The deconstruction of Arafat’s image was only part of Mossad’s role in Israel’s information warfare, infowar, which had become the hottest concept in the Kirya, the Israeli Defense Forces headquarters. Infowar was designed to exploit the ever-advancing technological concepts of the late twentieth century to allow Israel to launch swift, stealthy, widespread, and devastating assaults on an economic, military, and civilian infrastructure before an attack could be launched. Prime targets were Syria and Iran.
Powerful computer microprocessors and sophisticated sensors, and the training to use them, had been provided by the United States under yet another sweetheart deal Sharon had negotiated with the Bush administration.
IDF officers and several Mossad specialists had been sent to the National Defense University in Washington and the Naval War College at Newport, Rhode Island, to learn how to cripple enemy stock markets and morph images of a foreign leader. A favorite among the Israeli students was a tape of the ayatollahs appearing on Iranian television sipping whisky and carving slices from a ham, both forbidden in Islam. Before they had graduated, the students had flown on
Mossad technicians were researching ways to infect enemy computer systems with a variety of virulent strains of software viruses. They would include the “logic bomb,” designed to remain dormant in an enemy system until a predetermined time when it would be activated and begin to destroy stored data. Such a bomb could attack an enemy’s air defence system or a central bank. The technicians had already created a program that could insert booby-trapped computer chips into weapons a foreign arms manufacturer planned to sell to a hostile country like Iran or Syria. Mossad
Mossad agents were now equipped with a briefcase-size device that generated a high-powered electromagnetic pulse. Placed near a building, the pulse burned out all electronic components in the building. The device had its own built-in self-destruct mechanism that ensured its innards remained a secret. At the Institute for Biological Research, scientists were working to see if microbes could be bred to eat the electronics and insulating material inside computers in the same way that microorganisms consumed trash. Other scientists were working on aerosols that could be sprayed over enemy troops. Biosensors flying overhead would then track their movements from their breath or sweat.
On the other floors below, where the specialists created their Web site entries about Yasser Arafat, other equally skilled experts were going about their work.
The Research and Development laboratories on the second floor continued to create and update surveillance devices and adapt weapons. From there had come the matchbox-size camera, which could record and photograph a subject at over sixty yards’ distance, and a variety of knives, including one that could slice through a spinal cord. These had been designed for the kidon, the unit specializing in assassination.
The third floor was occupied by the archives and the liaison offices with Shin Bet—Israel’s equivalent of the FBI, with responsibility for Israel’s internal security and foreign intelligence services that were deemed friendly. These included the CIA. Britain’s MI6, French and German services, and the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service. Part of the floor was allocated to the Collections Department. This collated all incoming intelligence and distributed it to the appropriate departments on a need-to-know basis. The archives received everything; the data would be stored on high-speed Honeywell computers.
