The chance of success by such an attack was challenged. A Pentagon adviser argued that such an attack “would be like bombing water, with its currents and eddies. The bombs would likely be diverted.” More certain was that such an attack would be seen throughout the Muslim world as another example of American imperialism and would lead to unprecedented retaliation. Already the growing prospect of such retaliation had come to preoccupy the intelligence services of Britain, Mossad, the CIA, and the Pakistan intelligence service. The threat was centered on a plot, that if successful, would lead to the greatest terrorist outrage the world had ever known.
Since March 2006, Operation Overt had become the largest, most secret and widespread surveillance and intelligence operation ever mounted in Britain, post-WW II. It had quickly widened to include Scotland Yard’s anti-terrorism squad and its special branch, GCHQ, Britain’s spy in the sky, NSA, its counterpart in the United States, the CIA and the FBI, the DSGE in France, Germany’s BND, the Pakistani intelligence service and Mossad.
In all some five hundred of the world’s most experienced spies were involved in an operation aimed at two British-based cells of suspected Islamic militants who were believed to be plotting a massive terrorist attack. How it would be carried out, the target, and its time and place were still unclear in late May 2006.
For weeks the intelligence teams had been patiently gathering the tentacles that had emerged from suspects uncovered in the “concentric circles” which materialized after the London bombings in July 2005. The first cell had been pinpointed after one suspect had returned from an al-Qaeda training camp in the “badlands” of northern Pakistan. The second cell had been identified as operating out of the Muslim community in the suburbs of south London. Both cells were placed under intense monitoring. All public meetings in both areas were infiltrated by MI5 officers. Telephone contacts by those who attended the gatherings were traced to Paris, Frankfurt, and, as one anti-terrorist officer later said, “to all points East and West.” E-mails were intercepted by GCHQ and NSA. From listening posts on the island of Cyprus to the deserts of Afghanistan, the mountains of Iran, and the North West Frontier border of Pakistan, the words of cell members and their associates were plucked out of the air, recorded, and sent to the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre (JTAC) in London’s Millbank. Its Anacapa wall charts—specialist diagrams to create a coherent picture from all the incoming information—were constantly updated.
In the world outside, other stories came and went in the headlines. One was the assassination of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the murderous leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq. In late June 2006 his hideout near Baghdad was devastated by a laser-bomb attack. He had tried to crawl to safety, but had been shot by U.S. Special Forces. They were led to al-Zarqawi by a whistleblower in his midst. The man received “a very substantial payment” and was given a new identity in a country of his choice. He was assured its whereabouts would forever remain a secret.
Also in late June 2006, Hamas militants in Gaza kidnapped an Israeli soldier, Corporal Gilad Shalit. Israel promptly launched a massive offensive against targets in the territory. Ostensibly it was to recover Shalit. In reality it was the precursor of the war in Lebanon that started in July 2006. That was confirmed by Ehud Olmert on July 12 when Hezbollah guerrillas killed eight Israeli soldiers and kidnapped two more on the border of south Lebanon. Ehud Olmert called it “an act of war.” Two days later, with strong support from Israel, the U.S. and British missions at the United Nations opposed a motion on a ceasefire. By then, the first Hezbollah rockets rained down on Haifa and other towns in northern Israel. Israel’s powerful air force had made its first strikes on south Lebanon and Beirut. The dead were left where they lay, soon numbering a hundred a day. Meir Dagan found himself at the cutting edge of the conflict, deploying his agents into hostile territory.
CHAPTER 28
FIGHTING THE FIRES OF SATAN
Every morning before the sun rose over the Judean hills, Israeli Prime Minister Olmert, who was barely three months into office, routinely slipped out of the bed he shared with his wife, Aliza. In no time he had shaved, showered, and dressed in another of his lightweight suits, which nevertheless would leave him slightly perspiring in the fierce midday heat. A consolation, he told an aide, was that it was nowhere near as unbearable as the temperature inside the tanks he had sent across the border to fight in south Lebanon. By 5 A.M. each day Olmert was reading the overnight intelligence summary left for him on a table. No more than two foolscap pages long, the document had been prepared by Meir Dagan and faxed to Olmert. It consisted of little more than bullet points listing the latest number of overnight rocket attacks on Israel’s northern cities, the current body count, the number of injured, the number of missions flown by Israeli air force jets, the assessment from Mossad stations around the world of the criticism of Israel, and the mounting demand for a ceasefire.
In those first weeks of July after the war had started, the summary could only have brought little comfort to the man whom Efraim Halevy had dismissed as “just happening to be in the right place when he could make or break his career.” Already his domestic critics were asking if Olmert’s limited experience of military tactics meant he was the wrong man to lead the war to a successful conclusion for Israel. As July drew to a close and the first body bags with IDF soldiers were brought back for burial, the war showed all the signs of becoming a widespread conflagration. It had all seemed a long way from only two weeks before when President George W. Bush had pronounced at the G-8 summit in Saint Petersburg on July 16, four days into the conflict, that “this is a moment of clarification. It is now clear why we don’t have peace in the Middle East and that Iran and Syria are the root causes of instability in the region.” Two days later calls came from several governments for the United States to lead the negotiations to end the fighting. But Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice insisted that any ceasefire was not possible “until the conditions are conducive.” She never explained what “conducive” meant, brushing aside media requests to do so.
Ehud Olmert had been told by Meir Dagan that Mossad’s intelligence from Washington was that the Bush administration believed that a swift war against Hezbollah would serve as a prelude to the eagerly anticipated preemptive attack that the president and his vice president, Dick Cheney, were still convinced was their solution to “why we don’t have peace in the Middle East.” In the meantime, Mossad agents had uncovered another reason. Al-Qaeda had asked an estimated million-plus jihadists to fight alongside Hezbollah. By mid-July the agents were reporting that from the snow-capped mountains of Afghanistan to the scorching deserts of Saudi Arabia, the call to join the “Holy War” was being answered.
In Washington, however, Olmert knew he could continue to have the support of an impressive number of organizations and individuals who included a number of influential Christian evangelicals—preachers like Jerry Falwell, Gary Bauer, and Marion “Pat” Robertson—as well as Tom DeLay and Dick Armey, who had been majority leaders in the House of Representatives. They were all united in a common belief that Israel’s existence was the fulfillment of a biblical prophecy and was “God’s will.” In their support of Israel, they could count on the support of powerful neo-conservative gentiles like John Bolton, now America’s ambassador to the United Nations; Robert Bartley, the former editor of the highly respected Wall Street Journal; William John Bennett, the former secretary of education; Jeane Kirkpatrick, the former UN ambassador. Between them they had established that in Congress, Israel would remain virtually free of criticism. No nation in the Middle East had gone to war knowing it had such powerful backing.
This must have been a comfort to Ehud Olmert as he was driven in his armor-plated car from his official residence in a Tel Aviv suburb for his first appointment of the day with his generals.
Once hostilities had started, critics—especially those in Europe—found themselves under familiar attack for condemning Israel. The specter of anti-Semitism, never far from the surface, was gi
ven a fresh outing. Most of it came from Muslims in Germany and France, which has the largest Muslim population of any European nation. The attacks portrayed Israel in Nazi-like terms, ignoring the incident when a French Jew was murdered in France before the fighting broke out in Lebanon and tens of thousands of demonstrators had filled the city streets to condemn anti-Semitism. Even Jacques René Chirac and Dominique de Villepin had attended the victim’s funeral service to show their solidarity. The attacks in the Arab press had predictably been more inflammatory. From Tehran to Cairo they had been united in calling Israel’s actions “war crimes.” Equally predictable, the powerful pro-Israeli elements in the America media had sprung to its defense. One commentator saw it as “a two-word message to be delivered to other hostile regimes: you’re next.” In case there was any doubt who “next” should be, a radio pundit said: “It is time to turn the screws on Syria.” It was described as “terror friendly” by the New York Daily News, and “a serious threat to the United States” in The New Republic.
The reality was that the Bush administration was now divided over attacking the Damascus regime. While Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney were in favor, both the new head of the CIA, General Michael Hayden, and Condoleezza Rice strongly opposed the idea. Hayden pointed out that Syria continued to provide the CIA with important intelligence about al-Qaeda—the “back door channel” had been created when George Tenet had met with Syrian intelligence chiefs after 9/11. The CIA had been given secret access to Mohammed Haydar Zammar who had been identified as one of the recruiters of the hijackers that had flown their planes into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. Hayden had argued that to attack Syria, either directly or to allow Israel to act as Washington’s surrogate, would almost certainly end Damascus’s cooperation. Dr. Rice had reminded the president that Syria posed no direct threat to the United States and that an attack would encourage it to foment trouble in neighboring Iraq. “Before any dealings with Syria, it would be sensible to finish our work in Iraq,” she was reported as saying to an aide.
Now, on that July morning as Ehud Olmert was driven from his home for his first early morning meeting with his generals, he was fully aware of how much Washington depended on his promise to destroy Hezbollah and its heavily defended interlocked web of bunkers in south Lebanon and the Beka’a Valley. Mission reports on the relentless bombing raids conducted by the Israeli Air Force were being routed to the American embassy in Tel Aviv and then on to the Pentagon where they were further analyzed. While the State Department saw the bombing campaign as a means to reinforce their encouragement of the Lebanese government to deal more firmly with Hezbollah—a forlorn hope—the Pentagon strategists saw the round-the-clock aerial assault on Hezbollah redoubts as what one former Pentagon official told the author “was a test run for Iran.” The official had added, “the only real on-the-ground intelligence we have was from Mossad’s undercover agents in Iran. While it confirmed much of what we suspected, and had helped us to devise a proper bombing strategy against Iran’s nuclear facilities, we still needed to know how it would play out. The air attacks on south Lebanon and the Beka’a Valley provided such an opportunity.”
A hint of that had surfaced when Shabtai Shavit, a former Mossad director and, in 2006, a national security adviser to the Knesset said, “we do what we think is best for us, and it happens to meet America’s requirements. That’s just part of a relationship between two friends.” This would explain why a small team of U.S. Air Force strategists had been in Israel for weeks and had held several meetings with Lieutenant General Dan Halutz, the chief of staff of the Israeli Defense Forces, who during his time in the Israeli Air Force had helped to prepare the attack plan for an aerial assault on Iran. It was that plan which had been used to launch the air assault on south Lebanon. The effect would once more form the core of the morning meeting in Israel’s war room.
The size of a Hezbollah rocket crater—forty by twenty feet—the war room was deep inside the Kirya, the Tel Aviv headquarters of the Israeli Defense Forces. It was accessed by swipe cards whose codes were as closely guarded as the life-or-death decisions made within the featureless concrete building. Tacked to the olive-green walls were maps and charts showing the progress in the war: the number of IDF air strikes and their targets, bombardment by Israeli warships of the towns and villages around the port city of Tyre, ground advances by the crack Galilee, and Nahal divisions into south Lebanon. On a separate chart were the latest figures of rockets launched against northern Israel and the precise location where each Katyusha BM-24 and Fajr-3 rocket had landed. Another chart listed the armaments Hezbollah still possessed, but had not yet fully used. The Fajr-5 rocket with its range of 55 miles and the deadliest of them all: the Zelzal-2 Iranian missile with a range of 150 miles. It brought Tel Aviv and the Kirya within its range.
Against one wall were a bank of screens. They brought into the war room unedited footage from IDF cameramen on the frontline: advancing with troops into Arab villages, perched on mine-sweeping bulldozers clearing the way for tanks, or on the hull of the tanks as they ground their way forward, firing as they advanced.
In the center of the room was a conference table made from cedar wood from Galilee. There were twenty chairs around the table. With the sun already high over the Judean hills, they were all occupied by 6:25 A.M. each morning by the men who would direct the war against Hezbollah. The fanaticism and ruthlessness of their opponents had surprised them. Their faces showed the strain of long days and shortened hours of often disturbed sleep. They knew before they left the room each morning they would make more life-or-death decisions which, when they were implemented, would draw further harsh criticism from not only around the world, but from within Israel.
A great deal of criticism had been directed against Ehud Olmert from an increasingly bewildered public who had begun to ask what was being gained from a war where the number of Israeli dead rose by the day and tens of thousands cowered in bomb shelters and protected rooms in the north of the country. Hezbollah, far from being crippled, appeared to have a limitless supply of rockets and anti-tank missiles that had destroyed the pride of the IDF army—its latest American-built tanks.
Every morning Israeli Army Radio carried the anguished words to the people that the prime minister had promised to teach Hezbollah a lesson it would never forget—and from which it would never again threaten Israel. And it was not only Hezbollah who would be dealt with. Hamas had continued to attack the Jewish state, creating an effective war on two fronts. Olmert in one of his regular broadcasts had promised the day of reckoning would also soon be upon Hamas. But there were a growing number of Israelis who felt the prime minister not only looked increasingly tired, but sounded ever more uncertain. That would have been noted by his waiting generals in the war room.
Pinned to one wall was a blow-up of an Israeli newspaper editorial: “If Israel fails in this war, it will be impossible to continue to live in the Middle East. What is it about us, the Jews, the few and persecuted? We are not hesitating, apologizing, or relenting. The Jewish state will no longer be trampled underfoot.”
By 6:30 A.M. the last cup of coffee had been cleared from the table. Olmert opened proceedings with a political update on the view from Washington. He did not have to remind his listeners there was now only a limited time left to crush Hezbollah. On that July morning Ehud Olmert returned to a question raised previously in the war room. Where did the “hawk of hawks”—U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld—stand? Could his virtual silence be no more than a reminder of Rumsfeld’s age, that for him this was just another war in a career that dated back to Vietnam in 1975, where Rumsfeld had been a junior White House aide as American troops had withdrawn? Washington’s Israeli ambassador had been reassuring—his latest enquiries showed “Rummy remained as enthusiastic as ever over what Israel was doing,” Olmert assured the battle-hardened men around the table.
Olmert’s preamble done, he handed over the meeting to Meir Dagan who sat across the table from the prime
minister. He, too, had news from Washington. While there was no evident split within the Bush administration, his station chief in the capital had picked up that Condoleezza Rice had modified her position over whether it was not yet “conducive” to formally intervene in the conflict. The Mossad man had learned from his own sources within the State Department that Rice had redefined her role to that “of a mediator waiting to intervene.” It was still too early for her to resume her shuttle diplomacy, but she hoped that day was coming soon. In Dagan’s judgment this could be interpreted as the secretary of state, for the moment, continuing to take a back seat in the crisis while the neo-conservatives around Bush maintained their position of all-out support for military action. It was the latest steps in that action which preoccupied air force chiefs Major General Elyezer Shkedy, Commander of the Israeli Air Force, and Major General David Ben Ba’ashat, Commander of the Israeli Navy. Sitting around the table were the other men charged with running the war. Lieutenant General Dan Halutz as Chief of Staff sat next to Olmert. He was the highest ranking officer in the room and the Minister of Defense had, since 1976, held overall command of the IDF. He was represented by Colonel Yaakov Toran, Director General of the Ministry. Olmert’s cabinet was also asked to approve all military policies and operations. In reality, this was done by the Foreign Affairs and Security Committee, but the decisions taken in the war room had so far not been challenged—and were unlikely to be.
Next to Halutz sat his deputy, Major General Moshe Kaplinsky, and Amos Yedlin, Director of Military Intelligence. Others around the table included the three key field commanders, Major General Yair Naveh of Central Command, Major General Yoav Gallant of the Southern Command with responsibility for watching over the Sinai, and Major General “Udi” Adam who was the northern field commander at the cutting edge of the conflict with daily responsibility for running the war in south Lebanon. Toughened by years of fighting, the three officers gave their reports in the clipped language of seasoned military briefers. Another important member of the gathering was Major General Avichi Mendelblit, the IDF’s Military Advocate General. Among his many responsibilities was to ensure that the air attacks would avoid being labeled as war crimes. Brigadier General Moshe Lipel, the IDF’s Financial Adviser, was present to give the daily cost of running the war. Down to the last tank-shell fired and the sticks of bombs dropped, all was accounted for.
Gideon's Spies: The Secret History of the Mossad Page 73