Robert Baer, a former CIA agent, speculates about where the Dubai hit went wrong.
The assassins failed to account for the marked advance in technology. Not only were there closed-circuit TV cameras in the hotel where Mr. Mabhouh was assassinated and at the airport, but Dubai has at its fingertips the best security consultants in the world. The consultants merely had to run advanced software through all of Dubai's digital data before, during and after the assassination to connect the assassins in time and place. For instance, a search of all cellular phone calls made in and around the hotel where Mr. Mabhouh was assassinated would show who had called the same number—reportedly a command post in Vienna. It would only be a matter then of tracking when and where calls were made from these phones, tying them to hotels where the team was operating or staying.Strange that all these was not taken into account.
18 comments:
David Gardner in the FT suggested that Israel wanted the world to know it conducted this assassination.
Dave,
I dont think so.
I agree w/ J - Israel always wants to maintain ambiguity in such missions and never seeks to take credit or even telegraph in code that they are Israeli operations. Never.
It may be a combination of misunderestimating (to use a Bushism) the capabilities and competence of the other side and assuming the Dubai government wouldn't care to dig that deep. Even now it's not clear why Dubai wants to press this so hard - possibly some kind of internal politics where one faction wants to use this to gain advantage over the other. Certainly they are not doing it out of love for the Palestinians, about whom they don't give a damn unless it suits their purposes.
K
Agreed. The why Dubai is pressing it so hard can be found in the its Police Chief's words: He has challenged the Mossad's Head "to be a man" and come out and aknowledge the operation. It is an inferiority complex thing, I presume.
You want me to believe the Mossad (or whoever) does not know about CCTV and would not take it into account in an otherwise meticulously planned hit? Please.
Unfortunately I have no other explanation.
Now they're saying that Hamas did it.
There were probably Hamas collaborators - at least Israel would like you to think there was - nothing is better than to sow suspicion among the enemy that their colleagues are all traitors and cannot be trusted. This way the enemy can destroy each other without you having to lift a finger. Stalin did more damage to the officer corps of his own army than Hitler did. But that Israel knew Mabhouh's itinerary in advance points to there in fact being Hamas traitors. But highly unlikely that this was a purely Hamas operation - it's not their style (much easier to just throw the man off a roof top) and was far beyond their technical and organizational skills.
Very strange that a couple of the supposed agents left via Iran. It is possible that the Israelis were so confident in their false documents and secrecy that they felt comfortable exiting this way without fear of detection or arrest (a confidence that was not misplaced - those agents were not detained by Iran). Perhaps a little flourish to signal to the Iranians that we can operate on your territory and you'll never even know it until it's too late. So again, if you are an Iranian nuclear scientist, you should spend a lot of time worrying and looking over your shoulder rather than concentrating on your work.
It's also possible that Dubai has it wrong and that those who went to Iran were not part of the plot at all. Usually police are wildly off track in at least some part of their analysis of a crime.
K
Hamas's style, as you said, is different. This operation has the fingerprints of Israelis. Each people has its profile, and this is definitely Israeli. I can recognize them by the way of walking. Do you remember the CIA operation of "rendering" in Italy? They charged hundreds of dollars of bar expenses. These people were not filmed in the bar or flirting with "Gail", not one of them, they were only filmed working.
Maybe Dubai has decided to push the investigation into this since they have just recently gone broke.
It would not be the 1st time a failed government has used nationalism as a distraction from economic crises. Even Argentina is now making noises about las Malvinas again.
This makes more sense than J's "be a man" theory, which to me doesn't have much explanatory power. What is more manly than reaching out and physically eliminating your enemies while emerging without a scratch? Is James Bond less of a hero because he does not ever "man up" and confess his "crimes" in public and plead for the mercy of the court? Exactly the opposite. Disraeli (another manly Jew) said "never complain, never explain." Mossad recruiting has skyrocketed - everyone in Israel wants to join now.
K
BTW, I agree w/ J about the fingerprint thing, but it's funny that Americans (and apparent the Dubai authorities) can't tell the difference. At the airports they can't tell the apart nervous looking Arab males and frail grandmothers so they strip search equal #'s of both . They have no saichel at all - apparently having saichel is another concept that is a euphemism for "racism".
I keep imagining a conversation between "Michael Lawrence Barney" and the Dubai immigration officer:
Officer: And where are you from?
Barney (in heavy Israeli accent): Zgotlant.
Officer: And what business do you have in Dubai?
Barney: I am earr to buy vul for make sveter, cain? Kol beseder?
Etc. I'm sure the Israelis were better disguised than that, but not much better - if "Barney" is British then I am Swedish.
The latest news is that the Israelis injected Mabhouh with an instantly paralyzing drug so he would have remained conscious but unable to cry out or struggle against his suffocation (leaving marks). Such paralysis is an appropriate punishment for such a man.
I take it that you have read Baer's piece in the WSJ :
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704479404575087621440351704.html?
I disagree w/ Baer. Perhaps America with its fleets of drones (with which is kills not only Arab terrorists but entire families and villages worth of Pashtun bystanders) and its aircraft carriers, etc. can have the moral luxury (imposed on it by leftists) of never carrying out assassinations (or under the proposed Baer doctrine, only if such actions would prevent a war, which is a very high , perhaps impossible to meet standard - and apparently Predator strikes are not "assassinations" which puts the whole exquisite morality thing into question). Israel as a small nation surrounded on all sides by enemies who have no qualms at all about killing busloads of civilians, indeed who would push every Jew into the sea if they had the power, cannot afford this kind of fine moral calculus.
K
Did you notice that the big man in blue is walking along the line in the floor? He is very tense.
You might be very tense too if you had your target in sight, and were about to fulfill a mission that you had trained for for many months. The line I think is just a coincidence, given the way the floor is laid out (the line leads directly to the elevator door) - if two men are walking side by side one of them will be walking on the line. If you see the full video, they don't look tense in this scene, just like they are rushing to catch the elevator, as many people do.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYYHaf0kvJU
The subject freeze frame is around 8:15.
PS Baseball caps are fairly effective at hiding the face because most cameras are mounted high. I assume they were aware of the cameras and are careful never to look directly at them but always face to the left or right or backs turned. If you watch from 8:15 to the end of part 1, the "tennis players" do look a little nervous and pace the floor (and actually not like guys who play a lot of tennis, more like guys who drink a lot of beer and eat too much shashlik - guys, you should have your cholesterol checked), but apparently not enough to arouse any suspicion at the time. They really don't look like "British tourists", but I guess Britain is so multicultural today that a lot of British passport holders don't look typically British.
It occurs to me that it's strange that at least some of the team did not have fake Arab passports. First of all there must be many Mossad agents who are native Arabic speakers and can convincingly portray an Arab. Second, using passports from friendly powers upsets those powers or causes them domestic political problems with their native anti-Semites but what could say Syria do that they are not doing already if Israeli agents used fake Syrian passports?
K
PS I finally got around to reading the Gardner piece in FT. It's along the lines of Baer - such operations always backfire, the leader who replaces the assassinated enemy leader is even worse, blah, blah, blah. He gives as an example the killing of "Abu Jihad" who was supposedly a moderating influence on Arafat. Here's a hint - if a man's name is " The Father of Jihad" he's not really a moderate. If assassination doesn't work, why is the US working to decapitate Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Iraq and Afghanistan? Should Israel pray for the good health of Meshal because his replacement might be even more evil? Meshal is evil enough to deserve death on his own "merits" and God willing Israel will kill him soon and his successor and his successor's successor, etc. - at some point they will go thru the entire "A" team and there has to be a drop off in either the degree of evil or the effectiveness of the leadership or both. Just knowing that you are next on the list in itself makes you a less effective leader. Every minute you spend preoccupied with your personal survival is one less minute you can spend plotting against the Jews.
K
(1) Why there are no Arab passport holders in the team? It may be because a Dubai Arab can easily recognize a fake Arab, but for him, all Australians look alike. Also one always should look like a high class guy, everything is easier for one, he is treated with more respect by the natives. A Phillipine passport holder may not even allowed to enter the hotel.
(2) Regarding the policy of asessinations, the man Mahboub said he killed the soldier Sesportas and other Israeli - that alone condemned him to death. No Israeli dead is ever forgotten. I am definitely for that policy. Anybody hurting us should be punished very severely, disproportionally, ferociously punished. עין תחת עין
It is different from the Americans in Afganistan.
It's not different - we lost 6,000 eyes on 9/11 because of the friends of the Taliban. Americans have an attention span of 5 minutes but the leadership in Washington has not forgotten.
I understand that Mabhouh had been arrested and release several times after he killed the soldiers and they did nothing because there were other priorities at the time. But his current work in obtaining rockets from the Iranians could have killed thousands so the assassination was not just vengeance but saving Jewish lives in the future, which is even more important. But also to send a message to Hamas that none of you are safe, not Meshaal, not any of them. Past crimes may be forgiven, but what they do in the future may determine whether they live or die just as it did for Mabhouh, so it's not too late to repent.
K
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