The stunned silence in the room was broken by Downing’s question. Could he pinpoint them? Shavit could not be more specific than to suggest the Scuds were sited in the Iraqi western desert and in the east of the country. The Americans agreed with Downing that “that was a lot of desert to hide them in.”
“Then the sooner you start, the better,” Shavit said, not bothering to conceal his frustration.
Downing promised to pursue the matter vigorously, and the meeting closed with the repeated reminder that Israel must stay out of the coming conflict—but all the intelligence Mossad and Aman could gather would be welcomed. In the meantime, they could be reassured the United States and its partners would deal with the Scuds. The Israeli team flew home feeling they had gotten the worst end of the deal.
Shortly after 3:00 A.M. on the morning of January 17, 1991—hours after the start of the Desert Storm conflict—seven Scuds hit Tel Aviv and Haifa, destroying 1,587 buildings and injuring forty-seven civilians.
Later that morning Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir icily asked over a hot line to Washington how many Israelis had to die before President Bush did something. The short call ended with Bush pleading for restraint and Shamir warning that Israel would not remain much longer on the sideline.
Shamir had already ordered Israeli jets to patrol the northern airspace with Iraq. Bush immediately promised that if the aircraft were recalled, he would send “in double quick time” two Patriot antimissile batteries “to further defend your cities,” and the coalition forces “will destroy the remaining Scuds in days.”
Missiles continued to fall on Israel. On January 22, one landed in the Tel Aviv suburb of Ramat Gan. Ninety-six civilians were injured, several seriously; three died of heart attacks. The sound of the explosions carried to Mossad headquarters. In the Kirya, Amnon Shahak called a direct line number to the National Military Command Center on the second floor of the Pentagon. His call was even shorter than Shamir’s; the gist was: Do something or Israel will.
Hours later, Downing and his commandos were on their way to Saudi Arabia. Waiting for them in the tiny Iraqi border village of Ar Ar was Shalom. He was dressed in British army fatigues. He never explained, and no one asked, how he had gotten them. The news he brought was electrifying. He could confirm there were four Scud launchers less than thirty minutes’ flying time away.
“Let’s go!” Downing said. “Let’s go fry some butts!”
Chinooks helicoptered the team into the Iraqi desert, together with their specially adapted Land Rover to operate in a terrain that mostly resembled a moonscape. In an hour, they had located the Scud launchers. Over a secure radio the commando leader called up U.S. fighter-bombers armed with cluster munitions and thousand-pound bombs. A hovering Black Hawk helicopter videoed the kills.
Hours later a copy of the tape was being viewed by Shamir in his office in Tel Aviv.
In another telephone call from Bush, the prime minister conceded he had seen enough to keep Israel out of the war. Neither man mentioned the role Mossad had played.
In the remaining days of the Iraqi war, the Scuds killed or injured almost 500 people—including 128 Americans dead or wounded from a missile that landed in Saudi Arabia; over 4,000 Israelis were left homeless.
The aftermath of the Iraqi war saw Mossad and Aman under fierce attack during secret sessions of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Oversight Intelligence Subcommittee. Both services were roundly condemned for failing to predict the invasion of Kuwait or to provide “sufficient warning” of the Iraqi threat. Leaks from within the committee room spoke of slanging matches involving Amnon Shahak, head of Aman, and Shabtai Shavit, and committee members. After one clash, the Mossad chief had come close to resigning. But all was not lost for the embattled Shavit.
Mossad’s Department of Psychological Warfare, LAP, usually called upon to spread disinformation and blacken the character of Israel’s enemies with foreign journalists, focused its skills on the local media. Favored reporters were called and told it was not a question of there having been too little intelligence, it was a matter of the Israeli public having grown accustomed to being spoiled for choice in that area.
Familiar truths were trundled out by LAP: no other country proportionate to its size and population analyzed or used as much intelligence as did Israel; no service could match Mossad in understanding the mind-set and intentions of the country’s enemies, or equal its record for frustrating the plans of those who had plagued Israel for almost fifty years. It was rousing stuff and found ready space in a media only too grateful to be given “inside track” information.
