To me it seems that it's sort of a confirmation of subtext from the book "The Secret History of the Mossad".
The thesis is that the Mossad is being seriously damaged by involvement of politics. Mossad requires time to do things properly (getting the job done, covering the trails, not leaving a trail to either operatives, Israel or Mossad itself), but politicians, especially Benjamin Netanjahu required (in 90's) that Mossad perform more operations faster, or so to say "on demand" whenever he needed a PR boost. Thus leading to a couple of spectacular failures that left Mossad operatives demoralized and even got them to start talking publicly about the ways of Mossad.
Fast forward 10 years. Bibi is in charge again and Mossad blew it again. Hmm???
If this is Mossad this is a terrible failure - revealing identity of 25 agents is horrible price to pay. Just imagine what kind of tow this will be on morale of other operatives. Mossad operatives work(ed) so good because they know that the organization will take care of them, that they will be protected and that they are being appreciated (in hacker terms think MS, Google,...).
Kinda reminds me of how in IT when PHB type MBA's come around "demanding results NOW!!!11one!", engineers loose morale, start leaving and everything goes down the drain.
> Just imagine what kind of tow this will be on morale of other operatives.
Oh poor Mossad, how will it ever manage now...
They just assassinated a person in another country, in cold blood, using passports from countries they are supposedly allies with. The main problem with that, is of course, the "morale" of the Mossad agents. Just like the the morale of a suspect charged with first degree murder should be the biggest concern of everyone involved.
Just imagine what kind of tow this will be on morale of other operatives.
Inquiries for employment on the Mossad website have reached levels never before seen. Lots of young Israeli people evidently think that now is a great time to become a Mossad operative.
I believe that there are quite some parallels between world of "spycraft" and high technology.
I believe that personality traits and skill set for a successful spy are very similar to those of a top-notch hacker.
Both require an excellent all rounder with a creative spirit and strong sense for duty and loyalty. These are the kind of people, that can be relied upon to carry out their job without micromanagement.
People like that are few and far in between. And more significantly, when you start to displace them with mass produced "drones", they are the first who get the cue and they start leaving (Elves have left middle earth).
So for a final parallel - there have never been more people sought after in high-tech and the good ones have never been treated with more disrespect. Incidentally there has never been a bigger supply of crappy code/tech than today.
The difference is that business world can take such failures more easily - companies turn over and that's it.
In world of Intelligence - like the assassination attempt on Khaled Mashal - this is a failure of such magnitude that it will cost waaaay more than what was gained. Both in money and in credibility and prestige.
It seems so very implausible to me that one of the most experienced and most revered intelligence agencies in the world would fail to recognize security cameras as a viable threat to their operation. Seriously?
What seems more likely to me is that they were sending a very clear message: even with one of the most advanced surveillance and counter-intelligence networks in the world, we can still put two dozens operatives on the ground, run a complex mission with military precision, kill the target, and disappear before you know it's happened. There's nowhere you can hide from us.
Why would they jeopardize the identities of so many of their agents? Would they have bothered with disguises at all if it was intentional to be "caught"?
I don't believe an intelligence agency like that would be dumb enough to be so brazenly open. They didn't want to get caught, but they did.
I think they simply doubted the diligence on the part of the investigators. If you watched the video, you'd know how hard it would have been to put all the pieces together.
The very clear message they've actually sent is "We can expose our agents and make ourselves look bad internationally. Also we can steal the identities of foreign nationals giving us further diplomatic problems.".
A great read, but... Most people says Israel did it even though nobody has a proof of the case. Israel is the usual suspect in any death of a Palestinian terrorist, and so far there has been little more than the usual suspicious. A couple of Palestinians were arrested, that seems to be it.
The author says the lesson to whomever killed that guy is that nowadays you cannot get away with it. My question is -- who exactly did not get away with it this time?
From Associated Press (link is to Washington Post):
"Israel's parliamentary opposition leader on Tuesday praised the assassination of a Hamas commander in Dubai last month"
Let's think about it. This definetly caused a diplomatic blow to Israel. If they indeed didn't do it, they would have revved up their propaganda machine to the maximum denying everything. They are not, they are praising it. At this point arguing if Israel did or not is a little silly I think.
"If they indeed didn't do it, they would have revved up their propaganda machine to the maximum denying everything." This is a good argument, but I am not sure how strong it is. I can easily imagine them not doing that.
Hitler got away with annexing Sudetenland. And yet his photographs and "footage showing how the operation was conducted" was widely available.
Not getting away with something means having been punished for that. I do not see it happening this time, not yet anyway. This is why I say that the author's thesis is premature.
Lets go through the many ways in which Israel is being punished for this:
* Twenty five agents have had their identities compromised. Bear in mind that agents you can send into a foreign country to participate in an assassination do not grow on trees, even if you're Israel. This has not just impaired Mossad's supply of agents, it is also a blow to the morale of the organisation.
* These twenty five are at a real risk of reprisals in the years to come. If a video of one of them turns up with a bag over their head this will do further damage to Israel's prestige and Mossad's morale.
* Worse still, the identities of foreign nationals have been stolen. This has angered nations that actually matter, ie prosperous Western nations. Israel is not in a strong geopolitical position, it relies on the goodwill of it's allies.
* The goal of the exercise, to eliminate a threat and strike fear into Israel's opponents, has been poorly accomplished. It's caused Israel no end of diplomatic troubles and made it's victim a martyr. Actually eliminating an arms dealer isn't much cause for celebration anyway as there's an almost endless supply of them. You'll run out of wetwork teams long before they run out of arms dealers.
* Finally, footage of Israel's incompetence have been displayed on TVs all around the world. You don't strike fear into the hearts of your enemies by cocking up repeatedly on TV.
Essentially, this was a political, not a military, operation, and it's failure has punished Israel politically.
I think that the author's point in claiming that such killings are technologically implausible is kind of shaky. Better disguises and more intelligent communication channels (select a hotspot in the city at random every time you need to send a message, encrypt the data, and bounce it around the globe for good measure. Hell, you could even use a bot net to do it so the neutral parties were oblivious).
Or you can call it part of the war on terror and blow the individual up with a remote controlled airplane.
It should glad me that everyone seems to discuss this with objective detachment. However, I am shocked that no one cared to touch the moral core of the matter : assassination of civil or political leaders is a crime.
Can you remember the outrage when Rabin was assassinated ? Can you imagine the outrage if Palestine assassinated an Israeli statesman ? What the Mossad did is no different.
assassination of civil or political leaders is a crime
Taking your wording as my guide to the morality of the situation, I'll note that the Hamas person who was assassinated was not an elected political leader, but rather a gun runner and apparent assassin himself. He wasn't traveling under his real name in Dubai, it appears, nor was he traveling with a diplomatic or official (that is, government official's) passport.
Rabin was assassinated for political reasons, as part of internal (Israel's) political discourse. This guy was assassinated for completely different reasons, as part of an ongoing war (or, if you prefer, anti-terrorist operation).
"Can you imagine the outrage if Palestine assassinated an Israeli statesman?" It has happened in the past (Rehavam Zeevi), however the perpetrators were not PA officials, so the answer too was not directed at PA but at the people who had done it.
Finally, calling the guy killed in Dubai a Palestinian statesman is preposterous. A very different situation, both in legal and moral aspects.
I don't like deontological ethics, I especially don't like this sloppy kind. It seems extremely implausible that the moral benefits of a crime could never outweigh its cost. The US has assassinated A LOT of al Qaeda and Taliban members in the "war on terror", is it more permissible if they do it with a drone (even if it does cause more collateral damage) because it just "seems more like war" than the James Bond stuff Mossad has been up to?
I'm not american. Not a big fan of US foreign policy either. My point is that being upset about assassination of foreign leaders because it is "a crime" looks pretty silly unless you are a full blown pacifist (and thus not OK with any of the killing states at war have done). In that case you look pretty silly anyway.
Interesting article, it also beings up the question(in my mind) how operatives can operate in a hostile environment(not necessarily hostile, just one in which they don't want to be caught).
How could US (or British for that matter) HUMINT operate in places such as PR-China (which is beginning to operate such pervasive surveillance systems) without leaving a trail. How can you be a real/digital ghost?
How could US (or British for that matter) HUMINT operate in places such as PR-China
By taking advantage of the pervasive corruption in China to bribe Chinese nationals ("agents") who are cross-checked for their ability to provide the U.S. or British citizens ("operatives") with information. That's how the C.I.A. has long gathered a lot of its human intelligence in a lot of countries. It doesn't always work, but neither do any other country's attempts to gather intelligence always work against the United States or Britain.
I think the state-of-the-art is headed towards man-lethal, man-portable stealth UAVs, either using lasers or some sort of projectile weapon to assassinate targets. If you could have a much smaller team launch a small vehicle which would then pick off a target by flying silently hundreds of yards away at night? You could pick people off with a high degree of deniability.
Big teams deployed in an urban environment are just not practicable anymore.
Were it possible, a laser sniper rifle would be an intermediary step. Of course, in both these cases, deniability is difficult when you're the only one with the technology.
A sniper robot would be workable with off-the-shelf technology. You could hide it in plain sight by simply making it look like a city garbage can or a vending machine.
The problem with static, low-cost technology is ingress and egress: whatever the mission, the idea is that there are no pieces for anybody to find once it's over. Ideally the robot would move itself into position and get the heck out of dodge with a high degree of invisibility. That's why man-portable UAVs work so well. Heck, we're already using them for reconnaissance. (But you're right about the technology problems. Only a few countries could mount such an effort)
The thesis is that the Mossad is being seriously damaged by involvement of politics. Mossad requires time to do things properly (getting the job done, covering the trails, not leaving a trail to either operatives, Israel or Mossad itself), but politicians, especially Benjamin Netanjahu required (in 90's) that Mossad perform more operations faster, or so to say "on demand" whenever he needed a PR boost. Thus leading to a couple of spectacular failures that left Mossad operatives demoralized and even got them to start talking publicly about the ways of Mossad.
Fast forward 10 years. Bibi is in charge again and Mossad blew it again. Hmm???
If this is Mossad this is a terrible failure - revealing identity of 25 agents is horrible price to pay. Just imagine what kind of tow this will be on morale of other operatives. Mossad operatives work(ed) so good because they know that the organization will take care of them, that they will be protected and that they are being appreciated (in hacker terms think MS, Google,...).
Kinda reminds me of how in IT when PHB type MBA's come around "demanding results NOW!!!11one!", engineers loose morale, start leaving and everything goes down the drain.
Edit: http://www.thejerusalemfund.org/ht/d/ContentDetails/i/9279/p... - describing the previous Netanyahues debacles.