Indeed, Hezbollah was pretty much the de facto Lebanese state. By the president’s assassination in 1989, it had subverted much of the army, large parts of the security services, and the police. It effectively ran Beirut’s only airport and its main seaport. In other words, Hezbollah was in a position to destroy any fool who wouldn’t recognize reality for what it was.
Consider Hajj Radwan’s point of view: With the new president proclaiming that he was determined to revive the state, could Hajj Radwan afford to sit on his hands while he tried? Wouldn’t the first thing on the president’s agenda be to exterminate Hajj Radwan and his coven of assassins? Hajj Radwan then saw no choice other than to put the state in its place.
There are a lot of parallels with the Hariri assassination. With his personal fortune and unreserved backing in Washington, Paris, and Riyadh, Hariri had started to labor under the delusion that he was the state. How long would it be before he deluded himself into trying to disarm Hezbollah? I imagine Hezbollah decided it couldn’t wait around to find out. (See Law #21—Get to It Quickly.)
Every country has its own constitution; ours is absolutism moderated by assassination.
—AN ANONYMOUS RUSSIAN
Assassinating people with hollow pretensions to power isn’t peculiar to Lebanon. Whether Benazir Bhutto was murdered by the Taliban, the Pakistani government, or a group we’ve never heard of, her loud and empty claims to power condemned her. She was tragically deceived into believing power in Pakistan is won at the ballot box.
Even in countries where the rule of law is given passing respect, the state at times will find it in its interest to murder upstarts who don’t seem to understand the way things really work. What’s sometimes called the “deep state”—secret units in the intelligence services or hired assassins—is called in to give the slow-to-comprehend a not so friendly reminder.
Between 1988 and 1998, Iranian intelligence operatives assassinated more than eighty dissident intellectuals. What the victims shared in common was a delusion that the mullahs’ power was on the wane and a political space was about to open up. Dubbed the “Chain Murders,” the assassins seemed to know what they were doing, never missing or murdering the wrong person. In many cases, they attempted to conceal that a murder had been committed at all. Some deaths occurred by injections of potassium chloride to induce a heart attack, others by fake car crashes.
A lot of people suspected that Iranian intelligence was behind the murders, and as the bodies started to pile up, even the regime recognized it looked silly trying to deny it. Its default defense was to point the finger at “rogue elements” of Iranian intelligence, conveniently naming an operative who himself may have been assassinated. Whether or not the assassination orders went all the way to the top or not, I doubt we’ll ever find out. But the point is that the assassins got what they were after: drowning the budding Iranian Spring in blood.
Just as Vladimir Putin was coming to power in 1999, a wave of assassinations hit Russia’s shores with a ferocity that surprised even the most cynical. No one seemed to be immune—big-name journalists, senior army officers, billionaire oligarchs, and even humble bookkeepers. One victim of assassination may have been Putin’s old boss, the ex-mayor of Saint Petersburg. According to a couple of reputable Russian journalists—a dying breed, to be sure—he was murdered by a poisoned lightbulb. The way it worked was the assassins coated the bulb of the ex-mayor’s bedside table with a toxic substance that atomizes with heat. A little late-night reading, and that was it for him.
Then, of course, there was the 2006 celebrated assassination of ex–Russian intelligence officer turned Putin critic Alexander Litvinenko. A minute but deadly dose of the isotope polonium-210 killed him. It’s almost certain that the assassins had expected the poisoning would go undetected. But when British police officials did discover traces of it, they concluded with near certainty that it was the Russian state that had assassinated Litvinenko.
(One of the small ironies in the Litvinenko assassination is that he may very well have signed his own execution order by openly accusing Putin of murdering a prominent journalist, who herself may have been assassinated because she’d accused Putin of assassinating a Russian general serving in Chechnya. I suppose if there’s a lesson to be had, it’s that it doesn’t pay to call an assassin by his name.)
But it’s not that regime assassinations are without risk. Again, it’s all in the timing. Too early and you get a reputation for unnecessary brutality, too late and you’re in trouble. The KGB must have often regretted not early on assassinating Lech Walesa, the Polish labor leader credited with opening the first crack in the Soviet bloc.
While there’s no way of getting the timing exactly right, Machiavelli advises a prince to undertake extrajudicial executions (read: assassinations) at regular intervals.
“For one should not wish ten years at most to pass from one to another of such executions; for when this time is past men begin to vary in their customs and to transgress the laws.”
Or as the old Chinese proverb goes, “If you want to scare the monkeys, kill the chicken.”
All armed prophets succeed, whereas unarmed ones fail.
—NICCOLÒ MACHIAVELLI, THE PRINCE
Montreal, January 20, 2004: A young Canadian man I knew called me one morning to ask if I’d come up to Montreal. He wanted to introduce me to a man he was thinking about doing some business with. I’ll call my friend Marc.
Marc had just opened a nightclub in downtown Montreal. Although only in his late twenties, he was determined to make serious money. I was more than happy to help him if I could, but I was tied up with a new book and asked if I could put the trip off for a couple months.
“Are you sure?” Marc asked. “It’s very important to me.”
He told me how his would-be business partner had read my memoir and genuinely wanted to meet me. If only I could fly up for dinner, or even lunch.
I didn’t know what to say. There wasn’t a shred of practical business advice in any of my books. I left it with a vague promise that I’d do my best to make some time for a trip.
Two days later, Marc’s father, an old friend, called me. He was a man who spoke deliberately and with a gravelly voice you had to take seriously. “You really must meet my son’s friend,” he said. “He’s a good family man. The two of you have a lot in common.”
I wondered what was going on with the two of them pressing me like this, and I decided I’d better go up to Montreal sooner rather than later. But before I could make reservations, Marc called the next morning: “Now it’s urgent. My friend’s been arrested.”
“Arrested?”
“Some bullshit charge. Please come up and talk to his son. He’ll explain everything.”
Before I got off the phone, I made Marc tell me the father’s name. “Vito Rizzuto,” he said. Other than I knew it was Italian, it meant nothing to me. I wrote it down to Google later.
I drew in a deep breath as I read about the notorious Canadian Mafia boss named Vito Rizzuto. A capo in the Bonanno family who more or less monopolized North American heroin smuggling, he was one of the most powerful gangsters in the world. The Canadian press dubbed him the “Teflon Don.” He was memorialized in the film Donnie Brasco, where in a true-to-life scene his character jumps out of a broom closet, a pistol blazing, cutting down three Bonanno family rivals. A classic regolamento di conti. A settling of scores.
Rizzuto had just been indicted in New York for those murders and racketeering, and the United States was now asking Canada to extradite him to stand trial. Rizzuto’s arrest in Montreal on January 20, 2004, was the first step in the process of extradition.
Now I was definitely interested. I didn’t care so much about the mob as I did about Rizzuto’s connections to the Lebanese heroin trade, which were supposedly tight. Taking into consideration the rumors that Hajj Radwan might have been dealing in the stuff to support himself, I wondered if there wasn’t something to be done with it. I’d come right out and as
k the Rizzutos about him.
Marc was curbside at Montreal’s airport, behind the wheel of a new black Porsche Cayenne. With his angular face, slicked-back hair, and Hugo Boss suit, he easily could have passed as a made man.
“You want something to eat?” Marc asked as I climbed in. “Or maybe go to the hotel and take a rest?” He didn’t wait for an answer: “Let’s go grab a drink.” Marc accelerated fast, nearly clipping a bus pulling away from the curb.
Marc caught me looking at the patchy snow along the skirt of the highway: “Welcome to Montreal, dude. More on the way tonight, a big dump.” You couldn’t tell it from the sky. It was patchy too, thin blades of sun slicing through it.
When Marc pulled up in front of his club, the lights were off, but a tall, slouchy blonde with high cheekbones and a short tube dress stepped out of the doorway. Her accent was Russian. We got out, and she took the Cayenne’s keys from Marc.
As Marc pushed through the front door, I asked him where he’d found the Russian. He didn’t answer. I followed him up a flight of stairs, two steps at a time, and then through two doorways with bead curtains. We came to a room with a proper door. He closed it behind us, turning on the lights. It was a private dining room, a dozen erotic Japanese gouache drawings lining the walls.
A second girl, as beautiful as the first, came in with two glasses of white wine on a tray. It wasn’t even noon, but I took one. Marc motioned for her to put his glass on the table. He told me he needed to step out to make a call.
Fifteen minutes later, Marc was back with a slender man in a tan cashmere overcoat and turtleneck. I stood up to shake hands. “Delighted to meet you,” he said. “I’m Leo Rizzuto.”
Marc pulled up a chair next to mine so Leo could sit next to me. Marc called into the darkness of the hallway: “Please bring us a bottle of red. A decent Bordeaux.”
“Do you smoke?” Leo asked, holding open a slim gold cigarette case. When I said no, he put it away without taking a cigarette.
“My father had so wanted to meet you,” Leo said. “It’s too bad you were busy.”
Marc had told me on the drive in from the airport that Leo was a lawyer with a good, legitimate practice. Now meeting Leo, I believed him. He seemed uncomfortable speaking with an ex–CIA agent on behalf of his Mafia father. But as Marc’s father told me, the Rizzutos were a tight family, which meant Leo had no choice in the matter.
Marc walked over to the window and pulled back the curtain, flushing the room with light. As he’d promised, it was snowing—small, dry flakes. It must have turned cold very fast, I thought.
Marc turned to me. “I have something to do. I’ll leave you two alone.” He closed the door behind him as he left. I noticed that Leo hadn’t touched his wine.
“I don’t want my father extradited to the United States,” Leo said. “He could spend the rest of his life in jail.”
“I’m not a lawyer, and I’m not sure how I can help.”
I considered asking him if his father really was in on killing the three men in Queens. But it would have been an unwelcome, not to mention pointless, question—the facts had been established long ago. A better question would have been whether it was the murder of his three rivals that had propelled Vito to the head of the Bonanno family. But I wasn’t going to ask that one either.
Leo went on: “My father knows a lot of people … a lot of things about them that aren’t well-known … about heads of state in Africa, South America, and the Middle East. He knows who’s selling what to whom, who’s on whose payroll. He has people everywhere. He knows people and can get things done you can’t imagine.”
I now finally understood what Vito Rizzuto wanted from me: a channel to American intelligence, the CIA. He’d probably tried but failed to reach a deal through the Department of Justice, and now he was looking for a back door. I couldn’t come up with another explanation.
“Was your father well connected in Lebanon?”
“I believe he was. But he’d have to give you the details.”
I had to laugh to myself when I pictured my returning to Washington and calling up the CIA to let them know that, after all these years of missteps and failure, I had finally found the perfect assassin to take care of Hajj Radwan. All I’d need is their help springing him out of a Canadian jail and the clutches of the Department of Justice. The telephone would have melted in my hand before I could get halfway through my pitch.
That night Leo and Marc took me to an Italian restaurant for drinks. They drifted off to talk to friends, leaving me to talk to a squat man united with a Roman nose. He never took off his fedora as he told me how tough things were in the wholesale fish business.
After round three of grappa, he asked me if he could trust me. When I said yes, he told me that, the night before, his car had been firebombed and burned to the rims. It was over a contract dispute.
“They’ll pay,” he said. “Don’t you worry about that.”
I changed the subject: “I have to go to Lebanon next month. [It was a lie.] Ever been there?”
“No.”
“No Lebanese business contacts?”
“No.”
I looked out the window at the snow; it was now a driving blizzard.
Somewhere between the Italian restaurant and a nightclub, Leo disappeared. As Marc drove me back to my hotel, breaking through a wall of falling snow, I thought about Leo’s offer, or at least the one I thought he’d made. It intrigued me; I could only guess what sort of people the Rizzutos keep on their speed dials, no doubt among them the heroin dealers in Hajj Radwan’s backyard, the Bekaa Valley.
But I didn’t think anything was really lost. The American Mafia may have a long history of settling disputes in blood, but they’re loath to do it for outsiders, especially governments. Maybe in Italy, but not on this side of the Atlantic. (At this point, some fool’s going to raise his hand to ask if the CIA didn’t try to recruit the Mafia during the Kennedy administration to assassinate Castro. It did, but it never got off another fool’s drawing board.)
None of this is meant to imply that the Mafia doesn’t know what it’s doing when it comes to murder. They know who their enemies are, who deserves it, and who doesn’t. They know to strike early, before the victim gets the same idea. The three Bonanno captains Vito murdered in the Queens social club would have done the same to him had they known about his ambitions. Murder is a two-way street.
In December 2009, Vito’s son—not Leo, but rather his heir apparent—would be assassinated in a Montreal suburb. Nearly a year later Vito’s father, the Rizzuto patriarch, would meet the same fate when a single sniper’s bullet punched through the double-paned patio doors of his house, killing him instantly. As for Vito, he was jailed for five years at the supermax prison in Florence, Colorado. He was paroled early, but died of cancer on December 23, 2013. I imagine this was the end to the Rizzutos’ reign, the complete destruction of its tabula patronatus.
NOTE TO ASSASSINS: It works best inside the family.
LAW
#18
LIKE A BOLT OF LIGHTNING OUT OF A CLEAR BLUE SKY
Speed, secrecy, and surprise are your best allies. When they are applied in proper doses, the target will not have time to even cower. As for the survivors, they’ll live in grim dread that their turn is next.
One more pothole, one less asshole.
—ANONYMOUS
Madrid, December 20, 1973: Franco’s new prime minister was a creature of habit. For as long as anyone could remember, at nine sharp every morning Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco would emerge from his apartment building, climb into a waiting car, and take a short ride to San Francisco de Borja church to attend daily mass. His schedule and route never varied; his neighbors joked that they could set their watches by it. In fact, it would be Carrero Blanco’s habitual observances that would contribute to his undoing.
By the early seventies, the Basque separatist movement ETA decided it was high time to knock a tooth out of the mouth of the doddering Franco regi
me, hoping to nudge it down the road to the realization that it wasn’t worth holding on to the Basques. Among ETA’s calculations: Franco’s health was bad; there was no real dauphin; the left wing of the Catholic Church had broken from the ultraconservatives, a serious blow to Franco; many Spaniards born after the civil war (1936–1939) didn’t think Spain needed a strongman to hold the country together. In short, with the consensus frayed, one high-profile murder would be a game changer.
ETA also decided it needed a spectacular display of violence to put itself on the map, to give it the voice that Franco had denied it all these years. As one ETA assassin put it in a long, taped confession to Blanco’s “execution”: “Spaniards have an enormous incapacity to understand the Euskadi [the Basque nation] is a country.”
ETA apparently didn’t share George Bernard Shaw’s opinion that assassination is the extreme form of censorship. For them, it was a means to uncensor themselves.
In those days, Spain was an overconfident police state, and all that ETA had to do to find Carrero Blanco’s apartment was look it up in the telephone book: Calle de los Hermanos Bécquer, 6. ETA members located it on a subway map. In the following days, they watched his apartment, which soon confirmed a tip about the prime minister’s daily trip to San Francisco de Borja.
The church was open to the public, which allowed the assassins to study its layout and workings at their leisure. The very first day, they caught Carrero Blanco leaving mass. The next day, they got there early enough to see him arrive and attend mass. Only one bodyguard accompanied Carrero Blanco inside the church.
Every day an ETA assassin waited at the church for Carrero Blanco to arrive. At one point one of them tested the reaction of Carrero Blanco’s bodyguard by kneeling on the prie-dieu next to him. Although he was only a foot or so from Carrero Blanco, the bodyguard did nothing. It was then that ETA understood just how vulnerable Carrero Blanco was. At first, they had considered kidnapping him, but when he was appointed prime minister he was assigned too many bodyguards to make it feasible.
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