June 4, 2021 • 51 mins
The Cukurs operation barely scratches the surface of what Mossad has done over the years. Mossad has been, “involved in special operations and activity in the service of the State of Israel, such as the pursuit of Nazi criminals.” This episode explores some of the most important operations the agency has carried out. Stephan Talty describes missions you’ve probably never heard of but that shaped the Middle East and the whole world.
The episode contains interviews with Robert Baer, accomplished former CIA agent, intelligence expert and security analyst, bestselling author of several books including *See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War Against Terrorism* which was the basis for the film Syriana, in which George Clooney's character is based on Baer and H. Keith Melton, intelligence historian and expert on espionage tradecraft.
Good Assassins: Hunting the Butcher came out of author Stephan Talty's work on a book called *The Good Assassin.* Click here to Buy the book
THE JET discusses an operation in which the target wasn’t human. In 1963, the Israelis decided they had to have a MIG. At the time, the MIG was the most advanced Soviet fighter plane, and the latest model, the MIG-21, had been purchased by Israel’s neighbors — and enemies — Egypt, Syria, and Iraq.
THE ENGINEER tells the story of Yahya Ayash, the No. 1 bombmaker for Hamas. Ayash was a master of building explosives. Ayash built bombs for Hamas suicide attacks: the Mehola Junction bombing in 1993, the Afula Bus massacre in 1994, the Dizengoff Street bus massacre also in 1994 — at the time, the deadliest suicide bombing in Israeli history with 22 civilians killed and 50 injured — Ayash was also behind the Hadera central station massacre, again in 1994, and many more.
THE SCIENTIST is about the Israeli government's operations to find out if Syria, which had been hostile to their Jewish neighbors for decades, had a nuclear program. Was there anything going on? Were they building plants? Were they thinking of building bombs? There was no evidence on the ground that anything was happening. Israel’s spy satellites were picking up nothing. Still, some people at Mossad had an uneasy feeling.
THE WRONG MAN explores Operation Wrath of God. In 1972, Mossad was thrust into the spotlight when members of the faction of the Palestinian Liberation Organization known as “Black September” took Israeli athletes and coaches hostage at the Munich Olympic Games. A botched German ambush resulted in the murder of nine Israelis, as well as the deaths of the terrorists. It was a catastrophe - for the Olympics, for the Germans, and for the Israelis. Prime Minister Golda Meir quickly approved Operation Wrath of God, a covert Mossad operation to hunt down and kill the planners of the Munich massacre.
SPIES NEVER FORGET tells the story of a Lebanese man named Imad Fayez Mughniyah, the mastermind in a series of terror attacks against Israelis. He was believed to be the chief of staff for Hezbollah and was a link between Iran and terrorist groups. Mossad and Mughniyah were involved in a cat and mouse game for decades. Mossad wanted to kill him and Mughniyah knew it.
THE GENERAL is about a man named Mohammed Suleiman, a general in the Syrian army and one of the main contacts to Iran and Hamas. Israel wanted him gone.
• Written and Hosted by STEPHAN TALTY
• Produced and Directed by SCOTT WAXMAN and JACOB BRONSTEIN
• Executive Producers: SCOTT WAXMAN and MARK FRANCIS
• Story Editor: JACOB BRONSTEIN
• Editorial direction: SCOTT WAXMAN and MANGESH HATTIKUDUR
• Editing, mixing, and sound design: MARK FRANCIS
• Theme Music by TYLER CASH
• Archival Researcher: ADAM SHAPIRO
• Thanks to OREN ROSENBAUM
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
Diversion podcasts. A note this episode contains descriptions of graphic violence.
Listeners discretion is advised. So Massad's mission to assassinate the
butcher of Latvia was the success it achieved its subjective
(00:32):
It changed how we think about the Holocaust in genocide law,
and it changed the lives of countless people, including the
people you've met in the last ten episodes. But the
Zookers operation barely scratches the surface of what Massad has
done over the years, and it's more than seventy years
(00:53):
of existence. Massad has been, by its own definition quote
involved in special operations, an activity in the service of
the State of Israel, such as the pursuit of Nazi criminals.
Massad has also rescued Jews and the diaspora from dangerous
situations and resettled them in Israel. The most famous of
(01:15):
these operations was the four covert evacuation of approximately eight
thousand Ethiopian Jews out of Sudan in Operation Moses. Massad
also tells us that they are quote a key factor
in the war against terror directed at Jewish and Israeli
(01:35):
targets abroad. So for this episode, I want to look
at some of the most important and spectacular operations the
agency has carried out. I want to tell you about
some missions you've probably never heard of, but then shape
them Middle East and even our world. I'm Stephen Talty,
(02:04):
and this is good Assassin's hunting. The butcher is rather
assassinated one of its top leaders. He was executed by
a coney bomb hidden in a mobile cellular telephone. There's
a time for diplomacy, and there's probably a time for
direct action. Normally it's a simple matter, and that's the
(02:25):
moral dilemma. Can you work with these people to save
your own skin? Episode eleven, Massad's Greatest Hits and Misses
(02:50):
the jet. Let's start with an operation in which the
target wasn't even human. In three, the Israelis decided they
had to have a meg. At the time, the MiG
was the most advanced Soviet fighter plane and the latest model.
The MiG had been purchased by Israeli's neighbors and enemies, Egypt,
(03:15):
Syria and Iraq. If it came to war, Israel would
be facing these fighter jets in the skies. They had
to know everything about them, so forget about stealing blueprints
or getting blurry photos from inside some hangar. They wanted
to steal an entire plane. There was a problem, however,
(03:37):
if you didn't have the plane, you couldn't fly it,
So Massad would have to convince an air pilot to
steal the plane for them. That was much harder than
just going after the hardware. The mission began in the
early sixties. A Massad agent named Gene Thomas offered an
Egyptian pilot one million dollars to hijack his own aircraft
(04:00):
fly it to Israel. That would be about nine million
dollars today. It was a fortune. But the pilot said no,
and then he went to his bosses and told them
about the offer. Thomas, the Massad agent, along with four others,
were arrested. Months later, Thomas and two of his accomplices
(04:21):
were hung, while the others received extensive prison terms. Who's
a complete failure, But for Massad the MiG was worth
another try. In the mid nineteen sixties, they moved the
mission's focus away from Egypt to Iraq and actually tried
to convince two pilots to get in the plane and
(04:41):
fly it again. The pilots refused. Finally, in nineteen sixty
six and Iraqi born Jew named Yusuf got in touch
with Massad. This is one of the strengths of the
agency's In countries around the world, there have been examples
of Jews willing to help Massa. I asked Keith Melton
(05:02):
about this. Melton is the intelligence historian an author of
several books on espionage we've heard from in previous episodes.
At one time, the total of number intelligence officers they had,
and this was thirty years ago, it was only twenty
four officers, so they had a very small service. But
(05:25):
they had the ability to look for other Jewish supporters
virtually anywhere they could go in the world. If you
needed a check cash, you needed to arrange a safe house,
if you needed a rental car. They had an established
contact within the synagogue, within a group in almost any
(05:45):
country they could go. So this guy Yusuf told aside
about this other guy named red fu Red Phone was
a pilot who flew the Big any One. He was
a Christian whose religion had caused his military career to
stall out. Only Muslims were getting promoted, so red Fot
(06:09):
was piste off. He was also angry that he had
been forced to fight against Iraqi Kurds, whom he had
no problem with. He was ready to turn against Iraq.
Massad sent a female agent to entice red Fot into
the deal. She got him to travel to Europe, where
he could meet with her handlers. There they offered the
pilot one million dollars, full Israeli citizenship and a good job.
(06:35):
Red Fot had some conditions. Knowing that Iraq's government would
take revenge on his relatives, he demanded that Israel get
them out of the country at the same time he
was stealing the plane. Massad agreed, but there were obstacles.
Red foot superiors didn't trust him. He was considered a
troublemaker and he was a Christian. They only allowed him
(06:58):
to fly a MiG equipped with two small fuel tanks,
which would theoretically prevent him from taking it all the
way to Israel. If he crashed on the way to
tell Aviv, the mission would be a failure. Massad made
the final arrangements. Red Fust's wife, who had no idea
what was going on, was given tickets to Paris with
(07:18):
her children. There, she was contacted by Massad and told
the whole story. She threw a fit, threatening to go
to the Iraqi embassy and tell them everything, but her
handlers finally convinced her to agree to the plant. Reda's
other family members were secretly escorted to Iraq's Iranian border,
where Kurdish guerillas guided them to safety. From there, they
(07:42):
were taken to Israel, but Redfa was still in Iraq.
Finally he was given permission to take the plane up
on a training mission. He pointed the nose towards Jordan's
air traffic control in Jordan's contacted the Iraqis, who was
a big flying over their territory. What was going on?
The Iraqis, not imagining anything was wrong, told them their
(08:06):
pilot was just getting some airtime in with the MiG.
Redford turned the plane towards Israel. When he finally landed,
it was found that the two small gas tanks only
had a few drops of fuel left. The mag was
put to use. Israeli pilots trained against it learned how
to fight it in the air. The next year, Israel
(08:30):
and Syria went into battle over the Golan Heights. Was
the Israeli Mirages against the MiG twenty ones There's my
age applied. This film reportedly showing the dog fight and
the sky between the Mirage jets and Syria's Russian built makes.
The cameras were mounted on the Israelian fighters and recorded
these dark air battles Kale Israel shot down six of
(08:52):
the Syrian planes and lost none of their own, and
then they could get an Iraqi pilot. I mean that's
not easy to do. That's Robert bar, a former CIA
case officer an author of many books on espionage. The
movie Siriana was based on one of Bear's books, and
the character played by George Clooney was based on him.
(09:14):
I mean, we had a pilot that defected the Japan
and make pilot. We got one of the air planes
as well. But you know, getting hard equipment like that
and figuring out what the avionics and the radar and
the rest of it was extremely important for them and
it was a worthwhile operation. Was it was quite amazing.
What interests me about this mission is the human aspect.
(09:38):
Getting an agent to betray his country is hard, but
getting them to leave their country is even harder. Look
how difficult it was to get the butcher out of Brazil.
Some espionage sources find their lives aren't really disrupted. Their
children stay in their schools, Their wives or husbands are oblivious.
But Redfa had to give up everything and move his
(10:00):
extended family out of their homeland. It's really something of
a miracle Massad was able to find someone like him
and to convince him to make the leap to Israel.
I asked Robert bart about using someone's emotions to get
what you need. Well, it's helpful to go after a
press minority anywhere in the world. I mean, if you
(10:22):
look at the KGB, most a lot of the defectors
were from Ukraine. A lot of Israeli sources in Europe
were Jewish who sympathized with the israel elements existence. And
the same way with Christians who were oppressed and had
no chance of ever, you know, holding positions of power.
(10:43):
And that's not to mention, you know, once these Islamic
groups came and started pressing, now that they would gravitate
to the United States or Israel. Mio had played on
the butcher's emotions brilliantly, and now these Raelis had done
it again. The engineer. Now let me take you to
(11:11):
the nineties. Sometimes Massad targets terrorists. Sometimes it's political operatives,
and sometimes it's people who betrayed their country. It's rare
that the agency goes after a technician. But the engineer
wasn't like other technicians. Yah Yah Ayash was a number
(11:33):
one bomb maker for Hamas. Hamas is the Palestinian Sunni
Islamic militant fundamentalist organization. Ayasha's nickname was the Engineer, and
he was a master of building explosives. His skill is
even more impressive because dynamite, which is a favorite of
(11:53):
bomb makers for its stability and power, was hard to
get in the West Bank and Gaza Strip where Yosh
did his work, So he used a mix of acetone
and detergent, ingredients found easily in many household cleaners. When
you put them together, they make acetone peroxide. This stuff
(12:14):
is powerful, but it's also highly unstable. In fact, it's
called the mother of Satan. You can guess why. People
who work with the Mother of Satan usually don't live
very long. But Ayash had an extensive and impressively lethal career. Well.
I mean, the Raelis went after arm stealers, especially ones
(12:36):
that were supplying Iraq. They were very interested in the
people who could make airplane bombs. And they went after them.
Some of these people were assassinated in Jordan's and the
rest of it. I mean, they essentially viscerated the Palestinians,
the leadership as well as the technicians. That's Robert bar again.
(13:01):
A Yash built bombs for Hamass suicide attacks. The Mahola
Junction bombing in the Afuller bus massacre, it was at
lunchtime when the bomb went off, cutting down shoppers waiting
at a bus stop in a fullah town center. It's
believed that the bomber himself was among the eight who died.
(13:22):
The attack was time to mark the end of the
Islamic morning period for the victims of the Hebron massacre.
Whoever planned the bombing took plenty of casualties, at least
fifty people injured, many of them. The Disnegoff Street bus massacre,
also in n at the time the deadliest suicide bombing
(13:44):
in Israeli history, with twenty two civilians killed and fifty injured.
It had happened in Disnengoff Street, the city's commercial heart
and a place where people normally sit in cafes and relax. Today,
though the bloodied survivors and those in shock, stumbled onto
the pavement as passers by came to their aid was done.
(14:08):
The Yash was also behind the Hadara Central Station massacre
again and many more Hamas claimed responsibility for the deadliest
terrorist attack in Israel for sixteen years. Police combed the
wreckage trying to prove their hunch that the person who
(14:30):
took so many lives was a suicide bomber. The engineer
was killing Israeli's inside Israel civilians right in the heart
of the country. He later branched out and built bombs
for other groups, including Islamic Jahad. He was like a
one man bomb factory. Massad had to get him out
of the picture and to cut off the supply of
(14:52):
explosives for these attacks. The agency worked with shin Bet,
the Internal Security Age see on the mission. They even
had the cooperation of the Palestinian Authority, the official Palestinian
government body that controls the Gaza Strip and West Bank,
in tracking a Yasha's movements. The break came when the
(15:20):
agents realized that Yash kept returning to a certain apartment
owned by a buddy from his childhood days. This childhood
friend the Israelis had worked with his uncle they knew him,
and they blackmailed him into cooperating with the operation. The
agents gave the uncle a cell phone. They told him
(15:41):
they'd placed a bug inside so they could tap into
a Yasha's conversations, but they didn't tell him was there
was also fifteen grahams something called r d X inside.
R d X has been used as an explosive since
World War Two. It has no smell, makes it perfect
for jobs like this. The yash worked with explosives. If
(16:04):
he smelled anything, he might get suspicious. So the uncle
gets the phone and gives it to his nephew, the
Yasha's buddy. These really knew that the yash often talked
on one of the nephew's phones. They were hoping that
would be the case again. They began monitoring all the
calls in and out of the nephew's number. The monitoring
(16:27):
was done from a small airplane that circled above the target.
At eight am one January morning, a call came through.
The agents listening in recognized the voice. It was a
yasha's father. The call was relaid from the phone to
the airplane flying above to an Israeli outpost nearby. The
(16:49):
second voice on the line was confirmed it was the Engineer.
A signal was sent across the cell phone connection and
the phone exploded, killing Ayash instantly. The most hated man
in Israel, a Palestinian terrorist yah Yaha Yash, known as
the Engineer, was killed in the Gaza Strip on Friday.
(17:10):
He was executed by a tiny bomb hidden an immobile
cellular cold. It's many from to I was excluding and
destroyed the outside of his head. How many people killed? Yeah, yeah, Yesh.
We are investigating the case, and this is how then
(17:32):
opposition leader Benjamin Yahoo framed the news. If it's true
that one of the world's most vicious killers, a person
who's been responsible for blowing up women and children and davies,
has been eliminated, I don't think anyone should shed a
tear of sorrow. I think equally that it's important to
(17:52):
send a message. I think such a message has been
sent to all his followers, all would be terrorists, that
Israel's all arm would reach them, that there is a
price for terrorism. The a Yash operation reminds me a
bit of Mio's work during the Zookers mission. It was
technician versus technician in the same way that Mio went
(18:13):
mano a mano against the Butcher. The nerd aspect of
espionage is often a sideline. If you go to the
International Spy Museum in Washington, d C. They have small
exhibits on the technology of spying with tiny cameras, the
Enigma machine, things like that. But here the tech was
(18:35):
the whole deal. Ayash new bombs, but he never suspected
that Massad would be skilled enough to hide one inside
a cell phone. The level of sophistication of precision was
a hallmark of the agency doing more with less. Hey,
(18:57):
this is Stephen Talty, the host of this podcast, Good
Assassin's Hunting the Butcher. This podcast project came out of
my work on a related book called The Good Assassin.
If you want to explore other parts of this story,
check it out. It's not just a book version of
the podcast. I spend time on different aspects of the mission.
There are chapters diving into World War two history that
(19:20):
we didn't cover in the podcast, and the book works
as a kind of companion to the listening experience. You
can purchase a copy of The Good Assassin on Amazon,
Apple Books, and on bookshop dot Org. Thanks the Scientist
(19:47):
for this one, let's go inside Syria. For years, Massad
In the Israeli government had wanted to know if Syria,
which had been hostile to their Jewish neighbors for decades,
had a nuclear program. They couldn't break through the security
that the Syrians had put around their atomic research. Was
there anything going on? Were they building plants? Were they
(20:10):
thinking of building bombs? For Israel? The nuclear option is
the nuclear option. If any one of their enemies gets
the bomb, it could mean the end of their country.
I asked Robert Bart about nukes and how they're figure
into the mindsets of spy agencies. It goes back to
the Second World War when here it was planning to
(20:31):
use a nuclear bomb on New York City. I mean,
it was just on paper. It never went anywhere. But
they're more mythical than they aren't real. But there's something
to think about. You know, you can aristolize all sorts
of toxins and spread them over New York City, and
that's certainly something the Israelitis are worried about. Or putting
a tactical nuke on the end of the SCUD and
(20:52):
firing Tel Aviv. This is why they're going after I
ran right now, by the way. It's just quite extraordinary
these operations they pulled off r and I just thought,
I never thought anyone could do these things. So clearly
the Israelis have put a lot of effort and a
lot of brains on, you know, all this problems, but
places like Iran were considered the top priority. Everyone knew
(21:15):
that the Iranians were trying for a bomb. As for Syria,
who was on the back burner for Israel if you
believed they would take the risk. But Massie started noticing
mysterious things happening inside Syria. Ships would leave ports in
Asia and arrive in Syria with unknown cargoes. There were
(21:35):
convoys of trucks criss crossing the country carrying something of
Pakistani nuclear scientists. A Q Khan traveled to Damascus for talks,
but talks about what There was no evidence on the
ground that anything was happening. Israel spy satellites were picking
(21:56):
up nothing. Still, some pulit Massad had an uneasy feeling,
but they were in the minority. One guy Massad kept
an ion was ibraheim Afman, who was the head of
the Atomic Energy Commission of Syria. If anyone knew what
(22:17):
was going on, it was Athman. In December two thousand
and six, Massad got word that Athman would be traveling
to a European city. The Syrians had given him a
fake passport, but the Israelis knew how to track him.
Massad didn't want to kill him necessarily, but they wanted
to get inside his head. So as soon as Othman
(22:39):
landed in Europe, the Agency had eyes on him. At
the airport, agents watched him get off the plane and
head to a hotel. They were about a dozen operatives
involved in the operation. Once they found out what hotel
he was staying at and which room, they got a
team inside. They planted listening devices and then got out
(23:00):
from their bugs. The agency learned Offman was planning to
do some shopping. European cities have goods you can't get
in Syria, so he was planning a day to blow
some money. Once he left the hotel, operatives broke into
his room. On the desk was a laptop. Great, maybe
there was something valuable on the hard drive, but the
(23:23):
agents didn't have time to steal the computer, bring it
to their base and download all the files. So what
do you do. One of the team members was a
computer expert. He installed software which let the agency track
Offman's activities on the computer without the Syrian knowing it.
They put the program on the hard drive where it
(23:44):
was invisible, cleaned up, and left. The data started to
come in from Offman's laptop, and it was astonishing. There
were maps, There were blueprints for a nuclear plant. There
were even pictures of the construction in various state ages,
and finally, a snapshot of a guy who looked East Asian.
(24:05):
When Massad ran the photo through its computers, it turned
out the guy was a nuclear official from North Korea.
The Syrians were going nuclear in a big way, and
nobody had known about it. Massad went to work. They
sent a team inside Syria to collect soil samples and
other evidence from the building site. When it came back,
(24:28):
there was no doubt Syria was on the path to
a bomb. Massad and the Israeli Defense forces began planning
Operation Outside the Box. September six, two thousand seven, a
fleet of ten F fifteen fighter planes lifted off from
inside Israel. Israel had seized control of serious radar and
(24:54):
air defenses and hid any sign of the coming attack.
The F fifteen's aproached the site. When the pilots were
above the target, they released their payloads. The bomb struck
the building and the plant was destroyed. The attack had succeeded.
Syria abandoned its nuclear program. The wrong man in Massad
(25:27):
was thrust into the spotlight when Palestinian terrorists stormed the
residents of the Israeli team at the Summer Olympics in
Munich and took eleven Israeli's hostage. Eight members of the
faction of the Palestinian Liberation Organization known as Black September
barricaded themselves inside the athletes apartments and negotiated for days
(25:48):
with German authorities. Nearly five dred German security police have
now sealed off the village and I'm mounting heavy machine
guns in the square there, keeping cameraman and television reportance
and the spectators well away the girls. They demanded the
release of two d thirty four Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.
Was the Israeli government refused, really enjoyed in the vide
(26:10):
of the round political rights be happy now to day
has we everbly shattered and their tragedy the helicopters there
appearing on onboard and there is really offated. When the
terrorists and their hostages were transported to a nearby NATO
(26:32):
air base where they were supposedly going to be flown
to Cairo, disaster struck. A botched German ambush resulted in
the murder of the nine remaining Israeli athletes and coaches,
as well as the deaths of the terrorists. Despite a
few bad decisions by judges, some disappoint boks of petty mistakes,
the Beautic Olympics were on the way into becoming the
(26:54):
Posantist Olympics because the West Germans were to make them solves. Today,
one observed gave them a new name, the Bloody Olympics. Altogether,
seventeen people were slaughtered yesterday too in the Olympic village
and the other fifteen and the shootout of the airport.
It was a catastrophe for the Olympics, for the Germans
(27:15):
and for the Israelis. If you doubted that the government
in Jerusalem would respond and that Massad would be the
sharp point of the sword, here's how it. Israeli Prime
Minister Golden my Year explained it. Innocent lives around With
that stage, the question is can innocent Israeli lives become
(27:40):
a commodity that groups of men and women can just
do with them whatever they like. Normally would say that
it's a simple matter of course. But what happens these
men demands the release from for them of men who
(28:02):
participated in the killing of our people. But they say, alpenmely,
they make a stake, and now the side over again.
But it means that people are set free when everybody
knows that what they intended to do the first opportunity
they were killing more Israelis. It's a difficult problem. I
(28:22):
don't say it's easy, but if you cannot say, well,
as long as it's a bounced Asraelis, it's long golden.
My year quickly approved Operation Wrath of God, a covert
(28:44):
MASSAD operation to hunt down and kill the planners of
the Munich massacre. Massad began their reprisals in nine three.
Who was an assassination in Rome, a bomb placed in
a telephone in Paris, another planet under a bed in Cyprus,
and a third that detonated under a car seat. There
(29:06):
was a spectacular military rate in Lebanon, using Zodiac boats
and agents disguised as women all found their targets, but
the mastermind of the Munich terror operation still eluded Massad.
That was Ali Hassan Salome, nicknamed the Red Prince. Salom
(29:28):
A was believed to be the operations chief for Black
September and the man who planned Munich. The Israelis put
him near the top of the list of targets. Massad
trece Salome to lily Hammer, a beautiful ski resort town
in central Norway. They sent an elite squad, fifteen agents
(29:51):
and even the head of Massad, s V Zamir. Some
reports have said the team came from Cesarea, the same
unit that Mio and Joseph your Reeve belonged to. The
agency didn't tell the Norwegians what they were up to,
which was standard operating procedure. The fewer people who know
the lower possibility of a leak. Once in lily Hammer,
(30:15):
the Massad agents began following a man they believed to
be a courier, an intermediary between the Red Prince and
Black September. Posing his tourists, they followed the man wherever
he went. On one of his errands, the courier headed
to a local swimming pool. There he met a dark
haired man. The agent studied the man. They had practically
(30:39):
memorized a few photos of Saloma that were available. Just
like with Herbert Suckers, they were comparing archival pictures with
a man in the field, and just like with Zukers,
the two matched. They believed they'd found the Red Prince.
The operatives acted quickly. They followed the target as they
(31:00):
moved through lily Hammer. The next day he met with
a blond woman, apparently in Norwegian. The two went to
see a movie together and then caught a bus. The
operatives telled them closely as the parallel to the driver
to their stop. Then got off the bus and began walking,
apparently toward the house they shared. After the bus pulled away,
(31:21):
the killed team struck. They shot the man thirteen times.
He fell to the pavement, the blonde woman calling for help.
The agents quickly disappeared. It was a clean operation, fast,
with no bystanders killed. Except it wasn't the man that
Massa had executed in the quiet Norwegian town. Wasn't the
(31:43):
Red Prince at all. His name was Ahmed Bushiki, a
Moroccan waiter. The woman who was pregnant at the time.
Was his wife to real it had been a horrible
mistake and now an innocent man and was dead. It
was the first murder in lilli Hammer in thirty six years.
(32:05):
The killed team left Norway almost immediately, but six other
Israelis who lingered after the hit were caught and arrested.
One of them apparently broke down under questioning and revealed
the entire plan to police. It was one disaster after another.
The Israelis had done what they always accused their enemies of,
(32:26):
killed someone who done nothing to them. Now they faced
the consequences. The agency was embarrassed. Five agents went on
trial in Norway and were sent to prison. It took
almost twenty five years for Massad to admit its mistake
and for the Israelis to pay a med Bushiki's family
an undisclosed amount of money. The damage was extensive. The
(32:51):
plausible deniability that Massad had always depended on was shredded.
The agency looks sloppy, careless, the new which an investigation revealed, secrets,
the location of safe houses across Europe, their tactics, even
the names of some of their agents, and things kept
getting worse. A year Later, the Israelis believed they traced
(33:14):
the Red Prince to Switzerland, where he was going to
meet some PILO officials in a church. Two Massad agents
walked into the church and spotted three men with dark
hare and Arab features. They later claimed that one of
them reached for a weapon, the assassin's opened fire, killing
all three. None of them turned out to be the
(33:34):
Red Prince was another fatal mistake. The head of the
operation called off the hunt for Solemn but incredibly, members
of the killed team continued to pursue him. They believed
they'd found the Prince in Tarifa, Spain. They approached the
house that their intelligence officers had placed them in, but
(33:56):
were intercepted by an Arab security guard. Another your fight.
This time the guard lay dead after the Israeli said
he pointed in a K forty seven at them. Operation
Wrath of God was called off. It would remain in
a deep freeze for a full five years until it
(34:18):
was resumed under a new Prime minister, but Massad's reputation
would never be the same. Some even suggested that it
had allowed its obsession with finding them unit killers to
distract it from its main mission protecting the Homeland. I
asked Robert Baar, the x C I a officer about
(34:39):
Operation Wrath of God, and he had a different take
on the blowback. This was, you know, a great actor
revenge that was supported across Israel, and they just had
to go right through the list. And you know, killing
the Moroccan and it's a it's a setback that could
happen to anybody. But I don't know away slowed the
(35:00):
Israelis down. I think the only thing that slowed them
down is sort of reassessments of fascinations. And and that's
a big question. I mean, they kill you seen it Gaza?
Did it truly decapitate um Us? You know, that's something
you have to ask the Israelis clearly. I mean it's
it's like Sulamani when they kill him. I think it
(35:22):
had a great effect on Iran. I mean he was
he was the de facto leader of Iran. Not how
many those are those are hard calculations assassinations, but killing
a Moroccan later in Norway in no way page to
Israeli policy radio were just the same scores. They're going
(35:43):
to advance them to be. It really occupied portions of
the desert when Aaron Forces launched a surprise attack on
Israel in October ninety three, many blamed the agency for
having provided no advanced warning that is suceeeded in capturing
the key and overwhelming and movies radio positions. The fireline
(36:10):
from Diam Kapoor war was one of the most dangerous
moments in Israeli history, and Massad had appeared to be
asleep at the wheel. Hi, this is Stephen Talty, host
(36:39):
of Good Assassins Hunting the Butcher. The folks that helped
me bring you the show, Diversion Podcasts have just launched
another podcast that I think you'll like. It's called Backstaged
The Devil in Metal, a deep dive into the history
of mental music, filled with never before heard interviews and
stories from some of the biggest names of m ZACK,
(37:00):
including Black Sabbath, Judas, Priest Van Helen, and many others.
It's outrageous, raw and surprising at times. Backstage. The Devil
in Metal is out now. Follow the show on Apple Podcasts,
I Heared, Radio app or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Spies,
(37:27):
never forget if you've got to look at Massad's most
wanted list in two thousand and eight a lebedies man
named Ahmad Fayez Mugnia who was probably at the top
or near it. Mugnia was the mastermind in a series
of terror attacks against Israeli's around the world. He was
(37:47):
believed to be the chief of staff for Hezbollah, the
Lebanese Shia Islamist political party, and militant group. It was
a link between Iran and terrorist groups. Robert Barr said,
Mugnia was probably the most intelligent, most capable operative we've
ever run across, including the KGB or anybody else. Massad
(38:10):
and Mugnia had been involved in the cat and mouse
game for decades. Massad wanted to kill him, and Mugnia
knew it. He was incredibly smart and resourceful. Every time
the agency planned an assassination, Nia outwitted them and survived.
In February two eight, Massad tried again the Massad track
(38:32):
move Mia around the clock. He lived in Syria and
those rare times he emerged on a Damascus street. They
got an alert that February. They got worried that Munia
was staying at a safe house in the city. They
couldn't get close to him. With an assassin on a
motorcycle or with poison. They decided on a car bomb.
(38:54):
Massad and his technical experts allegedly began to sign, build,
and test the bomb. They removed the spare tire from
a car's trunk and replaced it with a face bear
that actually contained a powerful explosive. They performed test run
after test run. Finally they thought they were ready. The
main problem was being able to confirm when Mugnia would
(39:17):
go to his safe house and how he would exit.
If you're using a car bomb, you need to know
a person's route before they take it. That was tough. Finally,
on February twelve, Munia headed to the safe house. He
parked as Missubishi in a nearby lot and emerged from
the car. It was the anniversary of the nineteen seventy
(39:39):
nine Iranian Revolution, and Munia was there to celebrate. The
bomb car was close to the Missubishi, but as Mougnia emerged,
Massad's lookouts realized that he was with a bunch of
other men. Either because these other officials were considered out
of bounds, or Israel didn't want to told to be
(40:00):
that high, they called off the hit. The team's stayed
in place, They left the car bomb where it was
and they waited. Finally, late at night, Muvinia came out
to his car. This time he was alone. An operative
pressed the remote and the bomb tore the car to bids.
(40:23):
Unia was killed the loan casualty. That night, news trickled
out and international journalists began reporting. A top has Belaw
(40:44):
militant alleged to be the hide a series of attacks
on US, Israeli and Jewish targets has been assassinated his
middle aged car bombings go. This was a small one
and in the end only one person was killed, but
the death of the man involved as rock Dieselmas militants
in Lebanon and Syria, and it may be the trigger
for further unrest. A senior commander of the Lebanese based
(41:07):
Shiite militant group, his Ballah, Immed Mugnia, was one of
his buller's most deadly operatives. The FBI wanted him alive
and was offering a five million dollar bounty, but overnight
a car bombing in Damascus claimed his life. His ballah
has blamed Israel for his death. Israel denies involvement, but
many in the Jewish state and beyond glad that Imed
(41:28):
Mugnia is gone. Hello, I am Hashima. Lebanon's Zella says
Israel assassinated one of its top leaders. Israel denies it.
What will the repercussions be? Mad Mania, one of the
group's top military commanders, died in a car bombing in Syria,
who was accused by the U S and by Israel
of being involved in a string of attacks which killed
(41:50):
hundreds of here's former Knesset member Dannya Tom commenting, I
think that the organization that finally reached him showed and
very high skills, both in intelligence and in operational capability.
(42:12):
I think that the fluent democratic world today achieved a
very very important goal. Munia may have been the longest
running target Massad ever went after. It took decades to
get him. So why agencies tend to have long memories.
Their files go back many years, and they trace people's
(42:32):
loyalties and behavior from childhood on. But even from Massad
this was exceptional. As we saw with MEO, some spies
never forget. When you look at the history of Massad operations,
(42:54):
targeted killings are a big part of the picture. Israel
sometimes uses the agency less as an intelligence gathering outfit
than as an instrument of foreign policy. I asked the
intelligence historian Keith Melton about this. Is it possible that
Israel sometimes turns to its spies when a diplomat in
(43:15):
a suit might be a better solution. I would observe
that there's a time for diplomacy, and there's probably a
time or direct action. The problem, I believe becomes you
can believe that either is always a substitute for the other,
and that isn't true. There are certain instances in which
(43:38):
diplomacy would absolutely the best, but covertly there's instances in
which direct action might be the only choice to do something.
Israel uses its intelligence service very, very effectively. They are
clear in their attention, and they use their intelligence service
(44:01):
as an instrument of foreign power when it suits them.
Robert Baar agrees. He gave me some background on other
countries who used their spy agencies as tools of foreign policy.
It was it was a new war, and with German
intelligence considering we nothing about Russia in the thirties and
(44:22):
through the Second World were nothing. The only people who
knew a little bit about Russia were the Nazis, and
they were brought into the new German intelligence Service. How
useful they were is very doubtful, but it was better
than zero. Don't forget that by forty six and forty
seven of an existential conflict, and once the Russians nukes
(44:43):
it was even more so. So It's like always when
when in the Cold War we allied with very bad people,
hoping they would help us against an enemy that could
destroy us. The General Tartus is an old medieval fort
(45:04):
built by the Knights Templar on serious Mediterranean coast. This
is where a man named Mohammed Suleiman had a vacation house,
not far from a luxury beach resort. Suleiman was a
general in the Syrian Army and one of the main
contacts to Iran and Hamas Israel wanted him gone. Every summer,
(45:27):
Suleiman would travel to his seaside vacation home to review files,
chill out, swim in the ocean. But it wasn't like
he went there in a convertible with the top down.
He traveled from Damascus in an armored vehicle with bodyguards.
More bodyguards were stationed at the beach house. They never
let him out of their sight. Even going into the
(45:49):
water with him when he went for a swim after
the assassination of Mugnia on a busy Damascus street, Syria
was taking no chances. On one trip. It was a
typical August day, hot, not a lot of wind. It
was beautiful. Yachts were passing up and down along the coast.
(46:10):
People were sunbathing. The rich. We're heading out to an
offshore island to dine at one of the many fish
restaurants there. Suleiman was enjoying the beach when another yacht
showed up. It was, according to one report, unusually sleek,
but there was nothing strange about it. It was sailing
closer to shore than the others, about fifty yards off
(46:31):
the coast. Maybe its owners wanted to get a better
look at the houses on the shore. Suleiman's bodyguards weren't alarmed,
and when their boss wanted to go for a swim,
they went in the water with him. The men were
wading into the ocean when suddenly Suleiman sank into the water.
(46:52):
There had been no noise, not that anyone remembered, but
when the bodyguards pulled into the beach they found the
general had bullet in his head and chest and neck.
He died soon after, and the yacht, which we now
believe was carrying snipers with especially silence rifles, it sailed
away from the coast and disappeared. This is straight out
(47:18):
of a spy movie. The yacht the beautiful Blue Water
the Silence. Sometimes espionage appears almost to be a magic trick,
a seemingly impossible thing where you can't tell who did what.
(47:46):
Most by agencies have a motto. A lot of them
are what you'd expect. Am I six, the British spy
agency takes theirs from the Latin Semper cultists, always secret,
no surprises there. The cias is the work of a nation,
(48:07):
the center of intelligence, which I've always found bland and
vaguely corporate. I prefer their unofficial version from the scriptures,
And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall
set you free. Massad also turned to scripture for their motto,
or in their case the Torah, the Jewish Bible, where
(48:29):
no wise direction is the people fall, but in the
multitude of counselors there is safety. It's less certain than
the CIA's, not as confident. It refers to the fall
of the people. A nod to the many tragedies in
Jewish history. It doesn't talk about secrets, only wisdom, and
(48:51):
that's something that's often hard to judge. Are you eliminating
risks or increasing them? Are you targeting the mastermind of
Munich or an innocent waiter walking home with his wife.
Here's Robert bar once more. I mean, it's like always
in the Cold War, we allied with very bad people
(49:12):
hoping they would help us against an enemy that could
destroy us. And that's the whole, you know, the moral
dilemma for the United States is can you work with
these people to save your own skin? What I like
about Massa's motto is that it seems to acknowledge how
(49:35):
hard it is to find the truth. That espionage is
a tough job, not just the tradecraft, but guilt and innocence.
That's the hardest part. Good assassins. Hunting the Butcher is
(50:15):
a production of Diversion Podcasts in association with I Heart Radio.
This season is written and hosted by Stephen Talti, produced
and directed by Scott Waxman and Jacob Bronstein. Executive producers
Scott Waxman and Mark Francis. Story editing by Jacob Bronstein,
with editorial direction from Scott Waxman and mangesh At ticket editing,
(50:38):
mixing and sound designed by Mark Francis, with the voices
of Nick Afka, Thomas Amory, Angle, Andrew Polk, Mindy Escobar, Leants,
Steve Rautman and Stefan Brudnitsky. Theme music by Tyler Cash.
Archival research by Adam Shapiro, thanks to Oran Rosenbaum at
(50:58):
ut A Diversion Podcasts.
Diversion podcasts. A note this episode contains descriptions of graphic violence.
Listeners discretion is advised. So Massad's mission to assassinate the
butcher of Latvia was the success it achieved its subjective
(00:32):
It changed how we think about the Holocaust in genocide law,
and it changed the lives of countless people, including the
people you've met in the last ten episodes. But the
Zookers operation barely scratches the surface of what Massad has
done over the years, and it's more than seventy years
(00:53):
of existence. Massad has been, by its own definition quote
involved in special operations, an activity in the service of
the State of Israel, such as the pursuit of Nazi criminals.
Massad has also rescued Jews and the diaspora from dangerous
situations and resettled them in Israel. The most famous of
(01:15):
these operations was the four covert evacuation of approximately eight
thousand Ethiopian Jews out of Sudan in Operation Moses. Massad
also tells us that they are quote a key factor
in the war against terror directed at Jewish and Israeli
(01:35):
targets abroad. So for this episode, I want to look
at some of the most important and spectacular operations the
agency has carried out. I want to tell you about
some missions you've probably never heard of, but then shape
them Middle East and even our world. I'm Stephen Talty,
(02:04):
and this is good Assassin's hunting. The butcher is rather
assassinated one of its top leaders. He was executed by
a coney bomb hidden in a mobile cellular telephone. There's
a time for diplomacy, and there's probably a time for
direct action. Normally it's a simple matter, and that's the
(02:25):
moral dilemma. Can you work with these people to save
your own skin? Episode eleven, Massad's Greatest Hits and Misses
(02:50):
the jet. Let's start with an operation in which the
target wasn't even human. In three, the Israelis decided they
had to have a meg. At the time, the MiG
was the most advanced Soviet fighter plane and the latest model.
The MiG had been purchased by Israeli's neighbors and enemies, Egypt,
(03:15):
Syria and Iraq. If it came to war, Israel would
be facing these fighter jets in the skies. They had
to know everything about them, so forget about stealing blueprints
or getting blurry photos from inside some hangar. They wanted
to steal an entire plane. There was a problem, however,
(03:37):
if you didn't have the plane, you couldn't fly it,
So Massad would have to convince an air pilot to
steal the plane for them. That was much harder than
just going after the hardware. The mission began in the
early sixties. A Massad agent named Gene Thomas offered an
Egyptian pilot one million dollars to hijack his own aircraft
(04:00):
fly it to Israel. That would be about nine million
dollars today. It was a fortune. But the pilot said no,
and then he went to his bosses and told them
about the offer. Thomas, the Massad agent, along with four others,
were arrested. Months later, Thomas and two of his accomplices
(04:21):
were hung, while the others received extensive prison terms. Who's
a complete failure, But for Massad the MiG was worth
another try. In the mid nineteen sixties, they moved the
mission's focus away from Egypt to Iraq and actually tried
to convince two pilots to get in the plane and
(04:41):
fly it again. The pilots refused. Finally, in nineteen sixty
six and Iraqi born Jew named Yusuf got in touch
with Massad. This is one of the strengths of the
agency's In countries around the world, there have been examples
of Jews willing to help Massa. I asked Keith Melton
(05:02):
about this. Melton is the intelligence historian an author of
several books on espionage we've heard from in previous episodes.
At one time, the total of number intelligence officers they had,
and this was thirty years ago, it was only twenty
four officers, so they had a very small service. But
(05:25):
they had the ability to look for other Jewish supporters
virtually anywhere they could go in the world. If you
needed a check cash, you needed to arrange a safe house,
if you needed a rental car. They had an established
contact within the synagogue, within a group in almost any
(05:45):
country they could go. So this guy Yusuf told aside
about this other guy named red fu Red Phone was
a pilot who flew the Big any One. He was
a Christian whose religion had caused his military career to
stall out. Only Muslims were getting promoted, so red Fot
(06:09):
was piste off. He was also angry that he had
been forced to fight against Iraqi Kurds, whom he had
no problem with. He was ready to turn against Iraq.
Massad sent a female agent to entice red Fot into
the deal. She got him to travel to Europe, where
he could meet with her handlers. There they offered the
pilot one million dollars, full Israeli citizenship and a good job.
(06:35):
Red Fot had some conditions. Knowing that Iraq's government would
take revenge on his relatives, he demanded that Israel get
them out of the country at the same time he
was stealing the plane. Massad agreed, but there were obstacles.
Red foot superiors didn't trust him. He was considered a
troublemaker and he was a Christian. They only allowed him
(06:58):
to fly a MiG equipped with two small fuel tanks,
which would theoretically prevent him from taking it all the
way to Israel. If he crashed on the way to
tell Aviv, the mission would be a failure. Massad made
the final arrangements. Red Fust's wife, who had no idea
what was going on, was given tickets to Paris with
(07:18):
her children. There, she was contacted by Massad and told
the whole story. She threw a fit, threatening to go
to the Iraqi embassy and tell them everything, but her
handlers finally convinced her to agree to the plant. Reda's
other family members were secretly escorted to Iraq's Iranian border,
where Kurdish guerillas guided them to safety. From there, they
(07:42):
were taken to Israel, but Redfa was still in Iraq.
Finally he was given permission to take the plane up
on a training mission. He pointed the nose towards Jordan's
air traffic control in Jordan's contacted the Iraqis, who was
a big flying over their territory. What was going on?
The Iraqis, not imagining anything was wrong, told them their
(08:06):
pilot was just getting some airtime in with the MiG.
Redford turned the plane towards Israel. When he finally landed,
it was found that the two small gas tanks only
had a few drops of fuel left. The mag was
put to use. Israeli pilots trained against it learned how
to fight it in the air. The next year, Israel
(08:30):
and Syria went into battle over the Golan Heights. Was
the Israeli Mirages against the MiG twenty ones There's my
age applied. This film reportedly showing the dog fight and
the sky between the Mirage jets and Syria's Russian built makes.
The cameras were mounted on the Israelian fighters and recorded
these dark air battles Kale Israel shot down six of
(08:52):
the Syrian planes and lost none of their own, and
then they could get an Iraqi pilot. I mean that's
not easy to do. That's Robert bar, a former CIA
case officer an author of many books on espionage. The
movie Siriana was based on one of Bear's books, and
the character played by George Clooney was based on him.
(09:14):
I mean, we had a pilot that defected the Japan
and make pilot. We got one of the air planes
as well. But you know, getting hard equipment like that
and figuring out what the avionics and the radar and
the rest of it was extremely important for them and
it was a worthwhile operation. Was it was quite amazing.
What interests me about this mission is the human aspect.
(09:38):
Getting an agent to betray his country is hard, but
getting them to leave their country is even harder. Look
how difficult it was to get the butcher out of Brazil.
Some espionage sources find their lives aren't really disrupted. Their
children stay in their schools, Their wives or husbands are oblivious.
But Redfa had to give up everything and move his
(10:00):
extended family out of their homeland. It's really something of
a miracle Massad was able to find someone like him
and to convince him to make the leap to Israel.
I asked Robert bart about using someone's emotions to get
what you need. Well, it's helpful to go after a
press minority anywhere in the world. I mean, if you
(10:22):
look at the KGB, most a lot of the defectors
were from Ukraine. A lot of Israeli sources in Europe
were Jewish who sympathized with the israel elements existence. And
the same way with Christians who were oppressed and had
no chance of ever, you know, holding positions of power.
(10:43):
And that's not to mention, you know, once these Islamic
groups came and started pressing, now that they would gravitate
to the United States or Israel. Mio had played on
the butcher's emotions brilliantly, and now these Raelis had done
it again. The engineer. Now let me take you to
(11:11):
the nineties. Sometimes Massad targets terrorists. Sometimes it's political operatives,
and sometimes it's people who betrayed their country. It's rare
that the agency goes after a technician. But the engineer
wasn't like other technicians. Yah Yah Ayash was a number
(11:33):
one bomb maker for Hamas. Hamas is the Palestinian Sunni
Islamic militant fundamentalist organization. Ayasha's nickname was the Engineer, and
he was a master of building explosives. His skill is
even more impressive because dynamite, which is a favorite of
(11:53):
bomb makers for its stability and power, was hard to
get in the West Bank and Gaza Strip where Yosh
did his work, So he used a mix of acetone
and detergent, ingredients found easily in many household cleaners. When
you put them together, they make acetone peroxide. This stuff
(12:14):
is powerful, but it's also highly unstable. In fact, it's
called the mother of Satan. You can guess why. People
who work with the Mother of Satan usually don't live
very long. But Ayash had an extensive and impressively lethal career. Well.
I mean, the Raelis went after arm stealers, especially ones
(12:36):
that were supplying Iraq. They were very interested in the
people who could make airplane bombs. And they went after them.
Some of these people were assassinated in Jordan's and the
rest of it. I mean, they essentially viscerated the Palestinians,
the leadership as well as the technicians. That's Robert bar again.
(13:01):
A Yash built bombs for Hamass suicide attacks. The Mahola
Junction bombing in the Afuller bus massacre, it was at
lunchtime when the bomb went off, cutting down shoppers waiting
at a bus stop in a fullah town center. It's
believed that the bomber himself was among the eight who died.
(13:22):
The attack was time to mark the end of the
Islamic morning period for the victims of the Hebron massacre.
Whoever planned the bombing took plenty of casualties, at least
fifty people injured, many of them. The Disnegoff Street bus massacre,
also in n at the time the deadliest suicide bombing
(13:44):
in Israeli history, with twenty two civilians killed and fifty injured.
It had happened in Disnengoff Street, the city's commercial heart
and a place where people normally sit in cafes and relax. Today,
though the bloodied survivors and those in shock, stumbled onto
the pavement as passers by came to their aid was done.
(14:08):
The Yash was also behind the Hadara Central Station massacre
again and many more Hamas claimed responsibility for the deadliest
terrorist attack in Israel for sixteen years. Police combed the
wreckage trying to prove their hunch that the person who
(14:30):
took so many lives was a suicide bomber. The engineer
was killing Israeli's inside Israel civilians right in the heart
of the country. He later branched out and built bombs
for other groups, including Islamic Jahad. He was like a
one man bomb factory. Massad had to get him out
of the picture and to cut off the supply of
(14:52):
explosives for these attacks. The agency worked with shin Bet,
the Internal Security Age see on the mission. They even
had the cooperation of the Palestinian Authority, the official Palestinian
government body that controls the Gaza Strip and West Bank,
in tracking a Yasha's movements. The break came when the
(15:20):
agents realized that Yash kept returning to a certain apartment
owned by a buddy from his childhood days. This childhood
friend the Israelis had worked with his uncle they knew him,
and they blackmailed him into cooperating with the operation. The
agents gave the uncle a cell phone. They told him
(15:41):
they'd placed a bug inside so they could tap into
a Yasha's conversations, but they didn't tell him was there
was also fifteen grahams something called r d X inside.
R d X has been used as an explosive since
World War Two. It has no smell, makes it perfect
for jobs like this. The yash worked with explosives. If
(16:04):
he smelled anything, he might get suspicious. So the uncle
gets the phone and gives it to his nephew, the
Yasha's buddy. These really knew that the yash often talked
on one of the nephew's phones. They were hoping that
would be the case again. They began monitoring all the
calls in and out of the nephew's number. The monitoring
(16:27):
was done from a small airplane that circled above the target.
At eight am one January morning, a call came through.
The agents listening in recognized the voice. It was a
yasha's father. The call was relaid from the phone to
the airplane flying above to an Israeli outpost nearby. The
(16:49):
second voice on the line was confirmed it was the Engineer.
A signal was sent across the cell phone connection and
the phone exploded, killing Ayash instantly. The most hated man
in Israel, a Palestinian terrorist yah Yaha Yash, known as
the Engineer, was killed in the Gaza Strip on Friday.
(17:10):
He was executed by a tiny bomb hidden an immobile
cellular cold. It's many from to I was excluding and
destroyed the outside of his head. How many people killed? Yeah, yeah, Yesh.
We are investigating the case, and this is how then
(17:32):
opposition leader Benjamin Yahoo framed the news. If it's true
that one of the world's most vicious killers, a person
who's been responsible for blowing up women and children and davies,
has been eliminated, I don't think anyone should shed a
tear of sorrow. I think equally that it's important to
(17:52):
send a message. I think such a message has been
sent to all his followers, all would be terrorists, that
Israel's all arm would reach them, that there is a
price for terrorism. The a Yash operation reminds me a
bit of Mio's work during the Zookers mission. It was
technician versus technician in the same way that Mio went
(18:13):
mano a mano against the Butcher. The nerd aspect of
espionage is often a sideline. If you go to the
International Spy Museum in Washington, d C. They have small
exhibits on the technology of spying with tiny cameras, the
Enigma machine, things like that. But here the tech was
(18:35):
the whole deal. Ayash new bombs, but he never suspected
that Massad would be skilled enough to hide one inside
a cell phone. The level of sophistication of precision was
a hallmark of the agency doing more with less. Hey,
(18:57):
this is Stephen Talty, the host of this podcast, Good
Assassin's Hunting the Butcher. This podcast project came out of
my work on a related book called The Good Assassin.
If you want to explore other parts of this story,
check it out. It's not just a book version of
the podcast. I spend time on different aspects of the mission.
There are chapters diving into World War two history that
(19:20):
we didn't cover in the podcast, and the book works
as a kind of companion to the listening experience. You
can purchase a copy of The Good Assassin on Amazon,
Apple Books, and on bookshop dot Org. Thanks the Scientist
(19:47):
for this one, let's go inside Syria. For years, Massad
In the Israeli government had wanted to know if Syria,
which had been hostile to their Jewish neighbors for decades,
had a nuclear program. They couldn't break through the security
that the Syrians had put around their atomic research. Was
there anything going on? Were they building plants? Were they
(20:10):
thinking of building bombs? For Israel? The nuclear option is
the nuclear option. If any one of their enemies gets
the bomb, it could mean the end of their country.
I asked Robert Bart about nukes and how they're figure
into the mindsets of spy agencies. It goes back to
the Second World War when here it was planning to
(20:31):
use a nuclear bomb on New York City. I mean,
it was just on paper. It never went anywhere. But
they're more mythical than they aren't real. But there's something
to think about. You know, you can aristolize all sorts
of toxins and spread them over New York City, and
that's certainly something the Israelitis are worried about. Or putting
a tactical nuke on the end of the SCUD and
(20:52):
firing Tel Aviv. This is why they're going after I
ran right now, by the way. It's just quite extraordinary
these operations they pulled off r and I just thought,
I never thought anyone could do these things. So clearly
the Israelis have put a lot of effort and a
lot of brains on, you know, all this problems, but
places like Iran were considered the top priority. Everyone knew
(21:15):
that the Iranians were trying for a bomb. As for Syria,
who was on the back burner for Israel if you
believed they would take the risk. But Massie started noticing
mysterious things happening inside Syria. Ships would leave ports in
Asia and arrive in Syria with unknown cargoes. There were
(21:35):
convoys of trucks criss crossing the country carrying something of
Pakistani nuclear scientists. A Q Khan traveled to Damascus for talks,
but talks about what There was no evidence on the
ground that anything was happening. Israel spy satellites were picking
(21:56):
up nothing. Still, some pulit Massad had an uneasy feeling,
but they were in the minority. One guy Massad kept
an ion was ibraheim Afman, who was the head of
the Atomic Energy Commission of Syria. If anyone knew what
(22:17):
was going on, it was Athman. In December two thousand
and six, Massad got word that Athman would be traveling
to a European city. The Syrians had given him a
fake passport, but the Israelis knew how to track him.
Massad didn't want to kill him necessarily, but they wanted
to get inside his head. So as soon as Othman
(22:39):
landed in Europe, the Agency had eyes on him. At
the airport, agents watched him get off the plane and
head to a hotel. They were about a dozen operatives
involved in the operation. Once they found out what hotel
he was staying at and which room, they got a
team inside. They planted listening devices and then got out
(23:00):
from their bugs. The agency learned Offman was planning to
do some shopping. European cities have goods you can't get
in Syria, so he was planning a day to blow
some money. Once he left the hotel, operatives broke into
his room. On the desk was a laptop. Great, maybe
there was something valuable on the hard drive, but the
(23:23):
agents didn't have time to steal the computer, bring it
to their base and download all the files. So what
do you do. One of the team members was a
computer expert. He installed software which let the agency track
Offman's activities on the computer without the Syrian knowing it.
They put the program on the hard drive where it
(23:44):
was invisible, cleaned up, and left. The data started to
come in from Offman's laptop, and it was astonishing. There
were maps, There were blueprints for a nuclear plant. There
were even pictures of the construction in various state ages,
and finally, a snapshot of a guy who looked East Asian.
(24:05):
When Massad ran the photo through its computers, it turned
out the guy was a nuclear official from North Korea.
The Syrians were going nuclear in a big way, and
nobody had known about it. Massad went to work. They
sent a team inside Syria to collect soil samples and
other evidence from the building site. When it came back,
(24:28):
there was no doubt Syria was on the path to
a bomb. Massad and the Israeli Defense forces began planning
Operation Outside the Box. September six, two thousand seven, a
fleet of ten F fifteen fighter planes lifted off from
inside Israel. Israel had seized control of serious radar and
(24:54):
air defenses and hid any sign of the coming attack.
The F fifteen's aproached the site. When the pilots were
above the target, they released their payloads. The bomb struck
the building and the plant was destroyed. The attack had succeeded.
Syria abandoned its nuclear program. The wrong man in Massad
(25:27):
was thrust into the spotlight when Palestinian terrorists stormed the
residents of the Israeli team at the Summer Olympics in
Munich and took eleven Israeli's hostage. Eight members of the
faction of the Palestinian Liberation Organization known as Black September
barricaded themselves inside the athletes apartments and negotiated for days
(25:48):
with German authorities. Nearly five dred German security police have
now sealed off the village and I'm mounting heavy machine
guns in the square there, keeping cameraman and television reportance
and the spectators well away the girls. They demanded the
release of two d thirty four Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.
Was the Israeli government refused, really enjoyed in the vide
(26:10):
of the round political rights be happy now to day
has we everbly shattered and their tragedy the helicopters there
appearing on onboard and there is really offated. When the
terrorists and their hostages were transported to a nearby NATO
(26:32):
air base where they were supposedly going to be flown
to Cairo, disaster struck. A botched German ambush resulted in
the murder of the nine remaining Israeli athletes and coaches,
as well as the deaths of the terrorists. Despite a
few bad decisions by judges, some disappoint boks of petty mistakes,
the Beautic Olympics were on the way into becoming the
(26:54):
Posantist Olympics because the West Germans were to make them solves. Today,
one observed gave them a new name, the Bloody Olympics. Altogether,
seventeen people were slaughtered yesterday too in the Olympic village
and the other fifteen and the shootout of the airport.
It was a catastrophe for the Olympics, for the Germans
(27:15):
and for the Israelis. If you doubted that the government
in Jerusalem would respond and that Massad would be the
sharp point of the sword, here's how it. Israeli Prime
Minister Golden my Year explained it. Innocent lives around With
that stage, the question is can innocent Israeli lives become
(27:40):
a commodity that groups of men and women can just
do with them whatever they like. Normally would say that
it's a simple matter of course. But what happens these
men demands the release from for them of men who
(28:02):
participated in the killing of our people. But they say, alpenmely,
they make a stake, and now the side over again.
But it means that people are set free when everybody
knows that what they intended to do the first opportunity
they were killing more Israelis. It's a difficult problem. I
(28:22):
don't say it's easy, but if you cannot say, well,
as long as it's a bounced Asraelis, it's long golden.
My year quickly approved Operation Wrath of God, a covert
(28:44):
MASSAD operation to hunt down and kill the planners of
the Munich massacre. Massad began their reprisals in nine three.
Who was an assassination in Rome, a bomb placed in
a telephone in Paris, another planet under a bed in Cyprus,
and a third that detonated under a car seat. There
(29:06):
was a spectacular military rate in Lebanon, using Zodiac boats
and agents disguised as women all found their targets, but
the mastermind of the Munich terror operation still eluded Massad.
That was Ali Hassan Salome, nicknamed the Red Prince. Salom
(29:28):
A was believed to be the operations chief for Black
September and the man who planned Munich. The Israelis put
him near the top of the list of targets. Massad
trece Salome to lily Hammer, a beautiful ski resort town
in central Norway. They sent an elite squad, fifteen agents
(29:51):
and even the head of Massad, s V Zamir. Some
reports have said the team came from Cesarea, the same
unit that Mio and Joseph your Reeve belonged to. The
agency didn't tell the Norwegians what they were up to,
which was standard operating procedure. The fewer people who know
the lower possibility of a leak. Once in lily Hammer,
(30:15):
the Massad agents began following a man they believed to
be a courier, an intermediary between the Red Prince and
Black September. Posing his tourists, they followed the man wherever
he went. On one of his errands, the courier headed
to a local swimming pool. There he met a dark
haired man. The agent studied the man. They had practically
(30:39):
memorized a few photos of Saloma that were available. Just
like with Herbert Suckers, they were comparing archival pictures with
a man in the field, and just like with Zukers,
the two matched. They believed they'd found the Red Prince.
The operatives acted quickly. They followed the target as they
(31:00):
moved through lily Hammer. The next day he met with
a blond woman, apparently in Norwegian. The two went to
see a movie together and then caught a bus. The
operatives telled them closely as the parallel to the driver
to their stop. Then got off the bus and began walking,
apparently toward the house they shared. After the bus pulled away,
(31:21):
the killed team struck. They shot the man thirteen times.
He fell to the pavement, the blonde woman calling for help.
The agents quickly disappeared. It was a clean operation, fast,
with no bystanders killed. Except it wasn't the man that
Massa had executed in the quiet Norwegian town. Wasn't the
(31:43):
Red Prince at all. His name was Ahmed Bushiki, a
Moroccan waiter. The woman who was pregnant at the time.
Was his wife to real it had been a horrible
mistake and now an innocent man and was dead. It
was the first murder in lilli Hammer in thirty six years.
(32:05):
The killed team left Norway almost immediately, but six other
Israelis who lingered after the hit were caught and arrested.
One of them apparently broke down under questioning and revealed
the entire plan to police. It was one disaster after another.
The Israelis had done what they always accused their enemies of,
(32:26):
killed someone who done nothing to them. Now they faced
the consequences. The agency was embarrassed. Five agents went on
trial in Norway and were sent to prison. It took
almost twenty five years for Massad to admit its mistake
and for the Israelis to pay a med Bushiki's family
an undisclosed amount of money. The damage was extensive. The
(32:51):
plausible deniability that Massad had always depended on was shredded.
The agency looks sloppy, careless, the new which an investigation revealed, secrets,
the location of safe houses across Europe, their tactics, even
the names of some of their agents, and things kept
getting worse. A year Later, the Israelis believed they traced
(33:14):
the Red Prince to Switzerland, where he was going to
meet some PILO officials in a church. Two Massad agents
walked into the church and spotted three men with dark
hare and Arab features. They later claimed that one of
them reached for a weapon, the assassin's opened fire, killing
all three. None of them turned out to be the
(33:34):
Red Prince was another fatal mistake. The head of the
operation called off the hunt for Solemn but incredibly, members
of the killed team continued to pursue him. They believed
they'd found the Prince in Tarifa, Spain. They approached the
house that their intelligence officers had placed them in, but
(33:56):
were intercepted by an Arab security guard. Another your fight.
This time the guard lay dead after the Israeli said
he pointed in a K forty seven at them. Operation
Wrath of God was called off. It would remain in
a deep freeze for a full five years until it
(34:18):
was resumed under a new Prime minister, but Massad's reputation
would never be the same. Some even suggested that it
had allowed its obsession with finding them unit killers to
distract it from its main mission protecting the Homeland. I
asked Robert Baar, the x C I a officer about
(34:39):
Operation Wrath of God, and he had a different take
on the blowback. This was, you know, a great actor
revenge that was supported across Israel, and they just had
to go right through the list. And you know, killing
the Moroccan and it's a it's a setback that could
happen to anybody. But I don't know away slowed the
(35:00):
Israelis down. I think the only thing that slowed them
down is sort of reassessments of fascinations. And and that's
a big question. I mean, they kill you seen it Gaza?
Did it truly decapitate um Us? You know, that's something
you have to ask the Israelis clearly. I mean it's
it's like Sulamani when they kill him. I think it
(35:22):
had a great effect on Iran. I mean he was
he was the de facto leader of Iran. Not how
many those are those are hard calculations assassinations, but killing
a Moroccan later in Norway in no way page to
Israeli policy radio were just the same scores. They're going
(35:43):
to advance them to be. It really occupied portions of
the desert when Aaron Forces launched a surprise attack on
Israel in October ninety three, many blamed the agency for
having provided no advanced warning that is suceeeded in capturing
the key and overwhelming and movies radio positions. The fireline
(36:10):
from Diam Kapoor war was one of the most dangerous
moments in Israeli history, and Massad had appeared to be
asleep at the wheel. Hi, this is Stephen Talty, host
(36:39):
of Good Assassins Hunting the Butcher. The folks that helped
me bring you the show, Diversion Podcasts have just launched
another podcast that I think you'll like. It's called Backstaged
The Devil in Metal, a deep dive into the history
of mental music, filled with never before heard interviews and
stories from some of the biggest names of m ZACK,
(37:00):
including Black Sabbath, Judas, Priest Van Helen, and many others.
It's outrageous, raw and surprising at times. Backstage. The Devil
in Metal is out now. Follow the show on Apple Podcasts,
I Heared, Radio app or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Spies,
(37:27):
never forget if you've got to look at Massad's most
wanted list in two thousand and eight a lebedies man
named Ahmad Fayez Mugnia who was probably at the top
or near it. Mugnia was the mastermind in a series
of terror attacks against Israeli's around the world. He was
(37:47):
believed to be the chief of staff for Hezbollah, the
Lebanese Shia Islamist political party, and militant group. It was
a link between Iran and terrorist groups. Robert Barr said,
Mugnia was probably the most intelligent, most capable operative we've
ever run across, including the KGB or anybody else. Massad
(38:10):
and Mugnia had been involved in the cat and mouse
game for decades. Massad wanted to kill him, and Mugnia
knew it. He was incredibly smart and resourceful. Every time
the agency planned an assassination, Nia outwitted them and survived.
In February two eight, Massad tried again the Massad track
(38:32):
move Mia around the clock. He lived in Syria and
those rare times he emerged on a Damascus street. They
got an alert that February. They got worried that Munia
was staying at a safe house in the city. They
couldn't get close to him. With an assassin on a
motorcycle or with poison. They decided on a car bomb.
(38:54):
Massad and his technical experts allegedly began to sign, build,
and test the bomb. They removed the spare tire from
a car's trunk and replaced it with a face bear
that actually contained a powerful explosive. They performed test run
after test run. Finally they thought they were ready. The
main problem was being able to confirm when Mugnia would
(39:17):
go to his safe house and how he would exit.
If you're using a car bomb, you need to know
a person's route before they take it. That was tough. Finally,
on February twelve, Munia headed to the safe house. He
parked as Missubishi in a nearby lot and emerged from
the car. It was the anniversary of the nineteen seventy
(39:39):
nine Iranian Revolution, and Munia was there to celebrate. The
bomb car was close to the Missubishi, but as Mougnia emerged,
Massad's lookouts realized that he was with a bunch of
other men. Either because these other officials were considered out
of bounds, or Israel didn't want to told to be
(40:00):
that high, they called off the hit. The team's stayed
in place, They left the car bomb where it was
and they waited. Finally, late at night, Muvinia came out
to his car. This time he was alone. An operative
pressed the remote and the bomb tore the car to bids.
(40:23):
Unia was killed the loan casualty. That night, news trickled
out and international journalists began reporting. A top has Belaw
(40:44):
militant alleged to be the hide a series of attacks
on US, Israeli and Jewish targets has been assassinated his
middle aged car bombings go. This was a small one
and in the end only one person was killed, but
the death of the man involved as rock Dieselmas militants
in Lebanon and Syria, and it may be the trigger
for further unrest. A senior commander of the Lebanese based
(41:07):
Shiite militant group, his Ballah, Immed Mugnia, was one of
his buller's most deadly operatives. The FBI wanted him alive
and was offering a five million dollar bounty, but overnight
a car bombing in Damascus claimed his life. His ballah
has blamed Israel for his death. Israel denies involvement, but
many in the Jewish state and beyond glad that Imed
(41:28):
Mugnia is gone. Hello, I am Hashima. Lebanon's Zella says
Israel assassinated one of its top leaders. Israel denies it.
What will the repercussions be? Mad Mania, one of the
group's top military commanders, died in a car bombing in Syria,
who was accused by the U S and by Israel
of being involved in a string of attacks which killed
(41:50):
hundreds of here's former Knesset member Dannya Tom commenting, I
think that the organization that finally reached him showed and
very high skills, both in intelligence and in operational capability.
(42:12):
I think that the fluent democratic world today achieved a
very very important goal. Munia may have been the longest
running target Massad ever went after. It took decades to
get him. So why agencies tend to have long memories.
Their files go back many years, and they trace people's
(42:32):
loyalties and behavior from childhood on. But even from Massad
this was exceptional. As we saw with MEO, some spies
never forget. When you look at the history of Massad operations,
(42:54):
targeted killings are a big part of the picture. Israel
sometimes uses the agency less as an intelligence gathering outfit
than as an instrument of foreign policy. I asked the
intelligence historian Keith Melton about this. Is it possible that
Israel sometimes turns to its spies when a diplomat in
(43:15):
a suit might be a better solution. I would observe
that there's a time for diplomacy, and there's probably a
time or direct action. The problem, I believe becomes you
can believe that either is always a substitute for the other,
and that isn't true. There are certain instances in which
(43:38):
diplomacy would absolutely the best, but covertly there's instances in
which direct action might be the only choice to do something.
Israel uses its intelligence service very, very effectively. They are
clear in their attention, and they use their intelligence service
(44:01):
as an instrument of foreign power when it suits them.
Robert Baar agrees. He gave me some background on other
countries who used their spy agencies as tools of foreign policy.
It was it was a new war, and with German
intelligence considering we nothing about Russia in the thirties and
(44:22):
through the Second World were nothing. The only people who
knew a little bit about Russia were the Nazis, and
they were brought into the new German intelligence Service. How
useful they were is very doubtful, but it was better
than zero. Don't forget that by forty six and forty
seven of an existential conflict, and once the Russians nukes
(44:43):
it was even more so. So It's like always when
when in the Cold War we allied with very bad people,
hoping they would help us against an enemy that could
destroy us. The General Tartus is an old medieval fort
(45:04):
built by the Knights Templar on serious Mediterranean coast. This
is where a man named Mohammed Suleiman had a vacation house,
not far from a luxury beach resort. Suleiman was a
general in the Syrian Army and one of the main
contacts to Iran and Hamas Israel wanted him gone. Every summer,
(45:27):
Suleiman would travel to his seaside vacation home to review files,
chill out, swim in the ocean. But it wasn't like
he went there in a convertible with the top down.
He traveled from Damascus in an armored vehicle with bodyguards.
More bodyguards were stationed at the beach house. They never
let him out of their sight. Even going into the
(45:49):
water with him when he went for a swim after
the assassination of Mugnia on a busy Damascus street, Syria
was taking no chances. On one trip. It was a
typical August day, hot, not a lot of wind. It
was beautiful. Yachts were passing up and down along the coast.
(46:10):
People were sunbathing. The rich. We're heading out to an
offshore island to dine at one of the many fish
restaurants there. Suleiman was enjoying the beach when another yacht
showed up. It was, according to one report, unusually sleek,
but there was nothing strange about it. It was sailing
closer to shore than the others, about fifty yards off
(46:31):
the coast. Maybe its owners wanted to get a better
look at the houses on the shore. Suleiman's bodyguards weren't alarmed,
and when their boss wanted to go for a swim,
they went in the water with him. The men were
wading into the ocean when suddenly Suleiman sank into the water.
(46:52):
There had been no noise, not that anyone remembered, but
when the bodyguards pulled into the beach they found the
general had bullet in his head and chest and neck.
He died soon after, and the yacht, which we now
believe was carrying snipers with especially silence rifles, it sailed
away from the coast and disappeared. This is straight out
(47:18):
of a spy movie. The yacht the beautiful Blue Water
the Silence. Sometimes espionage appears almost to be a magic trick,
a seemingly impossible thing where you can't tell who did what.
(47:46):
Most by agencies have a motto. A lot of them
are what you'd expect. Am I six, the British spy
agency takes theirs from the Latin Semper cultists, always secret,
no surprises there. The cias is the work of a nation,
(48:07):
the center of intelligence, which I've always found bland and
vaguely corporate. I prefer their unofficial version from the scriptures,
And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall
set you free. Massad also turned to scripture for their motto,
or in their case the Torah, the Jewish Bible, where
(48:29):
no wise direction is the people fall, but in the
multitude of counselors there is safety. It's less certain than
the CIA's, not as confident. It refers to the fall
of the people. A nod to the many tragedies in
Jewish history. It doesn't talk about secrets, only wisdom, and
(48:51):
that's something that's often hard to judge. Are you eliminating
risks or increasing them? Are you targeting the mastermind of
Munich or an innocent waiter walking home with his wife.
Here's Robert bar once more. I mean, it's like always
in the Cold War, we allied with very bad people
(49:12):
hoping they would help us against an enemy that could
destroy us. And that's the whole, you know, the moral
dilemma for the United States is can you work with
these people to save your own skin? What I like
about Massa's motto is that it seems to acknowledge how
(49:35):
hard it is to find the truth. That espionage is
a tough job, not just the tradecraft, but guilt and innocence.
That's the hardest part. Good assassins. Hunting the Butcher is
(50:15):
a production of Diversion Podcasts in association with I Heart Radio.
This season is written and hosted by Stephen Talti, produced
and directed by Scott Waxman and Jacob Bronstein. Executive producers
Scott Waxman and Mark Francis. Story editing by Jacob Bronstein,
with editorial direction from Scott Waxman and mangesh At ticket editing,
(50:38):
mixing and sound designed by Mark Francis, with the voices
of Nick Afka, Thomas Amory, Angle, Andrew Polk, Mindy Escobar, Leants,
Steve Rautman and Stefan Brudnitsky. Theme music by Tyler Cash.
Archival research by Adam Shapiro, thanks to Oran Rosenbaum at
(50:58):
ut A Diversion Podcasts.
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