Israeli media: Mossad assassinated Al-Mabhouh

[DoYouEverWonder]

Israel's issuing in denials and England and Ireland all summoning Israel's envoy. Been awhile since I've heard of anyone summoning an envoy. Friends aren't suppose to steal friend's ID. Mossad blew it, big time.


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U.K. summons Israel envoy over passports used in Hamas killing
By Barak Ravid, Haaretz correspondent, and DPA

Feb 17, 2010

Ireland also expected to send for Israel's Dublin ambassador to explain identity thefts by Dubai assassins.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1150424.html

[American Dream]

MCFARLANE TOOK CAKE AND BIBLE TO TEHERAN, EX-C.I.A. MAN SAYS

By BERNARD GWERTZMAN, Special to the New York Times
Published: January 11, 1987

WASHINGTON, Jan. 10— A retired Central Intelligence Agency official has confirmed to the Senate Intelligence Committee that on the secret mission to Teheran last May, Robert C. McFarlane and his party carried a Bible with a handwritten verse from President Reagan for Iranian leaders.

According to a person who has read the committee's draft report, the retired C.I.A. official, George W. Cave, an Iran expert who was part of the mission, said the group had 10 falsified passports, believed to be Irish, and a key-shaped cake to symbolize the anticipated ''opening'' to Iran.

These and other details of the secret American operation are discussed at length in the report, but much of the material has already appeared in public in the more than two months since the revelations began with publication of a story about the McFarlane mission in a small Beirut weekly. In effect, the report supplies a useful chronology of the events.

The rather bizarre details of the McFarlane mission were first made known by the Iranian Speaker of Parliament, Hojatolislam Hashemi Rafsanjani, on Nov. 4, when the secret operation first became known. Hojatolislam Rafsanjani also said that the Americans had been disguised and that they had carried sets of Colt pistols as gifts. But these details were not confirmed in the report.

Nevertheless, until the committee's report began to circulate in Washington, all the Iranian assertions about the McFarlane mission were either derided as fanciful or not confirmed. Today, a senior State Department official independently confirmed that Mr. McFarlane, a former national security adviser, did carry the Reagan Bible as authentication for the group. But he said he was not sure about the cake and declined to discuss the passports.

The Irish Government complained publicly when the reports appeared that the McFarlane group had carried Irish passports.

The report noted that Mr. McFarlane, in his testimony, said he had carried his own United States passport but had never had to show it. One earlier report said Lieut. Col. Oliver L. North carried all the fake passports. When asked in November about the Iranian reports, Mr. McFarlane dismissed as fiction many of the details, such as that the participants were wearing disguises.

According to participants in the trip, the McFarlane mission, on May 28-31, turned out to be a major disappointment for the Reagan Administration, the committee report said. Under an elaborate plan worked out in advance by Manucher Ghorbanifar, an Iranian businessman, and an Israeli official, Amiram Nir, the McFarlane mission was to deliver three planeloads of weapons starting with their flight to Iran. In return, all the American hostages were to be freed in Lebanon.

When no hostages were freed, the group's three days were spent in fruitless argument with low- and middle-level Iranians. The Iranians complained that they had been overcharged for weapons previously sent to them via Israel.

The committee, in its report, covered in depth in chronological fashion how the United States became involved in the Iran operation. Some of the material was made known earlier in the week by NBC News, and some was broadcast over the Israeli radio today by its correspondent, Shimon Shiffer. Other material has been supplied by committee sources who have read the report.

The draft report concluded with a criticism of the way the Reagan Administration handled the Iran operation. It said the plan to sell arms to Iran in the hopes of releasing the American hostages was originated by the Israelis, who had their own agenda in seeking to improve their own ties with Iran.

Questions on Israeli Motives

The report said it appeared that the Administration had failed to undertake a formal assessment of the Israeli initiative to Iran, to see if the objectives and motives of the Israelis were identical to those of the United States.

Secretary of State George P. Shultz was quoted approvingly by the committee for sounding a warning to Mr. McFarlane in July 1985, when Mr. McFarlane was still national security adviser. He had just been approached by David Kimche, a high Israeli official, about the initiative toward Iran.

[hava1]

Quite a flashback. Hey Alice..

[AlicetheKurious]

Hey! Welcome back.

[American Dream]

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE61G2PF20100217

After Dubai hit, Israelis question Mossad methods

Dan Williams - Analysis
JERUSALEM
Wed Feb 17, 2010

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - The quiet assassination of a Hamas commander gets unexpectedly messy. Exposed and forced to atone before angry allies, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu orders the spymaster responsible to fall on his sword.

That was in 1997, when the Mossad director resigned after his men botched the poisoning of Khaled Meshaal in Jordan. Now premier a second time, Netanyahu faces a similar crisis over the death of another Hamas figure, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, in Dubai.

Israel's official silence on the January 20 killing has been outpaced, in the popular imagination, by UAE police footage of the suspected assassins and revelations some of them had copied the European passports of actual immigrants to the Jewish state.

The idea that the Mossad, having long cultivated a reputation for lethally outwitting Israel's foes abroad, this time tripped up by underestimating Arab counter-espionage capabilities prompted commentators to demand a public reckoning.

Special scrutiny was devoted to Mossad director Meir Dagan, an ex-general now in his eighth year of service and praised by Israeli leaders for spearheading a "shadow war" against Hamas, Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas, and Iran's nuclear program.

Amir Oren of the liberal Haaretz daily went as far as to call for Dagan to be fired, describing him as "belligerent, heavy-handed" and predicting a row with Britain, Ireland, France and Germany -- the countries whose passports were used.

"Even if whoever carried out the assassination does reach some kind of arrangement with the infuriated Western nations, it still has an obligation to its own citizens," Oren wrote.

Several of the foreign-born Israelis who said their identities had been stolen for the Mabhouh assassination voiced fear they could now be vulnerable to murder prosecutions.

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman did not deny Mossad involvement in Mabhouh's death but tried to deflect attention, implying in a radio interview that "some other intelligence service or another country" may have had a role.

Israel's allies recognize "that our security activity is conducted according to very clear, cautious and responsible rules of the game," Lieberman asserted.

UNNATURAL CAUSES

Other pundits disagreed about the diplomatic price that could be exacted from Israel, which is already fending off foreign criticism of the hundreds of Palestinian civilian deaths during its offensive in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip last year.

But there was little arguing the fact that Hamas had turned the tables on Mabhouh's assassins by insisting UAE police launch a murder investigation after they initially ruled that his death, in a Dubai hotel room, had been of natural causes.

"What began as a heart attack turned out to be an assassination, which led to a probe, which turned into the current passport affair," wrote Yoav Limor in Israel Hayom, a pro-government newspaper.

"It is doubtful whether this is the end of the affair."

Israelis generally rally around the Mossad's two-fisted image -- honed back in the 1970s, when the agency hunted down and killed Palestinians blamed for a deadly raid on Israel's Olympic delegation at the Munich Games.

But the Mabhouh hit underscored the difficulties spies must contend with in the digital era, with ubiquitous high-resolution CCTV coverage and easily accessed passport databases.

"What happens in the modern world, the cameras everywhere -- it changes things not just for those whose trade is terror but also those trying to fight terror," former Mossad officer Ram Igra told Israel's Army Radio.

The UAE is holding two Palestinians accused of helping Mabhouh's assassins. Should they finger Israel, it will deepen the questions about Mossad tradecraft and operational security.

Mabhouh had masterminded the abduction and killing of two Israeli troops in 1989 and, more recently, the smuggling of Iranian-funded arms to Gaza. The attempted discretion of his killing indicated the assassins were not on a vendetta but, rather, trying to eliminate what they saw as a current threat.

Yet the possibility that the Mossad had so quickly come undone led Yossi Melman, author of two books on the intelligence agency, to suggest such assassinations would not be repeated.

Melman said a wider question would be also raised: "Does Israel's assassinations policy pay off?"

The 1997 attempted assassination in Amman, by two Mossad officers posing as Canadian tourists, unwittingly boosted Meshaal's status in Hamas. Netanyahu was also forced to free the Islamist faction's jailed spiritual leader, Ahmed Yassin.

[DoYouEverWonder]

Calls for Mossad chief to go as unease over Hamas killing grows

Evidence in the assasination of Hamas commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh points back to Israel

17 February 2010

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/fe ... as-killing

[LilyPatToo]

Just a slightly off-topic footnote--did you know that Ostrovsky is a painter? Some of his paintings are espionage-themed, too.

LilyPat

[MinM]

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/0 ... t-on-tape/

[AlicetheKurious]

"What happens in the modern world, the cameras everywhere -- it changes things not just for those whose trade is terror but also those trying to fight terror," former Mossad officer Ram Igra told Israel's Army Radio.

Those damn cameras, the internet, independent reporters, human rights activists, dissidents, war crimes prosecutions -- what's a poor rogue terrorist state to do? You can't even rob or torture or kill people in privacy anymore, or depend on a monopolized media to transmute your shit into gold anymore, and suppress damning evidence when you need them to.

Now everyone can see what used to be hidden behind all the spin and myth: a bunch of dumb, vicious thugs. It's all so bewildering. It didn't used to be that way.

[DoYouEverWonder]

That video is very interesting. Notice the one guy leaving after the murder didn't even bother to take off his latex gloves.

Looks like Dubai is doing everything they can to expose this little operation. Nice to see some of this 'security' technology that we're all subjected to, come back and bite them on the ass.

(Funny how the airports and hotels in the US, never came up with anything like this on 9/11. All we got were a couple of grainy photos from an airport in Portland, Maine.)

[seemslikeadream]

[Uncle $cam]

[MinM]

Murder mystery in the Middle East | Homepage Feature | PRI's The World

Mistaken identity | Latest Editions | PRI's The World

Dubai Assassination Was Work of Mossad and Likely Sanctioned by Prime Minister Says Former Intel Officer | Threat Level | Wired.com

[AhabsOtherLeg]

.
We'll get the same full cooperation we demanded from our Russian allies over the blatant murder of Litvinenko in the heart of London. None. Zilch. Nada. Absolute zero.

And we'll take it bravely on the chin, and be graceful too, and back out of the room doffing our caps and tugging our forelocks.

You see, this kind of incident is the real reason (speaking in purely practical terms) why supposed parliamentary democracies like the UK should no longer engage in the widespread torture of opponents and the targetted assassinations of enemies. Our good friends like Israel, the US, and even Russia, know exactly what we've done and are doing - to the likes of David Kelly, for example - and if we try to criticise them for doing the exact same thing, they laugh in our faces. Rightly so. At least they are somewhat honest about how dishonest they are prepared to be when it suits them.

[smiths]

can we try and keep posts about incidents like this together,

there was a perfectly good thread with ongoing details and development called Israeli media: Mossad assassinated Al-Mabhouh

i am interested in this story and would rather read one thread, ya know?