The Architect of Espionage
The Arab Spring and the Syrian Civil War opened an enormous window into Hezbollah for Israeli intelligence. Iran dispatched Hezbollah units into the bloody fratricide to help protect the regime of Bashar al-Assad from ISIS, Kurdish rebels, and other fractious ethnic and religious militias in Syria trying to survive the carnage. The Syrian
... See moreSamuel M. Katz • The Architect of Espionage
In the fall of 2006, during that rainy late-night shoot-the-breeze session inside Meir Dagan’s office at Mossad headquarters in the predawn hours before a new day, when his trusted division chiefs were discussing what to do about Hezbollah and the words “kill them all” were uttered, the idea was not hyperbole. The words were a marching order. It
... See moreSamuel M. Katz • The Architect of Espionage
History has proven that overconfidence and arrogance are Kryptonite for intelligence agencies and the nations they serve. The seismic ruptures of October 7 were far worse than those experienced in the smoldering collateral damage of October 1973. The perfect storm self-inflicted disaster was compounded by political hubris and strategic malpractice.
... See moreSamuel M. Katz • The Architect of Espionage
Even Prime Minister Netanyahu, whose contentious relationship with Dagan became very public, spoke glowingly of his former spy chief. Netanyahu spoke of the outside-the-box intelligence operations that Dagan would present to him for authorization, reminiscing that some of them were beyond the boundaries of imagination, they were so spectacular. The
... See moreSamuel M. Katz • The Architect of Espionage
Meir Dagan forbade any celebrations following the Negative Treatment of an enemy target. Champagne bottles were never opened, and no one dared clap. “We are not Gods,” he used to tell his officers. “The taking of another life is a last resort and nothing to rejoice over,” his former head of training remembers. Dagan never authorized a citation or a
... See moreSamuel M. Katz • The Architect of Espionage
It was decided that a car bomb would be used to kill Mughniyeh. Details of American participation remain vague. The CIA built the device and tested it over twenty times at a secluded site in North Carolina to ensure that the blast radius would not kill bystanders.16 The CIA would transport the device through a diplomatic pouch from Jordan, and then
... See moreSamuel M. Katz • The Architect of Espionage
It is not known precisely when Meir Dagan pitched the idea of a joint Mossad-CIA operation to Michael Hayden. Many inside the Mossad were furious at the director for involving the Americans; it was a severe breach of Israeli independence and operational integrity. Dagan hushed the uproar as nonsense. He preached the virtue that intelligence that
... See moreSamuel M. Katz • The Architect of Espionage
He was forty-four years old when he masterminded the kidnapping raid that sparked the 2006 Second Lebanon War and supervised Hezbollah’s support of Shiite rebels battling American and coalition forces in Iraq. The signs of middle age had begun to show. His guerrilla-style beard no longer concealed the onset of a double chin. He had gained weight;
... See moreSamuel M. Katz • The Architect of Espionage
Mughniyeh’s résumé constituted some of the most heinous acts of terror of the 1980s and 1990s. Among the acts of mass murder that Mughniyeh blueprinted: the suicide truck bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut in 1983; the bombing of the U.S. Marine Corps barracks at Beirut International Airport and the French paratrooper headquarters in the
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