Shadow Strike: Inside Israel's Secret Mission to Eliminate Syrian Nuclear Power

by Yaakov Katz Narrated by Christopher Lane

Overview

The never-before-told inside story of how Israel stopped Syria from becoming a global nuclear nightmare-and its far-reaching implications

On September 6, 2007, shortly after midnight, Israeli fighters advanced on Deir ez-Zour in Syria. Israel often flew into Syria as a warning to President Bashar al-Assad. But this time, there was no warning and no explanation. This was a covert operation, with one goal: to destroy a nuclear reactor being built by North Korea under a tight veil of secrecy in the Syrian desert.

Shadow Strike tells, for the first time, the story of the espionage, political courage, military might and psychological warfare behind Israel's daring operation to stop one of the greatest known acts of nuclear proliferation. It also brings Israel's powerful military and diplomatic alliance with the United States to life, revealing the debates President Bush had with Vice President Cheney and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert as well as the diplomatic and military planning that took place in the Oval Office, the Prime Minister's Office in Jerusalem, and inside the IDF's underground war room beneath Tel Aviv.

These two countries remain united in a battle to prevent nuclear proliferation, to defeat Islamic terror, and to curtail Iran's attempts to spread its hegemony throughout the Middle East. Yaakov Katz's Shadow Strike explores how this operation continues to impact the world we live in today and if what happened in 2007 is a sign of what Israel will need to do one day to stop Iran's nuclear program. It also asks: had Israel not carried out this mission, what would the Middle East look like today?

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

"[Katz] goes beyond the drama... Shadow Strike is well written, engaging, and thoughtful." —Middle East Quarterly

"A powerful read...Katz flexes both his editorial sinews and his prior government connections...to deliver a suspenseful chronicle, bolstered by rapid-fire precision and continuous in-room details." —Edwin Black, San Diego Jewish World

"At the top of my reading list." —Alan Dershowitz, professor emeritus at Harvard Law School

"Remarkable...one of the most compelling stories I have read in a long time." —Newt Gingrich, Newsweek

"Katz’s account is at once authoritative and deeply engaging. Shadow Strike provides readers with a front-row seat to the cutthroat world of Israeli politics...underscores the central role that coordination with its chief strategic partner, the United States, plays in virtually all of Israel’s decision-making processes. It does all of the above in quick, accessible and compelling prose that promises to make Shadow Strike an essential addition to any serious collection on contemporary Israeli statecraft." —Ilan Berman, The Jerusalem Post

"Full of espionage, political courage and psychological warfare, this book is sure to thrill both the casual James Bond fan and the most serious followers of Middle Eastern politics." —Avi Jorisch, Times of Israel

"Detailed...Valuable...for understanding Israel's defense policy and its broader effects on the Middle East as a whole." —Kirkus Reviews

"I was so engrossed by the story that it was almost impossible for me to put the book down, so anxious was I to know how it would unfold... one of the most gifted writers I have had the pleasure to read." —M. Nadeau, Wellington World

"Reading like a spy-thriller novel, Yaakov Katz's Shadow Strike takes you behind the scenes in the Oval Office, at Mossad headquarters, and in the Syrian desert on a mission too complex and daring to be believed. Israel's cunning in its fight for survival, its determination to keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of its enemies, and its struggle and partnership with its closest ally, keep the pages turning and the adrenaline pumping." —Dan Shapiro, U.S. ambassador to Israel and senior director for the Middle East and North Africa at the National Security Council during the Obama Administration

"A gripping portrayal of how Israel's leaders reached one of the most momentous decisions in its history, a decision that had significant implications for Israel, the region, and much of the world. A great read and an important one." —Deborah E. Lipstadt, author of Antisemitism Here and Now

"Shadow Strike tells a remarkable story of courage, determination and Israeli military might. It is a blueprint for how countries can and should act when faced with a threat of an existential nature. This book provides a behind-the-scenes look at America's alliance with Israel, a relationship we need to protect and foster in the years to come." —Dick Cheney

"This covert action of the highest level and held in the tightest secrecy makes this exclusive disclosure so much more exciting to read. The reader becomes enmeshed in the detailed discussions with military and political actors in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and Washington and the extraordinary and meticulously collected documented discussions between the leaders of both countries in what was to be a daring and courageous military mission. The reader is truly treated to a fascinating tale that will not allow the book to be set down until completely finished." —Association of Jewish Libraries

"As Israel and the US struggle with how to contain Iran’s nuclear weapons program, Shadow Strike tells the tale when action replaced words. Katz’s book is that rare combination: illuminating, important, and tense as a thriller." —Martin Fletcher, author of Promised Land and The List

Kirkus Reviews

2019-03-17
A detailed account of a little-known episode in Middle Eastern history.

Jerusalem Post editor-in-chief Katz (co-author: The Weapon Wizards: How Israel Became a High-Tech Military Superpower, 2017, etc.) takes advantage of high-level contacts in the Israeli military and government to give the inside story of a bombing mission that preserved the balance between two rival powers. The story begins in 2007, with a visit by Meir Dagan, director of the Mossad, to the George W. Bush White House. Dagan met with the director of the National Security Agency and Vice President Dick Cheney, showing them photos of a site in Syria that Israeli intelligence believed to be a nuclear reactor under construction. With some help from American intelligence, that interpretation was confirmed. However, Bush decided not to take direct action, which left it to Israel to determine how to respond to the threat. The decision was complicated by Israel's setbacks in its 2006 conflict with Hezbollah along the Syrian border, which left that nation in an apparently weak defensive posture. Furthermore, the clear evidence of a North Korean role in Syria's reactor project raised the critical issue of nuclear proliferation. Katz takes readers inside the discussions at the White House, the Israeli National Security Council, and the Israeli Defense Forces, and he profiles key figures in the mission and in the political discussions preceding it, many of whom are probably unfamiliar to many American readers. We get close-up looks at former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi, and Amos Yadlin, head of Israeli military intelligence. The author also explores the early career of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad as part of the analysis of Syria's response to the attack. On the whole, Katz makes a solid case that the attack, which largely escaped wide public attention at the time, had profound implications for nuclear nonproliferation policy, the ongoing Syrian civil war, and the U.S.-Israel relationship.

A valuable document for understanding Israel's defense policy and its broader effects on the Middle East as a whole.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169935486
Publisher:	Brilliance Audio
Publication date:	05/07/2019
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

A RAID IN VIENNA

In the middle of April 2007 a short, bald and burly man with a limp and a cane walked into the West Wing of the White House. He carried a small briefcase with a few folders chaotically jutting out.

The man showed his diplomatic passport at the entrance. He was under the impression that he would be brought directly to the Oval Office for a private meeting with the president but, instead, the guards were under orders to keep his name off the official visitor logs and to clandestinely escort him to the office of National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley. Inside, two other men were waiting: Hadley's deputy, Elliott Abrams, and a surprise guest, the vice president of the United States, Dick Cheney.

The man the trio had gathered to meet was Meir Dagan, the renowned and feared head of the Mossad, Israel's legendary foreign spy agency and the equivalent of the CIA. A few days earlier, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had called President George W. Bush and told him that Dagan would be coming to Washington with some important information. "I'd appreciate if you could meet him," Olmert told Bush.

The request, phrased in a way that seemed urgent, took Bush and his staff by surprise. Heads of state — even close allies like Olmert — don't usually ask the president to meet the directors of their intelligence agencies alone. If they ever do meet them, it is almost always according to diplomatic protocol and in the presence of the foreign leader.

So, the president's aides decided to stick to protocol. They would first meet Dagan, evaluate whatever information he was bringing with him, and, if needed, take him to see the president. Cheney was briefed about the pending visit and decided to sit in on the meeting. He knew Dagan and figured that based on Olmert's special request, it must be urgent.

Dagan took a seat on the couch. Cheney settled into a large blue wing chair to his right. Not one for small talk, Dagan got straight to the point.

"Syria is building a nuclear reactor," the Mossad chief said in his thick Israeli accent. "For Syria to have a nuclear weapons program, to have a nuclear weapon, is unacceptable."

Dagan then pulled the first folder out of his bag and spread a number of color photos on the coffee table. Cheney lifted one. Hadley and Abrams took another. They could clearly make out a concrete building under construction with some large pipes being installed inside. There was nothing yet that showed the building to be a nuclear reactor. It didn't have the typical dome or smokestacks, the trademarks of nuclear facilities.

"That is the nuclear reactor," Dagan told the group. It was a gas-cooled graphite-moderated reactor, he explained, used to produce plutonium, and was being built as an almost exact replica of the Yongbyon nuclear reactor in North Korea. The concrete building on the exterior was a façade being built to hide what was really happening inside.

The Americans were speechless. There were dozens of photos. Cheney, Hadley and Abrams just watched and listened as Dagan pulled out one after another and explained in detail what they were. One of the photographs looked too good to be true. It showed two men posing in front of the concrete structure. One of the men, of Asian ethnicity, was wearing a blue tracksuit. The man he was standing next to, Dagan said, was Ibrahim Othman, head of Syria's Atomic Energy Commission.

Dagan then showed his hosts another photo. It was the same Asian man, although this time he wasn't wearing workout clothes but a tailored suit and black tie. From their intelligence experience, the Americans knew what they were looking at. It was a photo taken at a recent meeting of the Six Party Talks, the negotiations America and other Western superpowers were conducting with North Korea in an effort to stop its rogue nuclear program. The man in the photo, Dagan said, was Chon Chibu, one of the scientists in charge of the Yongbyon nuclear reactor.

The news was earth-shattering. Until then, there was no evidence in the US intelligence community to support what Dagan was claiming. None. Everyone knew about North Korea's nuclear ambitions — the hermit country had tested its first nuclear weapon just a few months earlier in October 2006 — but there was nothing to even hint that Pyongyang was proliferating its technology and helping Syria build a nuclear weapon. It wasn't just shocking. It was a strategic nightmare of worldwide proportions.

Dagan continued to pull additional photos out of his bag. It was an intelligence treasure trove. There were photos of the vertical tube openings at the top of the reactor used to hold control rods and another of the reinforced concrete reactor vessel with its steel lining.

Israel, Dagan said, had already found the facility. It was buried deep in the desert in northeastern Syria in a region known as Deir ez-Zor, along the Euphrates River. The Syrians, he explained, had used the river to help conceal their rogue nuclear activity. They had built the reactor in a wadi, a valley, so it couldn't be seen by passing cars or hikers. The outer square structure that surrounded the reactor was built to look like an old Ottoman-era fort, no different from the countless other old guard posts scattered throughout the desert.

Cheney, who for years had tried to get US intelligence agencies to probe a possible link between North Korea and Syria, sat quietly. He had warned already in 2001 of the possibility that terrorist groups or rogue states would reproduce and sell nuclear technology on the black market and that North Korea would be at the top of the list of countries selling.

A few months before the meeting with Dagan at the White House, US intelligence agencies had detected that Chibu was making unusually frequent visits to Damascus. As head of the Yongbyon reactor, Chibu was on the US intelligence community's watch list. In his regular intelligence briefings, Cheney periodically asked the intelligence community what Chibu was doing there and if it meant that Syria and North Korea were cooperating on nuclear activity.

The answer he kept getting was "no." The US intelligence services said that while the countries were known to cooperate on missile technology, there was simply nothing to back up the possibility of nuclear collaboration. As Cheney later explained, what happened wasn't necessarily an intelligence "failure" but rather a complete "misinterpretation" of available intelligence.

Cheney's skepticism and high state of alert made these questions natural. He was selected by Bush to serve as his vice president largely due to his experience as a veteran member of Congress — he served six terms representing the State of Wyoming — as well as a stint as secretary of defense under Bush's father from 1989 to 1993. Cheney was in the Bush family's inner circle, and after taking office in 2001, the president sent him to visit all of the different US intelligence agencies and get up to speed on the national security challenges and threats the US faced at the time.

But then Dagan showed up and proved Cheney's intuition to have been right. North Korea wasn't just sharing nuclear know-how with Syria, it was building a nuclear reactor there.

When looking at the photos, the vice president saw clues that others had missed. The reactor was almost completely built and seemed, from the photos, to be just a few months away from becoming operational. There were, for example, no power lines to the facility, or an electrical grid visible nearby that could provide enough power to run a nuclear facility. No military vehicles were visible in the area or anti-aircraft systems to intercept enemy aircraft. The Syrians, Cheney could tell, had gone to great lengths to hide what they were doing.

In Cheney's mind, this was a clear violation of a marker Bush had laid down half a year earlier after North Korea conducted its first nuclear test. Just hours after the detonation, Bush made a statement from the Diplomatic Reception Room in the White House, declaring that "the transfer of nuclear weapons or material by North Korea to states or non-state entities would be considered a grave threat to the United States, and we would hold North Korea fully accountable of the consequences of such action."

What could be considered a greater "transfer" to another state than the construction of a nuclear reactor, Cheney wondered? No one knew at the time, but when North Korea tested its nuclear device and Bush made his statement, the ruthless regime in Pyongyang was already neck-deep in the midst of one of the gravest, greatest and most secretive acts of nuclear proliferation. Based on the photos, this was something that had been going on for years, possibly as early as 2000.

While Israel was convinced that the building was a gas-cooled nuclear reactor, the satellite images Dagan brought with him made it clear to the others in the meeting that whatever Syria was building, it wasn't some random warehouse. This was a unique structure built for some nefarious purpose that Syria had gone to great lengths to hide from the world.

Cheney knew Dagan from his first term as Bush's vice president, when the Israeli was appointed head of the Mossad. They were about the same age and shared a similar appreciation for military force as a viable way to solve diplomatic problems. Nevertheless, they couldn't have come from more different backgrounds. Cheney was born in 1941 in Lincoln, Nebraska, and went to Yale University. Dagan was born in 1945 in a train car on the outskirts of Ukraine while his family was trying to escape to Poland.

Cheney had a particular respect for Israel's intelligence capabilities. He often recalled a meeting he had in July 1990 with then Israeli defense minister Moshe Arens and Ehud Barak, Israel's most decorated solider and, at the time, the IDF's deputy chief of staff. It was just a few weeks before Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, setting into motion Operation Desert Storm, which Cheney would oversee as secretary of defense.

It was a different time also for US-Syrian relations. Unlike 2007, in 1990 America was speaking directly with Syria and its leader, Hafez al-Assad. It was Cheney who was tasked with calling Assad a few hours before the beginning of the war to update him on what was about to happen. At the time, Syria sent a division to fight against Saddam as well as military representatives to sit in the joint command center set up by the Americans.

Arens and Barak shared with Cheney Israel's updated intelligence assessments on Saddam Hussein's nuclear program. Israel had destroyed the reactor nine years earlier but according to recent Israeli intelligence, Iraq was back to advancing its nuclear program. It was a starkly different assessment than the one reached by the US intelligence community, which at the time assumed that Saddam had forfeited his nuclear aspirations.

During Desert Storm, Cheney had a secure phone line installed in his office that he used to directly contact Arens's office in Tel Aviv. The two spoke almost daily as the US worked hard to keep Israel out of the war. With Saddam firing Scud missiles directly into Israel it wasn't easy. At one point, Cheney learned that Israel had ordered special forces onto helicopters to fly them to Iraq to hunt Scud launchers, jeopardizing the international coalition the US had worked hard to put together and which included Syria and other Arab countries. For the coalition to work, the administration thought, Israel needed to stay on the sidelines.

When the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) gained access to Iraq after the war, Cheney was not surprised to learn that Saddam had in fact restarted his nuclear program. What Arens and Barak had told him months earlier turned out to be closer to reality than what his own intelligence agencies were saying.

"Israel was at least equal if not better than we were in terms of that subject," he would tell people.

* * *

Dagan's life story was a microcosm of Israel's never-ending fight for survival. Most of his family had been killed in the Holocaust, and instead of going to college, he spent his post–high school years participating in covert operations deep behind enemy lines in places like Lebanon and the Gaza Strip.

As a young IDF recruit, Dagan originally tried out for Sayeret Matkal, the IDF's most elite unit and a breeding ground for many of Israel's leaders, including two prime ministers — Ehud Barak and Benjamin Netanyahu. But he didn't get in, failing to pass the grueling selection process. Instead, Dagan was drafted into the Paratrooper's Brigade, where he slowly climbed the ranks, earning a reputation as a brave soldier and brilliant tactician along the way. His undercover experience and creative mind soon made him a key player in countering the Palestinian terror threat emanating from the Gaza Strip.

In January 1971, for example, Dagan — then a young captain — was leading a convoy of military jeeps through Jabalya, a Palestinian refugee camp north of Gaza City. On the way, a taxi passed Dagan's car. While it drove by quickly, Dagan — whose mind was always sharp and acutely vigilant to his surroundings — was able to identify one of the passengers as Abu Nimar, a known terrorist Israel had been hunting for some time. He caught up with the cab and ordered it to pull over. The soldiers took up positions around the vehicle as Dagan approached the passenger seat where Abu Nimar was sitting.

Abu Nimar got out of the car and pulled out a grenade, yanked the pin and yelled: "We are all going to die." Dagan shouted to his troops to take cover as he lunged directly at Abu Nimar and headbutted him with his helmet. As Abu Nimar fell to the ground, Dagan grabbed the Palestinian's hand and succeeded in securing the grenade before it could explode, an act for which he was later awarded the IDF Medal of Honor.

Abu Nimar was arrested and sentenced to a lengthy prison term. A few months after his capture, he expressed willingness to become an informant for Israel but had a condition — he wanted to meet the man who in a singular moment had both taken him prisoner and saved his life. Dagan agreed to the meeting and helped turn Abu Nimar into one of Israel's most strategic intelligence assets.

When asked about this period of his life, Dagan explained a simple equation: "We hit people who were involved in attacks on us. We hit them and deterred others."

Ariel Sharon, then an IDF general in charge of the Southern Command, heard of Dagan and became fond of the young officer. Sharon was struggling to stop a wave of infiltrations by Palestinian terrorists from the Gaza Strip into Israel and gave Dagan the mandate to find a way to end this bloody reign of terror. Within a few months, Dagan had founded Sayeret Rimon, a crack commando unit of fearless soldiers who would disguise themselves as Palestinians and then raid Gaza to eliminate PLO fighters.

The Rimon commandos took on the most dangerous missions. They dressed up as Palestinian fishermen, farmers and women, doing whatever it took to get as close as they could to their targets. Israel was fighting a cruel and brutal battle for its life. Rules of engagement were left blurry.

When Sharon became prime minister in 2001, Dagan tagged along as his counterterrorism adviser. But Sharon had bigger plans for his former soldier.

When he took over the premiership, Sharon encountered a Mossad that he believed had become paralyzed. Its leadership at the time, Sharon felt, appeared to prefer talks with Arab diplomats at cocktail parties in Geneva over dangerous and risky operations in Tehran or Dubai.

It was a paralysis that had taken hold of the spy agency after the botched 1997 assassination attempt against Hamas leader Khaled Mashal in Amman. Two Mossad agents were caught trying to poison Mashal, and to get them back, Israel had to provide the antidote to save the Hamas leader's life and release Palestinian terrorists, including Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the terror group's founder and spiritual leader.

"The motto at the time was 'don't get into trouble,'" one former security official explained.

On one occasion in the early 2000s, Mossad trainees were hearing a lecture about what to do if they were captured by police during a covert operation overseas. The trainees were told not to resist. "Talk your way out of it but don't fight," the instructor said. As an example, he told a story about a team of Mossad agents caught trying to tap a suspected Hezbollah operative's phone in Switzerland.

"Why shouldn't we resist?" one cadet asked the instructor. The answer was that violence was not the way the Mossad operated. It was the exact opposite of the ruthless and legendary spy agency that had once instilled fear in the hearts and minds of Israel's enemies across the globe.

In 2002, Sharon decided he needed to shake things up at the Mossad and asked Dagan, his old commando friend, to take over the reins of the dusty spy agency. Dagan, Sharon knew, was a no-nonsense soldier. He was brave, innovative and not afraid to get his hands dirty. On the contrary, that was his modus operandi.

(Continues…)

---

Excerpted from "Shadow Strike"
by .
Copyright © 2019 Yaakov Katz.
Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---

Videos