Cindy Doesn't Live Here Anymore By ALLISON KAPLAN SOMMER TEL AVIV (April 7) -- Hairdresser Guy Shiber said he wasn't surprised to learn that the notorious Mossad agent "Cindy" owns one of the large villas in his community of Kochav Yair. The town is home to so many former and current members of the military and intelligence community, he said as he worked on a client's coiffure, that the woman who became world-famous for her role in the capture of Mordechai Vanunu would fit right in. His only hope, he said, eyeing the woman on the cover of Yediot Aharonot with rather wild-looking curly blond hair, "is that our Hair Studio shop would be one of the places she'd go to first. She really needs a haircut." In the aftermath of a Sunday Times article published yesterday, it is likely that "Cindy" is concerned about a great deal more than her hairstyle. The British newspaper detailed her life as a real estate agent in Orlando, Florida. The paper said that "Cindy," whose real name is Cheryl Ben-Tov, nee Hanin, aged 37, "who zips about in a red convertible and sells time-share accommodation to aging Jewish 'snowbirds' migrating south for the winter, and lives with her husband Ofer, a former Israeli intelligence officer and two daughters, in a secluded villa close to Disney World." The family owns a home in Kochav Yair, which is being rented out, it said. Vanunu revealed details of Israel's nuclear program to the Times 10 years ago. During his stay in England, despite warnings from the newspaper to stay in the country, "Cindy," who said she was a beautician from the United States, wooed him to Rome for a romantic tryst - where Vanunu was abducted to Israel, tried for treason and sentenced to 18 years in prison. This is the second time Ben-Tov has been the subject of unwanted publicity since Vanunu's arrest - the first newspaper reports of her identity appeared in 1988 while she was living in Netanya. The journalist wrote that "speaking in fluent if deeply accented Hebrew, she did not deny her role in the affair. Her primary concern, she said, was that any story about her should not 'harm' her position in America." What is most likely to harm her is the article's implication that her real estate career is a false front. The article attributes to "acquaintances in Israel" that she "is on assignment abroad for the same employer as ever: Israeli intelligence." Intelligence expert Yossi Melman said the inclusion of an insinuation that she is still active in the Mossad is "a wicked, vicious, unsubstantiated hint." "Uzi Machani, who wrote the story for 'The Sunday Times,' is a former captain in the military intelligence," said Melman, an analyst for Ha'aretz and co-author of a book on the Israeli intelligence community. "He should know better....She is not the first former intelligence military security operative who lives outside Israel and shows no evidence that she is still active." Most of the details regarding Ben-Tov's identity, he pointed out, were published in 1988, and yesterday's article only revealed that she has two children and lives in Orlando, Florida, near her childhood home. If "Cindy" is pressed to return to Israel as a result of the publicity, and moves into the villa said to belong to her family, Kochav Yair residents said she will be welcomed with open arms. "Good for her," said Kochav Yair resident Guy Olainik. "She caught a spy, she helped the country. She deserves all the respect in the world." "So we'd have another celebrity among us," shrugged a woman who identified herself only as Sara. "We're used to it - we have all kinds of military leaders, chiefs of staff living here," she said, referring to Labor Party MK Ehud Barak, "And who knows, maybe someday we'll have a prime minister." From the Jerusalem Post; Monday, April 7, 1997 (29 Adar II 5757)