These included psychoprofiles of world leaders, terrorists, politicians, leading financiers—anyone who could be a help or hindrance to Israel. A typical profile contained personal details and close relationships. The one on President Bill Clinton listed the many transcripts from a yaholomin surveillance of his conversations with Monica Lewinsky, some verging on phone-sex calls (see chapter 5, “Gideon’s Nuclear Sword,” pp. 103–5). The profile of Hillary Clinton contained a close analysis of her contact with Vince Foster, the Clinton White House deputy counsel. Mossad concluded that Foster did not commit suicide but, according to one Mossad officer who had read the file, “most likely was murdered to cover up what was a serious attempt by persons in the Clinton White House to keep secret material they would have preferred to keep quiet” (the author was told).
Osama bin Laden had an entire shelf of computer discs divided into his speeches, his sightings since 9/11, and the structure and restructure of al-Qaeda. In painstaking detail his profile explored how he had created the plans that had led to more innocent people being killed in the West than had died in Europe during any conflict since the Second World War. The analysis of his speeches showed bin Laden to be a slave to literal interpretations; the usual intellectual extrapolations upon which much European thinking depends appeared to be beyond his range. A late entry was the appointment of his eldest son, Saad, as his successor, and in the meantime the instructions were to concentrate on developing strategies for attacks on U.S. targets. The announcement had come from “the Jerusalem Force,” the name bin Laden used when addressing his followers as a reminder of his ultimate ambition to ride in triumph through that city. A transcript of the message promised: “when that day comes our son Saad will ride at the head of our great cause.” The Mossad analysts had concluded that the words were a further sign bin Laden did not expect to live long enough to see such an event. A separate file on Saad gave his age, twenty-six, and described him as the son of bin Laden’s first wife and his favorite among the other twenty-three children he had fathered. The file described Saad as “the mirror image of his father, both physically and mentally.” It revealed Saad had served with his father in Afghanistan and had fought against the Soviet occupiers. “Americans who met him there recall his readiness to kill.” The last entry in the file said that Saad was on Mossad’s list for assassination by kidon.
As Arafat lay dying in Paris, bin Laden had again resurrected his own demand to create a great caliphate of terror that would stretch from Asia to southern Spain. It was this claim that the specialists on the sixth floor had used for their own purposes. They had created documents, sourced to Hamas, that Osama bin Laden was set on “dishonouring” the memory of the PLO leader. In the Arab world, such a claim would create unease while, at the same time, would not diminish the impact of statements that Yasser Arafat had robbed the Palestinians of tens of millions of dollars. Setting one enemy of Israel against another was a tactic in which LAP was unrivaled.
One way of doing so had been to exploit the behavior of Libya’s leader, Colonel Mu’ammar Gadhafi. Since he had seized power in 1969, as the twenty-seven-year-old head of a group of young officers, Gadhafi had been a prime target for assassination by Mossad. Having survived several attempts, it drove him to create a team of tall, muscular female bodyguards trained by the former KGB. LAP had focussed on ridiculing him in the Arab world by using fake photographs created in the Mossad psychological warfare photo lab showing Gadhafi in sexual poses with the women. Meanwhile Gadhafi had backed terrorists, including arming the IRA and sponsoring attacks on airports in Vienna and Rome and in a Berlin discotheque, a favorite with U.S. servicemen based in the city. He had been linked to the Lockerbie bombing in 1998. At times his behavior seemed to drift beyond sanity. In 2001, he offered to buy all the bananas grown in the Caribbean to break the “stranglehold” of the World Trade Organization. Sartorially, he rivaled Michael Jackson, his favourite pop star; Gadhafi regularly wore orange robes, gold-braided military garb, and a powder blue jumpsuit.
