Most of the $13 million that el-Ghoul had waited for, the lifeblood of his men in the trenches, was destroyed in the missile strike. Once the smoke cleared, the skies turned green as a storm of singed $100 bills cascaded onto the dusty streets of Gaza City like strips of confetti in a Wall Street tickertape parade. The payroll’s incineration was a major blow to Hamas. Without the cash they couldn’t maintain the struggle. Hamas asked for a cease-fire, and the summer war in Gaza ended forty-eight hours later.
Meir Dagan had been right all along. If you choke off the money, the bloodshed will end.*
It has been reported—neither confirmed nor denied by the U.S. government—that in 2015 David S. Cohen, the former undersecretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, chaired a meeting at a CIA black site in 2015, somewhere in an allied nation to assemble a task force to deal with the new terrorism scourge that confronted the West and the United States: ISIS. Known as Daesh in Arabic, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, was born out of al-Qaeda in Iraq and achieved prominence in 2013 in the chaos of the Syrian Civil War where its fanatical fighters captured large swaths of territory. ISIS became a regional concern when it declared itself a caliphate and seized major cities in western Iraq, including Mosul. Flush with oil money stolen from the lands it captured, ISIS attracted fighters from all over the world, including many disillusioned young people from Western Europe. The western fighters were considered the most fanatic and bloodthirsty. After fighting in Iraq and Syria, some of the westerners returned home and established operational cells in their home countries. One of these cells was responsible for the November 2015 multipronged attacks in Paris that resulted in 130 dead and scores more wounded.
David Cohen had taken over from Stuart Levey at Treasury in 2011, and he had now been tapped personally by President Barack Obama to serve as CIA deputy director. Cohen’s appointment sent shock waves through the ranks at Langley—deputy directors were usually promoted from within. Cohen had served as Levey’s deputy, and he had seen Harpoon operate up close and personal. He wanted to assemble a similar entity at CIA.
At the black site, Cohen spoke to his operational heads in the clandestine service. Some of the people at the roundtable were computer wizards, some were accountants and lawyers, others were shooters, operators from the Agency’s Special Activities Division who had spent the better part of the last fourteen years fighting al-Qaeda all around the world. Cohen knew, like Meir Dagan before him, that the war on terror wasn’t simply one of shock and awe. It was one of finesse and guile. And he knew that targeting a terrorist group’s sources of income and its ability to acquire the tools of war was just as important as, if not more important than, impressive body counts from aerial bombardments and drone strikes.
The CIA wanted to establish a unit that could track terrorist money in real time, not in monthly statements, but from the field. And the CIA wanted a unit that could focus on the moneymen, the currency launderers and the financiers who profited from the bloodshed and who enabled operatives to travel across borders, rent safe houses, and perpetrate attacks in Europe and the United States.
Cohen had no experience in an intelligence organization, but his appointment signified the focus that the Agency, as well as other western intelligence services, now have in the war on terror: namely “follow the money.”7 In order to meet and defeat the threat of ISIS and other groups that were bound to follow, the CIA wanted to replicate the template that Harpoon had produced.
In the field, in the blood-soaked towns of Iraq and Syria, the new policy was proving to be highly effective.
Throughout its advances into Iraq and Syria in 2014–2015, as ISIS fighters took over a territory, the Islamic State began to fill its coffers. Everything that could be stolen was stolen. Everything that could be taxed was taxed. The group seized local banks, stripping their assets, emptying personal accounts, and claiming all the cash reserves as their own. They pillaged museums and libraries, selling off precious antiquities and national treasures as quick swag. Christian and Yazidi girls, along with those of other religious minorities, were abducted and auctioned off as sex slaves. This systematic robbery yielded massive amounts of money used to expand the group’s reach and cement its hold over captured populations. Water, electricity, and even cell phones were subject to taxation by ISIS. Any withdrawals from banks under ISIS control were subject to a 5 percent fee.8
This larcenous policy was employed to great effect in Mosul, the northern Iraqi city captured by ISIS in June 2014. The group took control of Mosul’s Central Bank, a move that brought in $480 billion for ISIS.9 It also engaged in massive theft from the terrified local population. The group seized anything of value, anything that could be sold, and its revenue used to further its objectives. This included cattle, jewelry, and even machinery used by Moslawi craftsmen. Antiquities were confiscated and auctioned off. Experts estimated that this yielded the group an additional $500 billion in assets from this wide-scale looting.10
But ISIS was far from finished. The hundreds of thousands of Christian residents of the city were given three options: leave, convert to Islam, or die.11 Most fled. Their deserted homes and other properties were seized, and daubed with the Arabic letter Nuun, indicating that it belonged to Christians. The N stood for Nasrani, or Nazarene, denoting members of the faith whose founder had once lived in Nazareth.12 When the effects of the United States targeting its finances began to bite, ISIS put these Christian homes up for auction, with the group pocketing the profits.13
ISIS also earned millions from kidnapping for ransom and from donations from the Persian Gulf. Money was also raised from fund-raising, especially through Internet promotion and social media.14
Money poured in from every corner of their callous empire, which quickly stretched across swaths of Iraq and Syria. But the real money, the cash cow that never stopped giving, was the oil, a natural resource that had long been a cause for brutal conflict.
At its height, the Islamic State held hundreds of oil fields, controlling more than 60 percent of Syria’s oil production and 10 percent of Iraq’s. Despite draconian international restrictions on ISIS, there was no shortage of buyers for the oil; even Syria’s embattled leadership was willing to pay for the privilege of using its own stolen natural resources.15
Like Israel at the height of the second intifada, U.S. President Barack Obama realized the most effective way to defeat ISIS was to separate it from its revenue stream. The cost of running an empire is steep; without money, the group could not pay its fighters, buy munitions, or even keep the lights on.
In October 2015, the U.S. and coalition forces launched Operation Tidal Wave II, named in honor of a Second World War mission to decimate the oil capabilities of Nazi Germany and its Axis. Tidal Wave II’s objective was to take out the oil fields that were the central source of ISIS income, and, for the first time, focus on the entire mechanism that kept the oil flowing. The air raids conducted by the United States and its allies targeted oil distribution, trucks, brokers, and even middlemen who were hitherto largely ignored in previous bombings.16 The Americans were using intelligence gathered during a May 2015 raid that yielded deep insight into the workings of the highly lucrative ISIS oil industry.17
By December 2015, the U.S. military announced that it had destroyed almost all ISIS oil assets.18
Faced with a military onslaught now coupled with a direct assault on its primary source of funding, ISIS was left shell-shocked and weakened. Its once fierce grip on large areas of territory in Iraq and Syria was now under real threat of annihilation. Its oil fields, which had once brought in estimated profits of USD $50 million per month, were smoking ruins.19 The organization was now also cash-strapped, limiting its ability to send fighters back to their home countries to perpetrate catastrophic attacks, such as the November 2015 attacks in Paris that killed 130 people and wounded close to five hundred, and additional strikes in Brussels and Istanbul.
By the close of 2015, ISIS fighters who had
been used to lavish monthly wages began to feel the pinch, as the group scrambled to compensate for its dramatic loss of revenue. These salaries once averaged USD $500 per month or even more. Foreign fighters were the highest paid—often earning more than USD $1,000 a month.20
This was higher than the remuneration offered by Syria’s civil service, or even rival Islamist group Jabhat al-Nusra.21 ISIS needed to keep its fighters happy or face mass defections—and to do that, it needed oil. Ultimately, ISIS’s fear of losing its fighters came to pass once the stipends dried up. The local populations, emboldened by the swift, shocking blow to their captors, began to resist the now-depleted ISIS presence. This paved the way for the local and international coalition to reclaim territory once thought lost.
A policy birthed in Israel had again proved its effectiveness in combating a terrorist scourge in the Middle East, bringing the greatest threat to the region in modern history to its knees. But the Americans and their coalition partners also borrowed a specific tactic. On January 10, 2016, U.S. air strikes hit a key facility in Mosul where ISIS stored its cash reserves—making it impossible for the fighters in the field to be paid. The air raid destroyed the site, incinerating close to USD $45 million in irreplaceable cash.
AFTERWORD
Legacy
For by wise guidance you can wage your war, and in abundance of counselors there is victory.
—Proverbs 24:6
More than two decades have passed since the tourists from Chicago arrived at an Israeli airport with suitcases brimming with money and malicious intentions of financing bombs and murdering innocent civilians. In the years since the Oslo Accords—which purportedly settled the Arab-Israeli conflict—were signed, the Middle East, and the world beyond it, has grown more violent and lawless as terrorism has metastasized, and religious rage has been weaponized. Hate and extremism have been exported to every corner of the globe, evolving into a pandemic plague.
The war on terror financing, pioneered in the Jewish state as a radically unconventional but desperately needed start-up, has grown into a standard and vital component of every nation’s national security strategy. Most of the original Harpoon members have retired from service, and have pursued civilian careers, while others have passed away. The private sector—attorneys and others, who rose to wage their own battles against the terrorist organizations, their patrons, and the financial institutions that aid and abet them—continue pursuing these villainous miscreants with lawsuits and legal actions in courtrooms around the world. While the names and faces of many of those killed and injured in the terrorist attacks quietly fade with time from memory, the pursuit of justice on their and their families’ behalf continues on.
On a chilly and cloudy afternoon in September 2014, a federal jury in a Brooklyn courtroom found that the Arab Bank was liable for supporting Palestinian terrorism, in connection to a slew of attacks in Israel.1 The decision followed a fiercely fought five-week-long trial and set a historic precedent that sent shock waves through legal—and banking—systems around the world. It was the first time ever that a bank had been held responsible for aiding and abetting terrorism in a civil suit. There were 297 plaintiffs in all. They represented victims of Hamas terror who had loved ones killed or injured, during the second intifada. It was another stinging defeat for the Arab Bank. Years earlier, in 2005, the U.S. Department of the Treasury forced the Amman-based institution to pay a hefty $24 million fine for failing to adequately initiate anti-money-laundering controls; in that ruling, the Treasury Department’s Office of the Comptroller ordered the Arab Bank to cease transferring money or opening new accounts from its midtown Manhattan branch.2
The court battle had taken nearly a decade. Sitting through the trial had been heartbreaking for the victims and their families, who were forced to relive the horrors of the suicide bombings and shooting attacks. The victory, though, was an important milestone in the war on terror. Throughout the trial, the bank’s officials had insisted upon their innocence, that they knew nothing about the terror funds moving through their accounts. The Brooklyn jury wasn’t buying it. “Terrorist organizations are dependent on the financial system to operate,” one of the plaintiffs’ lawyers, Gary Osen, explained outside the courthouse. “They’ve been able to thrive largely because folks like Arab Bank and others have turned a blind eye.”3 Reportedly, the parties entered into a settlement just before the damages portion of the case could be heard.4
Shortly after the Arab Bank decision, another landmark counterterrorism verdict was received. In the federal courthouse in lower Manhattan, the civil case against the PLO and the Palestinian Authority came to a close. On February 23, 2015, a federal jury found the PLO and the Palestinian Authority liable for supporting, financing, and perpetrating murderous terrorist attacks that killed thirty-three people and wounded close to five hundred, including American citizens, in Israel.5 During the seven-week-long trial the jury heard compelling evidence in regard to a series of shooting and bombing attacks carried out by Fatah’s al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, Hamas, and the PIJ between the years 2001 and 2004—the height of the second intifada, when the Palestinian leadership launched an all-out terror war against Israeli civilians. In a unanimous decision, the twelve-member jury found the Palestinians liable on all twenty-four counts of terrorism. The representatives from the PLO who were in court that morning, along with their lawyers, looked crushed and defeated as the jury answered “Guilty” to each and every count.
Unlike the Arab Bank trial, the verdict came with a damages award. The PLO and the PA were ordered to pay $218.5 million in damages to the ten American families who were represented in the case; under the provisions of the 1992 Anti-Terrorism Act, the damages were automatically tripled to $655.5 million. The U.S. State Department officials worried that the court decision could bankrupt the Palestinian Authority.
Lawyers for the victims’ families were jubilant. If the Palestinian Authority and the PLO had the money to pay the imprisoned terrorists and families of suicide bombers, they asserted, they certainly could pay the court judgment to the victims. As lead trial counsel, Kent Yalowitz had stated passionately in his closing arguments just days before: “Money is oxygen for terrorism. The anti-terrorism law hits those who send terrorists where it hurts them most: in the wallet.” Outside the courthouse, standing with the other lawyers and wearing an overcoat to protect her from the harsh New York winter, a smiling Nitsana told reporters, “Now the PLO and the PA know there is a price for supporting terrorism.”6
Lawyers for the Palestinian Authority quickly left the courthouse, despondent and silent, trying desperately to avoid the press. One man was happy, though. Meir Dagan knew that lives could be protected and terrorism could suffer serious setbacks on new battlefields without shots in anger having to be fired.*
Meir Dagan was diagnosed with liver cancer shortly after leaving the Mossad. His doctors told him that he had two options: get a transplant or, as he would explain, “clean his desk so that others wouldn’t have to.” He was a year past the age limit to get a transplant in Israel, so he tried to find a match in the United States. Finally, he underwent surgery in Minsk, the capital of Belarus.7 Dagan fought like a soldier to make it through the difficult medical procedure and the precarious post-op period. According to his wife, Bina, the monarch of a nation that Israel does not have formal ties with offered Dagan the use of one of his palaces so that he could recover from the difficult operation.8 The Middle Eastern leaders respected Dagan, and they felt safer while he was at the helm of the Mossad. An Egyptian newspaper, remarkably, even called him Superman.9
Meir Dagan never allowed his medical condition to interfere with his daily routine. For the next four years, Dagan traveled the world speaking at conferences and making the kind of money soldiers and spies can only dream of. He painted and he read. Dagan spent time with his children and grandchildren, and he enjoyed the company of his friends and former comrades in arms. Those who had served with Dagan, those who he had counted on in dange
rous moments, adored their former commander. These men and women made sure that Meir Dagan always knew exactly how much he was revered.
To the surprise of some, Dagan used his time to be an outspoken critic of any unilateral Israeli military action against Iran. He sincerely believed that any effort to take out the Islamic Republic’s well-fortified and strategically positioned reactors, laboratories, and factories would end in failure. His position, which he determinedly shared with news organizations around the world such as CBS, was viewed by many as a direct challenge to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; some in Israel accused Dagan of leaking classified information for political gain. Dagan would have none of it. He was a private citizen, he told Ilana Dayan, one of Israel’s premier investigative journalists, in an interview given in his Tel Aviv apartment, and it was his right to speak on what he believed.”10
Dagan appeared at rallies, and he was a featured guest of honor at symposiums and forums around the world. In early 2016, however, his medical condition worsened. He lost weight, and he began to lose the bombastic energy that he had displayed throughout his entire military and Mossad career. Meir Dagan died on March 17, 2016 at the age of 71.
The former soldier and spymaster was buried the following day at a military ceremony in Rosh Pina, his beloved home in northern Israel near where he fought so many battles in the hell of Lebanon. His coffin was carried by six senior IDF officers; an honor guard fired a volley of rifle rounds over his grave.11 Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Reuven Rivlin, and scores of Dagan’s former comrades in arms attended the funeral, held under gray skies and a cold, light rain. The Mossad was forced to hold a private ceremony, behind closed doors, so that the men and women that Dagan had led in the shadows could mourn without being subjected to the media spotlight. Condolences flooded Mossad headquarters from espionage services from all over the world. The CIA, the U.S. Department of the Treasury, and many who were on the front lines of America’s war against terror mourned the passing of a partner and a legend.
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