IOSI, THE REMORSEFUL SPY

The spy who came in from the heat.

Argentina has the fifth-largest Jewish population of any country outside of Israel, with Jewish immigration playing a major role in shaping Argentine society over the past century. While many people of Jewish heritage have risen to positions of power and respect, an undercurrent of antisemitism flows beneath the surface of official life. The story of José Perez, who becomes Iosi the spy, exposes the complex relationships among the Jewish community, the all-powerful military, and the administrative bureaucracy of Argentina. The Argentinian federal police officer recruited to infiltrate the Jewish community takes on a new identity. He learns Hebrew. He passes effortlessly in families and synagogues. The information he retrieves played a major role in two attacks on Jewish Argentina in the 1990s: one, the attack on the Israeli embassy in 1992; the other, the bombing of the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association in 1994. This latter attack has become one of the most controversial events in recent Argentine history. Who was responsible? Who should pay? The real heart of this book, however, is a personal rather than a political story. Much of the book is told in the first person, as if by Iosi himself. We get a story of recruitment and seduction as subtle and as disturbing as anything in a novel by John le Carré. We get a vision of a democratic country that monitors its citizens. We hear the voices of Argentinians trapped between a love of their country and a duty to their heritage. The story of Iosi exposes duplicity and defiance in a modern nation. In the process, it makes us ask whether the United States is capable of such deceit.

A gripping story of spycraft and intrigue, told with the flair of thriller fiction.