New Book Reveals: Israeli Spy Eli Cohen Was Not Captured Due to His Transmissions

How was spy Eli Cohen captured? Anyone who has ever been interested in this affair probably knows the accepted version: the most successful Israeli spy of all time was caught in the middle of a transmission to his handlers in Israel, using locating equipment that detected the transmission device.

But is this really true? Researcher Noam Nachman Tafer, who recently released a new book titled 'Eli Cohen - Open File', completely refutes this version. "I began to take an interest in the true story behind Cohen's capture when I interviewed the rabbi of Damascus Jews, Rabbi Avraham Hamra," he says. "I asked him how the situation of Damascus Jews was in 1965, after Eli Cohen's capture. He said it was very bad, and that shortly after the capture, members of the Syrian secret police came to the Jewish neighborhood and arrested 40 Jews, all members of the Laty family."

Why did this mass arrest fall specifically on the Laty family? "The rabbi explained that the head of the family, Mordechai Laty, ran a store selling antique copper items. Shortly before Cohen's capture, he came to the store with a Syrian officer, and they bought copper items together. When Eli Cohen went to the back of the store during the purchase, Cohen spoke to Laty in Hebrew. I told Rabbi Hamra that the story doesn't make sense, but he insisted that this is what Mordechai Laty himself had told him."

Mordechai Laty, who immigrated to Israel, had already passed away at that time. But Tafer went to look for his descendants and found his son, Nathan Laty, behind a stand at the flea market. "He told me that the story is very true: the whole family was arrested simply because they found the receipt he wrote for Cohen. He denied that his father spoke with Eli Cohen in Hebrew."

Tafer realized he was speaking to the son of the last Jew, most likely, who met Eli Cohen. As he continued to question him, Laty stated that the family members were interrogated, confronted with Cohen, and even tortured. Eventually, they were released.

Gaining deeper interest in the affair, Tafer contacted Eli Cohen's younger brother. He listened with interest to the Laty family's story and then told him that he suspected there was a connection between his brother's capture and the prior arrest of an American spy.

Tafer began a deeper investigation, reaching a file called 'Redmacher File', managed by the CIA on a Nazi criminal on the run named Franz Redmacher who lived in Damascus when Eli Cohen operated there. "I studied the file, deciphered who the people mentioned there in code were, and discovered this picture: at the time Eli Cohen operated in Damascus, a Syrian named Majd Al-Ard was operating there, who was an American CIA agent. He too was arrested shortly after Eli Cohen and ended his life in prison. Additionally, Redmacher was operating in Damascus, who was an informant for both West German intelligence and Syrian intelligence."

Franz Redmacher - the meeting with him made Cohen suspicious

"One of Cohen's missions was to help obtain information about escaped Nazi criminals. One day, he was sitting with Al-Ard, the Syrian spying for the USA, who told him he'd recently met a guy named 'Rozalio'—this was Redmacher's alias—who was an escaped Nazi criminal. Cohen said he didn't believe him, so the Syrian made a call and arranged a meeting."

Present at that meeting were Eli Cohen, the Syrian, and Redmacher. But somehow, Tafer claims, it turns out that the Syrian security services discovered the meeting's occurrence. They suspected Cohen simply because he met with Redmacher, who was indeed their informant but also suspected of espionage involvement. The presence of Al-Ard—who was suspected of his connections with the Americans—increased the suspicion towards Cohen.

Eli Cohen, Al-Ard, and another suspect during the trial

When Cohen reported the meeting to Israel, says Tafer, his superiors told him to keep away from Redmacher and focus on the primary objectives for which he was sent to Syria. But for his personal safety, it was too late:

In early 1965, Syrian forces broke into Eli Cohen's apartment. "In a film made with the officer in charge of the break-in team, he recounts that they broke into the house, found him in bed, and only after a thorough search did they find the transmission devices. They obviously wouldn't have needed to do that if he had been in the middle of broadcasting. He also mentioned that a physical surveillance had been underway for some time watching Eli Cohen since they saw him meeting with someone known for his suspicious ties—Redmacher."

Redmacher was also arrested on that occasion and held in solitary confinement for three years. "Why did they do this to him? They were angry with him for not reporting on the meeting with Cohen," says Tafer. "He was their agent and needed to update regarding such a meeting, and for his own reasons—he didn't. Only after three years did they extradite him to West Germany, where he faced trial but died before the verdict."

Initially, the Syrians did not know Cohen was an Israeli spy. They thought he was Egyptian or Iraqi—two countries with which they had particularly strained relations at the time. When it was discovered he was a Zionist spy, says Tafer, they lost their minds. "They arrested about 500 people, everyone they had been in contact with. This is why Laty family members were also arrested. The regime was relatively new and was under pressure from all sides, mainly from newspapers worldwide that mocked Syria."

To dispel myths and soften the media backlash, the Syrians decided to bring a respected Lebanese journalist named Zohar Al-Mardani to Syria. "They laid everything open to him," says Tafer. "They gave him free access to the investigation files and allowed him to speak to whoever he wanted, including Eli Cohen himself."

The Lebanese observed, listened, was impressed, and wrote an article that accurately covered the Eli Cohen affair. The article was published in a Lebanese weekly with a respectable reputation worldwide and soon reached the Mossad translators. "I encountered a translated page of the article in the Ministry of Defense documents," says Tafer. "This piqued my curiosity, and that's how I went on to the original article. The original article states exactly the conclusions I reached: Eli Cohen's transmitter was not detected; there was a physical surveillance due to an unsuccessful meeting with a suspicious individual."

Eli Cohen

Why, then, did the myth about the transmitter take root? "At that time, two more spies in Egypt were caught with the same type of transmitter," says Tafer. "Therefore, there was a thought that maybe this device had been 'cracked'. Even Meir Amit, head of the Mossad, said in a eulogy for Eli Cohen that 'perhaps they found him broadcasting,' and the hypothesis became fact in the public consciousness."

Tafer also researched the issue of Eli Cohen's burial site and concluded that the Syrians know exactly where he is. "The president at the time was ousted after a few months, but there was continuity of government. Assad was already in the government, and the senior military officials remained the same. In such a situation, I have no doubt the regime knew where Cohen was buried. They couldn't afford just to 'forget' such important strategic information."

Will the full dossier on Eli Cohen ever be published?

"There are no groundbreaking revelations in the dossier itself. What will remain censored is likely the efforts of Israel over the years to find out his burial site. This chapter, which is still incomplete, will undoubtedly remain classified for now."