Posted on 01/15/2003 1:45:12 PM PST by Dallas
Israel is embarking upon a more aggressive approach to the war on terror that will include staging targeted killings in the United States and other friendly countries, former Israeli intelligence officials told United Press International.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has forbidden the practice until now, these sources said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The Israeli statements were confirmed by more than a half dozen U.S. foreign policy and intelligence officials in interviews with UPI.
With the appointment of Meir Dagan, the new director Israel's Mossad secret intelligence service, Sharon is also preparing "a huge budget" increase for the spy agency as part of "a tougher stance in fighting global jihad (or holy war)," one Israeli official said.
Since Sharon became Israeli prime minister, Tel Aviv has mainly limited its practice of targeted killings to the West Bank and Gaza because "no one wanted such operations on their territory," a former Israeli intelligence official said.
Another former Israeli government official said that under Sharon, "diplomatic constraints have prevented the Mossad from carrying out 'preventive operations' (targeted killings) on the soil of friendly countries until now."
He said Sharon is "reversing that policy, even if it risks complications to Israel's bilateral relations."
A former Israeli military intelligence source agreed: "What Sharon wants is a much more extensive and tough approach to global terrorism, and this includes greater operational maneuverability."
Does this mean assassinations on the soil of allies?
"It does," he said.
"Mossad is definitely being beefed up," a U.S. government official said of the Israeli agency's budget increase. He declined to comment on the Tel Aviv's geographic expansion of targeted killings.
An FBI spokesman also declined to comment, saying: "This is a policy matter. We only enforce federal laws."
A congressional staff member with deep knowledge of intelligence matters said, "I don't know on what basis we would be able to protest Israel's actions." He referred to the recent killing of Qaed Salim Sinan al Harethi, a top al Qaida leader, in Yemen by a remotely controlled CIA drone.
"That was done on the soil of a friendly ally," the staffer said.
But the complications posed by Israel's new policy are real.
"Israel does not have a good record at doing this sort of thing," said former CIA counter-terrorism official Larry Johnson.
He cited the 1997 fiasco where two Mossad agents were captured after they tried to assassinate Khaled Mashaal, a Hamas political leader, by injecting him with poison.
According to Johnson, the attempt, made in Amman, Jordan, caused a political crisis in Israeli-Jordan relations. In addition, because the Israeli agents carried Canadian passports, Canada withdrew its ambassador in protest, he said. Jordan is one of two Arab nations to recognize Israel. The other is Egypt.
At the time, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said, "I have no intention of stopping the activities of this government against terror," according to a CNN report.
Former CIA officials say Israel was forced to free jailed Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmad Yassin and 70 other Jordanian and Palestinian prisoner being held in Israeli jails to secure the release of the two would-be Mossad assassins.
Phil Stoddard, former director of the Middle East Institute, cited a botched plot to kill Ali Hassan Salemeh, the mastermind of the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre. The 1974 attempt severely embarrassed Mossad when the Israeli hit team mistakenly assassinated a Moroccan waiter in Lillehammer, Norway.
Salemeh, later a CIA asset, was killed in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1976 by a car bomb placed by an Israeli assassination team, former U.S. intelligence officials said.
"Israel knew Salemeh was providing us with preventive intelligence on the Palestinians and his being killed pissed off a lot of people," said a former senior CIA official.
But some Israeli operations have been successful.
Gerald Bull, an Ontario-born U.S. citizen and designer of the Iraqi supergun -- a massive artillery system capable of launching satellites into orbit, and of delivering nuclear chemical or biological payloads from Baghdad to Israel -- was killed in Belgium in March 1990. The killing is still unsolved, but former CIA officials said a Mossad hit team is the most likely suspect.
Bull worked on the supergun design -- codenamed Project Babylon -- for 10 years, and helped the Iraqis develop many smaller artillery systems. He was found with five bullets in his head outside his Brussels apartment.
Israeli hit teams, which consist of units or squadrons of the Kidon, a sub-unit for Mossad's highly secret Metsada department, would stage the operations, former Israeli intelligence sources said. Kidon is a Hebrew word meaning "bayonet," one former Israeli intelligence source said.
This Israeli government source explained that in the past Israel has not staged targeted killings in friendly countries because "no one wanted such operations on their territory."
This has become irrelevant, he said.
Dagan, the new hard-driving director of Mossad, will implement the new changes, former Israeli government officials said.
Dagan, nicknamed "the gun," was Sharon's adviser on counter-terrorism during the government of Netanyahu in 1996, former Israeli government officials say. A former military man, Dagan has also undertaken extremely sensitive diplomatic missions for several of Israel's prime ministers, former Israeli government sources said.
Former Israel Defense Forces Lt. Col. Gal Luft, who served under Dagan, described him as an "extremely creative individual -- creative to the point of recklessness."
A former CIA official who knows Dagan said the new Mossad director knows "his foreign affairs inside and out," and has a "real killer instinct."
Dagan is also "an intelligence natural" who has "a superb analyst not afraid to act on gut instinct," the former CIA official said.
Dagan has already removed Mossad officials whom he regards as "being too conservative or too cautious" and is building up "a constituency of senior people of the same mentality," one former long-time Israeli operative said.
Dagan is also urging that Mossad operatives rely less on secret sources and rely more on open information that is so plentifully provided on the Internet and newspapers.
"It's a cultural thing," one former Israeli intelligence operative explained. "Mossad in the past has put its emphasis on Humint (human intelligence) and secret operations and has neglected the whole field of open media, which has become extremely important."
Regarding Mossad's new policy and budget increase, Kim Farber an Israeli Embassy official said, "There is so little information available on this, there is nothing I can add."
Agreed. But I also can't believe people are buying into this ridiculous news article. Don't people know that managing the relationship between Israel and the United States is almost job #1 for an Israeli prime minister, and that carrying out an assasination on US soil would be the obvious of all mistakes?
Most reporters using anonymous sources consider themselves lucky to find two sources saying the same thing. How likely it is that SIX misbehaving U.S. officials told this reporter, one Richard Sale, the same story regarding Israel being about to commit these truly distardly deeds? Did Sale somehow get a CIA phone book and start calling anyone with a Moslem-sounding name? Beats me, but this story is nonsense.
A while ago, I would have said it was extremely unlikely to find many of the things that are being said on public chat boards. But these boards are the last bastions of freewheeling, *anonymous*, hate-filled, brain-warped mega-idiots to write of their deepest fears and attach them to threats against you, against me, against yo mama. Get real, man.Did ya read the threats that the *peace* crowd have made against our Veterans? Do you think yhere will be no response if any of it is attempted? Do you believe that those here who send aid and comfort to Hamas and Hizbullah and/or every other terror group in the world who murder Americans right along with Christians and Israelis aren't enemies of the entire world?
If the US has the right to go after the murderers of Americans in Israel, turnabout is the ultimate in fair play. KNOWN terrorists. Not who some nutball whacko says MIGHT be a terrorist.
If you think any of these things, think again. Iran has murdered ITS nationals who it targetted. So has Iraq. Iraq is still doing it and so is Al Qaeda. Never mind the Nazi swill.
For Israel to send agents to America to murder people is the most insane possible move it could make. The whole idea is nothing more than the fantasy of anti-Israel fanatics, since there is nothing Israel could do that would be more self-destructive. If these former Israeli intelligence agents exist, which I rather doubt, Israel should arrest them (but not in the US!) and charge them with well-deserved treason. But more likely the interviews are made up or wildly distored.
Folks, we are talking here about Ariel Sharon, a man who anti-Israel types say is an extremist, but actually is quite middle-of-the-road. His reelection platform is that he want to govern in a coalition with the dovish Labor party. How would he do this while carrying out extreme policies like this? Ridiculous.
He has put Israel's relationship with Washington at the top of his political agenda in his 20 months as prime minister. And now he's going to throw it all away just to get rid of one or two third level terrorists? After all, the US would love to help arrest any first rate terrorist on our soil. Folks, think!
We could run our own ops if we had the resources on the ground in the AO's. Thanks to the freaking PEANUT FARMER and his globalists, those assets were deemed "unsuitable" for the good guys to make use of and so they all faded away. Today, they would not trust us and probably with good reason.
Our SpecOps guys are all in all, excellent, but they're still the military and not intel guys. We've got to emulate MOSSAD in every possible way and we've got to play catchup damn quick. For example, we usually use (so I have been told by guys who have done it) a Beretta 9mm wearing a hushpuppy to make a clandestine kill. MOSSAD uses a .22 short (unsuppressed) and nails 'em straight thru the eye every time. Such a weapon is much more easily concealed and disposed of, and doesn't scream USA in case the op is compromised.
Rent the movie "SWORD OF GIDEON" it is pretty close to what actually happened.
More power to them. The more Islamic fanatics they kill, the less terrorists there will be.
Ahhhh but remember Black September was killed in EUROPE where they had very little in the way of support infrastructure and not everybody even looked alike! Mossad also had a lot of help in the way of intel from a wide variety of sources on the continent, but such is not the case where the Hamas vermin scurry and hide.
As someone noted above, this has been happening for ages. Dissidents from foreign countries who found a refuge here, have died under mysterious circumstances, the cases never solved. Don't gimme no pitchers of US Constitution here, or high moral stands, 'coz you've been tolerating this for decades from the Soviets and other wonderful governments.
Absolutely.
If we rely solely on these PC buffoons, many more Americans will die horribly.
I extend an invitation to the Mossad to kill as many terrorists as they want here. The more they kill and the sooner they kill them, the safer I and all Americans will be.
They have my 100% support.
The Constitution grants the Congress the following powers:
To define and punish piracies and felonies committed on the high seas, and offenses against the law of nations;To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water;
It would never happen, but I suppose theoretically, Congress could issue the above mentioned letters of marque and reprisal to Mossad for specific targets and it would then be legal for them to hunt down and kill an enemy within our borders.
The Constitution grants them also the following:
To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers... (with the letters of marque being one of the foregoing powers mentioned)
They could even keep it secret for a certain amount of time I suppose:
Each House shall keep a journal of its proceedings, and from time to time publish the same, excepting such parts as may in their judgment require secrecy; and the yeas and nays of the members of either House on any question shall, at the desire of one fifth of those present, be entered on the journal.That leaves enough Constitutional wriggle room to not say anything about it.
I'm not directing this comment at you per se, I just noticed you were in on the discussion and you were the last post I got to. It's something to think about...
Huh. Maybe that's why hitmen call their targets 'marks'.
Can you fathom why the Israelis would be compelled to announce this to the press? It's really rather incendiary, imagine if any other country on the planet decreed this?
I would have no problem subbing out our intel business to Mossad. They rock.
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