FORMER Mossad spies have shared details of Israel’s elaborate pager plot that crushed Hezbollah with the press of a button.
Two masked retired senior Israeli intelligence agents have revealed the operation that saw hundreds of booby-trapped pagers exploding simultaneously, was years in the making.
60 MinutesThe masked former spies spoke about the attack to CBS for a documentary[/caption]
60 MinutesThey said the pagers had been tested on dummies before September 17[/caption]
UnpixsThe pager blasts went off across Lebanon including in supermarkets and homes[/caption]
60 MinutesThe ex-Mossad agents said the operation was a decade in the making[/caption]
Speaking to 60 Minutes as part of a bombshell documentary the two former officers agreed to share the plot that led to the the coordinated strikes step-by-step.
The agents, speaking with altered voices under pseudonyms to hide their identities revealed the operation started a decade ago using walkie-talkies laden with hidden explosives, which Hezbollah didn’t realize it was buying from Israel.
The agent who went by the name “Michael” told Lesley Stahl: “We created a pretend world.”
The second phase of the plan with the booby-trapped pagers was launched in 2022 after Mossad found out Hezbollah had been buying pagers from a company based in Taiwan.
The agent explained the pagers needed to be made slightly larger in order to fit the explosives.
They were tested on dummies a number of times to find the right amount to hurt the Hezbollah fighter but not anyone else close to him.
A number of different ringtones were also tested to establish which sounded urgent enough to prompt someone to pull the pager out of their pocket.
It took two weeks to convince Hezbollah to switch to the larger pager partly through targeted fake YouTube ads promoting the devices as dustproof, waterproof and with longer battery life, the second agent “Gabriel” said.
He also said Israel used shell companies to dupe the Taiwanese firm, Gold Apollo into unknowingly working with Mossad – while Hezbollah was also unaware it was working with Israel.
He said: “When they are buying from us, they have zero clue that they are buying from the Mossad.
“We make like ‘Truman Show,’ everything is controlled by us behind the scene. In their experience, everything is normal.
“Everything was 100% kosher including businessman, marketing, engineers, showroom, everything.”
Michael added: “Shell companies over shell companies to affect the supply chain to our favor.
“We create a pretend world. We are a global production company. We write the screenplay, we’re the directors, we’re the producers, we’re the main actors, and the world is our stage.”
By September, Hezbollah militants had 5,000 pagers in their pockets.
Israel triggered the attack on September 17, when pagers all over Lebanon started beeping.
Users were instructed to push two buttons simultaneously for an incoming encrypted message – but the devices would explode even if the person failed to push the buttons.
The next day, Mossad activated the walkie-talkies,in a fresh attack declaring a “new phase of wa.r”
Gabriel said the goal was more about sending a message than actually killing Hezbollah fighters.
“If he is just dead, he’s dead. But if he’s wounded, you have to take him to the hospital, take care of him.
“You need to invest money and efforts, he said. And those people without hands and eyes are living proof, walking in Lebanon, of dont mess with us.
Mossad’s greatest hits
THE Israeli spy agency has carried out a number of pinpoint strikes across the years with many seeing specialised weaponry being used to eliminate their enemies.
Killer bomb blow
Back in July, Israel used a bomb smuggled months earlier into a Tehran guest house to assassinate the leader of Hamas.
Ismail Haniyeh was blown up at around 2am as he slept in one of the of the most secure sites in the Iranian capital.
It was initially unclear how Israel had carried out the attack, with some suspecting a drone had fired a missile.
Ultrasound poison syringes
In 2010, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh – one of the founders of Hamas’ military wing – was assassinated in his hotel room in Dubai.
A team of several dozen agents flew to Dubai on false passports, wearing wigs, outfits and false moustaches to disguise themselves as tourists and tennis players.
The suspected Mossad agents followed him into a hotel and allegedly used a high-tech ultrasound tool to inject poison into Mabhouh’s neck without even breaking the skin.
He was dead by 9pm that evening.
Remote controlled machine gun
In 2020, the so-called “Kidon Unit” inside Mossad assassinated Dr Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the mastermind of Iran’s suspected nuclear weapons programme,
Fakhrizadeh’s was killed with a remote control machine gun mounted to the back of a car – which was smuggled into Iran and assembled piece-by-piece.
Mossad agents used the remote controlled gun to to fire 13 hyper accurate shots that hit the scientist directly, the Jewish Chronicle reported.
“They are walking proof of our superiority all around the Middle East.
In the days after the attack, Israel’s air force hit targets across Lebanon, killing thousands.
Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, was assassinated when Israel dropped bombs on his bunker.
The agent using the name Michael said that the day after the pager explosions, people in Lebanon were afraid to turn on their air conditioners out of fear that they would explode, too.
“There is real fear,” he said.
Asked if that was intentional, he said, “We want them to feel vulnerable, which they are. We can’t use the pagers again because we already did that.
“Weve already moved on to the next thing. And theyll have to keep on trying to guess what the next thing is.”
60 MinutesThe ex-spies told Lesley Stahl how they had to use larger pagers[/caption]
Thousands of people were injured in the pager explosions in Lebanon
X/ME_Observer_A damaged device discarded on the ground[/caption]