Did CIA and Mossad Collaborate in 2008 Assassination of Top Hezbollah Officer?
US marines search for victims, on October 31, 1983, after a terrorist attack against the headquarters of the U.S. troops. Image by Getty Images
The CIA and the Mossad collaborated in the 2008 assassination of Imad Mughniyeh, the top Hezbollah operations officer blamed for an array of terrorist attacks.
Two in-depth reports published this weekend, in the Washington Post and Newsweek, for the first time revealed the extent of the cooperation ahead of the Feb. 12 2008 killing.
It included a long period of both agencies tracking Mughniyeh in Damascus, where he kept a secret residence.
The CIA built the explosive device, hidden in the spare tire of an SUV, and the Mossad detonated it long distance from Israel as he walked past. Agents from both agencies identified him.
Mughniyeh is believed to be behind, among other terror incidents, attacks on U.S. and French military targets in Beirut in 1983, which killed 299 people, and on the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires in 1994, which killed 85 people. President George W. Bush agreed to the killing in part because Mughniyeh was believed responsible for attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq at the time.
Lawyers for the Bush administration said the killing did not violate a U.S. ban on assassinations, as Mughniyeh posed an immediate danger to Americans.
Hezbollah blamed Israel for the killing; a number of retaliatory actions since then have failed, and in recent weeks Hezbollah arrested an alleged spy in its upper ranks who was feeding Israel information about the planned attacks.
Israel killed Mughniyeh’s son last month in a strike on a Hezbollah convoy on the Syrian Golan Heights.
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
