CIA Assisted Israeli Intelligence in Assassination of Hezbollah Official

U.S. and Israeli intelligence services collaborated to kill a senior Hezbollah official in 2008, so say former U.S. officials.

Hezbollah international operations chief Imad Mughniyeh was walking down a street in Damascus, Syria, on February 12, 2008 after having dinner at a neighborhood restaurant when a bomb planted in a parked car exploded and killed him. The bomb had been placed inside the spare tire in the back of an SUV Mughniyeh was approaching, and he was killed by shrapnel that flew out after the blast. 

The CIA had been monitoring his movements for months before the blast, which was triggered by Mossad agents in the Israeli capital of Tel Aviv, the officials told The Washington Post. CIA and Mossad agents had been working together to try to find the best place and time for a bomb to go off and kill Mughniyeh. The Mossad said Mughniyeh had a habit of taking walks by himself after dinner, and that targeting him during those walks would be the best way to get to him without harming anyone else. 

The officials, who spoke to the paper on the condition of anonymity, said that Israeli intelligence officials approached the CIA about collaborating to kill Mugniyeh and that the CIA wasn’t concerned about any repercussions because Hezbollah would likely not know about CIA involvement and would blame the killing on the Mossad. 

The U.S. helped build the bomb and had tested it numerous times at a CIA facility in North Carolina. 

The Bush administration ended up explaining the bombing as an act of self-defense, alleging Mugniyeh had been plotting against the United States and that he had already been implicated in the death of 63 Americans in a 1983 bombing of the U.S. embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, and in the 1992 suicide attack on the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires, Argentina, that killed 29 and injured 242. 

The operation to kill Mugniyeh required greenlighting by the U.S.’s top authorities, and the attorney general and the national security advisor were among those who signed off on it.