Assassination Tango; Mahmoud al-Mabhouh
The recent murder of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai has many people discussing whether it was right or wrong to have done. However I wont really go into any of that here. What I would like to concentrate on are the way the job was carried out, the mistakes I see that were made in the operation, and finally, the end results and what the future possibly holds for those involved. So far I have not seen much in the way of a discussion on the merits of the hit team or the mistakes they made. I read on another blog that the mission was probably acted on or commenced in haste. I however disagree with that. I do not believe it was carried out in haste, rather I think it was planned well in advance, and was also the result of betrayal by someone close to Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, possibly even someone very high up in his inner circle.
The Mistakes
1. Using passport names of real people not connected with the operation.
2. Airport arrival without disguises in play thus showing your real faces.
3. Not anticipating the wide use of surveillance cameras in Dubai.
4. Checking into several hotels prior to checking in at the target hotel thus bringing suspicion on your entire operation.
5. Checking into the same hotel that the last person on the team checked into in order to change disguises.
6. Not anticipating the reaction that the local police had upon discovery of the crime, and their subsequent use of surveillance cameras in showing your entire operation to the world in order to send you a message that such actions or activities will not be tolerated on their soil.
7. Not anticipating the use of surveillance camera footage being posted on YouTube, thus showing everything about your operation right down to your faces and use of disguises to the masses around the world.
8. Using 11 people for a job that one person could have done without all the negative attention to the operation. For example, it could have been as simple as a robbery on the street with a subsequent shooting to cover it all up for what it really was.
9. Using too much sophistication in the operation showing it to be a high level intelligence/hit operation, as opposed to a simple matter using one person to carry out the assignment who was either used as a cutout or an expendable person which was then eliminated after the job was completed, thus covering all your tracks without one shred of evidence leading back to the original order for the hit.
10. Arriving too close to the date or time of the hit. Had the team arrived a few weeks earlier they could have established a presence in the city – thus seeing all the problems associated with carrying out said assignment – thus calling it off or having a counter plan whereby something else could have been tried elsewhere or in another country.
11. And to take everything to 11 points, not even noticing (which many on your team did in fact notice) all the surveillance you were under, and not calling the entire thing off because of it, and because you failed to see all of your mistakes made so far and then not calling it off because of them.
That makes it a hit of immense stupidity carried out by immensely stupid people who shouldn’t even be allowed to run nor be involved in said operations. The person who hired the team is probably now thinking of just how he can clean up said operation, which leads to the next issue, which is what comes next for the team itself.
Forward Options
With the benefit of hindsight those in charge now have scant few options left. Too many people on the team are now in full view worldwide. And while a few bald headed people on the team could grow hair and change appearances, one has to wonder if that will be enough to get away with it? And getting away with it means that they have to get away with it for life or for the life of the team members of which many on the team are relatively still young. So where does one go forward in this operation to clean it up without anyone leading back to the person giving the orders? It is assumed that if any of the team members are caught that they will give up everyone else on the team, especially since most of them were connected in some way or another throughout the entire operation and thus knew each other. Therefore, since most of them on the team are probably isolated at the present time at a safe house one has to wonder if another team has or will be dispatched to get rid of the original team? And if so, what does this mean for the lone members of the team now? Especially since they also know this, and they can see the media coverage all over the operation and them personally. And this is speaking if this was a freelance operation, not a state sponsored one. State sponsored teams have different options, and freelance operations have different parameters.
You would have to know that each team member probably now fears for his or her own safety because of all the screw ups. And blame doesn’t go around very easily in circles such as these. Rather it is usually known that each member of the team is personally responsible for his or her own screw ups, and mistakes are usually never tolerated on such operations. Therefore each team member is now a potential target for a cleaner elimination than the one prior. And on such a clean up operation each team member would probably be dispatched in a vat of acid so that no one will ever be able to identify that team member ever again. If this is pretty much the only way to clean up the operation before one of them gets caught, then it stands to reason that each of them knows that the only way to stay alive now is to either run for the rest of their lives or turn themselves in to police in Dubai or some other safe country; whereby they can spill the beans on everything that happened thus ensuring that they at least have a small percentage of a chance at living. Granted, the minimum sentence in Dubai for premeditated murder is usually around 15 years hard labor. And in Dubai that could be a fate worse than death. Then of course they would have to worry over the repercussions from the leaders of that operation from getting to them after they are released. And since the original target was accused of doing something wrong to them in 1989, it stands to reason that Israelis do not forget. Thus upon release from such as hellish place as a Dubai prison one would know that they probably do not have that long to live either. Therefore it looks as if the original team is probably not long for this world, and in fact there is probably nothing any of them can do about it.
The end result is probably death to the people on the team, which I find ironic. They live by the sword, and now will probably die by the sword; which is the exact type of justice they meted out to Mahmoud al-Mabhouh.
And what happens to the person who ordered the hit? Is his or her screw up going to be tolerated or will he or she also be terminated for incompetence after the original team is terminated?
Only time will tell how it will all turn out. The lessons that come out of this operation are many, but one of them I can see here is that we now live and breathe in a society that is constantly under surveillance, and no matter what you are doing or where you are doing it you are probably under the watchful eye of someone somewhere who can piece together your entire movements at any time they wish to do so. This type of society will make any type of operation in the near future very complex and difficult to accomplish tasks that used to fly under the radar easily.
5 Responses “Assassination Tango; Mahmoud al-Mabhouh”
You appear to assume that whoever did that was freelancing. You talk about elimination as if it was inevitable. What about plastic surgery?
It stands to reason that if the Israelis did this job, they invested heavily in the people that executed it, they probably wouldn’t want to burn that investment. Also, they are their own, Jews that is, so that there is the issue of loyalty to kin, so to speak.
Then, they probably wouldn’t want to scald their intelligence service by killing off their own, a move which wouldn’t exactly inspire trust in leaders and inspire loyalty. Disappearing one agent is one thing, but to do that to an entire team, of eleven? These people are very specialised. I assume that very few intelligence services have so many so specially trained specialists that they can easily lose or spare an entire team, in a way that doesn’t get noticed.
I was speaking that day about freelance job not a state hit per se. There are radical differences between the two. And as for trust, I feel the need to discuss that in another post.
Great article! I’m not sure that you’re right about #8, though. Didn’t the Hamas arms dealer have a body guard? I would definitely have a body guard, and you wouldn’t catch me in any dark alleys, or even really on the street at all, if I were an arms dealer. I would say to myself, “I just bought a bunch of weapons from Iran, and sold them in Gaza. I’ll take a cab.”
No, the target went to Dubai alone. #8 has been debated a number of times. I think one or two people would have been more productive. However so far none of them have been caught, therefore, so far, it is a success to some degree for those who carried it out. Only time will tell how successful it actually was.
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/03/even_more_on_th.html#comments
@Bill – I see we took the the same assessment of the Cold Spy
In more detail, his 11 points arent even 11 points – obviously Cold Spy wants to make use of the Digg effect where numbered lists seem to get much more prominence…
The overarching issue I have with it, and all similar analysis postings, is that we are working from a position of vast ignorance. We have no idea what risks were assessed and tolerated, what other risks were mitigated against and what other constraints the operation was planned under. Its trivial for *us* to sit at our PC (or Mac for the weirdos) and discuss what *we* would or wouldnt have done based on our assumptions (normally along the lines of Mossad operators are superhuman, no risk is acceptable, one man can do the job of 20 etc. I blame Bourne for this).
So, of the 11 points:
1 – not a mistake. A best this is an operational decision they may not use again. However it may well be the case that a passport that has “lived” on international travel systems will get less scrutiny than one belonging to an adult who has only just bothered to get it. Even middle eastern countries try to screen out terrorists….
2 – Not really a mistake unless the operational decision had been to hide their faces. That said, if you were at a border control point and someone came through trying to disguise their face, what would you do? (allowing entry is probably low on the list)
3 – How do you know they didnt? We assume they didnt and they may well not have but given the widespread surprise about how well the Dubai police reacted to this and built an evidence pack, its possible they did indeed make that mistake. Its also possible that Mossad (or whoever) accepted this risk and, as others have said, given that not one of the team have been found yet it seems an acceptable risk to me.
4 – not a mistake at all, in fact this is probably fairly good operational practice depending on the goal. If they didnt know where the target would be, they have to make sure they are as flexible as possible so getting several locations is good. This activity did not lead to their plan being compromised and only came to light *after* they had left the country. Is this a mistake or an operational judgement?
5 – I dont understand why this is a mistake at all, so I might have misread it. I will withold judgement in case someone can explain it a bit better.
6 – I am not sure this is a mistake or significantly differrent from #3. The mistake may well have been to hope that the police would assume natural causes and not investigate and if everything else was built on that these decisions cease to be mistakes. Can an operational decision that has no negative impact on the outcome of the operation be called a mistake? It seems to me that (again assuming Mossad) this is a message that cuts both ways. One country can say “dont do it on our soil” (but if you do, we wont catch you) and the other says “You arent safe anywhere.” Either way its good PR if you are that way inclined.
7 – this is 6 repeated.
8 – If they did this with 11 people I am impressed. Unless that 1 person is Jason Bourne, James Bond or similar, its not possible. Even a street robbery would need more than 1 person. The key is that this is not a street robbery, so unlike a crack addict robber they have to factor lots and lots of things into the equation – not least of which is controlling who is in the vicinity at the time of the attack. A street robber is attacking any person who passes, this is an attack on a specific person. Massive difference and one that needs lots and lots of people.
9 – pretty much contradicts everything else. Why is it harder for a film to fake a car crash than to have one in real life? In real life things just happen, a mugger just stabs their victim. In a staged attack things have to be set up to look real enough without leaving any loose ends. If you go down the cut out, which you then kill route, it gets even more confusing (do you kill the killer, and the killer of the killer’s killer etc). Madness and I have never heard of it happening in real life (*).
10 – how is this a mistake? Not only is more time in country more dangerous (risk of compromise) but how do we know the attacking agency had that much notice? Even once they have the solid intelligence plans have to be made, budgets checked, authority granted etc. Why would more time have led to it being called off? Was the target planning to visit a load of low security countries? (Do any still exist?). It strkes me their plan was reasonably well thought out but everything carries risk.
11 – see 6 again.
Overall, no mistakes. Risks were taken and some of these risks were realised. If this never happened, they wouldnt be risks.
We could argue all day as to if the organisation which did this was right to accept all these risks but we dont know what else they considered.
As anyone who works in security knows even with the best will in the world, with flawless execution sometimes the residual risk happens.
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(*) but then I wouldnt…
Posted by: GreenSquirrel at March 22, 2010 9:50 AM