In the covert and sometimes shadowy world of intelligence-gathering, it's rare to find an agent with a reputation as notorious as that of Juval Aviv.
A U.S. citizen who bills himself as an expert on international terrorism, and a former agent of Mossad, Israel's highly secretive intelligence agency, Mr. Aviv has had a difficult time keeping his name out of the limelight during his 36-year controversial career.
Mr. Aviv, who is about 60, is the president of Interfor Inc., a Manhattan-based firm offering security consulting and international investigative and intelligence services to legal, corporate and financial communities. Publicity materials from the company say it has a global presence, and former clients include the British Secret Service, Israeli intelligence and several high-level U.S. government agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Central Intelligence and Drug Enforcement Agencies.
However, Mr. Aviv is best known for his controversial role in the investigation that followed the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103. After the London-to-New York flight blew up over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 259 people, Mr. Aviv was commissioned by the airline and its insurance company to investigate.
In his final report, Mr. Aviv claimed CIA involvement in the bombing. He suggested the agency had a deal to co-operate with Syrian drug smugglers in exchange for the release of American hostages being held at the time in Lebanon. According to Mr. Aviv's theory, this deal led the CIA to allow a package, supposedly drugs, to be loaded onto the plane. Its contents were actually a bomb, according to the theory.
While Mr. Aviv's findings failed to resonate with a jury in the Lockerbie case, the agent alleges his work led U.S. law-enforcement officials to pay him special attention. In March of 1995, he was indicted federally on three counts of mail and wire fraud stemming from a $20,000 report he did for GE Capital Corp., which was alleged to be fraudulent.
Mr. Aviv was acquitted of the charges in late 1996, but not before a document from the court file alleging that Mr. Aviv never worked for Israeli intelligence made its way into The Wall Street Journal.
Since then, Mr. Aviv seems to have been on the defensive about his credentials. While those who operate in the tight-knit global network of private investigators know his work well, some of Mr. Aviv's colleagues say they are concerned about his high profile.
"In this kind of intelligence-gathering world, you try to stay as far below the wire as possible," said one private investigator. "If you come above the wire, you can be exposed to anything. It doesn't seem to bother him or intimidate him."