Annals of the Mossad – What Happened in Dubai?
Perhaps it’s because I am thinking, after all these years, of writing another thriller, but I have been obsessed with what happened last month in Dubai, although it was only revealed to the public earlier this week. As I’m sure most readers are aware, it was in a luxe hotel in that Arab emirate that leading Hamas military commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was apparently murdered on January 19, allegedly by the Mossad. If this occurred as reported, it was a “false-flag” operation with (supposedly) eleven Israeli agents entering Dubai under the passports of various nations (Britain, France, etc.). Those countries are currently stamping their feet about the affair, at least for public and media consumption, although their own intelligence agencies regularly practice the same thing. Several of those passports were, interestingly, dual Israeli-foreign, but more of that in a moment.
I am now going to speculate about what may have happened with the following caveats: 1. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar and this could have been just an ordinary, if overly elaborate, hit. 2. When I wrote my detective series, I did so from a position of absolutely no expertise whatsoever (in other words, total amateurism). So “I don’t know nothin’.”
The first notable clue is those “eleven” agents. Why send eleven for an assassination when two or three would do? Why not just knock the Hamas man off with a bombing or cell phone some place? It would be far less risky. And the Israelis clearly had remarkably precise advanced knowledge of al-Mabhouh’s itinerary. The Hamas leader had only left Damascus that morning, supposedly, according to some reports, en route to China via Dubai. And yet the Mossad had a minimum of eleven people in place, waiting for him. No wonder Hamas was so shocked that, when they learned of his “murder” on January 19, they immediately announced terminal cancer had over taken their leader. Hamas itself must have had something closer to a heart attack. To have this much warning of al-Mabhouh’s itinerary, the Israelis must have permeated them pretty thoroughly. The embarrassment alone, not to mention the internal finger-pointing and suspicion, must have been extreme. (From the Gulf News of Feb 19: An additional suspect arrested in Syria is believed to be a senior Hamas fighter.)
Nevertheless, the Israelis still must have had some motive for employing so many agents for a hit. After checking into a blacked out room at the Al Bustan Rotana hotel that day, al-Mabhouh went missing for four hours – and this may provide some clues. A meeting with an Iranian official has been reported and denied, also some Palestinian group. In any case, he was doing something and there was information to be gleaned from this man, most probably key information regarding Hamas and its allies (Iran, Syria, etc.) that certainly accounts in part for the elaborate assassination. In a world rapidly becoming nuclear one can only speculate what that information is, but we can be sure it’s not particularly appetizing. It’s also worth considering what al -Mabhouh wanted to obtain from the Chinese. The Mossad was out for al-Mabhouh’s knowledge even more than the revenge that is commonly reported. (al-Mabhouh was responsible for the killing of two Israeli soldiers, but that was years ago and the Hamas leader has been in Israeli custody since and released.)
Wonderful to watch the British jump up and down and wave their arms. The Brits who not only welcome but support half the worlds murderous arab crazies.
Roger, it’s plain as day that it wasn’t the ISraelis. That ‘video confession’ was obviously a way of casting suspicion on Israel. Eleven people for a guy with no bodyguards? And they all arrive and leave at the same time? FAKE BEARDS? Does anyone, even the Arab League, think Mossad is that stupid?
THis is proof of the rising tension in the Arab world over the Hamas/Iran alliance. Next thing that happens is Hamas buys a nuke from Tehran, sets it off in Tel Aviv, and the fallout drifts over Egypt and Jordan. The Hamas nutjobs wouldn’t care, but I think the Arabs have a legitimate concern, not just over fallout but over Tehran’s next target after Israel.
Heck, they might even save the Jews for last.
Sorry, Dave in Dallas. This has Mossad written all over it. This is way over the heads of Arab intell services in my book. Interesting stuff here… http://bigthink.com/ideas/18747
BTW, RLS may have a point about the kidnapping.
Or a kidnapping gone awry. Who knows?
Too many details do not fit. The dead one left his body guards behind because plane was over booked. How would assasins plan that and know about it? Why was it reported as cancer death and later changed?
The door to the room locked from the inside and chain was latched. How can you do that?
Mossad rules! hehehe
Put me down for “Who Cares?” Another bad actor exits the stage.
If the Israelis wanted to kidnap him, they’d have done it, and spirited him out of the country. The Gulf States are awash with private jets from rich Arabs, but also business planes from Westerners who do business with the locals are no doubt prevalent. Hell, Michael Jackson was a resident of one of them for a bit–lots of rich people there. One more Gulfstream wouldn’t have raised any eyebrows.
On the other hand, why have eleven people when two or three would be adequate for what they did? My guess is that they had advance knowledge of his arrival, but only a little bit, and probably didn’t know how they were going to carry out the assassination until just a bit before it occurred. It’s been reported that they tried to break into his hotel room, and failed. They then improvised, and talked their way in after he’d returned from dinner. I would guess that the rest of the team were “contingency” operators, there so that if this plan wasn’t going to work, they could ambush a vehicle, create diversions, etc. If the Israelis only had a few hours or a day’s notice of his arrival, they may not have been aware that he’d be there without bodyguards. *That* would have meant a lot more people in the hit team.
On a related note, are we ever going to see another Moses Wine book, Roger? When I read a mystery series from a particular author, each time I read a new book it’s as if I’m meeting an old friend, and I haven’t seen Moses around in a good long while.
Provided the videos can be taken at face value, it’s hard to imagine this happening without someone having sold this guy out. Either an agent inside his own, a rival within his own, the Fatah, his arms suppliers, international mafia types in search of access to swiss vaults containing $$$’s, etc.
Again, if the videos are to be believed – the Hamas guy was traveling with a false passport also. I wonder what state issued it. It would be really nice to see the stamps in it.
As DeNiro’s character in Ronin said: “Whenever there is doubt, there is no doubt”. Here, something appeared to have happened – or at least that’s what multiple parties want the appearance to be.
Or maybe Fatah did it.
They and Hamas seem to hate each other as much as both hate the Israelis.
The MOSSAD creates a symphony orchestra on stage! You see a circled victim. He is wearing what appears to be a white tee-shirt. He shows up in the hotel. And, is wearing a black tee-shirt, with the collar of a shirt peeking through.
All the 11 ‘agents’ (except for the gal), all appear to be older men. Not so odd in hotels, where men schlepp around looking for whores. But MOSSAD agents? Hello. Maybe, now at 70, I can be recruited? And, so can you.
By playing like dummies, the Dubai police bit the bait. While what “fake passport” showed up with the real Mab-hoo?
Israelis rarely use hallways. They’d tend to go from room to room through the inter-connecting doors. Or through the air conditioning system. And, yes, they can carry in an already dead body. Even, possibly, one “stand up.”
This is a real thriller! It brings out all the anti-Semites kicking and spitting. While the MOSSAD? They planned it. And, the execution was perfect. And, on top of that, you will never know!
Andy Rigrod #4,
I repeat… eleven people? For one guy? All arriving and leaving at the same time? Going in front of various security cameras changing looks, fake beards, dark wigs and glasses, KNOWING YOU’re ON CAMERA and knowing they’ll figure out you changed your look in your hotel room?
Eleven people, ALL IN THE COUNTRY FOR AN IDENTICAL NINETEEN HOURS, ALL LEAVING SIMULTANEOUSLY?????
Even ARAB intelligence services wouldn’t book eleven people on public travel to arrive and leave simultaneously from an ASSASSINATION, for pete’s sake.
This is kindergarten stuff. Not subtle, not smart. And the suspicious ‘confession video’, trying to stir up the vengeful anger of the Israelis, as if they haven’t dealt with all that stuff a long time for those soldiers..
Mossad doesn’t do this. If that guy was buying arms, they’d want to catch him doing it, not just kill him in his room while eleven fake tourists attract the attention of the entire Dubai and British government.
Out of the question IMHO. NOt smart, not sensible, not subtle, not anything like Mossad.
Color me unconvinced that Mossad was actually responsible for this.
“The Jews” are a convenient whipping boy for anything suspicious in the Middle East, just like “white conservative Christians” are in the United States.
I imagine the Israelis have a dozen 11 man hit teams working world wide all the time. Every year or so all the pieces fall in place and they do it. 99% of the time they walk away. This time, the terrorist’s body guards were gone, the room location was right, etc. Everything fell into place and the on-ground chief ordered the hit. A hundred other times conditions weren’t perfect and the team walked away. Don’t you think we, the French, the Brits, the Chinese, the Rooskies, have teams like this out and about waiting for perfect conditions? And don’t argue that that many hit teams always out and about would be too costly. I can’t think of anything more cost efficient.
Steven
Steven
The plot thickens…
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1151018.html
You are a fricken genius Roger! A genius. You should be working for Mossad.
11 people, different passports – Occam’s razor suggests: Maybe they really all were from different countries. Lots of countries had reasons to want to get rid of the guy. Murder on the Orient Express?
Support for your theory in the Haaretz link:
….The Mossad man said Israeli intelligence chiefs understood British authorities would have to “slap them on the wrist” and added:
“The British government has to be seen to be going through the motions.”…
Why did Mossad say that BEFORE the operation if there wasn’t a high probability (or certainty) of disclosure and that supports the theory.
If it was the Isrealis they are really slipping. Talk about poor tradecraft!
al-Mahbouh was alone and who ever killed/abducted him knew his schedule.
This requires insider knowledge at a level that few would have. If it was a betrayal the list of suspects is quite short.
Therefore, it becomes more likely that al-Mahbouh was either set up by Hamas to be killed by Moussad, or Hamas itself set it up to look like what everyone thinks a Moussad operation looks like. Thanks to Daniel Silva.
Has the body been positively identified?
It could be that the “obvious eleven” were just there to drawn attention while the real team swooped in to gather him up, and spirit him away.
Maybe he defected to the Israelis and they staged this to look like a hit. Not sure if anyone knows/remembers the story of Eli Cohen. He was a Mossad agent who so thoroughly penetrated the Syrian military that he became that country’s defense minister.
The Mossad are capable of anything and like the CIA, it’s the stuff you never hear about that is even more amazing.
Thanks for that, J. J. Lofton… Eli Cohen, indeed. One of the great stories in the history of intelligence, if not the greatest story. For those who don’t know it….
http://www.elicohen.org/
Hmmmmmm, Surely I’m not the only one who’s asking about the video showing the girl clocking his room, evidence that there is more video than they are showing us? If not, why don’t we have any video of the assassins gaining entrance into his room? We know there was a camera placed to show at least some of the forced entry.
And to forestall the obvious, don’t call me Shirley.
What’s fun is to watch the released videos, turn the sound off,ignore the captions and focus on one person per pass through.
Some of those guys remind me of some people I knew in the past: “Hey if you really hate him that much we’ll give you such a deal, $400 bucks and a case of beer and we’ll break both his legs.” “How about a case of beer and you spread the rumor he likes being raped.” Union guys with slightly bent noses.
Heck now I’m not real sure that the woman is a woman.
In short, it’s not 1975 anymore. CCTV, DNA, post 9/11 watch for al Qaeda security,searchable data lists, networks. Your error factor is very slim, and like anything else now a days, nothing is easy, takes twice as long and double the people. Heck, I bet there were somewhere back at base, lawyers involved.
So 11? That’s this crew. There were others scouting before them. And the command. I’d say back office in on it, fifty, maybe more.
Lastly, what a message! You think we won’t do CCTV, swank hotels? Guess again. If the Israelis did it, I give them a good old A++ for entering the YouTube age of communication. I imagine a lot of Iranian scientists and engineers are looking at their hotel door chains( made in China ), cheap door lock swipe cards, and not sleeping too good on their buying trips. Lot of stress, heart attack, stroke, suicides even. Could happen to anyone.
Look at the video shots. The asassins were operating at two different hotels. They didn’t know which one their target would select. Hence, two surveillance teams at each. That accounts for most of the eleven.
Interesting, Columbus, but puzzling. To fully believe your theory, you have to accept the idea that – assuming the assassins didn’t know the hotel – they were able to narrow it down to two. Confusing, since there are many hotels in Dubai. Perhaps there is another explanation – that they were staking out a second party. There is definitely more to this.
Was al-Mahbouh actually killed at all?
Roger,
Still, nobody explains why Mossad would send eleven fake people into the country at the same moment, and out of it again at the same moment… VERY clumsy and foolish.. and the business of switching appearances in your OWN ROOM, only to be captured entering as one person and leaving as another on hotel security cameras?
Mossad is not that dumb.
Multiple eleven man teams working the world is one thing… but these people were all simultaneously arriving into a small security-conscious country, and simultaneously leaving. Sheer stupidity for a working, traveling 11 person team.
There is more to this, and Mossad may be involved, but this is NOT a simple assassination by Israel of a Hamas man. There’s some very big bread crumbs being tossed on the ground for all to see. STUPIDLY big crumbs. Nothing here is as it seems.
Too sloppy for Mossad, unless there’s a very elaborate double-bluff going on. Think Gerald Bull: shot in his Belgian hotel-room doorway, and not the least trace of evidence, ever. THAT’s Mossad.
Would Mossad use fake passports in the names of actual Israeli (dual) citizens????? Not bloody likely. Not when there are millions of permutations of made-up English and French and German names to use.
I’m thinkin’ Fatah, trying to lay the blame on the Israelis.
Why eleven? Because they had no way of knowing the bodyguards weren’t coming, and had to have agents in place to take care of them, too.
Probably they gathered their info electronically, but want to sow the seeds of suspicion among the upper echelons of Hamas. Purges will come, and whoever is “liquidated” will be a bonus for the operation!
They could not wait until the actual arms deal, if any, because they can’t operate in China so easily.
Those claiming this is an “amateur” operation unworthy of Mossad must not see the confusion on the part of every other player – the Dubai police, the Hamas leadership, even the Euro=trash have no idea what happened. Sounds like a success to me, right down to the implausible deniability (who cares, nobody believes Israel’s denials anyway).
Why 11 agents? They may have had had multiple teams covering different areas – they may have nabbed, or hoped to nab, someone al-Mahbouh’s met with then split up.
Mossad isn’t known for being sloppy and I’m pretty sure they’ve heard of security cameras. So why get caught on tape? 1) it was unavoidable; 2) it didn’t matter; 3) to send a message (i.e. “anywhere, anytime”)
Roger and most of those commenting here have obviously never planned or executed a covert operation and know absolutely nothing about the operational tasks and how a team is utilized. And when you really, really don’t know what you’re talking about, your critical comments (“why would they need 11 people?”) make you look really, really stupid.
Roger, go look up what a “false flag” operation is.
Goog grief.
If two Palestinians (one is a brother of a Hamas previously killed by Israelis)have been arrested in Jordan and extradited to UAE and one Hamas higher-up has been ‘detained’ in Damascus, why is Mossad still the most likely suspect? This, combined with numerous dual- nationality passported Israelis too quickly identified, makes Mossad responsibility looking increasingly remote. UAE gov’t and Western news editors are displaying distressingly predictable knee-jerk reasons to blame Israelis to the exclusion of anyone else, as usual. Sorry, the ‘known’ facts don’t add up. Brits, Irish and French gov’t critics should display a little more sophistication here. And the Israeli gov’t is letting them. A little too convenient. Mossads ubiquitous reputation get’s more free build up while inner-circle Hamas or others scurry off. Let’s see what the UAE police chief releases after ‘interrogating’ the people in hand. Also, whatever Damascus ‘chooses’ to reveal after ‘questioning’ the other one.
AJAJ, I am certainly aware that I was using the term “false flag” in a loose sense (that’s why I put it in quotes) and that strictly speaking a false-flag operation is a pure change of national identity, i.e. an action apparently taken by the French when it was really the British. Here it is a variety of nations employed for the purpose of entry, etc. But the larger point remains. A lot of people(who knows how many really?) were being employed for a simple assassination. I am almost certain that the intent was to do a lot more than simply kill the target.
Oscar the Grump and Carla have some interesting insights in the comments over at Six Degrees of Assassination.
AJAJ,
It’s not JUST that it was eleven people. IT was eleven bogus people who put on wigs and fake beards while under security camera coverage, and who ENTERED AND LEFT SIMULTANEOUSLY in a time span of 19 hours.
THAT IS STUPID. That is not tradecraft, not caution, not professionalism. It is not false flag, its RED FLAG for security services.
No, I never planned or executed a covert operation. But if I was to try, it would not be this obvious. Call me crazy.
Just what is “Tommy Crown” doing these days?
Any organization can be sloppy. Even Mossad, which killed a Palestinian waiter in Norway thinking he was one of the Munich Massacre masterminds. There were numerous Mossad people involved in that, who had to hurriedly flee Norway. About five I think. This was back in the 1970′s.
If it was Mossad, it may be that interrogation, likely with drugs and various machines to measure brain-wave activity (determine effort to lie), was the primary objective, and other issues (team security, disclosure of inside info on the man’s itinerary, which in turn means high-level info through technical or human access to senior HAMAS security information) were secondary.
IF this guy were on a nuke-bomb materials or importation scheme, knowing what he knew would justify everything else — including giving up human assets inside HAMAS or technical advantage. It would be unlikely that IRAN would trust a HAMAS leader with aspects of supply for their nuclear program. It may be that HAMAS was with Iranian/Syrian coordination sourcing materials for a dirty bomb, or outside effort at a quick and dirty nuke unconnected to Iran’s effort to produce warhead-missile ready nukes.
The other alternative is FATAH abducted and killed the man to determine who was who among HAMAS, and assets of HAMAS inside FATAH. Using convenient identities of dual-national citizens they cloned passports from.
The CIA of course had about 10 people in the abduction of some Jihadi from Italy, with sloppy tradecraft and now arrest warrants out for them (they essentially cannot leave the US and Obama has at his discretion the ability to extradite them).
Let’s see just how Machiavellian I can get:
The main point of the operation was to encourage Hamas to conduct a circular firing squad. I.e., look at it as a psy-op, taking out the target is just an incidental bonus.
Or maybe they were extracting a mole, making look like an assassination, and running a psy-op against Hamas all at once.
It wasn’t Mossad, this was an internal hit by a rival within Hamas.
… or by Fatah.
AJAJ
p.s. If someone asks uninformed questions about a specialized process in which he has not been trained, that is known as ignorance.
Stupidity is simply not established in that scenario.
But we did learn a lot about you.
There are two ways to make sense of this as a Mossad op, if that’s the position one chooses to take: (1) either Mossad isn’t all that after all, or (2) while everyone’s chasing all the barking dogs (and this op has a passel of ‘em), nobody’s taking time to wonder about the dog that didn’t bark.
The third possibility is, it really wasn’t Mossad.
I didn’t know who to think was responsible and when listening to the tapes I found another even more confusing fact. One of the Israeli’s(?) turns to one of the other agents and shouts, “Bak. Derk-derk-Allah. Derka derka, Mohammed Jihad. Haka sherpa-sherpa. Abaka-la.” So it was neither Mossad, the FSB or ASCAP but Team American World Police. The live action version.
Isn’t it obvious? Mossad has done this in plain sight for all to see!
Terry Benedict thought his hotels were the most secure in Las Vegas! The security firewall was inpenetrable. Danny Ocean stole Benedict blind, and got his lady back.
Danny Ocean took 11 men and made a fool of Benedict and his marvelous hotels! And did it right in plane sight with cameras rolling!
I think Mossad is quite clever. Mossad’s Eleven! ….and we’ll throw a lady into the mix just for kicks!
Maybe he’s not dead.
Maybe he’s cooperating and this is how the mission impossible crew came up with to cover.
Nah!
Bush did it.
I subscribe to the theory that it was Fatah that did the hit, with Israeli training and logistical support.
Nothing is at it seems with this. It’s like the film, “The Usual Suspects” on steroids.
I can almost picture the bast**d whimpering, “Keyser Soze” before the pillow hit his face.
I believe it was an inside job. Dubai was in on it. And right now they are employing some very aggressive methods to extract info from this bastard. I’ll bet you he is still very much alive, and not more than 20 miles from where he was kidnapped.
And they will never find the folks captured on video tape. They were put there to make it look like they didn’t know what they were doing. Hate to be a Hamas leader right now, or an Iranian one.
Roger the more important question/issue is do you have the treatment into the hands of your agent, making said agent work a bit for you next week. If you want I can hit a few money guys out here in the Valley. Just give me the heads up.
Seems like everyone here thinks Mossad is really sexy.
It was all of the above!
Roger, the site you posted regarding Brit intelligence being notified shortly before the operation went into play is too NYT article-like for me. ‘Unnamed sources’, ‘British official’ et al.,
Until a Brit official goes public with information pertaining to the above article, it’s hard to imagine Mossad being this negligent in their ‘Serpico’ role..
Dave in Dallas said “FAKE BEARDS? Does anyone, even the Arab League, think Mossad is that stupid?”
Well, yeah, it looks amateurish but who else could have done it? The Fwench? The Egyptian Mukhabarat? I don’t see this as Fatah or an internal Hamas operation. Those guys aren’t that good. Four possible explanations:
1. Mossad (or whoever did this) really was that careless and amatuerish, but were still orders of magnitude more capable than Hamas and Dubai security / intelligence. They did the job and didn’t get caught.
2. Mossad/ whoever didn’t care whether they were found out.
3. They had very short notice- they confirmed Mahmoud al-Mabhouh’s travel plans and pulled this off on the fly.
4. Most likely: They want Hamas, the mullahs, and the Chinese to know what they did. “Yes, we killed him. How much information do you think we got out of him? Who do you think is next?” Psyops wasn’t the only reason but it was a big part of it.
This stuff is better than fiction.
In the Intelligence Community nothing is ever as it seems to be. There could be many reasons to carry out an operation that would point the finger back at your own country. It could be that they want the targeted group to THINK they have been compromised. It could be that it never really happened at all and the videos were just a made up production from other sources for their own reasons. We rreally have no idea.
The only things we do know is that stories have been released over a period of time that do not mesh. First it was death by natural causes. Next he was murdered. Now it was a Mossad Hit Squad. If it was Mossad why did they look at the camera? Experienced field agents know how hide their face without being obvious. Operations are carefully planned and have multiple backups and cutouts.
This whole story reeks of disinformation. The real question is who is providing that information and to what purpose? Speculating is fun and all kinds of things come to mind but we cannot even be certain of the most basic facts. Is Mahmoud al-Mabhouh dead? If he is dead, was he murdered? Is the video supplied real or fabricated? Is the leaked UK story real or just another part of the disinformation operation? It is not hard to get a story planted in the news.
What is certain is that we do not know what is really giong on, and probably never will unless this is really just a ham fisted attempt to blame a natural death on the Mossad and then it does make a little sense.
Jim in Virginia,
Mossad puts on fake beards, parades around in front of security cams while changing appearances, and moves 11 people with cloned passports into and out of the country simultaneously.. in order to look amateurish and thus deflect suspicion from them… with the result that the entire world is accusing them of doing it.
Makes sense to somebody, somewhere.
The idea that this was somehow something internal among various Arabs, in some combination, is almost too silly to be contemplated. It’s as if you’ve discovered that the chief of police in some city in America has been poisoned to death, and someone suspects the Crips. The M.O. is all wrong. If this had been Arabs, in one fashion or another, they’d have sprayed his car with AK-47 fire somewhere in Beirut, thrown in a couple of RPGs or something. Those guys are never this subtle. Apparently the authorities didn’t even realize this guy was dead for several days. As for the quick in and out of the country, which has been put forward as a sign of incompetence: if they had ample warning that he was going to be there, sure. If they only had say one or two days to arrange things, this may have been the best they could do. Since the assassins got in and out without any detection, and were only picked out on security cameras a month later, my guess is that they regard their exfiltration as completely successful. They’ll just stay in Israel for 10-15 years, so that no one in a European country gets over-enthusiastic, figures out who they are, and arrests them. No big problem.
11 agents … stolen identities of Israeli citizens … probably not Mossad. This was designed to look like a Mossad hit and to have all leads point back to Israel.
The two hotels is easy to explain. Most hotels have a longstanding agreement with another place to handle their overflow when fewer guests than expected cancel their reservations. The Mossad might have staked out both the original and the overflow hotels.
Roger, the assumption is somehow Mossad botched the operation with the video stream. Hell, in some of the shots, the actors appear to be looking at the camera. Another theory here is deterrence. Israel, assuming as I do that this is a Mossad hit, is sending a message to bad actors engaging the Iranians: You ain’t safe… even in the most secure arab urban capitals, or behind the lines in Lebanon, or on the streets of Iran. Is it possible Israel indeed wanted this as a public message to others? Seems to me Hamas will now have to think more than twice about travel plans of their top brass as will the Iranians.
On another front, the hit team itself. If you read ‘The Hi Team’ or ‘Munich’ – or any of the other books about Mossad out there. There is typically one to two observation teams who’s job it is to make sure you’ve located his target and can predict where and when he will be for the hit. The video supports this: only a few probably performed the actual hit. Israel had one infamous mistaken hit in the ’70s and obviously want to get the right guy! On a related note, they only want to hit the target. They don’t want any innocents or casual friends, hookers, ect… to be taken out.
In short, I would not discount the possibility that Israel may actually want these tapes out there. Sure they take a one week pr hit in the western press, but the mystique and ferocity and intellect of the Mossad grows. While the media will forget the video footage in a week, I’m sure the various bad actors out there will not.
Hi Roger- here is what I think happened (more for your story than anything.)
Mossad framed themselves. Dubai actually did the hit because they weren’t being paid off and treated properly by Hamas. In exchange for being present when Mabhouh was tortured, Israel sent a dummy team with the wigs, false beards, etc. to be intentionally photographed. That is how an 11 man team got out so quickly, and more importantly- why Dubai was able to assemble the evidence in record time.
Dubai got intel concerning Iran which is now a chip to be traded with Arab countries worried about Iran. Mossad got to ask a few choice questions about Hamas. Israel got to stick a finger in the eye of MI6. The passport information was stolen from EUROPOL by a mole from… where?
All the best.
The botched Israeli hit on Khaled Meshel? a few years back is instructive. The Mossad, in Jordan, allegedly dropped some poison in the ear of the Hamas strongman and were caught. Yes, a botched job, with diplomatic fallout, but the message there was a. we’re not scared, b. you need to be scared because c. we have a long arm and will stalk you in your friendly arab capitals.
My guess is Eric Holder will issue an arrest warrant and publish an indictment for the Dubai 11, and bring them back to Manhattan for prosecution.
But, seriously. There is no way to tell what the hell went down, and that is what makes it perfect. I have to say, show me a body. Produce a corpse, otherwise one can only speculate as to whether he is still alive, and who has him, and what their plans are for him.
I think Queen Elizabeth must depart for Israel immediately to clear up all this mishugina.
The Brits did it; that’s why they are yelling so loudly.
In the kitchen.
With the golf club.
I wonder who is playing who here.
Simplest solutions are usually the correct ones.
Still one wonders what the Dubai law enforcement people are up too. What horse do they have in this race ? Why would they make this into a front page issue …for Agatha Christie tourism ?
If they know as much as they let on they know I doubt that they would try to put a spotlight on it.
more questions then answers, there is a movie script in this for sure.
Thank you.
The best way to hide anything is to put it front and center and in plain sight.
Mossad can infiltrate all U / Russian / Arab / European intelligence agencies and not get caught, but they are going to have their pictures taken and spread all over the world…yearightsure.
Where was George Bush during all this?
The only way I can see that it would be Mossad would be if it were done in a hurry and they had to use “contingency” teams. Lets say a target of opportunity presents itself. You have only a few hours to act. You don’t have time to do things in a very clean way. So you engage resources who have already trained for this sort of action.
But several problems present themselves.
How would someone be able to request the room directly across from a major Hamas operative?
Why would someone change their disguise in view of the camera not knowing of someone from hotel security might be watching a security monitor, become suspicious and send someone up there to see what is going on?
Why would someone look directly into the camera and smile?
So it would seem to me that there was a lot of local help involved.
A piece of misdirection… First, this was anything but sloppy. Coordinating a large number of operatives to accomplish the mission was an indication of proper planning and training (and maybe a little bit of luck). Second, maybe we’re all looking in the wrong direction. What if the target was really a double or triple agent, and things just became too complicated for Hamas/Fitah/Mossad/CIA/KGB/whomever. The fact that none of the 11 is cooling his (or her) heels in a lock-up, and their whereabouts are unknown, points to the success of this operation where many things could have gone terribly wrong. Why was the guy traveling without a body guard? Was he planning a defection? Was he traveling without the direct knowledge of Hamas leaders who were suspicious of him? Granted, the Mossad is the boogeyman in the Arab World, but Arabs are just as capable to pulling something off like this and blaming it on Israel. Remember 9/11? A large percentage of Arabs still think the Mossad was behind that one, too.
I happened to be reading up on Mossad via wikipedia due to this hit, it looks like large squads are actually de rigeur for Mossad. Allegedly many of the “Operation Wrath of God” Mossad hit squads used up to 15 agents (9 agents were involved in the botched assassination that became the “Lillehammer Affair”). Fewer people probably makes it easier to get away with it, but more people probably ensure greater chance of success.
Personally I have no reason to believe this wasn’t the Mossad in action.
“when two or three would do?”
Are you listening to yourself? This isn’t Hollywood.
So many opinions. So little Intelligence experience.
“Those countries are currently stamping their feet about the affair, at least for public and media consumption, although their own intelligence agencies regularly practice the same thing”
Um, really? Britain and france send hit-men overseas on civilian passports to kill people? And they do this REGULARLY? I’d love to see some evidence for that.
The original getaway plan has now been revealed. Eleven hang gliders were discovered on the top floor of the Burj Khalifa (world’s tallest building). This also explains why the Antiquan freighter “Francop” (which Israel recently seized) has been seen lurking off Dubai’s shore. This plan had to be abandoned when the Burj Khalifa was unexpectedly closed a short time after it’s grand opening. Rumor is that Burj Khalifa was closed to keep Mossad from using it. Mossad is everywhere.
#76 Matthew
The KGB never kills civilians either. (I want some of what you’re on.)
Do you really believe that governments such as France, England, America, or China don’t use targeted killing as a tactic? Ya think they recruit and train these hit teams only when they need them or do you think they have a few trained killers standing by “on Call?” Proof you want? You probably won’t get confirmation of French extra judicial hits with a Google search, though.
Steven
Three words: Rainbow Warrior. Aukland.
What if they didn’t murder him? Roger suggested that he was kidnapped. What if he was a double agent and they were picking him up? What better cover than to pretend he was murdered?
35. DamnCat, I’ll take door number 2. The cameras didn’t matter.
I doubt that the hotel cameras are so closely monitored that anyone would have noticed the activities of the team. Security personel usually aren’t sitting there one man per camera. A person watching several monitors may have seen a person go in but miss seeing him come out in disguise. The activites would have only stood out in real time if the people monitoring the cameras already had at least an inkling that something was going on. The activities are suspicious only in hindsight. So the ‘team’, whoever they were, were as not as sloppy as some seem to think at least in regards to the cameras. Being seen on camera in real time posed little risk to their mission. Seems to me that all of this together, passports, video, apparent sloppiness, number of agents, their departure etc., intentionally casts a pretty wide net of suspicion which is useful in and of itself.
If the point of this assassination/kidnapping/whatever was to make the Arabs look weak, then it was successful.
If the point was to drive a wedge between the Brits and their Gulf Arab masters, then it was also successful. The Brits are having a hissy fit now because they are entirely dependent on Gulf money and Islamic banking to stay afloat. Europeans, who also want their share of rapidly dwindling “Islamic Banking” cash, are also put on the spot.
No matter who did it, the Arabs look like poor fools. al-Mabhouh was supposed to be a high-level operative and yet he was traveling alone without a bodyguard? Why? Hamas can’t afford one? Dubai is out of petty cash? They can’t even afford to do a reasonable investigation on their own – they have to run crying to the international community.
Of course, the assassination/kidnapping whatever would have been more effectively symbolic if it took place in the empty, rotting Burj Dubai Tower.
“and the Hamas leader has been in Israeli custody since and released.”
Body turned over to son a week later.
Dubai is extremely vulnerable to Iran. Hamas is Iranian Shia proxy.
Extraction.
I read the door was latched from the inside. How do you do this and kill the guy? He was traveling without a bodyguard? It was staged to cast suspisions elsewhere than what really happened?
If it could be done Mossad could do it..
I understand that Mossad has a policy of not commenting on such things..so much the better.
I agree that there are mysteries here. Either the agents were meant to be seen on video (most likely) or this was not Mossad. This leaves the question of why they were meant to be seen. The same applies to the particular choice of passports and the simultaneous arrival and departure.
It’s not surprising that there would be 11 agents on a hit – only that they would all go to the location of the hit. The logistics, surveillance, counter-surveillance, ELINT and other needs of the hitters requires quite a few people.
My guess: Mossad knew they’d be blamed anyway, so they decided to add a bunch of FUD to the operation.
EU nations do not care one bit about this operation. While they currently feign indignance, in a week, their public displays of outrage will totally evaporate. The real passport holders have been vindicated. Everyone knows they were not involved and they have thus derived no harm from the temporary use of their identities. Look for more of this in the future.
Many entities are currently very frustrated with the Iranian situation and this operation was a message to Iran along with the convenient disposal of a high level Hamas operative. If Iran wants to continue along on their present course there will be much more of this.
Dubai has now also been sent a signal. While they tout their city as a world capital for commerce, travel and leisure, they have also been harboring and facilitating commerce between various terrorist entities and Iran.
The hypocrisy of the moderate Islamic State will increasingly be put on display. As anyone who has been to Dubai knows, it is a place where Muslims can act like utter infidels with total impunity. I defy anyone to go to the Dubai Fairmont and observe that it is not a complete palace of prostitution. Walk down Sheikh Zayed Road any evening – you will need a counting device to keep track of the advances you receive from prostitutes. While the Emiratis’ punish alcohol consumption and beach intimacy, it is only for the purpose of conducting occasional show trials. Everyone there knows illicit activities thrive in Dubai.
Watch for a pullback by the Dubai Police. They have completely over-played their hand and they do not want news agencies from all over the world to come to Dubai to produce expose’s.
Jim in Virginia
had your CIA clever boys listened to the Fwench intelligence, your twin towers would still stand in Manhattan
Has anyone addressed the point that all this “bungling” was only discovered after the fact? Will anything we’ve seen here; videos, passports, etc prevent the same thing from happening again? With 11 different people? Heck most of the original 11 will be mostly indistinguishable in 6 months or a year from now.
If this was a Mossad operations (and I can’t think of anyone else who wanted him dead enough to try this) then I think we are seeing the acceptance that the “real world” (CCTVs) will bust you but only after the deed has been done!
You have said it better than I did, John Moore. It’s indeed not surprising there would be 11 agents on this enterprise, but it is surprising that so many of them would be on plain view in video. I agree this was deliberate and some sort of dumb show for public consumption, including the silly makeup.
The only thing that matters here is that a terrorist is dead. If he isn’t dead, there is a problem.
All the rest of the commenting is just kiddush table talk – if that even.
You say: all 11 arrived on the same flight and all left together, 19 hours later, apparently also on one flight. From where did they depart and to which airport did they fly after they left? Which airline(s) were involved and who made the bookings? This should not be too difficult to establish and may provide better clues than the (amateurish) guessing displayed in these comments.
While we’re preoccupied talking about this operation, what is actually going on that needs to be kept hidden?
Was all this just a bit of misdirection?
This was not a Mossad operation but an operation organized by a few intelligence agencies to engineer a notorious frame-up of the Mossad. There is no way that all those agents lives would be jeopardized by being filmed operating together in one foreign area. That the MSM believes every statement the incompetent Dubai Police Chief utters makes the MSM appear to be bit players in this Moslem farce.
Mossad or not, they certainly weren’t amateurs: Mahmoud al-Mabhouh is dead, or kidnaped, and they got away. Why would anyone intentionally look so amateurish? If it’s a frame up of Mossad, why make it look like a spy movie parody? Was it so easy they had to liven things up to keep from being bored?
The butler did it, with the tire iron in hte pantry. Period.
I have one point to make about this operation.
Why do people solely focus on the fact that the agents were caught on CCTV cameras? From the videos, we can see that CCTV cameras are ubiquitous around Dubai, which means, under no circumstances, could the assassins not have been seen by a CCTV system.
Look at the videos again, the assassins are always acting normally, you don’t see a very blunt and direct action in front of the camera, and definitely nothing that would arise suspicion from an overworked security guard. The agents acted normally, under high surveillance, and because they acted normally, not like a secret spy or something silly, they weren’t spotted until long after the fact.
Or, think about it this way. The Dubai intelligence service has pierced together what happened, but in took them a month. There was no way the Dubai service spotted this operation as it occurred.
What I see, from the video, is that the agents did not try to avoid the cameras, because doing so would be highly suspicious. Instead, they worked within the environment they had and did everything in such a way that they succeeded.
Other quick points, the team did not leave all in one flight, they sort of scattered around the globe. Second, not every member has been located. Notice that the assassins all wore ball caps, obscuring their faces. Only the front people, those who were buying the hotel rooms, did not wear caps. That makes perfect sense, those agents shouldn’t wear a cap, because that would be suspicions.
Really, I see no signs of poor planning in this operation. It was a success, the agents got their person and got out. The target was killed in a very quite manner and it appears that the Dubai police have no leads beyond passports. And those passports will never be used by the assassinating agency again. Look at it this way, the killing was done, even though the environment was saturated in CCTV cameras, that speaks to professionalism and a well trained group.
There is nothing in the tapes that suggests that this is not an operation of the highest skill and execution.
We just got the latest from Jane’s Military Hardware Manual. The Israeli Moussad has developed a new subsonic assassination device developed from Sleep Center pillows. Once employed, it is almost always fatal. Described as cumbersome, it takes an eleven man crew to transport and operate. Rumor has it that demand for this weapon has caused a serious shortage of Posture Pedic pillows.
Those who know don’t talk. Those who talk don’t know. If it *was* a Mossad operation, it’s unlikely their European ambassadors were read into it. That way, when they’re summoned or “invited” in to explain to the French, Brits, Irish or Germans they “don’t know anything about this”.
But my money is on Fatah. Don’t sell their capabilities short. Many were trained by the Soviets, and PLO had their own operatives responding to Mossad hits after Munich. And how curious that the only folks arrested and extradited back to Dubai are … Palestinians. That doesn’t surprise me. Al-Mabhouh was in a dangerous business and made lots of enemies.
This has all the marks of a false flag operation meant to put the focus on Israel. Why, after all, would Mossad put a half dozen of its own nationals at risk by using their names? Anyone with access to airline records could have pulled the names of folks that have flown to Israel along with their passport info.
“Being seen on camera in real time posed little risk to their mission.”
Maybe at the hotels you stay in, but many do have the monitors being viewed in real time. And seeing something suspicious such as someone changing a disguise in plain view of the camera would be good reason to send security up there immediately.
Try just walking down the hall of a Vegas hotel just checking the doorknobs. You won’t make it to the end of the hallway.
These are the last recorded words of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, “My G-d, eleven count Egyptian cotton!”
Raymond in DC
“this has all the marks of a false flag operation meant to put the focus on Israel.”
thank you.
“those who know don’t talk, those who talk don’t know”
perfectly said.
Then again, this is my fifth comment in this thread. I guess I’m one of those who don’t know.
Whatever the intentions of the eleven (Oceans 11?) a legend has been born. We know that the eleven elusive asassination team members will forever be memorialized in the tomes of the dark professions. Whether they jumped from the highest floor of the Burj Khalifa and hang glided to a waiting ship, or they simply vanished into the night, we are now captured by the courage of those incredible people that did this deed. Few intelligent people will be unhappy with the outcome.
We may disagree with their motives and their methods, but I for one would be forever proud that I had played a role in this incredible story.
The adage of the famous British double X system was that the greater the truth the larger the deception. Roger Simon implicitly alludes to this in his dissection of the events in Dubai. What is certain is that nothing here is as it seems, and if this is a really good operation, we will never know who did what to whom, no matter how much we think we know.
100 Crosshatch. Good grief. I didnt say they weren’t being monitored in real time. I suggested that one person watching over SEVERAL monitors could miss something. Even Vegas doesn’t have one person per camera.
“And seeing something suspicious such as someone changing a disguise in plain view of the camera would be good reason to send security up there immediately.” Give me a little credit will ya. Obviously it would but no one was changing in plain view now were they?
“Maybe at the hotels you stay in” Excuse me? Pretty snide thing to say since you know nothing about me or the types of hotels I stay in. I suggest you go back and read what I really wrote and not what you think I wrote.
what business does a hamas militant have in china?
Yawn!! I’m just glad he’s dead. How about an encore, let’s say, of all of Hezbollah so that Lebanon can go back to the once great land that it was. He was a thug and got off far more lightly than his victims.
Other than his books this is as close as I’ll get to Roger Simon.
1. Seems the killers needed info from al-Mabhouh before killing him or a simple impersonal hit in Gaza would have sufficed.
2. They must have gotten that info quickly…in 10 minutes or less if you believe the vid’s time line…meaning this guy may have been a triple agent.
3. The hit squad must have known Mabhouh’s activities in his absence from the hotel…and wanted that info b4 86ing him.
4. There is probable misinformation about the state of the body and how the hit squad entered/exited Mabhouh’s room.
5. Al-Mabhouh was alive when the assasains left the suite. Al-Mabhouh locked and chained the door behind them then expired naturally from heart failure from the trauma or from a time release poison administered minutes earlier by the hit squad…or suicide.
6. Killing Al-Mabhouh was not the objective. Getting information was. As such the 11 members were not particularly concerned with camera surveillance.
The information released by Dubai authorities is both incomplete and inaccurate. Get out your crystal ball Roger! This is a good one.
Trust me if Israel sent 11 people for an assasination hit ,they would be taking out more than one wanted terrorist.A whole slew of terrorist bodies would be in their wake.Meh ,if it was the Mossad,i wont be shedding any tears for Hamas.Id be saying- whos next?
One would think (hope, if you ever stay a hotel) that a failed attempt to reprogram a lock that didn’t originate with security or the front desk would generate some real-time suspicion – not just show up on the month end report.
There is a reason for the large team. It is professional.
We’re used to watching TV shows and thinking the world works like Mission Impossible. The five heroic agents put together a complex plot and it almost, almost fails, but in the last minute Cinnamon gets the guard to look away and it all works out. In reality, a good operation does not almost fail. Yes, a few people actually do the deed. The remainder are there as support, as redundancy as eyes, as subtle or not subtle influences on events so that things will go exactly as the team wishes. They add a mix of skill and capabilities. Some are there for emergency, to make the extraction go well. In Mission Impossible, the team always started with near-omniscient intelligence: where the bad guy is, what he will be doing, where he will be, etc. Not so in the real world. The team had to track and analyze unpredictable events on the ground in real time, and make things up on the fly.
And they did it with only eleven people? I’m impressed.
Assuming the video is legit. There were 7 on the floor of the hotel when the event went down – 4 big burly guys, the 2 hall monitors and 1 coordinator/cleanup in the adjacent room. Two in the hotel lobby (the man and woman with the floppy hats), bringing the total to 9. The two previous lobby watchers (red and blue shirts with pants) – total now 11. The tennis players with the white and blue shirts and shorts – 13 total. The room renter, logistics man – total 14.
looks like everyone here thinks Mossad is really sexy.
As a constant reader of your blog I want to tell you that your writing skills are superb.