base their study on official documents and on interviews -- what they uncover is bound to shock and put on the alert anyone who loves his country, respects honesty, good will and just about any other virtue within its borders.

Riveting, Shocking, Eye-Opening, and Credible

This book is anything but boring--calling this book boring strikes me as a desperate subterfuge by someone who want to keep its explosive contents from fuller circulation. This book is *fascinating* and explosive, not least because of the very well documented coverage it provides of how Israel's intelligence service, the Mossad, used Robert Maxwell to penetrate not just the U.S. government, including the Department of Justice, the military, and the national laboratories, but many foreign governments including the Chinese, Canadians, Australians, and many others, with substantial penetration of their intelligence service databases, all through his sale of a software called PROMIS that had a back door enabling the Mossad to access everything it touched (in simplistic terms).Also shocking, at least to me, was the extensive detail in this book about how the Israeli intelligence service is able to mobilize Jews everywhere as "sayanim," volunteer helpers who carry out operational (that is to say, clandestine) support tasks to include spying on their government and business employers, stealing documents, operating safehouses, making pretext calls, and so on. I am a simple person: if you are a Jew and a US citizen, and you do this for the Israeli intelligence service, then you are a traitor, plain and simple. This practice is evidently world-wide, but especially strong in the US and the UK. The book draws heavily on just a couple of former Israeli intelligence specialists to address Israeli use of assassination as a normal technique (and implicitly raises the possibility that it was used against Senator John Tower, who died in small airplane crash and was the primary "agent" for Maxwell and Israel in getting PROMIS installed for millions of dollars in fees all over the US Government).Finally, the book has a great deal of detail about the interplay between governments, crime families, Goldman Sachs and other major investors, and independent operators like Robert Maxwell who play fast and loose with their employee pension funds.This book is not boring. Far from it. It is shocking, and if it is only half-right and half-accurate, that is more than enough to warrant its being read by every American, whatever their faith.

Quite Explosive

Really quite a shocking story of a media giant, whose true passion was international geo-political manipulation and personal greed. A must read for anyone who is concerned about the concentrations and misuse of power.