“Come upstairs,” the colonel said.
The opportunity that had presented itself was clear to both of them—Yasser Arafat, chairman of the PLO and commander of Fatah, a man high on Israel’s hit list for years, was in south Lebanon, a few minutes’ flight time from Israel’s northern border. Mor walked into the colonel’s office and presented the facts: ten minutes ago Arafat seemed to have entered Fatah’s forward command center in Nabatiya, south Lebanon, five miles north of Israel’s border. There was no positive ID of the man. The only way they could be sure was to have a look at the parking lot of the house that served as their HQ—if it was lined with Mercedes-Benz cars and top-of-the-line Jeeps, they would know. A visit from Arafat would draw all of the area’s commanders. He did not visit the trenches that often; no one would miss the occasion.
Five minutes later, Mor and the colonel presented themselves outside the office of Chief of Staff David Elazar. They were escorted straight through. Elazar smiled when they entered. He knew both of them well. After a sixty-second presentation of the facts, the three of them left the office and walked through the door that led to the civilian half of the building, to the office of the defense minister. Although only thirty yards divided the two offices, the separation was kept stark and clear. Moshe Dayan listened to the news. “I’ll pass this on to Golda. Get ready. And get me some verification.” Before they turned from the room Dayan already had Golda on the phone. The conversation was over in seconds. He looked back at the uniformed men. “She authorized it. But she also demands verification that it’s him.”
The Chief of Staff sent Mor to “The Pit”—the air force control room dug several stories under the soft, sandy earth of the IDF headquarters. From there, Mor could supervise the mission. Moments later, an order was sent to the northern Ramat David airbase to arm a foursome of F-4 Phantoms with quarter-ton bombs. From the runway to Nabatiya was seven minutes flight time. A single-engine surveillance aircraft was already in the air, heading north. The pilot of the slow-flying Cessna had received orders from the office of the chief of staff before they went to Dayan’s office. Each minute counted. The squadron’s best aerial reconnaissance man sat behind the pilot, studying Nabatiya as it appeared on long strips of aerial photos. His mission was to locate the parking lot and answer one simple question—empty or full? He did not know that Arafat was suspected of being present.
Mor looked at his watch agitatedly. His feet were bouncing, his back sweating. “I’m overseeing one of the most important missions in the history of the country—the mission to eliminate Yasser Arafat,” he thought to himself. Then he looked at the air force officer handling the mission from his end. He was all business, switching phones and radio receivers, issuing short and clear orders. It seemed to Mor that this officer and the other air force officers were too pressed for time to feel history in the making. After ten minutes of nerve-racking tension, the aerial reconnaissance man radioed, announcing calmly that he was over the borderline, five miles from the parking lot. “I have 8/8ths across the board,” he said. Everyone in the pit realized the implications. In meteorological terms 8/8ths describes the fraction of the sky covered by opaque clouds: visibility was nil.
Leaning back in his chair, Mor let out a deep, remorseful sigh. The room around him was filled with the sound of the air force officers folding up the special mission. What a shame, he thought to himself. Yasser Arafat, leader of the PLO, owed his life to 8/8ths cloud cover.
Assassination missions had fallen low on the Mossad and Military Intelligence list of priorities. The were two reasons for this. The first was the failure in Lillehammer. The debacle that resulted in the death of an innocent man and sent six Mossad operatives to jail led to the immediate cessation of assassination missions. The Mossad’s image had been tarnished at home and abroad. It was one of the Mossad’s toughest hours. Their confidence was shaken, their prestige tarnished.
Senior officers from within their ranks immediately began an in-house investigation. Caesarea and the Facha division, which supplied the initial faulty intelligence that led to the debacle, were called on to assist. The internal investigative committee prodded, poked, and probed. The report they handed in to Zvi Zamir detailed all aspects of the disastrous mission and the operational lessons to be learned from it.
But before the agency could learn any lessons a second blow was dealt: war. On October 6, 1973, Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, the Syrian and Egyptian armies coordinated a surprise invasion of Israeli-controlled territory on the Golan Heights and the Sinai Peninsula. The attack came under the guise of innocent border maneuvers. Israeli intelligence agencies had failed dismally in not seeing through the Egyptian-Syrian ruse.
There was a cessation of terror during the war, the Palestinian organizations waiting on the sidelines for the elimination of Israel. Military Intelligence’s Branch 4 was shut, its officers dispersed to different units until the end of the war, which would claim over 2,500 Israeli lives.
The inability to predict the war was a colossal intelligence failure, a nine on the Richter scale. The Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry under the jurisdiction of Supreme Court Justice Shimon Agranat, which was set into motion to investigate the failure, kept the senior officers busy, as they exchanged accusations of culpability. Few senior officers escaped the fray. The committee’s findings were grave. Major General Eli Zeira, commander of Military Intelligence, and Lieutenant General David Elazar, the IDF’s Chief of Staff, were both forced to step down.
One of the few officers not involved in the squabble was Lieutenant Colonel Mor, who afterward did everything in his power to push for Mossad and IDF missions outside the country—like the one that fell into his lap when Arafat visited Nabatiya.
In September 1974 the top spot at the Mossad changed hands. Zvi Zamir, fifty-two, stepped down. Yitzhak Rabin, the new Prime Minister and former IDF Chief of Staff, a man untainted by the 1973 war, appointed his close friend Major General (ret.) Yitzhak Hofi. Hofi had shed his uniform two months earlier, after skillfully leading the Northern Command during the conflict. A cool-headed and conservative army man, he knew little of the Mossad’s ways. He took to learning all he could, while addressing the recommendations of the Agranat Commission, including, among other things, starting an independent intelligence analysis wing. In 1976 the Facha division was formed as an independent unit, separate from Tzomet, housing all branches of operational intelligence analysis under one roof. Caesarea, under the guiding hand of Mike Harari, was reorganized. New departments and new branches in the chain of command were put into place. Kidon, a small, secretive assassination unit, was created. Caesarea was renamed several times, but the old name never wore off—it endures today as a nickname.
Hofi served as head of the Mossad for eight years, from 1974 to 1982. As opposed to his predecessor, he felt no obligation to avenge the Munich Massacre. As far as he was concerned the terrible shock of war, to both the defense establishment and the civilian population, did not allow for the type of single-minded focus necessary to hunt down the perpetrators of Munich to the end. Munich-based retribution was downgraded among the Mossad’s priorities.
The primary mission for Hofi was rehabilitating and rebuilding the Mossad itself. Postwar reality demanded a shift in priorities. Manpower was diverted elsewhere. But terror attacks within Israeli cities meant the Mossad had to be prepared to respond. Only one and a half years after taking the reins, the cautious Hofi hesitantly authorized preventive assassinations in Europe and the Middle East. At first, the Munich perpetrators were not targeted. But that would change.
31 OVERSEAS TERRORISM GRINDS TO A HALT
EAST GERMAN HOSPITAL
FRIDAY, MARCH 30, 1978
Dr. Wadi Haddad, the international man of terror responsible for dozens of airline hijackings and other earthshaking attacks against Israeli, American, and European targets the world over, died a slow, painful death in a grim East German hospital. The Palestinian doctor flew to Germany from Iraq, terminally
ill. Once a fat man, he was now weak and emaciated, confined to his bed, waiting out his days. He died on March 30, 1978, only forty-eight years old.
The few dozen loyalists who had left the PFLP with Haddad were hard-pressed to explain the riddle of his torturous death. He died of an unknown terminal disease that attacked and debilitated his immune system. They could not be certain if his death was natural or induced. His more imaginative friends believed that Haddad’s Iraqi patron, the ominous Vice President Saddam Hussein, had the doctor secretly poisoned once he was no longer useful to that regime. As always, some saw the hand of the Mossad in Haddad’s death, claiming poisoning, but lacking any proof. Over the years the conspiracy theories dissipated and only the bitter fact of his inexplicable end remained. The bachelor, having amassed riches from years of terrorist activity, left millions of dollars to his sister.
For years Israel kept silent on the matter. Now it is possible to reveal that Dr. Haddad died an unnatural death. Poison was slipped into his food. The Mossad had sought to kill him ever since they learned that he was the mastermind behind hijackings carried out by the PFLP. They figured assassination was the only way to stop further deadly plans.
Haddad was a prolific and skilled terrorist. He was the first to hijack an El Al plane, on July 23, 1968. After weeks of captivity, Israel, headed at the time by Prime Minister Levi Eshkol, freed Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the hostages—the first and last time the Israeli government would ever bow to terrorist extortion. That El Al hijacking was the first in a series of plane hijackings designed to raise the profile of the Palestinian predicament. In September 1970, Dr. George Habash, the leader of the PFLP, the Marxist Palestinian terror organization that he founded along with Haddad, flew to North Korea on business. While he was away, Haddad had five planes hijacked. They were flown to Jordan, emptied, and then exploded for the cameras.
His operatives hijacked a Lufthansa flight en route from New Delhi, India, to Germany, forcing it to land in Aden, Yemen. Lufthansa paid several million dollars ransom for the plane and the passengers. Detractors of the supposedly Marxist terrorist claimed that Haddad deposited some $1 million in his own account. He was responsible for the PFLP’s relationship with international terrorist organizations in Europe, Asia, and South America, offering them training facilities in Lebanon and strengthening their ties. One result: the Marxist Japanese Red Army attack at Lod Airport in 1972.
Haddad and his followers left the mainstream of the PFLP after that bold-headline attack, quarreling over the necessity of overseas terrorism. In October 1972 his men carried out the dubious Lufthansa hijacking that secured the freedom of the three surviving Munich terrorists. Determined to continue carrying out high-profile attacks outside Israel, his men were responsible for a December 21, 1975, attack on OPEC headquarters in Vienna and a late June 1976 hijacking of an Air France flight on its way from Israel.
Haddad was also willing to assist other terrorist organizations. In late February 1973, still living in Beirut, Haddad was asked by his good friend Abu-Iyad to falsify entry visas to Sudan, facilitating the attack on the embassy in Khartoum. Haddad created the visas in his print workshop within six hours.
Finally, on June 28, 1976, Haddad’s men, with the assistance of the German Baader-Meinhof Gang, hijacked an Air France Airbus 747 en route from Israel to Paris, forcing the plane to land in Entebbe, Uganda. On July 4, 1976, the American Bicentennial, the hostage situation was resolved by a team of Israeli commandos led by Sayeret Matkal. Several Hercules C-130 cargo planes flew over one thousand miles beyond Israel’s borders and landed in Entebbe. Once safely on the ground, the lead team of commandos proceeded to the terminal. Dressed to resemble the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin and his entourage, and riding in the type of black Mercedes he favored, the team from Sayeret Matkal drove to the terminal, stormed the passenger hall, and rescued the stunned hostages.
Entebbe was the last straw. The Mossad and Military Intelligence upgraded the importance of assassinating Dr. Wadi Haddad after the victorious mission. Haddad, however, resided in Baghdad and rarely traveled, complicating their work. In the spring of 1977, nearly one year after Entebbe, it was clear that the mountain would not come to Muhammad; the Mossad decided to bring Muhammad to the mountain. An assassination plan took shape and was authorized by newly inaugurated Prime Minister Menachem Begin.
Dr. Haddad had a weak point: his sweet tooth. The man loved good chocolate, Belgian chocolate, particularly; Tzomet, the human intelligence collection arm of the Mossad, was keen to capitalize on that weakness. The plan called for a reliable Palestinian agent, a member of Dr. Haddad’s organization, to bring the doctor a gift of Belgian chocolates upon return from travels in Europe. The valuable gift, unattainable in Iraq in those years, was coated by Mossad specialists with a lethal biological poison. Tzomet had good reason to believe that the chocoholic would eat the creamy squares alone, unwilling to share the delectable gift. And so it was. The agent brought his boss the gift when he got back from Europe and the doctor gleefully devoured it—alone. Weeks later he began to lose weight. He lost his appetite. Blood tests showed that his immune system was compromised. It took him a few long months to die.
The faction under Dr. Wadi Haddad’s command collapsed after his death. Dry statistics indicate that the number of attacks against Israeli targets abroad plummeted with his passing. Israeli intelligence and, in particular, the Mossad, viewed this as further proof of the effectiveness of their assassination program. The intelligence community presented these facts and conclusions to the new prime minister, explaining that the bio-hit on Haddad was the very definition of a preventive assassination, eradicating a ticking bomb, a man with a fertile mind who never stopped planning the next attack.
Menachem Begin was pleased with the execution and results of the Haddad assassination, and authorized yet another elimination, one that Mossad members somewhat arrogantly referred to as “something we just picked up . . .”
The target was Zuhir Mokhsan, head of the pro-Syrian Palestinian terror organization A-Tzaika. His assassination, in the summer of 1979, was not particularly complicated, and didn’t require extensive intelligence gathering. Mokhsan, who did not take even minimal safety precautions, was shot on July 25, 1979, by two assassins from Caesarea’s Kidon unit in the hallway of his apartment building in Cannes, on the French Riviera. Fatally injured, he died the next day at the Louis Pasteur Hospital in Nice. The French police announced that the murdered man had arrived in France with a Syrian diplomatic passport, claiming to have been born in Damascus. Mokhsan’s sudden death led to the dissolution of the A-Tzaika organization—another veritable well of terrorism gone dry.
The numbers show a steep slide in the frequency of terror attacks against Israelis and Israeli institutions abroad from 1974 to the present. At the end of the 1970s, top-ranking Israeli intelligence officials were in near unanimous agreement that Israel’s post-Munich wave of retaliatory and preventive assassinations gravely affected terrorist organizations, causing some to fold and others to limp. For Fatah and other groups that survived, the onslaught hindered their ability to function in Europe and deterred them from acting, forcing them to gradually abandon the idea of mega-attacks against Israeli targets abroad. That said, many in the Israeli intelligence community acknowledged that the Palestinians were also motivated by pragmatism. As time went on, the PLO realized that attacks outside Israel were doing their cause more harm than good.
On the Palestinian side, the leading consensus was to stand firm, which meant that the Mossad’s assassinations had not deterred them, as General Aharon Yariv and others at Israeli intelligence agencies believed—or wanted people to believe. The explanation for the drop and the eventual cessation of foreign attacks, rather, could be found in the Palestinians’ gradual transition from terrorism to political action and international diplomacy. This change peaked with Yasser Arafat’s speech at the United Nations in New York in 1974. The Palestinians had labored for international recognition—ter
rorism had been a part of that fight. Now they had it. There was no longer a need for international terrorism—and it could damage their image.
Most of the Israeli intelligence community remains convinced that their campaign forced an end to overseas terror.
32 ALI HASSAN SALAMEH
BEIRUT, VERDUN ST.
MONDAY, JANUARY 22, 1979, 1535H
Ali Hassan Salameh was philosophical about the matter of his death, telling Time magazine, “They’re the ones who should be worried after all their mistakes. But I also know that when my number is up, it will be up. No one can stop it.”
It had been more than five years since Salameh had been directly involved in terrorism; even Black September, the name used by Fatah, was no longer active. But ever since the lethal blunder in Lillehammer, the urge to eliminate Salameh had been tied less to cold calculation and more to the human desire to right a historical wrong. For Mike Harari and Caesarea, so long as he lived and breathed, Ali Hassan Salameh was a testament to their great failure. That black stain could be erased only with his death.
Even in the immediate wake of the Lillehammer disaster, the intelligence gathering in the hunt for Salameh never stopped. R., Caesarea’s chief intelligence officer, pored over thousands of raw intelligence briefs looking for the man’s Capture Point. Every relevant detail gleaned from the raw data was checked, analyzed, and filed.
Raw intelligence data showed that Salameh spent an inordinate amount of time practicing karate and pumping iron. He would go to the gym for hours at a time nearly every day. Undercover Caesarea combatants combed Beirut’s gyms, putting miles on nearly every treadmill in the beleaguered city until they found their man. The Mossad operatives watched him carefully, noticing that he always hit the sauna before the shower. Soon, Mossad staff officers crafted a plan to plant a bomb under a sauna bench. The plan was discarded. There was no way to ensure that others would not join him at the last instant in the sauna or that the club wouldn’t be severely damaged, perhaps putting more lives at risk.
Striking Back: The 1972 Munich Olympics Massacre and Israel's Deadly Response Page 18