Eli Cohen was born in Alexandria to a Syrian Jewish family, moved to Israel in 1957, and was recruited by military intelligence after having been rejected earlier as unsuitable.
His cover was built over months. Kamel Amin Thaabet was a Syrian who had emigrated to Argentina as a child and made money in textiles, and who was now, out of patriotism, considering returning home. Cohen was sent to Buenos Aires in 1961 to live the identity for nearly a year, establishing himself in the Syrian expatriate community, joining the clubs, being seen.
He arrived in Damascus in 1962 with introductions from men who had known him in Argentina, and rented an apartment near the general staff headquarters.
His method was hospitality.
He entertained constantly and lavishly. Officers, officials and party men came to his apartment for parties with good food, whisky and women. He was generous, deferential, interested, and consistently more concerned with other people's importance than his own. He funded things. He made himself socially useful.
What that produces is not an obligation to answer questions. It produces an obligation to be interesting, which is far more productive.
Chapter 106 sets out the mechanism: self-disclosure is intrinsically rewarding, and a person who has been treated generously and is being treated as an expert will volunteer. Cohen appears rarely to have asked. He listened, and the officers explained.
He was taken on a tour of the Golan Heights fortifications as a distinguished patriot with an interest in the army's needs. The often-repeated story that he suggested planting eucalyptus trees for shade, thereby marking the positions for Israeli gunners, is probably embellished; what is documented is that he saw the fortifications and reported their layout, and that the information contributed to the 1967 campaign.
He became close enough to senior Ba'athists that he was, in some accounts, considered for a deputy ministerial position.
The exposure had nothing to do with his behavior. Syrian counterintelligence, with Soviet assistance, used radio direction-finding to locate a transmitter operating on a schedule, narrowed it by shutting down city power sector by sector, and arrested him mid-transmission in January 1965.
He was tried, convicted, and publicly hanged in Marjeh Square in Damascus in May 1965. His remains have never been returned.
The lesson for a defender: behavioral cover, however good, does not compensate for a technical signature. Cohen was never caught being suspicious.
Aftermath & Cross-Reference: Elicitation Defence Protocol