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."
proud to be born and raised in The USA!
I swear allegience to my flag, OLD GLORY, and no other!
china and russia and a host of others will most certainly nuke israel first chance they get...
isn't this what israel has been saying about their neighbors, and is now in the process of addressing?
IMHO israel knows this to be true!
I tried to look at it but it is blocked by our firewall.
don't ever say that f-word to me again!
my shoelaces are tied make sure your nose is not so high in the air that you trip on your big feet - stick it where it fits!
my grounds are myu groundfs if you've got a problem with it tough sh*T!
got it brethren!
Your firewall blocked it? Good. You have a sensible setup, then. I don't think you missed much worthwhile, actually.
No, it's not my site. It belongs to one of the denizens of "LibertyForum", and it is a Nazi party site. The guy also is responsible for another forum, where he recently blared "Hitler totally exonerated on Libertarian site" - meaning "LibertyForum", which is about as "Libertarian" as I'm a Buddhist.
Lol. Or what, sowbug?
Go back under your rock. Like all Arabs, you need to overcome your de-coupling from reality. Work on it.
watch your manners - boy!
L0L!
I checked out Libertyforum a few months ago when I got tired of the one-sided debates here and found out that LF has a high % of "protocols" oriented posters - blech!!! If I wanted to read that crap, I would go back to usenet.
True Libertarianism IMHO = Ron Paul.
No, he's not a Buddhist either.
The tactic you employ here (remotely diagnosing the ethnic background of poster who you diagree with)doesn't contribute much to "working to roll back decades of governmental largesse, to root out political fraud and corruption, and to champion causes which further conservatism in America," IMHO.
How is that any different from the tactics you decry on LF? Why is someone's ethnic background relevant?
You need to worry less about the color of people's skin and worry more about what they actually say.
Not a "tactic", really. The poster's constant harping on "a host of nations" nuking Israel shows a particular kind of decoupling from reality which is most commonly found in the Arab press. I have some hilarious examples I could repost here, but I'm sure you have seen a few of them :).
I'll ask you the same question you rhetorically asked me earlier, "Do you really think I'm that stupid?"
I have seen "examples" of a lot of things...
For example, I don't know what the term "host" implies for you (to me it has a sort of Old Testament resonance, eg "Lord of Hosts") but I do know that accusing people of belonging to "stormfront" or being "arabs" or "vermin" everytime they disagree with you whatever is not a legitimate technique of argumentation. It's a debate stifling maneuver with a latin name:
The Nizkor Project: Description of Ad HominemYou should check out the rest of Nizkor.org too, actually.Translated from Latin to English, "Ad Hominem" means "against the man" or "against the person."
An Ad Hominem is a general category of fallacies in which a claim or argument is rejected on the basis of some irrelevant fact about the author of or the person presenting the claim or argument. Typically, this fallacy involves two steps. First, an attack against the character of person making the claim, her circumstances, or her actions is made (or the character, circumstances, or actions of the person reporting the claim). Second, this attack is taken to be evidence against the claim or argument the person in question is making (or presenting). This type of "argument" has the following form:
Person A makes claim X.
Person B makes an attack on person A.
Therefore A's claim is false.
The reason why an Ad Hominem (of any kind) is a fallacy is that the character, circumstances, or actions of a person do not (in most cases) have a bearing on the truth or falsity of the claim being made (or the quality of the argument being made).
Example of Ad Hominem
Bill: "I believe that abortion is morally wrong."
Dave: "Of course you would say that, you're a priest."
Bill: "What about the arguments I gave to support my position?"
Dave: "Those don't count. Like I said, you're a priest, so you have to say that abortion is wrong. Further, you are just a lackey to the Pope, so I can't believe what you say."
LOL!
In fact, there is no way you could possibly know the ethnic background of "krodriguezdc", so it's actually irrelevant innuendo or assumption on your part rather than irrelevant fact.
Well, to most dictionaries (and to me) it implies "a lerge number of people or things". There isn't a large number of countries or states with nuclear capability, regardless of wether or not they would share a bizarre wish to "nuke Israel".
In fact, the rethoric in question is very typical of Arab "wishful thinking" propaganda - divorced from reality to the point where it becomes farcical.
Sorry, I assumed you were familiar with: "Holy, Holy, Holy is the LORD of hosts...". (Isaiah 6:3).
There isn't a large number of countries or states with nuclear capability, regardless of wether or not they would share a bizarre wish to "nuke Israel".
Last time I checked, Israel was not on the friendliest of terms with Pakistan, but that's OK. The point I'm trying to make here is that it would have been perfectly possible for you to make the above assertion without making unwarranted assumptions about "krodriguezdc"'s ethnic background or calling him a "sowbug."
If you view certain human ethnic groups as insectoid or somehow less than human then that is your business. But I think we can all agree that stirring racist rhetoric into the mix here lowers, rather than raises, the quality of the discussion for everyone.
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