straight nights which replicated, as nearly as we could, what we intended to do

straight nights which replicated, as nearly as we could, what we intended to do across the border in the Sinai. It was as if we’d never been there at all. Yet there were the errors, setbacks and frustrations as well. Many months into our planning, we conducted a series of run-throughs in which we simulated attaching the intercept to Israel’s telephone network in the south, not far from the camp where I’d done my fironut. Though it all seemed to go as planned, the next morning in rained heavily. Within hours, the phone company was getting reports from all around southern Israel of phones malfunctioning. Even allowing for the fact it rained less in the Sinai, we had to address the risk. I went to see the people in Meir Amit’s technology unit, and they began developing a waterproofing system for the equipment. The main problem with the equipment, however, was its sheer weight. The helicopter could get us, and it, into Egypt. But we couldn’t fly directly to the cable site in the Sinai. We might just as well tell the Egyptians we were on our way. At around 1,100 pounds, it was much too heavy for us to carry. And if we were going to go ahead with the mission, time was running short. A date for the operation had been set by the kirya: February 1964. I was not alone in believing that, unless we cracked the problem of getting the equipment to the cable site, the operation was impossible. The solution came from a staff officer in military intelligence. Meir Amit visited our base once a month to hear how the preparations were going. With the date getting closer, he brought along his entire staff. When I raised my concern about the weight problem, a colonel from his personnel section said: “Why not build a lightweight rickshaw, small enough to get in the door of the helicopter, but which can carry all or most of the equipment once you’re on the ground?” Within days, they had a prototype, made of airline-standard tubing and designed to be pulled by two men. We held an exercise in the Negev. But it was almost impossible for two men to pull through the sand. It also left deep zig-zag imprints in the sand, which would surely raise the suspicions of the Egyptians. But prototype number-two was a four-wheel, chrome alloy cart. The technology experts had made the axles telescopic, so the vehicle would get through the door of the chopper but could be expanded to the width of an Egyptian army Jeep. They had borrowed nose wheels from a training jet. To complete their oeuvre, they glued on real tire tread from one of the Egyptian Jeeps we had captured in the 1956 war. a HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_011548