Diversion podcasts. A note this episode contains descriptions of graphic violence. Listeners discretion is advised. So Massad's mission to assassinate the butcher of Latvia was the success it achieved its subjective It changed how we think about the Holocaust in genocide law, and it changed the lives of countless people, including the
people you've met in the last ten episodes. But the Zookers operation barely scratches the surface of what Massad has done over the years, and it's more than seventy years of existence. Massad has been, by its own definition quote involved in special operations, an activity in the service of the State of Israel, such as the pursuit of Nazi criminals. Massad has also rescued Jews and the diaspora from dangerous
situations and resettled them in Israel. The most famous of these operations was the four covert evacuation of approximately eight thousand Ethiopian Jews out of Sudan in Operation Moses. Massad also tells us that they are quote a key factor in the war against terror directed at Jewish and Israeli targets abroad. So for this episode, I want to look at some of the most important and spectacular operations the
agency has carried out. I want to tell you about some missions you've probably never heard of, but then shape them Middle East and even our world. I'm Stephen Talty, and this is good Assassin's hunting. The butcher is rather assassinated one of its top leaders. He was executed by a coney bomb hidden in a mobile cellular telephone. There's a time for diplomacy, and there's probably a time for direct action. Normally it's a simple matter, and that's the
moral dilemma. Can you work with these people to save your own skin? Episode eleven, Massad's Greatest Hits and Misses the jet. Let's start with an operation in which the target wasn't even human. In three, the Israelis decided they had to have a meg. At the time, the MiG was the most advanced Soviet fighter plane and the latest model. The MiG had been purchased by Israeli's neighbors and enemies, Egypt, Syria and Iraq. If it came to war, Israel would
be facing these fighter jets in the skies. They had to know everything about them, so forget about stealing blueprints or getting blurry photos from inside some hangar. They wanted to steal an entire plane. There was a problem, however, if you didn't have the plane, you couldn't fly it, So Massad would have to convince an air pilot to steal the plane for them. That was much harder than just going after the hardware. The mission began in the
early sixties. A Massad agent named Gene Thomas offered an Egyptian pilot one million dollars to hijack his own aircraft fly it to Israel. That would be about nine million dollars today. It was a fortune. But the pilot said no, and then he went to his bosses and told them about the offer. Thomas, the Massad agent, along with four others, were arrested. Months later, Thomas and two of his accomplices
were hung, while the others received extensive prison terms. Who's a complete failure, But for Massad the MiG was worth another try. In the mid nineteen sixties, they moved the mission's focus away from Egypt to Iraq and actually tried to convince two pilots to get in the plane and fly it again. The pilots refused. Finally, in nineteen sixty six and Iraqi born Jew named Yusuf got in touch
with Massad. This is one of the strengths of the agency's In countries around the world, there have been examples of Jews willing to help Massa. I asked Keith Melton about this. Melton is the intelligence historian an author of several books on espionage we've heard from in previous episodes. At one time, the total of number intelligence officers they had, and this was thirty years ago, it was only twenty
four officers, so they had a very small service. But they had the ability to look for other Jewish supporters virtually anywhere they could go in the world. If you needed a check cash, you needed to arrange a safe house, if you needed a rental car. They had an established contact within the synagogue, within a group in almost any country they could go. So this guy Yusuf told aside about this other guy named red fu Red Phone was
a pilot who flew the Big any One. He was a Christian whose religion had caused his military career to stall out. Only Muslims were getting promoted, so red Fot was piste off. He was also angry that he had been forced to fight against Iraqi Kurds, whom he had no problem with. He was ready to turn against Iraq. Massad sent a female agent to entice red Fot into the deal. She got him to travel to Europe, where
he could meet with her handlers. There they offered the pilot one million dollars, full Israeli citizenship and a good job. Red Fot had some conditions. Knowing that Iraq's government would take revenge on his relatives, he demanded that Israel get them out of the country at the same time he was stealing the plane. Massad agreed, but there were obstacles. Red foot superiors didn't trust him. He was considered a
troublemaker and he was a Christian. They only allowed him to fly a MiG equipped with two small fuel tanks, which would theoretically prevent him from taking it all the way to Israel. If he crashed on the way to tell Aviv, the mission would be a failure. Massad made the final arrangements. Red Fust's wife, who had no idea what was going on, was given tickets to Paris with her children. There, she was contacted by Massad and told
the whole story. She threw a fit, threatening to go to the Iraqi embassy and tell them everything, but her handlers finally convinced her to agree to the plant. Reda's other family members were secretly escorted to Iraq's Iranian border, where Kurdish guerillas guided them to safety. From there, they were taken to Israel, but Redfa was still in Iraq. Finally he was given permission to take the plane up
on a training mission. He pointed the nose towards Jordan's air traffic control in Jordan's contacted the Iraqis, who was a big flying over their territory. What was going on? The Iraqis, not imagining anything was wrong, told them their pilot was just getting some airtime in with the MiG. Redford turned the plane towards Israel. When he finally landed, it was found that the two small gas tanks only had a few drops of fuel left. The mag was
put to use. Israeli pilots trained against it learned how to fight it in the air. The next year, Israel and Syria went into battle over the Golan Heights. Was the Israeli Mirages against the MiG twenty ones There's my age applied. This film reportedly showing the dog fight and the sky between the Mirage jets and Syria's Russian built makes.
The cameras were mounted on the Israelian fighters and recorded these dark air battles Kale Israel shot down six of the Syrian planes and lost none of their own, and then they could get an Iraqi pilot. I mean that's not easy to do. That's Robert bar, a former CIA case officer an author of many books on espionage. The movie Siriana was based on one of Bear's books, and the character played by George Clooney was based on him. I mean, we had a pilot that defected the Japan
and make pilot. We got one of the air planes as well. But you know, getting hard equipment like that and figuring out what the avionics and the radar and the rest of it was extremely important for them and it was a worthwhile operation. Was it was quite amazing. What interests me about this mission is the human aspect. Getting an agent to betray his country is hard, but getting them to leave their country is even harder. Look how difficult it was to get the butcher out of Brazil.
Some espionage sources find their lives aren't really disrupted. Their children stay in their schools, Their wives or husbands are oblivious. But Redfa had to give up everything and move his extended family out of their homeland. It's really something of a miracle Massad was able to find someone like him and to convince him to make the leap to Israel. I asked Robert bart about using someone's emotions to get what you need. Well, it's helpful to go after a
press minority anywhere in the world. I mean, if you look at the KGB, most a lot of the defectors were from Ukraine. A lot of Israeli sources in Europe were Jewish who sympathized with the israel elements existence. And the same way with Christians who were oppressed and had no chance of ever, you know, holding positions of power. And that's not to mention, you know, once these Islamic groups came and started pressing, now that they would gravitate
to the United States or Israel. Mio had played on the butcher's emotions brilliantly, and now these Raelis had done it again. The engineer. Now let me take you to the nineties. Sometimes Massad targets terrorists. Sometimes it's political operatives, and sometimes it's people who betrayed their country. It's rare that the agency goes after a technician. But the engineer wasn't like other technicians. Yah Yah Ayash was a number one bomb maker for Hamas. Hamas is the Palestinian Sunni
Islamic militant fundamentalist organization. Ayasha's nickname was the Engineer, and he was a master of building explosives. His skill is even more impressive because dynamite, which is a favorite of bomb makers for its stability and power, was hard to get in the West Bank and Gaza Strip where Yosh did his work, So he used a mix of acetone and detergent, ingredients found easily in many household cleaners. When you put them together, they make acetone peroxide. This stuff
is powerful, but it's also highly unstable. In fact, it's called the mother of Satan. You can guess why. People who work with the Mother of Satan usually don't live very long. But Ayash had an extensive and impressively lethal career. Well. I mean, the Raelis went after arm stealers, especially ones that were supplying Iraq. They were very interested in the people who could make airplane bombs. And they went after them. Some of these people were assassinated in Jordan's and the
rest of it. I mean, they essentially viscerated the Palestinians, the leadership as well as the technicians. That's Robert bar again. A Yash built bombs for Hamass suicide attacks. The Mahola Junction bombing in the Afuller bus massacre, it was at lunchtime when the bomb went off, cutting down shoppers waiting at a bus stop in a fullah town center. It's believed that the bomber himself was among the eight who died.
The attack was time to mark the end of the Islamic morning period for the victims of the Hebron massacre. Whoever planned the bombing took plenty of casualties, at least fifty people injured, many of them. The Disnegoff Street bus massacre, also in n at the time the deadliest suicide bombing in Israeli history, with twenty two civilians killed and fifty injured. It had happened in Disnengoff Street, the city's commercial heart
and a place where people normally sit in cafes and relax. Today, though the bloodied survivors and those in shock, stumbled onto the pavement as passers by came to their aid was done. The Yash was also behind the Hadara Central Station massacre again and many more Hamas claimed responsibility for the deadliest terrorist attack in Israel for sixteen years. Police combed the wreckage trying to prove their hunch that the person who
took so many lives was a suicide bomber. The engineer was killing Israeli's inside Israel civilians right in the heart of the country. He later branched out and built bombs for other groups, including Islamic Jahad. He was like a one man bomb factory. Massad had to get him out of the picture and to cut off the supply of explosives for these attacks. The agency worked with shin Bet,
the Internal Security Age see on the mission. They even had the cooperation of the Palestinian Authority, the official Palestinian government body that controls the Gaza Strip and West Bank, in tracking a Yasha's movements. The break came when the agents realized that Yash kept returning to a certain apartment owned by a buddy from his childhood days. This childhood friend the Israelis had worked with his uncle they knew him, and they blackmailed him into cooperating with the operation. The
agents gave the uncle a cell phone. They told him they'd placed a bug inside so they could tap into a Yasha's conversations, but they didn't tell him was there was also fifteen grahams something called r d X inside. R d X has been used as an explosive since World War Two. It has no smell, makes it perfect for jobs like this. The yash worked with explosives. If he smelled anything, he might get suspicious. So the uncle gets the phone and gives it to his nephew, the
Yasha's buddy. These really knew that the yash often talked on one of the nephew's phones. They were hoping that would be the case again. They began monitoring all the calls in and out of the nephew's number. The monitoring was done from a small airplane that circled above the target. At eight am one January morning, a call came through. The agents listening in recognized the voice. It was a yasha's father. The call was relaid from the phone to
the airplane flying above to an Israeli outpost nearby. The second voice on the line was confirmed it was the Engineer. A signal was sent across the cell phone connection and the phone exploded, killing Ayash instantly. The most hated man in Israel, a Palestinian terrorist yah Yaha Yash, known as the Engineer, was killed in the Gaza Strip on Friday. He was executed by a tiny bomb hidden an immobile cellular cold. It's many from to I was excluding and
destroyed the outside of his head. How many people killed? Yeah, yeah, Yesh. We are investigating the case, and this is how then opposition leader Benjamin Yahoo framed the news. If it's true that one of the world's most vicious killers, a person who's been responsible for blowing up women and children and davies, has been eliminated, I don't think anyone should shed a tear of sorrow. I think equally that it's important to
send a message. I think such a message has been sent to all his followers, all would be terrorists, that Israel's all arm would reach them, that there is a price for terrorism. The a Yash operation reminds me a bit of Mio's work during the Zookers mission. It was technician versus technician in the same way that Mio went mano a mano against the Butcher. The nerd aspect of
espionage is often a sideline. If you go to the International Spy Museum in Washington, d C. They have small exhibits on the technology of spying with tiny cameras, the Enigma machine, things like that. But here the tech was the whole deal. Ayash new bombs, but he never suspected that Massad would be skilled enough to hide one inside a cell phone. The level of sophistication of precision was a hallmark of the agency doing more with less. Hey, this is Stephen Talty, the host of this podcast, Good
Assassin's Hunting the Butcher. This podcast project came out of my work on a related book called The Good Assassin. If you want to explore other parts of this story, check it out. It's not just a book version of the podcast. I spend time on different aspects of the mission. There are chapters diving into World War two history that we didn't cover in the podcast, and the book works as a kind of companion to the listening experience. You can purchase a copy of The Good Assassin on Amazon,
Apple Books, and on bookshop dot Org. Thanks the Scientist for this one, let's go inside Syria. For years, Massad In the Israeli government had wanted to know if Syria, which had been hostile to their Jewish neighbors for decades, had a nuclear program. They couldn't break through the security that the Syrians had put around their atomic research. Was there anything going on? Were they building plants? Were they thinking of building bombs? For Israel? The nuclear option is
the nuclear option. If any one of their enemies gets the bomb, it could mean the end of their country. I asked Robert Bart about nukes and how they're figure into the mindsets of spy agencies. It goes back to the Second World War when here it was planning to use a nuclear bomb on New York City. I mean, it was just on paper. It never went anywhere. But they're more mythical than they aren't real. But there's something
to think about. You know, you can aristolize all sorts of toxins and spread them over New York City, and that's certainly something the Israelitis are worried about. Or putting a tactical nuke on the end of the SCUD and firing Tel Aviv. This is why they're going after I ran right now, by the way. It's just quite extraordinary these operations they pulled off r and I just thought,
I never thought anyone could do these things. So clearly the Israelis have put a lot of effort and a lot of brains on, you know, all this problems, but places like Iran were considered the top priority. Everyone knew that the Iranians were trying for a bomb. As for Syria, who was on the back burner for Israel if you believed they would take the risk. But Massie started noticing mysterious things happening inside Syria. Ships would leave ports in
Asia and arrive in Syria with unknown cargoes. There were convoys of trucks criss crossing the country carrying something of Pakistani nuclear scientists. A Q Khan traveled to Damascus for talks, but talks about what There was no evidence on the ground that anything was happening. Israel spy satellites were picking up nothing. Still, some pulit Massad had an uneasy feeling, but they were in the minority. One guy Massad kept an ion was ibraheim Afman, who was the head of
the Atomic Energy Commission of Syria. If anyone knew what was going on, it was Athman. In December two thousand and six, Massad got word that Athman would be traveling to a European city. The Syrians had given him a fake passport, but the Israelis knew how to track him. Massad didn't want to kill him necessarily, but they wanted to get inside his head. So as soon as Othman landed in Europe, the Agency had eyes on him. At the airport, agents watched him get off the plane and
head to a hotel. They were about a dozen operatives involved in the operation. Once they found out what hotel he was staying at and which room, they got a team inside. They planted listening devices and then got out from their bugs. The agency learned Offman was planning to do some shopping. European cities have goods you can't get in Syria, so he was planning a day to blow some money. Once he left the hotel, operatives broke into
his room. On the desk was a laptop. Great, maybe there was something valuable on the hard drive, but the agents didn't have time to steal the computer, bring it to their base and download all the files. So what do you do. One of the team members was a computer expert. He installed software which let the agency track Offman's activities on the computer without the Syrian knowing it. They put the program on the hard drive where it was invisible, cleaned up, and left. The data started to
come in from Offman's laptop, and it was astonishing. There were maps, There were blueprints for a nuclear plant. There were even pictures of the construction in various state ages, and finally, a snapshot of a guy who looked East Asian. When Massad ran the photo through its computers, it turned out the guy was a nuclear official from North Korea. The Syrians were going nuclear in a big way, and
nobody had known about it. Massad went to work. They sent a team inside Syria to collect soil samples and other evidence from the building site. When it came back, there was no doubt Syria was on the path to a bomb. Massad and the Israeli Defense forces began planning Operation Outside the Box. September six, two thousand seven, a fleet of ten F fifteen fighter planes lifted off from inside Israel. Israel had seized control of serious radar and air defenses and hid any sign of the coming attack.
The F fifteen's aproached the site. When the pilots were above the target, they released their payloads. The bomb struck the building and the plant was destroyed. The attack had succeeded. Syria abandoned its nuclear program. The wrong man in Massad was thrust into the spotlight when Palestinian terrorists stormed the residents of the Israeli team at the Summer Olympics in
Munich and took eleven Israeli's hostage. Eight members of the faction of the Palestinian Liberation Organization known as Black September barricaded themselves inside the athletes apartments and negotiated for days with German authorities. Nearly five dred German security police have now sealed off the village and I'm mounting heavy machine guns in the square there, keeping cameraman and television reportance
and the spectators well away the girls. They demanded the release of two d thirty four Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. Was the Israeli government refused, really enjoyed in the vide of the round political rights be happy now to day has we everbly shattered and their tragedy the helicopters there appearing on onboard and there is really offated. When the terrorists and their hostages were transported to a nearby NATO air base where they were supposedly going to be flown
to Cairo, disaster struck. A botched German ambush resulted in the murder of the nine remaining Israeli athletes and coaches, as well as the deaths of the terrorists. Despite a few bad decisions by judges, some disappoint boks of petty mistakes, the Beautic Olympics were on the way into becoming the Posantist Olympics because the West Germans were to make them solves. Today,
one observed gave them a new name, the Bloody Olympics. Altogether, seventeen people were slaughtered yesterday too in the Olympic village and the other fifteen and the shootout of the airport. It was a catastrophe for the Olympics, for the Germans and for the Israelis. If you doubted that the government in Jerusalem would respond and that Massad would be the sharp point of the sword, here's how it. Israeli Prime
Minister Golden my Year explained it. Innocent lives around With that stage, the question is can innocent Israeli lives become a commodity that groups of men and women can just do with them whatever they like. Normally would say that it's a simple matter of course. But what happens these men demands the release from for them of men who participated in the killing of our people. But they say, alpenmely, they make a stake, and now the side over again.
But it means that people are set free when everybody knows that what they intended to do the first opportunity they were killing more Israelis. It's a difficult problem. I don't say it's easy, but if you cannot say, well, as long as it's a bounced Asraelis, it's long golden. My year quickly approved Operation Wrath of God, a covert MASSAD operation to hunt down and kill the planners of the Munich massacre. Massad began their reprisals in nine three.
Who was an assassination in Rome, a bomb placed in a telephone in Paris, another planet under a bed in Cyprus, and a third that detonated under a car seat. There was a spectacular military rate in Lebanon, using Zodiac boats and agents disguised as women all found their targets, but the mastermind of the Munich terror operation still eluded Massad. That was Ali Hassan Salome, nicknamed the Red Prince. Salom A was believed to be the operations chief for Black
September and the man who planned Munich. The Israelis put him near the top of the list of targets. Massad trece Salome to lily Hammer, a beautiful ski resort town in central Norway. They sent an elite squad, fifteen agents and even the head of Massad, s V Zamir. Some reports have said the team came from Cesarea, the same unit that Mio and Joseph your Reeve belonged to. The agency didn't tell the Norwegians what they were up to, which was standard operating procedure. The fewer people who know
the lower possibility of a leak. Once in lily Hammer, the Massad agents began following a man they believed to be a courier, an intermediary between the Red Prince and Black September. Posing his tourists, they followed the man wherever he went. On one of his errands, the courier headed to a local swimming pool. There he met a dark haired man. The agent studied the man. They had practically
memorized a few photos of Saloma that were available. Just like with Herbert Suckers, they were comparing archival pictures with a man in the field, and just like with Zukers, the two matched. They believed they'd found the Red Prince. The operatives acted quickly. They followed the target as they moved through lily Hammer. The next day he met with a blond woman, apparently in Norwegian. The two went to
see a movie together and then caught a bus. The operatives telled them closely as the parallel to the driver to their stop. Then got off the bus and began walking, apparently toward the house they shared. After the bus pulled away, the killed team struck. They shot the man thirteen times. He fell to the pavement, the blonde woman calling for help. The agents quickly disappeared. It was a clean operation, fast, with no bystanders killed. Except it wasn't the man that
Massa had executed in the quiet Norwegian town. Wasn't the Red Prince at all. His name was Ahmed Bushiki, a Moroccan waiter. The woman who was pregnant at the time. Was his wife to real it had been a horrible mistake and now an innocent man and was dead. It was the first murder in lilli Hammer in thirty six years. The killed team left Norway almost immediately, but six other Israelis who lingered after the hit were caught and arrested.
One of them apparently broke down under questioning and revealed the entire plan to police. It was one disaster after another. The Israelis had done what they always accused their enemies of, killed someone who done nothing to them. Now they faced the consequences. The agency was embarrassed. Five agents went on trial in Norway and were sent to prison. It took almost twenty five years for Massad to admit its mistake and for the Israelis to pay a med Bushiki's family
an undisclosed amount of money. The damage was extensive. The plausible deniability that Massad had always depended on was shredded. The agency looks sloppy, careless, the new which an investigation revealed, secrets, the location of safe houses across Europe, their tactics, even the names of some of their agents, and things kept getting worse. A year Later, the Israelis believed they traced the Red Prince to Switzerland, where he was going to
meet some PILO officials in a church. Two Massad agents walked into the church and spotted three men with dark hare and Arab features. They later claimed that one of them reached for a weapon, the assassin's opened fire, killing all three. None of them turned out to be the Red Prince was another fatal mistake. The head of the operation called off the hunt for Solemn but incredibly, members of the killed team continued to pursue him. They believed
they'd found the Prince in Tarifa, Spain. They approached the house that their intelligence officers had placed them in, but were intercepted by an Arab security guard. Another your fight. This time the guard lay dead after the Israeli said he pointed in a K forty seven at them. Operation Wrath of God was called off. It would remain in a deep freeze for a full five years until it was resumed under a new Prime minister, but Massad's reputation
would never be the same. Some even suggested that it had allowed its obsession with finding them unit killers to distract it from its main mission protecting the Homeland. I asked Robert Baar, the x C I a officer about Operation Wrath of God, and he had a different take on the blowback. This was, you know, a great actor revenge that was supported across Israel, and they just had to go right through the list. And you know, killing the Moroccan and it's a it's a setback that could
happen to anybody. But I don't know away slowed the Israelis down. I think the only thing that slowed them down is sort of reassessments of fascinations. And and that's a big question. I mean, they kill you seen it Gaza? Did it truly decapitate um Us? You know, that's something you have to ask the Israelis clearly. I mean it's it's like Sulamani when they kill him. I think it had a great effect on Iran. I mean he was
he was the de facto leader of Iran. Not how many those are those are hard calculations assassinations, but killing a Moroccan later in Norway in no way page to Israeli policy radio were just the same scores. They're going to advance them to be. It really occupied portions of the desert when Aaron Forces launched a surprise attack on Israel in October ninety three, many blamed the agency for having provided no advanced warning that is suceeeded in capturing
the key and overwhelming and movies radio positions. The fireline from Diam Kapoor war was one of the most dangerous moments in Israeli history, and Massad had appeared to be asleep at the wheel. Hi, this is Stephen Talty, host of Good Assassins Hunting the Butcher. The folks that helped me bring you the show, Diversion Podcasts have just launched
another podcast that I think you'll like. It's called Backstaged The Devil in Metal, a deep dive into the history of mental music, filled with never before heard interviews and stories from some of the biggest names of m ZACK, including Black Sabbath, Judas, Priest Van Helen, and many others. It's outrageous, raw and surprising at times. Backstage. The Devil in Metal is out now. Follow the show on Apple Podcasts,
I Heared, Radio app or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Spies, never forget if you've got to look at Massad's most wanted list in two thousand and eight a lebedies man named Ahmad Fayez Mugnia who was probably at the top or near it. Mugnia was the mastermind in a series of terror attacks against Israeli's around the world. He was believed to be the chief of staff for Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shia Islamist political party, and militant group. It was
a link between Iran and terrorist groups. Robert Barr said, Mugnia was probably the most intelligent, most capable operative we've ever run across, including the KGB or anybody else. Massad and Mugnia had been involved in the cat and mouse game for decades. Massad wanted to kill him, and Mugnia knew it. He was incredibly smart and resourceful. Every time the agency planned an assassination, Nia outwitted them and survived. In February two eight, Massad tried again the Massad track
move Mia around the clock. He lived in Syria and those rare times he emerged on a Damascus street. They got an alert that February. They got worried that Munia was staying at a safe house in the city. They couldn't get close to him. With an assassin on a motorcycle or with poison. They decided on a car bomb. Massad and his technical experts allegedly began to sign, build, and test the bomb. They removed the spare tire from a car's trunk and replaced it with a face bear
that actually contained a powerful explosive. They performed test run after test run. Finally they thought they were ready. The main problem was being able to confirm when Mugnia would go to his safe house and how he would exit. If you're using a car bomb, you need to know a person's route before they take it. That was tough. Finally, on February twelve, Munia headed to the safe house. He parked as Missubishi in a nearby lot and emerged from
the car. It was the anniversary of the nineteen seventy nine Iranian Revolution, and Munia was there to celebrate. The bomb car was close to the Missubishi, but as Mougnia emerged, Massad's lookouts realized that he was with a bunch of other men. Either because these other officials were considered out of bounds, or Israel didn't want to told to be that high, they called off the hit. The team's stayed in place, They left the car bomb where it was
and they waited. Finally, late at night, Muvinia came out to his car. This time he was alone. An operative pressed the remote and the bomb tore the car to bids. Unia was killed the loan casualty. That night, news trickled out and international journalists began reporting. A top has Belaw militant alleged to be the hide a series of attacks on US, Israeli and Jewish targets has been assassinated his
middle aged car bombings go. This was a small one and in the end only one person was killed, but the death of the man involved as rock Dieselmas militants in Lebanon and Syria, and it may be the trigger for further unrest. A senior commander of the Lebanese based Shiite militant group, his Ballah, Immed Mugnia, was one of his buller's most deadly operatives. The FBI wanted him alive and was offering a five million dollar bounty, but overnight
a car bombing in Damascus claimed his life. His ballah has blamed Israel for his death. Israel denies involvement, but many in the Jewish state and beyond glad that Imed Mugnia is gone. Hello, I am Hashima. Lebanon's Zella says Israel assassinated one of its top leaders. Israel denies it.
What will the repercussions be? Mad Mania, one of the group's top military commanders, died in a car bombing in Syria, who was accused by the U S and by Israel of being involved in a string of attacks which killed hundreds of here's former Knesset member Dannya Tom commenting, I think that the organization that finally reached him showed and very high skills, both in intelligence and in operational capability. I think that the fluent democratic world today achieved a
very very important goal. Munia may have been the longest running target Massad ever went after. It took decades to get him. So why agencies tend to have long memories. Their files go back many years, and they trace people's loyalties and behavior from childhood on. But even from Massad this was exceptional. As we saw with MEO, some spies never forget. When you look at the history of Massad operations,
targeted killings are a big part of the picture. Israel sometimes uses the agency less as an intelligence gathering outfit than as an instrument of foreign policy. I asked the intelligence historian Keith Melton about this. Is it possible that Israel sometimes turns to its spies when a diplomat in a suit might be a better solution. I would observe that there's a time for diplomacy, and there's probably a
time or direct action. The problem, I believe becomes you can believe that either is always a substitute for the other, and that isn't true. There are certain instances in which diplomacy would absolutely the best, but covertly there's instances in which direct action might be the only choice to do something. Israel uses its intelligence service very, very effectively. They are clear in their attention, and they use their intelligence service as an instrument of foreign power when it suits them.
Robert Baar agrees. He gave me some background on other countries who used their spy agencies as tools of foreign policy. It was it was a new war, and with German intelligence considering we nothing about Russia in the thirties and through the Second World were nothing. The only people who knew a little bit about Russia were the Nazis, and they were brought into the new German intelligence Service. How useful they were is very doubtful, but it was better
than zero. Don't forget that by forty six and forty seven of an existential conflict, and once the Russians nukes it was even more so. So It's like always when when in the Cold War we allied with very bad people, hoping they would help us against an enemy that could destroy us. The General Tartus is an old medieval fort built by the Knights Templar on serious Mediterranean coast. This is where a man named Mohammed Suleiman had a vacation house,
not far from a luxury beach resort. Suleiman was a general in the Syrian Army and one of the main contacts to Iran and Hamas Israel wanted him gone. Every summer, Suleiman would travel to his seaside vacation home to review files, chill out, swim in the ocean. But it wasn't like he went there in a convertible with the top down. He traveled from Damascus in an armored vehicle with bodyguards. More bodyguards were stationed at the beach house. They never
let him out of their sight. Even going into the water with him when he went for a swim after the assassination of Mugnia on a busy Damascus street, Syria was taking no chances. On one trip. It was a typical August day, hot, not a lot of wind. It was beautiful. Yachts were passing up and down along the coast. People were sunbathing. The rich. We're heading out to an offshore island to dine at one of the many fish restaurants there. Suleiman was enjoying the beach when another yacht
showed up. It was, according to one report, unusually sleek, but there was nothing strange about it. It was sailing closer to shore than the others, about fifty yards off the coast. Maybe its owners wanted to get a better look at the houses on the shore. Suleiman's bodyguards weren't alarmed, and when their boss wanted to go for a swim, they went in the water with him. The men were wading into the ocean when suddenly Suleiman sank into the water.
There had been no noise, not that anyone remembered, but when the bodyguards pulled into the beach they found the general had bullet in his head and chest and neck. He died soon after, and the yacht, which we now believe was carrying snipers with especially silence rifles, it sailed away from the coast and disappeared. This is straight out of a spy movie. The yacht the beautiful Blue Water
the Silence. Sometimes espionage appears almost to be a magic trick, a seemingly impossible thing where you can't tell who did what. Most by agencies have a motto. A lot of them are what you'd expect. Am I six, the British spy agency takes theirs from the Latin Semper cultists, always secret, no surprises there. The cias is the work of a nation, the center of intelligence, which I've always found bland and
vaguely corporate. I prefer their unofficial version from the scriptures, And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free. Massad also turned to scripture for their motto, or in their case the Torah, the Jewish Bible, where no wise direction is the people fall, but in the multitude of counselors there is safety. It's less certain than the CIA's, not as confident. It refers to the fall of the people. A nod to the many tragedies in
Jewish history. It doesn't talk about secrets, only wisdom, and that's something that's often hard to judge. Are you eliminating risks or increasing them? Are you targeting the mastermind of Munich or an innocent waiter walking home with his wife. Here's Robert bar once more. I mean, it's like always in the Cold War, we allied with very bad people hoping they would help us against an enemy that could
destroy us. And that's the whole, you know, the moral dilemma for the United States is can you work with these people to save your own skin? What I like about Massa's motto is that it seems to acknowledge how hard it is to find the truth. That espionage is a tough job, not just the tradecraft, but guilt and innocence. That's the hardest part. Good assassins. Hunting the Butcher is a production of Diversion Podcasts in association with I Heart Radio.
This season is written and hosted by Stephen Talti, produced and directed by Scott Waxman and Jacob Bronstein. Executive producers Scott Waxman and Mark Francis. Story editing by Jacob Bronstein, with editorial direction from Scott Waxman and mangesh At ticket editing, mixing and sound designed by Mark Francis, with the voices of Nick Afka, Thomas Amory, Angle, Andrew Polk, Mindy Escobar, Leants, Steve Rautman and Stefan Brudnitsky. Theme music by Tyler Cash.
Archival research by Adam Shapiro, thanks to Oran Rosenbaum at ut A Diversion Podcasts.