Robert Maxwell, Israel’s Superspy; The Life and Murder of a Media Mogul (2003)

The world knows only half the story of British media magnate Robert Maxwell's well-publicized career. He was born poor but thrived on ruthless ambition, devoured his competitors and outsmarted his most formidable peers to build an international empire as a publisher, politician, and industrialist. For the first time, this well-researched book from best-selling author Gordon Thomas and terrorism expert Martin Dillon tells the other, long-secret half of Maxwell's story. We are shown how Maxwell achieved his topmost objective as a superspy for Israel's Mossad; sold PROMIS—America's state-of-the-art surveillance software stolen by Mossad—to the USSR and many other countries; recruited foremost Republican Senator John Tower to acquire for Israel top-secret, cutting-edge U.S. technology being developed at Los Alamos; cultivated his vast KGB connections and strove to involve Israel in a coup to oust Mikhail Gorbachev; and how Maxwell ultimately became Mossad's target in an elaborately prepared assassination plot. For in November 1991, as his yacht cruised offshore of the Canary Islands, the life of Robert Maxwell ended—officially, by drowning. The facts that the news media did not then report or know, what truths even the autopsies concealed, are now revealed. Eight pages of black-and-white illustrations add to this compelling work.