Gordon Thomas - Gideon's Spies

Since October 1989, Dr. Kelly had also established contact with another sinister figure in the world of germ warfare. He was Dr. Vladimir Pasechnik, the former top scientist in the Soviet Union’s biowarfare program, Biopreparat. In one of those classic spy novel moments, the fifty-three-year-old Russian microbiologist had strolled out of a drug industry fair in Paris. Telling his colleagues he was going to buy souvenirs for his wife and children back home in St. Petersburg, Pasechnik had instead hailed a taxi to the British Embassy in the city. He had been brought by MI6 agents on the next EuroStar train to London. Dr. Kelly was appointed “to open the Pandora’s Box of biological secrets the Soviet Union had kept concealed from the world,” he later admitted to the author. Assisting Dr. Kelly was Dr. Christopher Davis, a member of the Ministry of Defense Intelligence staff. Over weeks of questioning Dr. Pasechnik revealed, among much else, how the Soviet Union had planned to spread the plague—the medieval Black Death—across Europe.

Later, Dr. Kelly, now a close friend of the Russian scientist, helped him to start Regma Biotechnologies Company and became a regular visitor to the company’s offices in Wiltshire, England. It was in Porton Down, Britain’s secret biodefense establishment. He also arranged for Pasechnik to have his own office and laboratory in the same building where Dr. Kelly worked at Porton Down. On November 21, 2001, Dr. Pasechnik left his office at Regma Biotechnologies. Staff later remembered he seemed happy and in good health. At home he cooked dinner, washed up, and went to sleep. He was found dead in bed the next day. Initially police said the death was “inexplicable.” The coroner, however, accepted the pathologist’s report that Pasechnik had died from a stroke. No details of the autopsy were made public. No reporter covered the coroner’s inquest. The funeral, which normally would have attracted media attention given who Pasechnik was, went unreported. A full month later the briefest announcement of his death was released by Dr. Christopher Davis, by then retired from the Ministry of Defense and living outside Washington, DC.

By July 2006, Nathan learned that MI5 had discovered Dr. Kelly had assisted Mossad on a number of occasions and that in his diary there was an indication he planned to contact the Mossad London station chief shortly before his death. There was no mention of the reason why and Nathan had set up an appointment. But had he learned that the MI5 inquiries included seeking answers as to whether the suicides of both Dr. Kelly and Dr. Ford were merely a coincidence—or something more sinister? Were all Dr. Kelly’s contacts with Mossad fully authorized—and if so, by whom? Who had given Dr. Kelly clearance to help Dr. Pasechnik to set up his company? And had the Russian’s death really been from a cerebral stroke—or had it been induced by some other method? It was no secret the Russians and other intelligence services had created fast-acting drugs that could mimic a stroke or heart attack—and leave no trace.

Nathan had been told to maintain a watching brief on developments. There was no more that Meir Dagan would, or could, do.

On August 11, 2006, the UN Security Council finally agreed to the text of a Lebanese ceasefire resolution. Even as the details were being sent to Tel Aviv, in the Israeli Defense Forces war room the men around the table were about to launch a full scale land offensive into Lebanon using thirty-thousand troops and massive air strikes. Their target to reach the Litani River had finally been approved by Prime Minister Olmert. Then, despite furious criticism from his military chiefs around the table, Olmert had decided to wait and see for himself what the exact wording of the UN resolution contained. The generals had accused him of wavering and said that, no matter what the resolution said, this was the time to strike a decisive blow against Hezbollah. Olmert caved in. The IDF would launch its massive assault, bombard Beirut and other cities in south Lebanon, and send its soldiers deep into Hezbollah-held territory.

Within hours, an air armada of fifty-five helicopters, hugging the hills of southern Lebanon for protection, dropped paratroopers near the Litani River. Simultaneously an aerial bombardment fired twenty missiles into the Beirut suburbs. Hezbollah shot down an Israeli transport aircraft killing all five crew members including the woman copilot. They were among twenty-four IDF soldiers to die on that day. The IDF claimed it had killed forty Hezbollah fighters during that period. But over 250 rockets had rained down on northern Israel.

In the war room in the Kirya, the arguments carried on as to whether the UN resolution met Israel’s requirements. It called for Hezbollah “to cease all its attacks” while ordering Israel to end “only its offensive operations.” Chief of Staff General Dan Halutz insisted after the ceasefire his forces should be allowed to remain in their present positions in south Lebanon. It was finally agreed that Ehud Olmert could issue the briefest of statements that his government would accept the UN resolution.

Meir Dagan left the meeting knowing that Olmert failed to achieve his two reasons for launching the war: to crush Hezbollah and recover the two captured soldiers, Ehud (Udi) Goldwasser and Eldad Regev. Both had been the reasons given for Israel to go to war. The Mossad chief believed the two captured Israeli soldiers had been moved to the Beka’a Valley and he began to make preparations for another raid into the area. It would not be until 2008 that their bodies would be returned to Israel by Syria in exchange for the release of two hundred Hezbollah prisoners from Israeli jails. In the next few days his agents, accompanied by IDF commandos, once more flew to the Beka’a Valley. After a fierce hand-to-hand battle with Hezbollah fighters, the Israelis withdrew having failed to find the two soldiers. It was also a predictable paradox of the thirty-four days of war that the fire fight would come after both sides had theoretically agreed to halt hostilities. The truth was, Meir Dagan told his senior staff at their weekly meeting, no one had won the war.

The biggest loser was Lebanon. Over one thousand of its people had been killed, fifteen thousand homes and other buildings had been destroyed, tourism and the economy had been decimated. Tourism had generated 15 percent of the Lebanese national economy and the economy had shrunk by 3 percent. Mossad analysts said it would require $2.5 billion to rebuild the country. Israel had lost 144 lives and hundreds more were injured. Israel had also spent $1.6 billion waging the war—equalling 1 percent of its GDP. It’s all important tourist industry had fallen by 50 percent—and would remain like that for some time. President Bush and Prime Minister Blair had both suffered a humiliating defeat in accepting Olmert’s insistence at the outset of hostilities that it would be a short conflict. And, even when that had looked unlikely, they had still done nothing to halt the fighting. Their stance had reinforced the view in the Muslim world that Britain and the United States would always side with Israel.

As Israeli troops trudged back from Lebanon, many of them were bitter and angry. They spoke of how they had gone to war in the stifling summer heat without even sufficient water to drink and how they had to take canteens from the bodies of dead Hezbollah fighters. By the time they reached Israel, many signed a petition claiming incompetence “at all levels” in the way the war was run. Others pitched tents outside government buildings in Jerusalem to protest, charging that Ehud Olmert and his security advisers provided incoherent leadership and must be held accountable. It was a view shared by the Mossad analysts. On the top floor of Mossad headquarters there was also anger that Ehud Olmert had asked an old friend, Ofer Dekel, a former head of Shin Bet, the country’s internal security service, to try and open discussions with Hezbollah to return the two captured soldiers. Meir Dagan told his senior staff that it was too soon to contemplate such a move.