This caught my eye while following a link
by Eric or Bill off memes.org today (spycraft). Wanted to check that it originated at
UPI. What do you think? Has anyone seen anything about this
elsewhere? . KWC
Israel
to kill in U.S., allied nations
By Richard
Sale, UPI Intelligence Correspondent, From the Washington Politics & Policy
Desk
Published
1/15/2003 7:14 PM @ http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20030115-035849-6156r
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 former and
currently serving U.S. foreign policy and intelligence officials in interviews
with United Press International.
But an
official at the Israeli Embassy in Washington told UPI: "That is rubbish. It is completely untrue. Israel and the United States have such
a close and co-operative intelligence relationship, especially in the field of
counter-terrorism, that the assertion is
ludicrous."
With
the appointment of Meir Dagan, the new director of Israel's Mossad secret
intelligence service, Sharon is 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."
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