MODERN ISRAEL'S ROLE

Mossad Briefs Cheney; Iraq Ready to Strike

By Gordon Thomas

Number 3 March 12, 2002

 MOSSAD BRIEFS VP CHENEY THAT SADDAM’S SUICIDE PILOTS ARE AT HARD STAND READINESS by Gordon Thomas (EXCLUSIVE) 

Vice President Dick Cheney has been briefed by Mossad’s director-general, Efraim Halevy, that Saddam Hussein has placed his squadrons of suicide pilots at “hard stand readiness” ready for instant take-off. 

Up to sixty of the pilots are reported to spend their time in the cockpits of their Russian-built MIGS and French Mirage jets. Cheney has been told that the aircraft are carrying biological and chemical canisters. They include nerve agents designed to destroy human immune systems. 

The agents include Tubun, Serin and Soman. Saddam has also placed Scud missiles with bio-chemical warheads in the Iraqi desert south of Karbala and Tikrit. Both the aircraft and the Scuds are within minutes flying time of what is now believed to be Saddam’s prime target – Israel. 

He is already calling it “The Coming Second Great Mother of Wars” in his Baghdad newspapers. High-level Israeli intelligence sources have confirmed to Globe-Intel that in the past days, Iraq has moved out of bunkers at two sites – Salman Pak and Al-Hakam –its biological weapons. 

Mossad had identified no fewer than a dozen other storage sites in and around Baghdad. “We believe some of them are buried beneath mosques in the city suburbs,” said an Israeli intelligence source. He acknowledged that to deliberately bomb a mosque could inflame the Arab world. 

Israel’s air force and ground defense system has already mobilized to one stage below DEF-COM 4 – all-out war. In the country’s defense headquarters, the Kiryia in Tel Aviv, commanders have drawn up route maps the suicide pilots are likely to use. The main one would bring them in across the Jordanian desert, flying north of Amman, the desert kingdom’s capital. Unless intercepted it would take then only a few minutes for them to crash on the Israeli cities like Tel Aviv and Haifa. But Halevy has warned both Cheney and Israel’s prime minister, Ariel Sharon, that Saddam’s prime target could be Dimona – Israel’s nuclear bomb facility in the Negev Desert. 

Globe-Intel has been told that stored there in its bunkers are some 200 nuclear weapons of all kinds. “A hit on Dimona could turn Israel into a nuclear wasteland,” confirmed Tim Trevan, former senior advisor to the UN Special Commission on Iraq. Mossad believe a second prime target for the suicide bombers will be the Institute for Biological Research in the Tel Aviv suburb of Nez Ziona. Scientists there are working with a variety of pathogens to find defenses against those Iraq are known to have. 

A hit on the Institute would release the germs and cause almost certain widespread death. The kamikaze pilots are under the command of Saddam’s son, Qusay. All are volunteers. For every one selected there are five waiting to fill their place. Their instructors in low flying skills – essential to attack below Israel’s radar defences – include Chinese pilots from its People Liberation Army’s elite 38th air division. 

The unit is known to have a number of combat-trained women pilots. But none are in Iraq. Gordon Thomas is a writer on intelligence for a number of leading European newspapers (the Sunday Express, UK; El Mundo, Spain; Welt am Sonntag, Germany). World Wide Syndication also syndicates his work internationally. Any use of the above must carry a clear attribution to both Gordon Thomas and Globe-Intel. He is a Contributing Editor to Globe-Intel, an international newsletter devoted to intelligence matters.