The effect was to weaken the PLO at a time when, if it was to establish a bargaining position with Israel’s prime minister Sharon, it needed to provide a strong and united front. By focusing on the undoubted murky world of Arafat’s financial dealings, LAP had also effectively ended further speculation about any role Mossad had in his death. It was a textbook example of what Rafi Eitan had once said (to the author): “Well-placed words are often as effective as a bomb.”
The deconstruction of Arafat’s image was only part of Mossad’s role in Israel’s information warfare, infowar, which had become the hottest concept in the Kirya, the Israeli Defense Forces headquarters. Infowar was designed to exploit the ever-advancing technological concepts of the late twentieth century to allow Israel to launch swift, stealthy, widespread, and devastating assaults on an economic, military, and civilian infrastructure before an attack could be launched. Prime targets were Syria and Iran.
Powerful computer microprocessors and sophisticated sensors, and the training to use them, had been provided by the United States under yet another sweetheart deal Sharon had negotiated with the Bush administration.
IDF officers and several Mossad specialists had been sent to the National Defense University in Washington and the Naval War College at Newport, Rhode Island, to learn how to cripple enemy stock markets and morph images of a foreign leader. A favorite among the Israeli students was a tape of the ayatollahs appearing on Iranian television sipping whisky and carving slices from a ham, both forbidden in Islam. Before they had graduated, the students had flown on Commando Solo, the customized former USAF cargo plane that had been given a $70 million refit that enabled its crew to jam a country’s TV and radio broadcasts and substitute messages—true or false—on any frequency. A version of the plane had been acquired by the IDF.
Mossad technicians were researching ways to infect enemy computer systems with a variety of virulent strains of software viruses. They would include the “logic bomb,” designed to remain dormant in an enemy system until a predetermined time when it would be activated and begin to destroy stored data. Such a bomb could attack an enemy’s air defence system or a central bank. The technicians had already created a program that could insert booby-trapped computer chips into weapons a foreign arms manufacturer planned to sell to a hostile country like Iran or Syria. Mossad katsas in key Eastern Europe arms manufacturing countries had also been briefed to find independent software contractors who wrote programs for such weapons systems. They would be offered substantial sums to slip viruses into the systems. An Israeli specializing in information technology said (to the author): “When the weapons system goes into attack mode, everything about it works, but the warhead doesn’t explode.”
Mossad agents were now equipped with a briefcase-size device that generated a high-powered electromagnetic pulse. Placed near a building, the pulse burned out all electronic components in the building. The device had its own built-in self-destruct mechanism that ensured its innards remained a secret. At the Institute for Biological Research, scientists were working to see if microbes could be bred to eat the electronics and insulating material inside computers in the same way that microorganisms consumed trash. Other scientists were working on aerosols that could be sprayed over enemy troops. Biosensors flying overhead would then track their movements from their breath or sweat.
On the other floors below, where the specialists created their Web site entries about Yasser Arafat, other equally skilled experts were going about their work.
The Research and Development laboratories on the second floor continued to create and update surveillance devices and adapt weapons. From there had come the matchbox-size camera, which could record and photograph a subject at over sixty yards’ distance, and a variety of knives, including one that could slice through a spinal cord. These had been designed for the kidon, the unit specializing in assassination.
The third floor was occupied by the archives and the liaison offices with Shin Bet—Israel’s equivalent of the FBI, with responsibility for Israel’s internal security and foreign intelligence services that were deemed friendly. These included the CIA. Britain’s MI6, French and German services, and the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service. Part of the floor was allocated to the Collections Department. This collated all incoming intelligence and distributed it to the appropriate departments on a need-to-know basis. The archives received everything; the data would be stored on high-speed Honeywell computers.
These included psychoprofiles of world leaders, terrorists, politicians, leading financiers—anyone who could be a help or hindrance to Israel. A typical profile contained personal details and close relationships. The one on President Bill Clinton listed the many transcripts from a yaholomin surveillance of his conversations with Monica Lewinsky, some verging on phone-sex calls (see chapter 5, “Gideon’s Nuclear Sword,” pp. 103–5). The profile of Hillary Clinton contained a close analysis of her contact with Vince Foster, the Clinton White House deputy counsel. Mossad concluded that Foster did not commit suicide but, according to one Mossad officer who had read the file, “most likely was murdered to cover up what was a serious attempt by persons in the Clinton White House to keep secret material they would have preferred to keep quiet” (the author was told).
Osama bin Laden had an entire shelf of computer discs divided into his speeches, his sightings since 9/11, and the structure and restructure of al-Qaeda. In painstaking detail his profile explored how he had created the plans that had led to more innocent people being killed in the West than had died in Europe during any conflict since the Second World War. The analysis of his speeches showed bin Laden to be a slave to literal interpretations; the usual intellectual extrapolations upon which much European thinking depends appeared to be beyond his range. A late entry was the appointment of his eldest son, Saad, as his successor, and in the meantime the instructions were to concentrate on developing strategies for attacks on U.S. targets. The announcement had come from “the Jerusalem Force,” the name bin Laden used when addressing his followers as a reminder of his ultimate ambition to ride in triumph through that city. A transcript of the message promised: “when that day comes our son Saad will ride at the head of our great cause.” The Mossad analysts had concluded that the words were a further sign bin Laden did not expect to live long enough to see such an event. A separate file on Saad gave his age, twenty-six, and described him as the son of bin Laden’s first wife and his favorite among the other twenty-three children he had fathered. The file described Saad as “the mirror image of his father, both physically and mentally.” It revealed Saad had served with his father in Afghanistan and had fought against the Soviet occupiers. “Americans who met him there recall his readiness to kill.” The last entry in the file said that Saad was on Mossad’s list for assassination by kidon.
As Arafat lay dying in Paris, bin Laden had again resurrected his own demand to create a great caliphate of terror that would stretch from Asia to southern Spain. It was this claim that the specialists on the sixth floor had used for their own purposes. They had created documents, sourced to Hamas, that Osama bin Laden was set on “dishonouring” the memory of the PLO leader. In the Arab world, such a claim would create unease while, at the same time, would not diminish the impact of statements that Yasser Arafat had robbed the Palestinians of tens of millions of dollars. Setting one enemy of Israel against another was a tactic in which LAP was unrivaled.
One way of doing so had been to exploit the behavior of Libya’s leader, Colonel Mu’ammar Gadhafi. Since he had seized power in 1969, as the twenty-seven-year-old head of a group of young officers, Gadhafi had been a prime target for assassination by Mossad. Having survived several attempts, it drove him to create a team of tall, muscular female bodyguards trained by the former KGB. LAP had focussed on ridiculing him in the Arab world by using fake photographs created in the Mossad psychological warfare photo lab showing Gadhafi in sexual poses with the women. Meanwhile Gadhafi had backed terrorists, including arming the IRA a
nd sponsoring attacks on airports in Vienna and Rome and in a Berlin discotheque, a favorite with U.S. servicemen based in the city. He had been linked to the Lockerbie bombing in 1998. At times his behavior seemed to drift beyond sanity. In 2001, he offered to buy all the bananas grown in the Caribbean to break the “stranglehold” of the World Trade Organization. Sartorially, he rivaled Michael Jackson, his favourite pop star; Gadhafi regularly wore orange robes, gold-braided military garb, and a powder blue jumpsuit.
In 2002, LAP scored another propaganda hit by planting a story Gadhafi had received a hair transplant. Later that year he arrived at an African summit with a container ship loaded with one thousand goat carcasses and distributed them to his fellow delegates. Afterward Jaafar Nimeiri, the former president of Sudan, described him as “a man with a split personality—both of them totally crazy.” LAP was able to use this to great effect. It also focused on Gadhafi’s sexual activities. Having fathered seven children by two wives, he had taken to offering interviews to foreign female journalists if they slept with him. That also became another item for LAP to promote around the world. More recently, in 2003, LAP planted stories that Gadhafi was terminally ill with cancer. But in mid-December 2004, his image as a buffoon who possessed a powerful nuclear arsenal, which he frequently threatened to unleash against Israel, was about to dramatically change.
Mossad’s London Station was situated deep within the Israeli Embassy in the fashionable district of Kensington. Accessed only by swipe cards that were changed regularly, and with a separate communications system from those of the main switchboard, the station was the most protected within a building where security was paramount. Each of the station’s offices had a keypad door and a safe, the combination of which was known only to the office’s occupant. Often a technician from Mossad’s Internal Security Department, Autahat Paylut Medienit (APM), used a hand-operated scanner to check for any bugging devices; none had ever been detected. The half dozen intelligence officers and a support staff had been carefully selected for a key overseas posting in Mossad. The London Station now rivaled in importance that of the service’s Washington base.
The staff worked under the direction of a man they all called Nathan. He had seen service in Asia and Africa before taking over as station chief. His formal duties included liaising with MI5 and MI6, Scotland Yard’s antiterrorist squad, and foreign intelligence services based in the capital. He was a familiar face on the capital’s diplomatic cocktail circuit and regularly dined at one of the city’s members-only clubs alongside senior British politicians. It was one of those clubs, the Traveller’s in Pall Mall, that focused Nathan’s attention on that cold winter’s day in December.
As Londoners made their way to another round of Christmas office parties, seven individuals arrived separately at the club, long a favourite meeting place for the senior officers of Britain’s intelligence community. Situated within walking distance of the Ministry of Defense, Foreign Office, Home Office, and Downing Street, it was comfortable and discreet, a place where secrets could be shared over one of the finest steaks in clubland or a reputation gently questioned over a postdinner port in the club’s lounge.
Six pinstripe-suited men and a woman in a black dress made their way past the club porter’s lodge to a back room. It had been booked in the name of William Ehrman, the director general of defence and intelligence at the Foreign Office. A self-service buffet of tea, coffee, soft drinks, and the club’s famed selection of sandwiches had been set up on a side table: the food did not include ham out of deference to the three men already waiting in the room with Ehrman. They were Musa Kusa, the head of Libyan intelligence, Ali Abdalate, the Libyan ambassador to Rome and Mohammed Abul Qasim al-Zwai, the Libyan ambassador to London.
They were introduced by Ehrman to Eliza Manningham-Buller; John Scarlett, head of MI6; David Landeman, head of counterproliferation at the Foreign Office; and two high-ranking officials from Ehrman’s department. He showed them all to opposite sides of a long mahogany table. At precisely twelve thirty on the mantle clock over the gas-fired Adams fireplace, Ehrman spoke.
“Gentlemen, we have come a long way. Let us now move to resolution.”
So began a meeting that would last six hours to negotiate one of the most stunning breakthroughs in international diplomacy in decades. The meeting was to draft and approve every word of the text that would enable Colonel Gadhafi, the man President Reagan once called “the mad dog of the Middle East,” to voluntarily give up Libya’s weapons of mass destruction.
Over the years Gadhafi had created an arsenal that was the most powerful on the continent of Africa. Close to its southern border with Egypt was the Kufra biological and chemical factory. Concealed deep below the desert sands, it was beyond the bunker-buster bombs the United States had given to Israel’s air force. The possibility of launching a successful sabotage attack had also been ruled out after a deep-cover Mossad agent managed to obtain a blueprint of the heavily guarded warren of laboratories where nuclear scientists from the former Soviet Union and former East Germany worked.
Sixty miles south of Tripoli, the country’s capital, was a chemical weapons factory at Rabta that produced mustard gas, a First World War weapon, and more up-to-date nerve agents. These were also manufactured at the Tajura Nuclear Research Center, sited on the Mediterranean coast. In all, there were ten weapons of mass destruction facilities. All were guarded by long-range Scud missiles built with the help of North Korea.
On that December day the meeting in the Traveller’s Club back room was the climax of efforts to end Gadhafi’s thirty-five years of torrid relations with the West and allow Libya to be finally removed from the list of pariah nations.
The road to redemption had begun with the collapse of Soviet communism, which had erased Libya’s hope that the continuous U.S. pressure would end. There had been the failure of a succession of economic programs that had made Gadhafi eager to attract foreign investment. Finally he had come to realize the ever-growing Islamic militancy was a threat of retaliation against his own regime and its long record of supporting terrorism. Even before Saddam had been captured, Libya had begun to ostracize the terrorist groups it had once embraced; at times Gadhafi had increasingly sounded almost like a moderate voice. In April 1999, Libya had agreed to allow two of its intelligence officers to stand trial under Scottish law for the destruction of the Pan Am 103 flight over Lockerbie. After the September 11 attacks, Gadhafi had secretly provided information to the CIA and FBI on al-Qaeda. In 2002, he had supported a Saudi initiative to offer Israel diplomatic recognition (yet to happen), and he had told Arafat not to declare a Palestinian state. All this had been summarized by his son Saif ul-Islam Gadhafi: “If we have the backing of the West and the United States, we will achieve more in five years than we could achieve in another fifty years.” The proof was the presence of his father’s emissaries in the bastion of the English establishment.
During the meeting, Ehrman and Musa Kusa took turns using a telephone in an adjoining room to make calls. Ehrman’s were to prime minister Tony Blair, who was on a visit to his Sedgefield constituency in the north of England. Using a second phone call, Blair kept President Bush in the White House updated on progress. Kusa’s calls were to a phone in a Bedouin tent where Gadhafi was enjoying another of his desert sojourns.
In the preceding months, Kusa had, under Libyan diplomatic passport, traveled to London several times. As the man most trusted by Gadhafi, his mission was to agree to a text that would ensure the Libyan leader did not lose face and satisfy the British team that he could not renege. In an MI6 safe house near Gatwick airport, Kusa and document drafters from the Foreign Office agonized over every word. Time and again, when a breakthrough seemed to be close and a draft was sent to Libya on a secure fax, it came back with suggestions and amendments that were unacceptable to the Foreign Office.
A further complication was Kusa’s suspicion of the need to involve Washington. Initially the Bush administration was also dubious about approvi
ng any deal with Libya. But as the secret meetings went on, the CIA asked to participate. Again Kusa was hesitant at their presence. He feared that Israel would learn of the plan from the CIA and possibly sabotage it. A Washington official involved in the negotiations said later: “Kusa was paranoid that the Israelis would want to torpedo the negotiations so that it could attack Gadhafi’s weapons sites. The Brits were finding that trying to do a deal with Gadhafi involved a lot of walking on eggs without breaking one.”
It had been like that from the August day in 2002 when Mike O’Brien, the Foreign Office minister, had visited Gadhafi in his desert tent. He was the first British envoy to do so. He was kept waiting for several hours before two female bodyguards finally ushered the gently perspiring minister into Gadhafi’s presence.
“Gadhafi sat with dark glasses on and spoke through a translator, though I knew he had learned English at a course in England. When it became appropriate I raised the matter of his weapons of mass destruction. To my astonishment he did not deny he possessed them, adding that this was a serious issue. Time and again he emphasized he was genuinely interested to improve relations with the West and in particular to attract foreign investments to the Libyan oil and gas industries,” O’Brien later recalled.
O’Brien returned to London convinced that Gadhafi was “genuinely ready to do a deal.” But there was still a way to go. O’Brien made further visits to Libya. Though he was certain he had taken every possible precaution to maintain secrecy, the deep-cover Mossad agent in Libya had picked up his trail.
In Tel Aviv, Meir Dagan decided to fly to London. He arrived on the eve of the Iraqi war. During his visit Dagan managed to meet with Scarlett and Manningham-Buller and the man Scarlett was due to replace at MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove. Later it emerged that Dagan, in his usual blunt manner, had told the intelligence chiefs, according to one Israeli source (who spoke to the author): “Be assured that Israel will not impede your plans. But I do expect you not to try and hoodwink us.”
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