English Historical Review Vol. CXL No. 604-605 Advance Access publication May 22, 2025 © The Author(s) 2025. Published by Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/ehr/ceaf096 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
As the clocks struck midnight on a winter night in Nicosia, Cyprus, in early 1973, an explosion shook one of its neighbourhoods. The bomb detonated as soon as Hussain Abu-Khair lay down to sleep. Mossad, the Israeli foreign intelligence agency, had placed a detonator underneath his hotel bed. Khair was the official representative of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO). Why did Mossad select Khair as a target, how did its operatives know about his alleged involvement in terrorism, and where did they get the information to organise his assas- sination? As this article demonstrates, he was killed with the witting or unwitting help of European intelligence services.
The murder of Khair was part of a campaign undertaken by Mossad in retaliation for the 1972 attack on Israel’s Olympic squad in Munich by the militant Palestinian organisation Black September. The attack had involved a hostage-taking of Israeli athletes followed by the deaths of all the hostages in a botched rescue attempt. It was experienced as a deep shock for the Israeli state.1 Following the Munich attack, the Israeli government authorised Mossad to launch an assas- sination campaign that targeted the perpetrators and organisers of the Munich attack and which later expanded to include other Palestinian מבצע זעם :targets. Known today as Operation Wrath of God (Hebrew Mivtza Za’am Ha’el), the campaign remains one of Mossad’s best האל known special operations, despite its initial secrecy.2 In Europe, the op- eration consisted of eight missions to kill individuals who were directly or loosely associated with Palestinian terrorism. The purpose of this
* I would like to acknowledge the European Research Council’s Marie Curie programme for enabling me to complete the research underpinning this article. I would also like to thank the editors and anonymous reviewers of this journal for their constructive feedback, which helped me to improve the article.
1. For an account in German about the Munich Olympics Massacre and the German authorities’ reaction, see M. Dahlke, Demokratischer Staat und transnationaler Terrorismus: Drei Wege zur Unnachgiebigkeit in Westeuropa 1972 –1975 (Munich, 2011), pp. 57–128. For the long-term political consequences of the attack, see E. Oberloskamp, ‘Das Olympia-Attentat 1972. Politische Lernprozesse im Umgang mit dem transnationalen Terrorismus’, Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, lx (2012), pp. 321–52; and K. Schiller and C. Young, The 1972 Munich Olympics and the Making of Modern Germany (Berkeley, CA, 2010), pp. 194–207. See also D.C. Large, Munich 1972: Tragedy, Terror and Triumph at the Olympic Games (New York, 2012), pp. 201–48; S.F. Kellerhoff, Anschlag auf Olympia: Was 1972 in München wirklich geschah (Darmstadt, 2022).
2. ‘Operation Wrath of God’ was not a term used by Mossad at the time. Later publications about the mission coined the operation’s name: see R. Bergman, Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations (New York, 2019), p. 663.
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covert action was to avenge past victims, disrupt ongoing plots, and deter anyone from perpetrating future terrorist actions.3
To accomplish this, Mossad needed the assistance of other intelli- gence actors to identify, track, locate and eventually kill its targets. As this article shows, Western European intelligence agencies provided the kind of information that Mossad needed to accomplish its mission. The argument here is twofold; first, European intelligence actors played important roles in facilitating Israeli operational planning and organ- isation via an existing intelligence-sharing framework; and second, the co-operation with Mossad was so beneficial for all parties that Israel’s European partners did not interfere with the operations. In other words, European agencies and, indirectly, the governments they served, implicitly condoned Israel’s covert actions on their territories.
There are very few publications that examine a country’s covert action as well as its intelligence co-operation.4 An intelligence service’s sources, methods and foreign connections are among the most care- fully guarded secrets in the world. In this article I analyse all three components by drawing on a large range of documents. The core of its evidence stems from archival records documenting the secret intelligence-sharing liaison known as the Club de Berne. Created in 1969, this multilateral collaboration brought together the intelligence agencies from eight Western European countries: Belgium, France, Great Britain, Italy, Luxemburg, the Netherlands, Switzerland and West Germany.5 The Club de Berne acted as host to the first multilateral counterterrorism communication channel, called Kilowatt, in which an additional ten members participated. From 1971 onward, Israel and the US were included and gradually, over the course of the decade, Denmark, Canada, Australia, Ireland, Sweden, Norway, Austria and Spain also joined.6
Kilowatt was used daily by the agencies to track Palestinian organisations and to share intelligence about planned terrorist attacks, weapon acquisitions, operational methods and innovations in terrorist techniques. All agencies replied quickly to requests, especially when
3. This article leaves the term ‘terrorism’ in its original context, using the term in accordance with what the intelligence officers at the time meant by it.
4. One of the few studies that looks at intelligence co-operation and targeted assassinations is J.P. McSherry, Predatory States: Operation Condor and Covert War in Latin America (New York, 2005).
5. For an account of the creation of the Club de Berne, see A. Guttmann, The Origins of International Counterterrorism: Switzerland at the Forefront of Crisis Negotiations, Multilateral Diplomacy, and Intelligence Cooperation (1969–1977) (Leiden, 2018), pp. 183–229.
6. For the early workings of Club de Berne intelligence co-operation, see A. Guttmann, ‘Combatting Terror in Europe: Euro-Israeli Counterterrorism Intelligence Cooperation in the Club de Berne (1971–1972)’, Intelligence and National Security, xxxiii (2018), pp. 158–75; A. Guttmann, ‘Secret Wires Across the Mediterranean: The Club de Berne, Euro-Israeli Counterterrorism, and Swiss “Neutrality”’, International History Review, xl (2018), pp. 814–33; A. Guttmann, ‘Turning Oil into Blood: Western Intelligence, Libyan Covert Actions, and Palestinian Terrorism (1973– 74)’, Journal for Strategic Studies, xlv (2022), pp. 993–1020.
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it was believed that a terrorist suspect was in their respective country. The information provided about suspects included information such as which hotel a suspect had stayed in and what telephone numbers they had called, as well as flight routes, addresses, passport details and anything else of relevance that could be ascertained. Agencies also distributed general threat assessments and the lessons they had learned from terrorist attacks via the liaison mechanism. The collaboration has since developed into a cross-country quasi-institutionalised intelligence apparatus.7 Today, the Club de Berne is the most important informal counterterrorism intelligence channel in Europe.8
Very little is known about the Club de Berne and its operations. It is rare for researchers to obtain access to the documentary evidence of a multilateral intelligence organisation, especially if that evidence allows for conclusions about the extent to which information was shared be- tween agencies. The records used for this article represent the most com- prehensive dataset on multilateral intelligence co-operation available to researchers. I received unredacted access to all files between the years 1971 and 1979 held in the Swiss Federal Archives.9 The Club de Berne records for this period amount to more than 40,000 cables sent from eighteen different intelligence agencies.10 Since the Kilowatt members agreed to send all messages to the entire group of agencies, it is possible to understand their co-operation as a whole by consulting the cables that the Swiss received and sent within the Kilowatt framework.
The core of Operation Wrath of God lasted from September 1972 until July 1973, and these dates form the main timeframe of this study. The article covers all eight assassination missions that took place in Europe as part of Operation Wrath of God. Proceeding chronologic- ally, the article analyses the communication between the intelligence communities in Israel and Western Europe in the context of each as- sassination. The research presented here adds two crucial elements to current knowledge. First, it demonstrates that European intelligence co-operation was a key element for Mossad, allowing it to plan, or- ganise and carry out Operation Wrath of God. Second, the article
7. For an account of the Club de Berne’s function in recent years, see J.D. Occhipinti, ‘Still Moving Toward a European FBI? Re-Examining the Politics of EU Police Cooperation’,Intelligence and National Security, xxx (2015), pp. 234–58, esp. 241.
8. For a journalistic investigation into the Club de Berne today, and its development into a near-institutionalised multilateral liaison, see J. Jirát and L. Naegeli, ‘Der geheime Club der geheimen Dienste’, Wochenzeitung, 5 Mar. 2020 and its English translation, ‘The Club de Berne: A Black Box of Growing Intelligence Cooperation’, available online at https://aboutintel.eu/the- club-de-berne/ (accessed 20 Mar. 2025).
9. For archival records of the Club de Berne, see Bern, Schweizerisches Bundesarchiv (Swiss Federal Archives) [hereafter SFA], E4320C#1994/77#479*, Terrorismus/BERNER KLUB/(5)39/5, 1978–1989.
10. For the archival records, filed by year, of the Kilowatt cables, see SFA, E4320- 07C#1994/349#806*, Eingang KILOWATT, 1971–1972 [hereafter E4320-07C, Kilowatt, 1971– 72]. Occasionally cables will be referenced that were sent by Swiss intelligence to the Kilowatt members. For these records, see SFA, E4320-07C#1994/349#812*, Ausgang KILOWATT, 1971– 1977 [hereafter SFA, E4320-07C, Kilowatt sent by Switzerland]. All translations are by the author.
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explains how Mossad selected the Palestinian targets that were to be killed. It is currently not well understood why certain Palestinians were on Mossad’s kill list. This article explains the logic behind the assassinations. In doing so, it tells the story of a major Mossad covert operation and the role of European intelligence in its execution.
How much did European intelligence know about Operation Wrath of God? At what point did European agencies understand, if they did, that they were being used for a targeted assassination campaign? According to the secondary literature and contemporary newspaper articles, there were some suspicions that Mossad may have been be- hind the killings. Arab circles pointed to Mossad as early as the second assassination in early December 1972 which resulted in the death of Mahmud Hamshari. Mainstream newspapers such as Le Monde reported these allegations. Nevertheless, Italy and France continued to share intelligence with the Kilowatt group, which included Mossad. The countries on whose territories the assassinations happened thus shared information with Mossad, despite the rising suspicions that the Israeli agency was behind the killings.
In July 1973, during what became known as the Lillehammer affair, Mossad organised the execution of what it believed was a leading terrorist in Lillehammer, a small Norwegian town. The victim, it turned out, however, was an innocent man, a Moroccan waiter and father-to-be. In an amateurishly executed escape and cover-up attempt, some Mossad officers were caught by the Norwegian police. The subsequent trial exposed Operation Wrath of God and clearly linked Mossad to the as- sassination operations in France, Italy, Greece and Cyprus that had occurred over the previous months. This was the point at which France and Italy realised that the lion’s share of Mossad’s killing operations had taken place in their countries. Not only did the assassinations infringe on the sovereignty of several European countries, bringing the Middle East conflict right to their doorsteps, but they also constituted a form of intelligence abuse: Club de Berne intelligence exchanges were meant to enhance collective knowledge about Palestinian terrorists in Europe, not to help kill them. European governments heavily criticised Israel, which led to a Euro-Israeli diplomatic crisis. However, despite official condemnations and tensions, the strong ties between the Israeli and Western European intelligence communities remained unaffected. The Club de Berne and its counterterrorism intelligence channels continued to be used daily without any disruption. No changes were made at the op- erational level—neither when rumours about Mossad involvement first appeared, nor when European intelligence agencies unmistakably under- stood that their intelligence had supported Israel’s killing operation.
These insights open up new ways of thinking about the international relations of the secret state. The article invites us to conceive of these secret relations as running in parallel to official diplomatic relations that reflected but also defied official state policies. In the case of the
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intelligence exchanges surrounding Operation Wrath of God, we see official condemnation but secret collaboration. We see European com- plicity with Israel’s assassination campaign, which brings to light a pre- viously hidden dimension of the history of European counterterrorism policy. While some in the intelligence community may have preferred that dimension to remain secret, its analysis adds to our understanding of the international relations of intelligence agencies and their wider political cross-regional implications, revealing new facets of European and Middle Eastern history.
I
On 16 October 1972, Wael Zwaiter took a bus back to his neighbour- hood in Rome after an opulent dinner at a friend’s place.11 After a last drink at a bar, he walked to his apartment at 4 Piazza Annibaliano. The following radio message was sent to Mike Harari, the agent in charge of Operation Wrath of God: ‘The beautiful Sarah has left the building and is making her way to her house’.12 Harari subsequently gave the order to kill. Two Mossad hitmen were hiding next to the elevator in wait for Zwaiter. As Zwaiter pressed the button, the killers approached and shot eleven bullets into his body. He fell to the floor and died in a pool of blood. Within hours, the four-man hit team and all seven- teen team members of Operation Wrath of God were out of Italy and travelling back to Israel.
Mossad’s identification of Zwaiter as a terrorist is questioned in the secondary literature and journalistic reports. He was generally considered to have led a peaceful existence as a poet and freelance translator at the Libyan embassy.13 Some mention Italian and Israeli suspicions that Zwaiter had been the organiser of an attempted sabo- tage of an El-Al plane on 16 August 1972.14 However, most authors believe that he was no more than the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) representative in Rome. While he was Yasser Arafat’s cousin, it was believed that he only expressed general support for the Palestinian armed struggle, allegedly without any involvement in terrorist actions.15
11. The descriptions of the assassinations are mainly based on the journalistic accounts of Ronen Bergman, Aaron J. Klein and Simon Reeve. Each of these authors bases their work on interviews with members of the Israeli intelligence community.
12. Bergman, Rise and Kill First, p. 154.
13. A.J. Klein, Striking Back: The 1972 Munich Olympics Massacre and Israel’s Deadly Response (New York, 2005), p. 119; M.E. Vargo, Mossad: Six Landmark Missions of the Israeli Intelligence Agency, 1960–1990 (Jefferson, NC, 2015), p. 107.
14. S. Reeve, One Day in September: The Full Story of the 1972 Munich Olympics Massacre and the Israeli Revenge Operation ‘Wrath of God’ (New York, 2011), p. 170.
15. I. Black and B. Morris, Israel’s Secret Wars: A History of Israel’s Intelligence Services (New York, 1991), p. 271. Black and Morris mention here that Mossad also held Zwaiter responsible for the organisation of the very first terrorist hijacking, that of an El-Al plane that was taken to Algeria in August 1968. But the authors also suggest that he was ‘more of an intellectual than a terrorist’. See also Vargo, Mossad, p. 108.
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Investigative journalist Ronen Bergman cites a top Mossad official who acknowledged that Zwaiter’s death had been a ‘terrible mistake’. In his view, Zwaiter had had nothing to do with the Munich Olympics massacre.16
The Club de Berne files, however, paint a different picture. Correspondence among the Kilowatt agencies explains why Mossad thought that Zwaiter had much more extensive involvement in terrorism than simply paying lip service to the Palestinian cause. On 7 July 1972, two months before the Munich Olympics Massacre, Wael Zwaiter was mentioned in a Club de Berne cable for the first time. It was sent by Mossad and warned about an imminent suicide attack in Europe.17 Mossad described the terrorist plan in detail and gave the names of the three-man suicide squad and their handler. The three terrorists were said to have met for the first time in Rome to rendezvous with their handler. He gave them exact instructions, provided them with weapons, and introduced them to a German named Wolf, who was going to help them with logistics.18 The handler in Rome, the cable specified, was Wael Zwaiter. He was described as the representative of Fatah (the dominant faction of the multi-party Palestine Liberation Organisation) in Rome and an employee at the Libyan embassy who used the cover name Wail Saadani.19
In addition to providing weapons, Mossad thought that Zwaiter also supplied the money and documentation needed for the attack. Zwaiter was said to have been able to recruit an Air France captain, who collaborated with Fatah in exchange for money and hashish. The cable added that the organisers of this operation further aimed to recruit a plane technician, who would bring the weapons onboard via one of his toolboxes. Mossad considered this intelligence to be of high quality and specified that it came from a source who had good access to Fatah.20 Thus, Mossad had already attributed a core role to Zwaiter in the organ- isation of Fatah terrorist operations in Europe by July 1972. Zwaiter was believed to have helped with the practicalities and logistics of attacks.
The next time that Zwaiter appeared in the Club de Berne records was in a cable sent by German officials on 13 September 1972, a week after the Munich Olympics Massacre.21 The German Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (BfV) shared the information that three of the Munich perpetrators had stayed at the Hotel Salzburg in Munich before
16. Bergman, Rise and Kill First, p. 156.
17. E4320-07C, Kilowatt, 1971–72, Kilowatt cable no. 6033, sent from Mossad, ‘Planned attack on El-Al plane at Copenhagen’, 7 July 1972.
18. It is possible that Wolf was Willy Pohl, a German neo-Nazi, who assisted Abu Daoud in the logistics of the Munich attack: see Kellerhoff, Anschlag auf Olympia, p. 32.
19. E4320-07C, Kilowatt, 1971–72, Kilowatt cable no. 6033, sent from Mossad, ‘Planned attack on El-Al plane at Copenhagen’, 7 July 1972.
20. Ibid.
21. E4320-07C, Kilowatt, 1971–72, Kilowatt cable no. 1022, sent from German BfV, ‘Anschlag im olympischen Dorf’, 13 Sept. 1972.
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the attack. They had stayed there for two weeks in early August 1972, and then again at the end of August until 4 September 1972, which was the day before the Munich attack. The BfV inquired with the hotel and uncovered that during their stay they had called telephone numbers in Libya, Tunisia and Lebanon.22 Importantly, the cable emphasised that Wael Zwaiter, using his cover name Wail Saadani, had allegedly been in constant contact with the three men. The cable reported that Zwaiter had stayed at the Hotel Eden-Wolf in Munich from 15 August to 5 September. The BfV reported that Zwaiter had paid the hotel bills for the Munich attack perpetrators at the Hotel Salzburg. He had also paid the bills of a fourth person at Hotel Eden-Wolf, who was believed to be another of their accomplices. Further, a physical description of Zwaiter was provided.23
The cable was sent from Germany to all Kilowatt partners including Israel. It directly connected Wael Zwaiter with the Munich perpetrators. It implicated him in the attack as having provided logistical and finan- cial support beforehand. Given the lack of other incriminating ma- terial on Zwaiter, it is conceivable that the German BfV had provided the Israelis with the ‘smoking gun’ that they needed to make a case to the Israeli Prime Minister, Golda Meir, to select Zwaiter as the first target for Operation Wrath of God. Since the BfV linked Zwaiter to the Munich perpetrators only a week after the massacre, it might not have been a coincidence that Zwaiter was Mossad’s first victim.
After Zwaiter’s murder, the Club de Berne members, in particular Italy, were determined to discover who had carried out the killing and what their motives may have been. A day after the assassination, on 17 October 1972, the Italian intelligence agency, the Servizio per le Informazioni e la Sicurezza Democratica (SISDE), sent a first report detailing the circumstances of the killing and shared clues it had gathered based on witness accounts.24 SISDE tried to be as helpful as possible and hoped to uncover the identities of the murderers collectively with other agencies. This first report gave details of the assassination, including the details of the car in which the killers escaped: a witness had written down the Italian licence plate number of the Fiat 124, and this was shared with the Kilowatt group.25 The Italian police further investigated the car and found out that it had been rented from the Avis rental car agency by a person named Anthony Hudon. Italy shared the Canadian driver’s licence and passport details, which were both presumed to be fake.26
The Italian cable specified that Zwaiter had been living in Rome for years and that he had worked at the Libyan embassy there. However,
22. Ibid.
23. Ibid.
24. E4320-07C, Kilowatt, 1971–72, Kilowatt cable no. 7032, sent from Italian SISDE, ‘Meurtre
du ressortissant Jordanien Zwaiter Wael – Rome – 16 octobre 1972’, 17 Oct. 1972. 25. Ibid.
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his exact role at the embassy was unclear. The cable mentioned that he was part of a solidarity committee for the Palestinian cause and a member of ‘the terrorist group Fatah’.27 It ended with a request for any information on the matter and especially any clues about Anthony Hudon. In sum, the Italian authorities were eager to solve the case and hoped the Club de Berne would be able to help.
On 24 October 1972, in its continued effort to keep its partners updated on the course of the investigation, Italian intelligence sent three copies of a description and sketch of Anthony Hudon, based on the memories of Avis staff members.28 To facilitate Hudon’s arrest, the Italian police informed their partners that they had issued an inter- national arrest warrant for him and sent his likeness to Interpol, the global crime prevention agency which at the time consisted of over 100 police agencies. Italian intelligence also gave a detailed description of Hudon, including his appearance (slim, greying hair, corrective glasses), age (45 years) and linguistic abilities (he spoke Italian reasonably well, but had a ‘meridional inflexion’29).
For Mossad, being updated on the police investigation was very useful. It was important for the Israeli agency to know that an inter- national arrest warrant had been issued with the description of one of their operatives. This meant that this Mossad officer, ‘Hudon’, ran the risk of being recognised or apprehended if he travelled or came into contact with the police abroad. Receipt of the intelligence meant that Mossad could take decisions about the future deployment of this officer, in particular for any international missions. Hudon was only mentioned once more in the Club de Berne network: German in- telligence informed its partners that he was not in their intelligence records.30 This made sense since Hudon was the cover name of a Mossad killer and not an actual person. The German reply indicates that at this early stage of Operation Wrath of God, no one in the European in- telligence network had the slightest idea that Mossad was behind the assassination.
The next time that the murder of Wael Zwaiter came up in Kilowatt correspondence was in March 1973, after the arrest of two Palestinian terror suspects. The Italian intelligence agency informed its partners that on 12 March 1973, two Palestinians with Jordanian passports, whose names were shared, had been arrested in Como for theft.31 When the men were searched, the police found nine colour pictures
27. Ibid.
28. E4320-07C, Kilowatt, 1971–72, Kilowatt cable no. 7034, sent from Italian SISDE, ‘Meurtre du ressortissant Jordanien ZWAITER WAEL – Rome 16 octobre 1972’, 24 Oct. 1972.
29. Ibid.
30. E4320-07C, Kilowatt, 1971–72, Kilowatt cable no. 1054, sent from German BfV, ‘Ermordung des jordanischen Staatsangehörigen Zwaiter Wael – Rom am 16.10.1972’, 15 Nov. 1972.
31. E4320-07C, Kilowatt, 1971–72, Kilowatt cable no. 7061, sent from Italian SISDE, ‘Arabes arretés à Come le 12.3.1973’, 15 Mar. 1973.
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of prominent buildings in Milan, such as the Central Station and the Hilton Hotel. The police suspected that these were possible targets for a terrorist attack.32 The Italian intelligence agency therefore requested any information that was available about these two suspects from its Club de Berne partners.
A few days later, the French intelligence agency, Direction de la surveillance du territoire (DST), replied and informed its partners that its services had no record of the two Jordanians, but it linked one of these terrorist suspects to the death of Zwaiter. It reported that the Iraqi embassy in Paris had discreetly been conducting a search for one of the Como arrestees since October 1972. The Iraqi em- bassy apparently suspected that this Jordanian had been responsible for the assassination of Wael Zwaiter.33 The cable further mentioned that he was married to an Italian and was known to be involved in a pro-Palestinian revolutionary organisation. The DST did not, how- ever, know what precisely his link to Zwaiter’s case might have been. For Mossad, it was interesting to know that Iraqi diplomats were quietly running an investigation in relation to Zwaiter’s murder and those whom they suspected to be connected to it.34 The cables sent by Italian and French intelligence suggest that at this stage neither authority suspected that Mossad was behind Zwaiter’s death. Since the information they provided was shared with Mossad, it effectively updated the Israeli agency about the investigations concerning its own assassination campaign.
II
On the morning of 8 December 1972, the phone rang in an elegant apartment at 175 Rue d’Alésia in the 14th arrondissement of Paris, the home of Dr Mahmoud al-Hamshari. He rushed to the little marble table where the telephone stood, picked up the receiver, and was greeted by an alleged Italian journalist who had set up an abortive meeting with him a few days before. Hamshari confirmed his identity and a moment later, Mossad transmitted a signal which detonated a bomb that it had installed inside the telephone stand. The bomb contained a relatively low quantity of explosives as Mossad did not want to cause any phys- ical damage to Hamshari’s neighbours. Similarly, the operatives waited until they saw that Hamsahri’s wife and daughter had left the building in the morning, to spare them from the explosion. Upon hearing the signal, a high-pitched whining sound, Hamshari stood abruptly back from the marble table. As a result, he initially survived the explosion.
32. Ibid.
33. E4320-07C, Kilowatt, 1971–72, Kilowatt cable no. 4016, sent from the French DST, ‘Arabes arretés à Come le 12 mars 1973’, ‘diffusion restreinte/trés urgent’, 19 Mar. 1973.
34. Ibid.
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The blast had however injured him severely. He died in hospital three weeks later due to heavy internal bleeding.35
Hamshari, who had been in charge of organising Zwaiter’s funeral in Rome two months earlier, was Mossad’s second Operation Wrath of God victim.36 In intelligence parlance he was a ‘soft target’—he took few security precautions and was easy to reach. He was the official PLO representative in France and thus met routinely with people interested in discussing the Palestinian cause. Furthermore, even though Zwaiter’s assassination instilled fear among the Palestinian leadership in Europe, Hamshari believed that his status as a quasi-diplomat would spare him from any assassination attempt.37 As a result, he was not in hiding and instead led a comparatively normal life. Mossad could plan the assas- sination by identifying the most convenient time in his daily routine as a PLO official.
Hamshari was mentioned several times by the Club de Berne as the official Fatah representative in France. In June 1972, for instance, the Dutch intelligence agency, Binnenlandse Veiligheids Dienst (BVD), informed its partners about a Fatah representative in Holland, Mahmud Salim al-Rabbani, who was allegedly in contact with his counterpart in France, Dr Hamshari.38 Dutch intelligence described the Fatah representative as having the following tasks: disseminating propaganda for the Palestinian cause, maintaining a close network of Arab diplomats, fundraising for Fatah among Arab expats, and keeping regular contact with the Fatah leadership (including Arafat, Nabil Sharath and Abu Omar). Fatah representatives were also alleged to be in charge of recruiting Fatah members among local Arab circles, organising free trips for them to the Middle East, and, surprisingly, the BVD believed Fatah representatives to be tasked with building cells for terrorist activities.39
It is likely that Mossad shared this last assumption and believed that Hamshari planned specific attacks and transferred money, mail and weapons to Black September.40 According to Aaron Klein and Ronen Bergman, Mossad thought that Hamshari was responsible for the bombing of a Swissair flight from Zurich to Tel Aviv on 21 February 1970 which crashed in Würenlingen and caused the deaths of forty- seven passengers and crew. The Israelis also thought he was an accom- plice in a Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) plan to murder David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, during a
35. Reeve, One Day in September, p. 172.
36. Vargo mentions Hamshari as the organiser of Zwaiter’s funeral: Vargo, Mossad, p. 113.
37. Klein, Striking Back, p. 107.
38. E4320-07C, Kilowatt, 1971–72, Kilowatt cable no. 9020, sent from Dutch BVD, ‘EL
FATAH representative in the Netherlands: Rabbani, Mahmoud Salim, born Haifa 2.5.1934’, comment: ‘confidential’, 28 June 1972.
39. Ibid.
40. Klein, Striking Back, p. 108.
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trip to Denmark in May 1969. Lastly, Mossad believed that Hamshari’s apartment in Paris was used as an arms cache for Black September.41
Because Hamshari was not killed immediately, the police were able to interrogate him before he died. This explains how French security came to know how the killing had been executed and was able to piece together how the assassination must have been planned. A few days after the explosion in Hamshari’s house, the French domestic intelli- gence agency DST shared details about the case among the Kilowatt group.42 The cable mentioned again that Hamshari had been the Fatah representative in France and reconstructed the likely execution of the assassination. The DST cable explained the sequence of events as detailed above.43 French police believed that Hamshari had been called so that he would stand next to the telephone table that contained the explosives: once he was on the line, the murderer knew that Hamshari was standing next to the bomb. The French cable assumed that ‘the killer activated the explosion via remote control from a nearby phone booth’.44 Lastly, the French cable mentioned that the investigation was still ongoing and that this was the latest information. Among all this information it was highly useful for Mossad to know that the French authorities did not at this point suspect that the Israeli agency was be- hind the attack; or, if they did, that they decided to keep quiet about it.
III
Shortly before midnight on 22 January 1973, Hussain Abu-Khair, 36 years old and recently appointed as PLO representative in Cyprus, went to bed in his hotel room in Nicosia.45 Minutes after he turned off the light, six small bombs underneath his bed were activated remotely. The detonations ripped him to pieces. This time, Israeli intelligence wanted to make sure that its target would be killed at once. Had Khair survived the explosion, like Hamshari, he too would have been able to give the police incriminating details that could implicate Mossad. By the same token, Golda Meir’s instruction remained that no innocent bystanders whatsoever were to be hurt. Hence, the explosive load had to be care- fully calibrated. In this case, the dose seemed to have been measured just right: it killed Khair, but the explosion was contained to his room.
41. Remarkably, the ways in which Mossad allegedly assessed Hamshari’s terrorism involve- ment was mentioned in exactly the same way by both authors: Klein, Striking Back, p. 108 and Bergman, Rise and Kill First, p. 154.
42. E4320-07C, Kilowatt, 1971–72, Kilowatt cable no. 4013, sent from the French DST, ‘Attentat en France contre Hamshari Mahmoud représentant du Fatah en France’, comment: ‘confidentiel/urgent’, 13 Dec. 1972.
43. Ibid.
44. Ibid.
45. Other Arabic transliterations of his name include: Hussain Abd el Hir, Hussein Abad
al-Chir and Hussein Al Bashir.
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Khair was Mossad’s third Operation Wrath of God victim. Unlike Hamshari, he was classified by Mossad as a ‘hard target’ because he spent a lot of time outside of the agency’s field of operation, mainly in Syria.46 However, because Khair had only recently arrived in Cyprus, he had not yet rented a flat. It was his temporary accommodation that made him vulnerable: even though he had different daily routines and frequently travelled abroad, in Nicosia he always returned to the Hotel Olympia in the centre of town. Unaware that he might figure on anyone’s hitlist, he did not have weapons or bodyguards. As Khair was unprotected and always at the same hotel (which was relatively easy to break into), Mossad calculated that his room in the Hotel Olympia was the best place to kill him.47
From the second assassination onwards, Mossad changed the basis on which it selected Palestinians to target as part of Operation Wrath of God. A direct connection to the Munich massacre was no longer needed. Anybody found to be an outspoken supporter of the Palestinian armed struggle or actively involved in the preparation of terrorist events was a potential target.48 This applied to Khair, who had not been directly involved in the Munich plot. Besides being the head of Black September in Cyprus, there was another element that made him a prime target: Khair was the Fatah liaison to the Soviet foreign in- telligence agency, the KGB.49 Nicosia was known at the time for being an intelligence hotspot: the US and Russia as well as several Western and Eastern European countries ran their Middle Eastern intelligence missions through Cyprus.50
In the early 1970s, the Soviet Union supported Fatah by providing weapons (including powerful AK-47 assault rifles) and arms training in Eastern Europe.51 Khair was in charge of selecting the Palestinian guerrillas who were to receive training.52 Israeli intelligence also believed that he forged close ties with senior Soviet intelligence officers who covered part of the Middle East from the Soviet embassy in Cyprus.53 In line with common operational methods and the typical reasoning of intelligence agencies, Mossad probably killed Khair to dissuade other
46. Vargo, Mossad, p. 115.
47. Klein, Striking Back, p. 113; Bergman, Rise and Kill First, p. 168.
48. Vargo, Mossad, pp. 114–6.
49. Klein, Striking Back, p. 114; Reeve, One Day in September, p. 173; Vargo, Mossad, p. 114. 50. Klein, Striking Back, p. 114.
51. For works that research the relations of Eastern and Western Bloc countries with armed
groups, see A. Hänni, T. Riegler and P. Gasztold, eds, Terrorism in the Cold War, I: State Support in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Sphere of Influence (London, 2020) and A. Hänni, T. Riegler and P. Gasztold, eds, Terrorism in the Cold War, II: State Support in the West, Middle East and Latin America (London, 2020). For Soviet-PLO/Fatah relations, see G. Golan, The Soviet Union and the Palestine Liberation Organization: An Uneasy Alliance (New York, 1980); R.S. Cline and Y. Alexander, Terrorism: The Soviet Connection (New York, 1986), p. 34; R. Goren, The Soviet Union and Terrorism (London, 1984).
52. Reeve, One Day in September, p. 173. 53. Ibid.
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Fatah members from taking on the role of KGB liaison. In other words, Mossad wanted to break the Fatah-KGB link by sending the signal that any Palestinian managing the connection to Soviet intelligence would be killed. Indeed, a few months later, Khair’s replacement, Zaid Mouchassi, was also killed under Operation Wrath of God.
On top of Khair’s links to Soviet intelligence and his role as an arms training facilitator, Marc E. Vargo suggests that Khair was also preparing a Black September attack on a ship. The alleged terrorist plot involved smuggling weapons and terrorists aboard a vessel departing Nicosia for Haifa. Once arrived, the terrorists, masquerading as passengers, were to use the weapons to launch an attack against the ship and the port it- self.54 According to Vargo, Mossad wanted to kill Khair in order to pre- vent this attack. The Club de Berne files suggest that just such an attack was indeed being prepared only a week before Khair’s assassination. On 12 January, the Cypriot authorities arrested a four-man terrorist squad on an Italian passenger ship, the Messapia, which followed the route Bari—Piraeus–Cyprus—Haifa.55 They were arrested at the Cypriot port of Famagusta on grounds that their Afghan passports were believed to be forged. Italian intelligence cabled that they had received a report about this arrest in Cyprus which suggested that the detainees were part of a terrorist operation. Because the terrorists had embarked in Bari, an Italian port, its agency SISDE was planning to investigate this case further. In the cable, SISDE included the names and backgrounds of the four terrorist suspects and asked the Kilowatt group whether any of them was known to other agencies.56
On 26 January 1973 (after Khair’s assassination), Italy provided an update on the Famagusta arrest based on further investigations.57Neither the Italian consulate in Paris nor the Greek consulate in Venice had issued transit permits for any of the visas found in the four passports. Italy was now certain that these passports were fake. Italian intelligence also investigated the purchase of the boat tickets. A woman had attempted to reserve the tickets in Rome on 28 December 1972, but she did not have her passport with her and so the travel company refused to sell her the tickets. A week later, on 4 January 1973, a man came in person and claimed that he was the husband of the woman who had tried to buy the tickets. The name in his passport was given to Italian intelligence, but he had not yet been identified by the Italian authorities.58
54. Vargo, Mossad, p. 114.
55. E4320-07C, Kilowatt, 1973, Kilowatt cable no. 7046, sent from Italian SISDE, ‘Soi-disant ressortissant afghans – soupçonnés de programmes terroristes’, 12 Jan. 1973.
56. Ibid.
57. E4320-07C, Kilowatt, 1973, Kilowatt cable no. 7048, sent from Italian SISDE, ‘Soi-disant ressortissant afghans – soupçonnés de programmes terroristes’, 26 Nov. 1973.
58. Ibid.
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Three months after the Famagusta arrest, an attack was thwarted at Rome Fiumicino Airport on 11 April 1973. After further investigation, Italian intelligence was able to connect this attempt to the Afghans arrested in Famagusta. Italian intelligence confirmed that the four arrested terrorist suspects had indeed been planning an attack on the Messapia and that the attack had been prevented by their arrest. But, SISDE explained, while four were arrested, two more terrorists had remained aboard the ship. They eluded the police in Cyprus and later went back to Italy. There they began the preparations for the failed attack at the airport in Rome. The cable thus further substantiates Vargo’s claim that there was indeed an attack planned aboard the Messapia.59
Based on the cables sent by Italy in January 1973, one can speculate that Kilowatt cables first informed Israeli security about the Famagusta arrests and the suspects’ plan to attack this shipping route. However, the hypothesis that Mossad wanted to thwart the attack by killing Khair is unlikely to be true, since the arrest had already prevented the attack. Nevertheless, if Mossad was able to connect the plot to attack the Messapia to Khair, given that the arrest was in Cyprus itself, then Mossad had further evidence that Khair was involved in the prepar- ation of terrorist attacks. This provided yet another reason for Mossad to target Khair. More generally, besides the Famagusta arrest, the risk of attacks involving the shipping industry or Israeli ports were mentioned numerous times by Kilowatt members before and after Khair’s assas- sination.60 These warnings lend further credibility to Vargo’s analysis.
The Club de Berne files make it apparent that an attack on shipping via Haifa was being prepared, but a link between the attack and Khair cannot be established definitively through the sources. The coincidence of the timing of the preparations of this attack and Khair’s death, how- ever, lend further substance to the claim that Mossad believed Khair was not only an important KGB liaison but also actively involved in the prep- aration of acts of terror.
59. E4320-07C, Kilowatt, 1973, Kilowatt cable no. 7072, sent from Italian SISDE, ‘Aeroporto di Fiumicino, 4.4.1973 – Arresto di due stranieri’, 11 Apr. 1973. Interestingly, George Jonas also mentioned that the Haifa shipping attack was going to be carried out by Afghan nationals: G. Jonas, Vengeance: The True Story of an Israeli Counter-terrorist Team (Toronto, ON, 1984), p. 220. However, it is important to note that the accuracy of this book has strongly been questioned and the way events are described in the book seems highly unrealistic: see P. Taubman, ‘Book on Israeli Avenger-Spy Questioned’, New York Times, 2 May 1984. Jonas’s book was, nevertheless, the basis for Stephen Spielberg’s 2005 movie, Munich.
60. Berne Club members frequently warned about possible Black September attacks against shipping or ports. Before Khair’s assassination, there was, for instance, a Dutch warning sent in the context of the arrest of a terrorist suspect: see E4320-07C, Kilowatt, 1971–72, Kilowatt cable no. 9028, sent from the Dutch BVD, ‘Ribhi Halloum’, 26 Nov. 1972. In April 1973 there was a similar warning from MI5: E4320-07C, Kilowatt, 1973, Kilowatt cable no. 5015, sent from MI5, [no title], comment: ‘priority – secret’, 6 Apr. 1973. After Khair’s assassination, Club de Berne members continued to warn that ships or ports were at high risk: see E4320-07C, Kilowatt, 1973, Kilowatt cable no. 9043, sent from the Dutch BVD, ‘Possible terrorist plans to hijack shipping’, 30 Mar. 1973. There were numerous further warnings, including one from Mossad that missiles could be smuggled aboard ships to attack ports: see E4320-07C, Kilowatt, 1973, Kilowatt cable no. 6141, sent from Mossad, ‘Terrorist attempt to attack airliners by means of shoulder fired A.A. rockets’, 10 Sept. 1973.
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In the early evening of 5 April 1973, Dr Basil al-Kubaisi finished a lux- urious dinner at the high-end Parisian restaurant Café de la Paix in the 9th arrondissement. Before returning to his hotel at the Place de la Madeleine, he went to see a prostitute for an hour. When he walked out of the building afterwards, a Mossad hit team of two men came up behind him. They crossed the street with him at Rue Chauveau Lagarde. Once they reached the other side, Kubaisi saw their weapons and begged them not to fire. They ignored his pleas and shot him nine times point-blank with silenced Beretta.22 pistols. Kubaisi collapsed and died on the pavement in a pool of blood.61
Kubaisi was born and raised in Iraq, went to the US to study, and received a Ph.D. in international law in Canada.62 In 1971, 38 years old, he returned to the Middle East. He moved to Lebanon where he taught law at the American University of Beirut. He travelled a great deal, including to Europe. Mossad had trailed Kubaisi’s movements for sev- eral months before the killing. Despite his frequent travels, he was what intelligence officers call a soft target. He had no bodyguard, visited European cities regularly, and during his stays in Europe he stuck to a relatively fixed daily routine. The reason for Kubaisi being placed on Mossad’s kill list is generally attributed to his active role within PFLP and Black September terrorism.63 Kubaisi was allegedly the quarter- master for many Palestinian terrorist operations in Europe, principally tasked with the supply and transfer of weapons and explosives.64
After his assassination, French authorities led an investigation and diligently sent the latest police reports to the Kilowatt group. As was the case after previous assassinations, Mossad thus received updates from its Club de Berne partners about police investigations into the murder it had carried out. The first cable about Kubaisi was sent four days after the assassination, on 9 April 1973. The French internal intelli- gence agency DST sent an ‘urgent’ cable to the Club de Berne members asking them to immediately send any intelligence about Raoul Basil al-Kubaisi.65 As part of its investigation, French intelligence was trying to determine who Kubaisi had met before his death. DST sent an- other ‘very urgent’ cable informing its partners about Kubaisi’s closest contacts.66 On the same day, the British intelligence service MI5 replied to France’s cable and informed its partners that, based on a reliable
61. Klein, Striking Back, p. 127.
62. Ibid, p. 126.
63. Reeve, One Day in September, p. 174.
64. Klein, Striking Back, p. 125.
65. E4320-07C, Kilowatt, 1973, Kilowatt cable no. 4023, sent from the French DST,
‘Al-Koubaissi Basil Raoul,’ comment: ‘urgent’, 9 Apr. 1973.
66. E4320-07C, Kilowatt, 1973, Kilowatt cable no. 4026, sent from the French DST, ‘Assassinat
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source, it knew that Kubaisi had been working for the PFLP in Paris for three months prior to his assassination. He had allegedly also been in touch with the South Yemeni embassy in France.67
A month later, in mid-May 1973, France finalised a report about Kubaisi’s travels and contacts since 1971. For the report, DST investigated his address book and passport, led some further searches, and completed this data with intelligence from Kilowatt members. French intelligence thus created a long and detailed list of all of Kubaisi’s travels to countries in the Middle East, Europe and North America. DST outlined every country that he had visited chronologically and listed the exact meeting dates and personal details of every person that he had allegedly come into contact with.68 The French agency asked for the utmost discretion and insisted that the people mentioned in the report should not be interrogated by the respective agencies. The inves- tigation was still ongoing and should not be compromised. However, if an agency had any relevant intelligence on any of Kubaisi’s contacts, DST was keen to receive it. It specifically asked about these contacts’ political orientation. The French agency explained that, by knowing about their political affiliation, it was hoping to obtain a clearer pic- ture of Kubaisi’s ‘true personality’, the nature of their relationship with him, and his exact role in the PFLP.69 The French authorities osten- sibly did everything in their power to obtain more details, reconstruct Kubaisi’s networks, and find out who among his contacts might have had a motive to kill him. Again, it was highly useful for Israel to know all this and be kept in the loop about the French investigations.
V
In the spring of 1973, Zaid Muchassi, the new PLO representative in Cyprus, travelled to Athens. On 11 April, after a day out, he came back to his hotel room, turned off the lights, and lay down in his bed. A switch flipped, remotely detonating a bomb under his mattress. The explosion killed him within seconds.70 Muchassi was the PLO envoy who had replaced Hussein Khair, who had been killed two months be- fore as the third victim of Operation Wrath of God. Mossad used the same killing method for Khair and Muchassi, a bomb hidden under- neath the bed in their hotel rooms. The message, too, was the same in both cases: the life of anyone who held the role of KGB liaison was at
67. E4320-07C, Kilowatt, 1973, Kilowatt cable no. 5016, sent from MI5, ‘routine, secret, pro- fessor al Kubaisi’, 13 Apr. 1973.
68. E4320-07C, Kilowatt, 1973, Kilowatt cable no. 4030, sent from the French DST, ‘Concerne les mouvements et déplacements de Al-Kubaissi (Koubaissi) Basil Raoul’, 17 May 1973.
69. Ibid.
70. Bergman, Rise and Kill First, p. 168; Reeve, One Day in September, p. 186.
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risk. In this vein, the aim of Muchassi’s assassination was deterrence, intended to disrupt links between PLO and Soviet intelligence.
Furthermore, Mossad believed that Muchassi had been involved with Black September and other Palestinian terrorist operations.71 Two days before his death, two Palestinian terrorist attacks were attempted in Cyprus, and it is conceivable that Mossad suspected Muchassi to have been involved in their planning. On 9 April 1973 there was an attempted attack on the Israeli ambassador’s residency in Nicosia. The second attack was directed against an Israeli airplane on the runway at Nicosia airport. Both attacks failed, and the perpetrators were taken into custody.72 The Arab National Youth Organisation for the Liberation of Palestine (ANYOLP), a Libya-backed Palestinian terrorist group, claimed responsibility for these attempted attacks.73
Given the proximity in time between the ANYOLP attacks and Muchassi’s assassination and considering that he had been based in Nicosia, it is plausible to conclude that Mossad assumed he was involved in the planning of the attacks. At the time, Cyprus and Greece were both excluded from Club de Berne and Kilowatt exchanges. There are unfortunately no Club de Berne records of Muchassi himself nor of his assassination. A month later, MI5 referred to the attacks in Nicosia as part of a general threat assessment.74 The British agency estimated that shipping and aircraft were at high risk, both in the Middle East and in Europe. In particular, transportation hubs that were connected to Israel, Jordan or the US were believed to be likely terrorist targets. MI5 further thought that Cyprus was among the most high-risk countries for an attack for as long as the terrorists responsible for the operations in Nicosia on 9 April 1973 remained in Cypriot custody.75
VI
On 17 June 1973, two Palestinians, Abdel Hadi Nakaa and Abdel Hamid Shibli, drove in a green Mercedes through the slow-moving morning traffic in the centre of Rome. In their car was a bomb meant for an im- minent attack on an office used by the Israeli airline El-Al. But before the two could strike, their own car exploded. A Mossad officer in a car behind them had remotely detonated a device placed in their vehicle. This was another Operation Wrath of God killing operation, a rather spectacular one, that prevented an attack shortly before it was going
71. Klein, Striking Back, p. 148.
72. ‘A Band of Arab Guerrillas Attacks Israelis on Cyprus’, New York Times, 10 Apr. 1973.
73. For more details about this Libyan-supported Palestinian group, see Guttmann, ‘Turning
Oil into Blood’.
74. E4320-07C, Kilowatt, 1973, Kilowatt cable no. 5019, sent from MI5, ‘Mohammed Abdul
K.F.’ [only initials are given here, in the cable full name was shared], comment: ‘priority – confi- dential’, 7 May 1973.
75. Ibid.
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to be carried out. Journalist Ronen Bergman provides context about how Mossad found out about the imminent terror attack. According to Bergman, Mossad had recruited a highly-placed Palestinian in the PFLP, who agreed to provide information in exchange for money.76 He gave them crucial intelligence based on what Israeli intelligence called ‘excellent and exclusive access’.77 The codename for this informant was Sadness. Mossad received intelligence from Sadness on 10 June 1973, suggesting that two PFLP hitmen had been sent to Rome to carry out an attack on the local El-Al office.78 Mossad’s Operation Wrath of God team immediately reacted to this intelligence and travelled to Rome.
All secondary literature accounts agree that Israel had successfully thwarted an imminent attack by killing the two men.79 As unlikely as the scenario of an assassination of terrorists who themselves were on their way to execute an attack may sound, the episode can be confirmed by official Italian police records that were shared through the Kilowatt channels. On 18 June 1973, a day after the explosion, Italian intelli- gence sent a detailed police report about the explosion of a Mercedes with two passengers in it.80 The report explained that at 9.30am a green Mercedes 200 exploded at Piazza Barberini in Rome. The loca- tion of the explosion confirms the likely target of the terrorists: Piazza Barberini was a two-minute walk from the El-Al office in the centre of town. By car, one would reach the office within seconds. This means that Nakaa and Shibi were literally about to reach their target when Mossad pre-empted the attack.
When the Italian agency, SISDE, sent the first cable with the ini- tial police report, the two terrorists were severely wounded and burnt, but had not yet died. Their names were given as Abdul Hadi Nakkaa and Abdel Amid Shibli, both born in Damascus. Shibli had a driver’s licence under the name of Rjad Shibli al-Ramleh. His clothes had a name tag that said Abu Khaled.81 Inside the car, the Italian police found items for constructing a bomb, including watchmaking devices for the timer, chemicals and more than 800g of plastic explosives hidden in eight packs of Dunhill cigarette boxes. The Italian authorities traced the movements of Shibli and Nakaa prior to their deaths and found that they had reached Rome from Lyon only a few days earlier. On 15 June 1973, the two made a call from a public telephone booth in Rome to a number in Lyon, and the cable provided this number and another that was written on a note found in their car. The timing of
76. Bergman, Rise and Kill First, pp. 168–9.
77. From an AMAN (the Israeli Military Intelligence Directorate) annual report, cited in Bergman, Rise and Kill First, p. 168.
78. Ibid.
79. Klein, Striking Back, p. 149; Vargo, Mossad, p. 120; Bergman, Rise and Kill First, pp. 168–9. 80. E4320-07C, Kilowatt, 1973, Kilowatt cable no. 7083, sent from Italian SISDE, ‘Rome,
17.6.1973 – explosion d’une automobile Mercedes ayant deux Arabes a bord’, 18 June 1973. 81. Ibid.
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Shibli and Nakaa’s arrival in Rome also aligns with Bergman’s account that Sadness informed Mossad on 10 June about two hitmen coming to Rome. The fact that the two had only reached Rome recently reinforces the hypothesis that they might have specifically come for the attack, as warned by Sadness. Italy urged its Kilowatt partners to send any intelli- gence they had on Shibli and Nakaa or the Mercedes. France was asked for help with identifying the owners of the telephone lines in Lyon.82
Over the following weeks, the Italian authorities pursued their murder investigation. On 26 June 1973, SISDE shared their latest findings about the personal details of the dead men and their itineraries before entering Italy.83 Italian intelligence gave as many details as pos- sible about Nakaa and Shibli’s personal information, their visa requests, the passports they used when they requested the visas, and their alleged profession, namely engineers. Shibli had tried to enter Italy with the exact same Mercedes on 10 June 1973, but his entry was refused because he did not have a visa. This further confirms Bergman’s account, since Sadness allegedly informed Mossad about the two hitmen on 10 June, the same day Shibli had tried to enter Italy.
Shortly after, German intelligence updated its partners with what it knew about Nakaa and Shibli.84 The BfV had no records of Nakaa but provided details of a visa application by Shibli and two other men (whose names were also given in the cable) to enter Germany in July 1971. The BfV explained that the three men had come to the German embassy in Paris and submitted their visa applications. When they were told that the German authorities needed to call Beirut to check their identities and that they had to pay for these phone calls, the three stormed out of the embassy and never came back.85 Because the Mercedes that was blown up had been manufactured and sold in Germany, the BfV knew the details of its previous owners. The agency shared the motor manufacturer number, chassis number, and signature physical features. The car, a Mercedes Benz 220d, was known to have first belonged to a German citizen, under a licence plate registered in Essen. On 17 April 1973, a Syrian citizen registered the car with the same licence plate number that was on the car when it exploded. The BfV shared the names of the two previous car owners but stated that it had no intelligence on them.86
82. Ibid. On the same day that the Italian cable was sent, Swiss intelligence replied and informed its partners that it had no records of the two Arab nationals who were killed in the car explosion: E4320-07C, Kilowatt sent by Switzerland, 1971–1977, Kilowatt cable no. 0049, sent from Swiss BuPo, ‘Explosion d’une voiture ayant deux Arabes a bord, Rome, 17.6.1973’, 18 June 1973.
83. E4320-07C, Kilowatt, 1973, Kilowatt cable no. 7085, sent from Italian SISDE, ‘Rome, 17.6.1973 – explosion d’une voiture Mercedes ayant deux Arabes a bord’, 26 June 1973.
84. E4320-07C, Kilowatt, 1973, Kilowatt cable no. 1100, sent from the German BfV, ‘Explosion eines Mercedes, am 17.6.1973 in Rom’, comment: ‘VS-vertraulich – amtlich geheimhalten’, 27 June 1973.
85. Ibid. 86. Ibid.
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A month later, on 30 July 1973, Italian intelligence sent a long list of attachments that it thought were useful for the Kilowatt group to help make sense of these killings.87 SISDE sent copies of the documents that were found on Nakaa and Shibli. This included every page of their passports, their driver’s licences, and pictures of them both. The cable also included pictures of what was found in the car’s boot, such as an ignition system and the still intact explosives that were packed in cigar- ette packs, intended for the attack on the El-Al office.
Shibli and Nakaa’s preparations for the imminent terrorist attack against El-Al in Rome is mentioned numerous times in the secondary literature. However, most books about Operation Wrath of God pass over this assassination rather quickly and do not mention further details about the two victims. With access to the Club de Berne files it becomes apparent that the two men were involved in other terrorist plans. In May 1973, MI5 investigated an alleged terrorist plot to attack synagogues in the UK and Holland. Later, MI5 was able to connect Shibli and Nakaa to this plan. The British agency subsequently revealed that the planned attacks against British and Dutch synagogues as well as the El-Al office in Rome were all part of the same terrorist operation. This link started to become clear when MI5 noticed the suspicious behaviour of an Arab national named Mahmoud Hassan Fowel who entered the UK on 2 May 1973. MI5 had intelligence that he had come to prepare a terrorist operation. His alleged immediate task was to obtain accom- modation and weapons on behalf of another Black September opera- tive, named Ghafour. Ghafour was said to have been the Fatah liaison and supply officer in Libya since 1970. Ghafour entered the UK shortly after Fowel, on 11 May 1973.88 Both men reconnoitred the Israeli em- bassy and three Jewish synagogues in the UK. MI5 received intelligence that suggested the two were planning to attack the synagogues with automatic weapons, pistols and grenades. The shooting was planned for a Saturday evening, when worshippers would be leaving after the Shabbat ceremony and prayers had finished.89
MI5 gave further details about the preparation of this attack. The two men had first travelled from Lebanon to Holland, where they met a third unidentified person and discussed an attack against a synagogue in The Hague. Dutch intelligence was later briefed bilaterally by MI5 and confirmed that their security agency had records on Fowel and Ghafour. MI5 further identified another operative, codenamed Abu Osame, whom the terrorist team met in Libya, Lebanon and then in Rome in March 1973. According to MI5, the plans to attack synagogues in the UK and Holland had been at an advanced stage. Two groups
87. E4320-07C, Kilowatt, 1973, Kilowatt cable no. 7087, sent from Italian SISDE, ‘Rome, 17.6.1973 – Explosion d’une voiture Mercedes ayant deux arabes a bord’, 11 July 1973.
88. E4320-07C, Kilowatt, 1973, Kilowatt cable no. 5022, sent from MI5, ‘Arab terrorism,’ comment: ‘priority – secret’, 24 May 1973.
89. Ibid.
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of five to six men each were completing their preparations to move to the UK and Holland from Libya and other Middle Eastern countries. When Fowel and Ghafour appeared at a London airport on 20 May 1973, they were arrested. Despite these precise details of a planned attack and potential charges against them, UK officials felt the evi- dence obtained during the investigation and detention was insufficient to ensure successful prosecution. Both men were thus allowed to leave on a non-stop flight for Beirut on 22 May 1973.90
In early June 1973, German intelligence added more pieces to the puzzle and revealed that Fowel was a drug and car dealer.91 He was believed to have been the provider of heroin in various drug abuse cases in Hamburg since July 1972. In August 1972, the German public pros- ecution office issued an arrest warrant against Fowel for suspicion of drug dealing and other drug crimes.92 The BfV investigated further and interrogated one of Fowel’s clients in Hamburg to whom he had supplied a kilogramme of heroin.93 This led German intelligence to a car manufacturing firm in Hamburg, which confirmed that Fowel had purchased several cars from them and that he had contacts with second-hand car dealers around Hamburg.94
Following the findings of the UK investigation into Fowel’s activities, the BfV connected the dots: it believed that Fowel’s drug and car dealings financed Black September terrorist operations. As previous investigations and shared Kilowatt intelligence revealed, trading in cars could serve two terrorist purposes: the gains from sales could help finance operations and cars were useful for smuggling weapons across borders.
The investigation of Fowel and Ghafour went quiet until Nakaa and Shibli were killed in the explosion of 17 June 1973. After the killing, various agencies checked their records for Nakaa and Shibli and shared their knowledge with the Kilowatt group. The first to do so was MI5, which sent its reply on 19 June, two days after the killing. In this cable, MI5 mentioned that it had evidence (without further details) that linked Shibli and Nakaa to Fowel’s thwarted terrorist operation.95 MI5 thought that Fowel and Ghafour and Shibli and Nakaa were two teams that were part of the same overall operation. This aligned with what MI5 had mentioned in an earlier cable, where MI5 assumed that in late May 1973 several terrorist teams had come to Europe from the Middle East.96
90. Ibid.
91. E4320-07C, Kilowatt, 1973, Kilowatt cable no. 1094, sent from the German BfV, ‘Arabischer Terrorismus’, comment: ‘VS-vertraulich – amtlich geheimhalten’, 6 June 1973.
92. Ibid.
93. E4320-07C,Kilowatt,1973,Kilowattcableno.1101,sentfromtheGermanBfV,‘Arabischer Terrorismus’, comment: ‘VS-vertraulich – amtlich geheimhalten’, 28 June 1973.
94. Ibid.
95. E4320-07C, Kilowatt, 1973, Kilowatt cable no. 5027, sent from MI5, ‘Explosion in Arab car – Rome, 17.6.73’, comment: ‘priority – confidential’, 19 June 1973.
96. E4320-07C, Kilowatt, 1973, Kilowatt cable no. 5022, sent from MI5, ‘Arab terrorism,’ comment: ‘priority – secret’, 24 May 1973.
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In the same cable, MI5 confirmed intelligence provided by the BfV that Fowel had been to West Germany on several occasions to purchase second-hand cars, mainly Mercedes, ostensibly for resale in Lebanon.97 Given that Shibli and Nakaa were driving a Mercedes, it is possible that the car that had been blown up in Rome had been purchased by Fowel and given to Shibli for the El-Al office attack. The MI5 cable had a second part, which connected Shibli to another planned terrorist attack. MI5 noticed that in a cable sent by the DST on 23 March 1973, an alleged terrorist sympathiser had included Shibli as one of her contacts in a fedayeen (guerrilla) camp in Lebanon in 1971/2.98 MI5 thus thought it was likely that Shibli had supported terrorist activities with her in France in March 1973.99 Lastly, MI5 compared the physical appearance of Ghafour, who had been arrested with Fowel in London in May, with the description of a 48-year-old third man whose documents had been found in the wrecked car. The two matched; UK intelligence thus suggested that Ghafour might have been the third team member of the Shibli and Nakaa terrorist squad.100 Ghafour had been released from detention in the UK on 22 May 1973, which would have given him plenty of time to travel to Lyon and Rome to help prepare the El-Al attack.
Dutch intelligence also checked its records about Shibli and Nakaa and shared their information.101 Dutch officials noticed that Shibli and his Beirut telephone number had been found on a terrorist suspect’s contact lists, which was shared among Kilowatt partners on 23 October 1972.102 This meant that Shibli had already been mentioned among Kilowatt co-operation at least twice before the El-Al attack: in October by Dutch intelligence and in March by French intelligence. These Kilowatt signals might have been the first indications that alerted Israeli intelligence about Shibli as a terrorist suspect.
A month after Shibli and Nakaa were killed, Mossad warned that three terrorists were allegedly on their way to Europe on a sabotage mission.103 Their names and physical appearance were given, two of
97. E4320-07C, Kilowatt, 1973, Kilowatt cable no. 5027, sent from MI5, ‘Explosion in Arab car – Rome, 17.6.73’, comment: ‘priority – confidential’, 19 June 1973.
98. E4320-07C, Kilowatt, 1973, Kilowatt cable no. 4017, sent from the French DST, ‘Les développements de l’enquête diligente à la suite de l’arrestation à La Grave, le 14 mars 1973, des ressortissants jordaniens’, comment: ‘diffusion restreinte/très urgent’, 20 Mar. 1973.
99. E4320-07C, Kilowatt, 1973, Kilowatt cable no. 5027, sent from MI5, ‘Explosion in Arab car – Rome, 17.6.73’, comment: ‘priority – confidential’, 19 June 1973.
100. Ibid.
101. E4320-07C, Kilowatt, 1973, Kilowatt cable no. 9049, sent from the Dutch BVD, ‘Rome, 17-6-73, explosion of an automobile, Mercedes, with two Arabs on board’, 19 June 1973.
102. E4320-07C, Kilowatt, 1971–72, Kilowatt cable no. 9026, sent from the Dutch BVD, ‘Ribhi Halloum, born 2.7.39 in Mazara (West Bank, Ramallah district)’, 24 Oct. 1972.
103. E4320-07C, Kilowatt, 1973, Kilowatt cable no. 6130, sent from Mossad, ‘Terrorists/de- parture of terrorist squad for Europe’, comment: ‘source reliable, with access to terrorist circles’, 26 July 1973.
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them were said to hold Lebanese passports, another a Syrian passport. A European man with tattoos, named Hans, was allegedly going to help the group with their mission. Mossad suspected that the Jibril or- ganisation was behind this terrorist squad. Mossad pointed out that the PFLP-General Command (Jibril), another Palestinian splinter organ- isation, had not carried out any terrorist activity since an air sabotage attempt in August 1972 using a boobytrapped record-player. Mossad believed that this could be a new attempt of the group to show its capabilities. In a follow-up to this cable, Mossad specified that the group’s targets were El-Al offices in Europe, and repeated their names and descriptions.104 Mossad reiterated that the risk for attacks against El-Al offices was very high. Based on this cable, it is conceivable that Mossad worried that Black September wanted to ‘finish the job’ that Shibli and Nakaa were meant to do.
VII
Algerian native Mohamed Boudia, who provided a nodal point of Palestinian terrorism in Europe, was a man of several passions. He loved women (and women loved him), he was a bon vivant and a party- goer.105 He was also passionate about the arts and his official role as the manager of a small theatre in Paris provided him with the perfect cover for his other passion, the Palestinian armed struggle. Boudia was acutely aware of Operation Wrath of God and knew that he might be on Mossad’s target list. While leading a very active Parisian social life, he was also very careful, frequently using disguises and makeup from his theatre to avoid detection. For instance, he would spend the night with a woman and leave in the morning disguised as an old woman to trick any surveillance teams that might have been following him.106 As another precaution, he regularly changed his daily routines, travelled frequently, and in Paris spent his nights at different locations. However, there was one constant element in his life, which was his weak point: he always drove a grey Renault R16 with a Parisian licence plate. This habit was what Mossad called his ‘capture point,’ the weakness that would allow the Israeli agency to organise his execution.107
In the evening of 27 June 1973, Boudia went to see one of his many girlfriends. Late at night, Mossad broke into Boudia’s car and planted a pressure-sensitive bomb beneath the driver’s seat. Even if Boudia left the apartment in disguise, the person entering his beloved Renault
104. E4320-07C, Kilowatt, 1973, Kilowatt cable no. 6134, sent from Mossad, ‘Departure of terrorist squad for Europe’, 13 Aug. 1973.
105. According to Reeve, Boudia’s sex life caused such exhilaration in Mossad that they nicknamed him ‘Bluebeard’: Reeve, One Day in September, p. 186.
106. F. Burton and J. Bruning, Chasing Shadows: A Special Agent’s Lifelong Hunt to Bring a Cold War Assassin to Justice (New York, 2011), p. 175.
107. Klein, Striking Back, p. 154.
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R16 was likely to be him. The bomb still had to be activated remotely and this was to be done only when a Mossad operative nearby was certain that it was indeed Boudia who was in the car. The bomb was purposely designed to look like a home-made bomb. Mossad used a pressure activated ‘land mine’, which was packed with scrap iron. This was meant to make it look as if Boudia was the victim of an accidental explosion of a bomb that Black September had built itself for an attack, but which had exploded prematurely.108 As will be shown later, this was indeed the conclusion the French police came to, at least in the Kilowatt reports they shared after the explosion. Mossad knew also that Boudia always checked for explosive devices around the outside of his car before he would get in. Hence, by planting the bomb inside the car, hidden underneath the driver’s seat, Boudia was unlikely to spot it.109 He did not, and the bomb was detonated just before 11 am on 28 June 1973, while he still had one foot on the pavement. The blast ripped him literally to pieces: when the French police arrived ten minutes later, they found his flesh and body parts scattered around the surrounding cars.
Boudia’s involvement in terrorism was clear to everyone. Secondary literature and Club de Berne files describe him as a central figure in most of the operational planning and execution of Palestinian terrorist activities in Europe. He was said to have replaced Hamshari as the new head of Black September operations in France. Most accounts place Boudia at the heart of all operational terrorism links in Europe and assign him a central role in many spectacular terrorist plots.
On 29 June 1973, a day after Boudia died in the upmarket Saint- Germain district, the French DST sent a long report through theKilowatt channel.110 Boudia was referred to as an Algerian national and an active pro-Palestinian militant. The report described how, where and when the car exploded. Like the Italian agency in the Nakaa and Shibli Rome killing, the French DST gave details about the car, its registra- tion number, and where precisely it was parked (32 rue des Fosses-Saint Bernard in the 5th arrondissement) and the exact time when the bomb exploded (10.57 am).111 Boudia was known to French intelligence as a central player in several clandestine and terrorist groups. First, as the cable highlighted, according to most recent intelligence he was believed to be the key person of the PFLP in Paris. Second, he was known to have been an important co-ordinator of the R.U.R, a secret Algerian movement against the government of Houari Boumédiène.
108. Reeve, One Day in September, p. 187; V. Ostrovsky and C. Hoy, By Way of Deception: The Making and Unmaking of a Mossad Officer (London, 1990), pp. 204–5.
109. Reeve, One Day in September, p. 187.
110. E4320-07C, Kilowatt, 1973, Kilowatt cable no. 4032, sent from the French DST, ‘Explosion d’une Renault R16 ayant entrainé la mort d’un militant actif pro-palestinien: Mohamed Boudia’, 29 June 1973.
111. Ibid.
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Based on their initial investigation, the French police assumed that the explosion had been accidental—as the cable said in French: ‘une detonation fortuite’.112 The word ‘fortuite’ can be translated as ‘by chance’ or ‘unexpected’. The DST thus suggested that Boudia’s death was caused by a bomb that exploded prematurely, unexpectedly and accidentally. Given Boudia’s terrorist activities, French intelligence may have assumed that the bomb had been intended for an attack. As mentioned, Mossad had designed the bomb on purpose to make it look as if it was a home-made terrorist device. At least initially, this decep- tion seems to have worked.
France, as the DST pointed out in the cable, had been trying to cap- ture Boudia for some time and the cable mentioned that Boudia was wanted by all French security forces. There was also an international warrant for his arrest, issued by Interpol. French intelligence added a short justification as to why they had not arrested him even though he was on French territory. The cable stressed that despite ‘intensive investigations to find Boudia’, he had until then escaped all French attempts at capturing him.113 French intelligence emphasised that he had moved around and travelled frequently in and outside of France as well as changing his hideout almost daily. The French agency shared another ‘very new piece of intelligence’ with its partners, one that had come in shortly before Boudia’s death and was based on a ‘vulnerable source’. An R.U.R. disciplinary commission had allegedly just removed Boudia from his position and stripped him off all responsibilities in that organisation, as punishment for sleeping with the daughter of a militant of this group.114 As a consequence, the cable continued, Boudia was preparing to leave France to move to Syria and was about to get rid of all his possessions in France—which, ironically included the very car in which he met his death, and which was still registered to his former wife, Guerrar Hadia. The cable speculated that this disciplinary measure and the dispute with R.U.R. could have something to do with his death. France promised to keep all partners updated about the po- lice and judicial proceedings of the Boudia case.
Like all Kilowatt cables after an Operation Wrath of God killing, the DST did not mention any suspicions about Mossad’s involvement in the killing. At the time, however, Israeli covert assassinations in Europe had become more widely known. The day after Boudia’s assassination, the French newspaper Le Monde blamed Mossad for Boudia’s murder.115 The French cable, on the contrary, drew suspicion away from Mossad: it suggested that either the bomb had exploded by accident or that Boudia had been murdered by or on behalf of the R.U.R.
112. Ibid.
113. Ibid.
114. Ibid.
115. ‘M. Boudia, militant de la cause palestinienne est tué par l’explosion de sa voiture’, Le
Monde, 29 June 1973.
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Late in the evening of 21 July 1973, in the small, quiet Norwegian vac- ation town of Lillehammer, a couple walked home from the movies. The woman, who was seven months pregnant, was walking slowly when a grey Volvo suddenly stopped nearby. Two Mossad hitmen leapt out of the car. They shot the man in the head and torso before driving off as quickly as they had come. An observant bystander wrote down the licence plate and later gave it to the police.116
Mossad thought they had achieved the crowning success of Operation Wrath of God, finally killing chief of operations for Black September, Ali Hassan Salameh, the so-called ‘Red Prince’. But the person they had executed was in fact Achmed Bouchiki, a Moroccan waiter and cleaner, who—apart from looking very similar to Salameh—had absolutely nothing to do with Middle Eastern terrorism. ‘The most damaging exposure ever of Israel’s clandestine activities abroad’ or ‘one of the greatest disasters in the history of Mossad’:117 authors who describe the Lillehammer fiasco are not hesitant to use superlatives and to present it as a major blunder with fatal and drastic consequences for the agency. It was so disastrous because it combined two unforgivable mistakes: Mossad had killed the wrong man, and it got caught doing it.
How did this happen? There were several contributing factors at play. Crucially, the assassination in Lillehammer was organised and executed by a new team, which made serious operational mistakes.118 Furthermore, unlike Rome or Paris, Scandinavia—where operatives of Middle Eastern appearance could blend in less easily than in Italy or France—was unfamiliar terrain for Mossad. The agency had never mounted an operation in Norway before. Remaining anonymous after an assassination was much harder in a town of 14,000 inhabitants, where strangers were highly conspicuous and where there had not been a murder case in forty years.119
With access to the Club de Berne files, it is now possible to add an- other important factor: since late 1972, reports had grown in number and intensity about terrorist cells operating in Scandinavia. Mossad thus found it entirely credible when intelligence reports claimed that its most wanted terrorist, Ali Hassan Salameh, was said to be in Norway to plan an attack.120 Despite months of chasing Salameh, in July 1973 Mossad only had very scarce intelligence on him. Secondary litera- ture reports that the Israeli agency only had one recent photograph
116. The criminal records of this murder case and the transcript of the judgment can be consulted in Norway at Hamar, Eidsivating Criminal Court, case number 182/1973, 1 Feb. 1974.
117. Black and Morris, Israel’s Secret Wars, p. 276; Reeve, One Day in September, p. 195.
118. Reeve, One Day in September, p. 197.
119. Black and Morris, Israel’s Secret Wars, p. 276.
120. Some of the first cables that mentioned a terrorist network with plans to attack in
Scandinavia were sent by MI5 in December 1972: E4320-07C, Kilowatt, 1971–72, Kilowatt cable no. 5034, sent from MI5, ‘Arab terrorism’, comment: ‘immediate – secret’, 27 Dec. 1972.
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of him. Immediately before the killing operation was approved, Mike Harari, the leader of Operation Wrath of God, insisted that the man in Lillehammer be compared with the man in this picture.121 In this picture, apparently, Salameh looked remarkably similar to Bouchiki, ‘like two brothers resemble each other’.122 The officers in charge of confirming Salameh’s identity indeed believed that, based on this pic- ture, they had found Salameh.123 Interestingly, the photograph was in fact shared by MI5 directly after the Munich massacre. At that time, agencies were trying to help Mossad with as much intelligence as pos- sible about Black September.124 MI5 of course could not know that Mossad would later use the picture for an attempt to kill Salameh. In retrospect, it is clear that one matching photograph should not have been enough evidence to authorise an assassination. To approve a killing on the basis of such circumstantial evidence was highly unusual for Mossad. But the mission was organised and greenlighted in haste, a fact for which the agency paid a huge price: its infrastructure in Europe was exposed and its ongoing operations compromised in their entirety. As a result of Lillehammer, Mossad had to withdraw agents, leave safe houses, pull back informants, and change telephone numbers all over the Continent.125
Internally, Lillehammer also had long-term consequences. Mossad headquarters became more cautious before authorising missions abroad. Critics within the agency took the outcome as confirmation of their belief that killing Palestinians in Europe was a waste of time and resources.126 Importantly, Lillehammer was a blow to the morale and self-belief of Mossad’s officers.127 The very public failure of the mission marked itself deep into the Israeli intelligence conscience. It is com- monly remembered with remorse and the Israeli intelligence commu- nity refers to Lillehammer in an unfortunate pun, as Leyl-ha-Mar, the Night of Bitterness.128
On the official diplomatic level, the Lillehammer affair and public trial of the six Mossad officers caused a mass outpouring of inter- national outrage and hostile press towards Israel.129 The incident further
121. Bergman mentions that Mossad had only one picture of Salameh: Bergman, Rise and Kill First, p. 172.
122. General Aharon Yariv, the former head of AMAN who at this time was Golda Meir’s adviser on counterterrorism, made the comment in an interview with the BBC on 23 November 1993, which was published the next day in the Washington Post: D. Hoffman, ‘Israeli Confirms Assassination of Munich Massacre Plotters’, Washington Post, 24 Nov. 1993.
123. Klein, Striking Back, p. 160.
124. E4320-07C, Kilowatt, 1971–72, Kilowatt cable no. 5005, sent from MI5, ‘Arab terrorist activities’, comment: ‘reference our watt 5004 of 1.9.72’, 6 Sept. 1972.
125. Vargo, Mossad, p. 127; Burton and Bruning, Chasing Shadows, p. 177.
126. D. Raviv and Y. Melman, Every Spy a Prince: The Complete History of Israel’s Intelligence Community (Boston, MA, 1991), p. 190.
127. Vargo, Mossad, p. 128.
128. Raviv and Melman, Every Spy a Prince, p. 192. 129. Burton and Bruning, Chasing Shadows, p. 178.
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damaged Israel’s reputation since it suggested that Mossad was carrying out its own terror campaign.130 Diplomatic relations between Israel and Western Europe became embittered. Norway in particular, which had had no prior knowledge of Operation Wrath of God, was incensed.131
While the Norwegian officials publicly showed outrage and refused to cover up the story, they also showed relative leniency towards Israel. In February 1974, the Eidsivating Criminal Court in Norway ruled that Mossad operatives were responsible for the murder. Five of the six were convicted and sentenced to prison, with terms ranging from one to five and a half years. However, after twenty-two months all the Israeli convicts were pardoned, probably through a secret Israeli–Norwegian deal.132 Furthermore, the Norwegian police had apparently been less than comprehensive in their investigation and did not follow up on all leads.133 Other Western European states showed solidarity with Israel. The PLO demanded that investigations into the unresolved murder cases of Palestinians in France and Italy be reopened, but both governments ignored these calls.134 Diplomatically, Israel got away with a black eye, but it had to live through a major public embarrassment. Operationally, its infrastructure in Europe was largely destroyed. As a logical next step, Operation Wrath of God was temporarily suspended by the Prime Minister, Golda Meir. It was several years before Mossad organised the next targeted assassination against a Palestinian involved in the planning and execution of the Munich massacre. This time, their targeting of Ali Hassan Salameh was successful— he was killed by a car bomb in Beirut on 22 January 1979.
IX
This article has shown what intelligence Mossad received from its European partners and how it used this information to plan and imple- ment a series of covert assassinations. In the first months of Operation Wrath of God, European agencies had not known that the intelligence they provided would be used for Mossad’s killing missions. Unwittingly and without their prior consent, European intelligence had thus be- come a key element of Operation Wrath of God. European intelligence was used for Mossad’s operation in three ways. First, through the Club de Berne, Israeli intelligence received support from European agencies in identifying the Palestinians involved in the Munich massacre. This was important for Mossad because every killing operation had to be justified before the Prime Minister, Golda Meir. A Palestinian’s
130. Klein, Striking Back, p. 168.
131. Vargo, Mossad, p. 127.
132. Bergman, Rise and Kill First, p. 175, who cites a report by a Foreign Ministry official,
Eliezer Palmor, The Lillehammer Affair (Jerusalem, 2000).
133. Raviv and Melman, Every Spy a Prince, p. 191; Reeve, One Day in September, p. 197. 134. Raviv and Melman, Every Spy a Prince, p. 191.
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involvement in the Munich massacre or other terrorist activities was taken as reason enough to put someone on the kill list.
Second, Mossad received timely and important intelligence on the whereabouts and movement of Palestinian suspects, some of whom had been on its target list. European agencies thus helped Mossad to locate terrorist suspects, without knowing that these suspects were going to be assassinated. Israel thus received help in the planning and organising of their killing operations. The European intelligence agencies particu- larly helped with the groundwork of tracing the alleged terrorists on Israel’s death list.
Third, and most importantly, after every assassination in Europe, respective intelligence agencies reported to the Club de Berne, shared detailed police reports and provided continuous updates about the ongoing criminal investigations. In short, the murderers were kept updated about the investigations into their own crimes. This provided Mossad with very clear indications as to whether European authorities had any suspicions that Israel might have been behind the murder.
This raises the question: were the European countries involved in the Club de Berne accomplices of Israel’s covert operations? This article suggests that they were because European intelligence was essential for Operation Wrath of God. Furthermore, already after the second killing mission (the assassination of Mahmoud Hamshari), rumours circulated that Mossad was responsible for the assassination. With every assas- sination, Mossad’s responsibility became increasingly clear and main- stream newspapers openly accused Israeli intelligence of the murders.135 If European intelligence had vehemently disapproved of Mossad’s covert actions, then they could have either confronted the Israeli gov- ernment or ceased to co-operate with it through Kilowatt.
The opposite happened: intelligence collaboration intensified, and no agency ever addressed Mossad’s potential involvement in any of the killings. After each Mossad assassination, European intelligence dili- gently shared details about their countries’ police investigations with Mossad. By continuing to update Mossad about these investigations, European intelligence agencies signalled that they would not investi- gate the murder cases further and implied that they would let Israel continue its covert operations in Europe. If not necessarily approving, European governments had secretly agreed to tolerate Mossad’s blood- bath in European streets. An element that supports this hypothesis further is that, once the Lillehammer trial had made Mossad’s killing operations publicly known, France and Italy refused to reopen their own murder cases, despite Palestinian pressure to do so.
135. See, for instance, articles in Le Monde published after the assassinations of Hamshari and Boudia: ‘Le F.P.L.P. dénonce la ‘complicité: des autorités françaises’, Le Monde, 9 Apr. 1973, and ‘M. Boudia, militant de la cause palestinienne est tué par l’explosion de sa voiture’, Le Monde, 29 June 1973.
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The secret condoning of Israel’s killing spree is all the more surprising when one considers the European Commission’s official foreign policy line at the time. In the early 1970s, the European Commission took a very critical stance towards Israel, heavily criticising Israeli post- 1967 settlement policies. However, intelligence relations between the Commission and Israel were excellent. After the Lillehammer affair, it was known publicly that Israel was using Europe as a ‘battleground’ for its struggle against the Palestinians. Officially, European governments strongly condemned Israel’s actions, which led to a diplomatic crisis between European governments and Israel. However, the secret Euro-Israeli exchanges remained entirely unaffected by these official condemnations and continued for years to come.136
All this indicates that the international relations of intelligence agencies operate on a different level than official diplomatic relations. Through intelligence-sharing, countries are able to communicate covert messages that they could not otherwise address via official channels. Agencies in Europe and Israel found their unique international modus operandi and administered their own intergovernmental relations. In the world of intelligence agencies, where everything can be kept se- cret, plausibly denied and kept away from the public eye, a different logic applies to that found in foreign policy decision-making. When deciding with whom to co-operate, an intelligence agency only needs to consider national security interests. If co-operation can be kept se- cret, neither moral considerations about a co-operating agency’s human rights record nor public perceptions of a government’s image play a role. In this vein, the discrepancy between official condemnation and tacit acceptance of Israel’s assassinations shows a form of covert security logic. Intelligence agencies thus have to be understood as international actors in their own right.
One of this article’s core insights is the extent to which Mossad relied on European intelligence to organise its covert action. From an Israeli perspective, this is not very surprising, given that Mossad simply used the pre-established intelligence-sharing channels. It was a sensible deci- sion to use all available intelligence provided through the Club de Berne. Indeed, since European agencies provided intelligence on exactly those suspects that Mossad was considering to select for its kill list, it would have been foolish not to use it. Furthermore, for Israeli decisionmakers, counterterrorism was not limited to collecting intelligence to support law enforcement. Counterterrorism meant eliminating the threat, which included killing terrorists before they could hit.
From a European perspective these revelations are significant be- cause they show that governments in Europe failed in their duty to keep all citizens that live under their sovereignty (irrespective of their
136. For intelligence-sharing in the Club de Berne throughout the 1970s, see Guttmann, The Origins of International Counterterrorism, pp. 183–229.
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nationality) safe. Even though—as this article has demonstrated— Mossad held clear evidence that the assassinated Palestinians were involved in terrorist activities, its killing missions were extrajudicial executions. Any government upholding the rule of law should refrain from tolerating or supporting such behaviour, especially if it happened on their sovereign territory. Instead, European governments helped Israel to kill Palestinians living in Europe. Arguably, Palestinians were lulled into a false sense of security and saw their trust in European governments’ rule of law betrayed. A marked variance existed between official European policy towards Arab states and a more tacit and un- official backing of Israel’s security objectives. Such a policy would not have been easy to justify publicly or at a diplomatic level, but intelli- gence agencies were well-suited for this purpose.
Aberystwyth University, UK AVIVA GUTTMANN
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