well as the Vulcan Phalanx anti-missile defense system. According to court papers filed by the Israeli government in an attempt to stop the publication of his book By Way of Deception, Ostrovsky was recruited by the Mossad in 1984 and trained as a katsa (case officer) at the Mossad's training school north of Tel Aviv. In 1986, he says that he left the agency saying it was because of what he considered cases of unnecessarily-malicious actions by Mossad operatives. He also accused its directors of knowingly making less-than-accurate reports to the nation's political leadership. However, historian Benny Morris states that Ostrovsky's two years in the Mossad were mostly spent as a trainee, and he wouldn't have had access to many operational secrets before he was fired. His wife, Bella Ostrovsky, died on January 8, 2015, at 65. He operated Ostrovsky Fine Art Gallery in Scottsdale, Arizona. While he has painted many subjects, he is best known for his Metaphors of Espionage collection, inspired by his days as a spy for the Mossad. By Way of Deception In 1990, he published By Way of Deception to draw attention to the corruption and shortcomings that he claims to have witnessed in the Mossad. He has repeatedly argued that intelligence-gathering agencies must be permitted certain operational freedoms but that significantly-increased governmental oversight of espionage activities is necessary. Without effective oversight, he has said that the Mossad cannot achieve its full potential and value. According to Ostrovsky, if a US senator on a military committee whose "aide was Jewish, he or she would be approached as a sayan," which Ostrovsky later defines as "a volunteer Jewish helper outside Israel" who would then assist Mossad. Of the Israeli spy network in the United States, David Wise wrote in his New York Times review that "both countries know that Israel has spied on the United States for years" and that from publicly known instances, the "general assertion can hardly be challenged." Many of Ostrovsky's claims have neither been verified from other sources nor been refuted, and arguments continue to rage over the credibility of his accounts. However, he was named in a lawsuit by the Israeli government, which claimed that he was part of the Mossad. Critics such as Benny Morris, have argued that the book is essentially a novel; or in the case of David Wise, that much of it reads like a "supermarket tabloid,"