Israel Poised To Strike Iraq

Israel’s spy satellite, OFEK, which keeps silent watch over Iraq has now been reinforced by Jordan’s unprecedented move in allowing Israeli air force radar experts to be stationed at its ultra-secret, H-5 air base east of Amman.

This is a further tangible sign that Israel is getting ready to strike hard against Iraq.

The decision to do so comes after Mossad agents inside Iraq have concluded that Saddam intends to launch a pre-emptive strike against Israel, “probably between September and the onset of Ramadan”, according to one Mossad source Globe-Intel spoke to.

Israel’s prime minister, Ariel Sharon, has been told that the Iraqi strike would be led with missiles equipped with chemical warheads.

So serious is the threat that Sharon called President George Bush. Tel Aviv sources told Globe-Intel that Bush agreed at the first indication of an attack, Israel was entitled to strike first.

The Israeli air force has now prepared plans to do so. Its 69 Squadron, the cutting edge of its air force equipped with F-151 fighters, is now on hard-stand readiness to strike deep into Iraq.

And the country’s Arrow anti-ballistic missile system – more advanced than any in the Middle East – has gone to Code Yellow, one stage below launch.

The radar experts stationed at the Jordanian H-5 base, have thrown an electronic network deep into Iraq’s desert – to warn of any low flying attacks from Saddam’s fighter bombers.

Mossad have warned that such an attack will be directed at Dimona, Israel’s nuclear facility in the Negev Desert.

Already some of its 200 nuclear weapons have been moved to secret bases in Israel.

A further sign of impending attack is that all emergency medical teams in the country’s hospitals have been vaccinated against biological agents.

There is also a plan to inoculate the country’s entire 6 million Israelis against bio-chemical weapons.

Every city and town in Israel has now received its stockpile of antidotes. But they will not be available to Palestinians on the West Bank or Gaza Strip.

A senior Israeli intelligence officer told Globe-Intel: “It is unlikely that Saddam will attack his own supporters in those areas. We know Israelis will be his targets. This time we will not sit idly back.”

During the 1991 Gulf War, Saddam’s forces launched 39 Scud missiles against Israel. The intention was to split the Arab coalition with America.

“But there is now no such coalition. And Washington has made it clear to us it would not this time expect Israel to stand idly by and do nothing. We will strike at the first hint Saddam is going to attack us”, said a senior Israeli Defence Force officer.

Fears that Saddam does intend to attack Israel emerged at Iraq’s “celebrations” to mark the 14th anniversary of its war with Iran last week.

Saddam told cheering crowds in Baghdad that “we are ready to make attacks deep inside the land of our enemy”.

Meanwhile it has emerged in Washington that the Pentagon has prepared a high-tech battle plan which will “deploy robots, unmanned reconnaissance drones and advanced electronic sensors to overcome resistance from urban warfare in Baghdad”.

GORDON THOMAS is the author of fifty-three books. Total sales exceed 45 million copies. Several were Main Selections for Book of the Month Club, the Literary Guild Book and the Readers Digest Book Club. He has received two Mark Twain Society Awards for Reporting Excellence. Seven of his books are major motion pictures including five times Academy Award nominated Voyage of the Damned; Enola Gay, which won the Emmy Awards Foreign Critics Prize. Experiences won the Juries and Critics prize at the Monte Carlo Film Festival. He holds an Edgar Alan Poe Award for Shipwreck.

His books of best-selling David Morton novels are being filmed by IAC International as a 22-hour television series to be screened worldwide in 2003. His Gideon’s Spies: Mossad’s Secret Warriors became a major documentary for Channel Four which he wrote and narrated. It followed three years of research during which he was given unprecedented access to Mossad’s key personnel. The book has so far been published in 16 languages.

Gordon Thomas lives in Ireland, with his wife, an interior designer. His four children work in various sections of the entertainment industry.

GORDON ON GORDON

"I am the author of fifty-three books published world-wide, several of which have dealt with various aspects of the intelligence world. As a foreign correspondent my assignments have ranged from the Suez Crisis in 1956 to Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Having worked as a foreign correspondent, I have first-hand experience of the dire consequences of unsuccessful foreign policies. Korea, Vietnam, Algeria, Cyprus, Iraq, Iran - I covered them all. But it was Tiananmen Square which me most bruised. Kids rolled out 14 foot long by tanks … I've seen a lot of death and horror but this was something else.

Forty-five years of reporting gave me a shelf of best-sellers - and the skills needed to persuade the men and women of Mossad to open up.

I was born on the floor of a house in a graveyard, in Wales. During the '30s Depression his mother was visiting my grandparents, cemetery-keepers, when she went into labour. A blizzard prevented her reaching hospital. Because my father served in the RAF, I spent my childhood abroad. While at school in England I wrote my first book, Descent Into Danger, the true story of a British agent in Russia during World War 11.

I wrote the whole thing in 30 exercise books. I had no idea how to find a publisher. I looked up the first one, Alan Wingate, and sent him a letter. The book was accepted. Descent Into Danger was also serialised by the Express Newspaper Group and I was given a job.

In 1956, during the Suez Crisis, Express newspapers sent me Arabic, to Egypt as a junior reporter.

One by one all the senior correspondents, legends of the 1940s and 1950s, were expelled and there was only me. I got my first big exclusive when Nasser told me in a moment of aberration that he intended to nationalise the Suez Canal. I filed the story. Two hours later the phone rang and it was Lord Beaverbrook himself. He said 'I hope you're right because if you're not your career is over'. At three o'clock the Egyptian Foreign Office denied any plans. The stock markets tumbled. At 6 o'clock Nasser nationalised the Canal.

When BBC 2 started I joined as the first resident writer. I started 'Tomorrow's World', 'Horizon' and 'Man Alive'. I became a writer, director and producer.

I made documentaries on Dr Christian Barnard, the heart surgeon, and Dr Joseph Issels, the controversial cancer specialist. But television seemed too ephemeral, and I'm not a person who likes big teams.

I have explored some extremely dark subjects, from slavery to the bombing of Hiroshima in my books and screenplays.

My father-in-law was a professional intelligence officer who worked for MI5 and ran a network in East Germany. He introduced me to many intelligence agents including William Buckley, the CIA station chief murdered in Beirut.

During the course of research I discovered the CIA had been the greatest pioneer of torture I'd ever come across in the West. They had enlisted a hospital attached to McGill University in Montreal and a Scots-born psychiatrist, Professor Ewan Cameron, experimented to see if it was possible to cook minds.

I've met a lot of people in Intelligence. Some are very spooky indeed. You wouldn't cross the room to avoid them, you just wouldn't go into the room in the first place. Those in Mossad I found particularly interesting … so devious.

In the run-up to the Gulf War, I had a rare interview with Saddam Hussein.

“In our deserts the makers of deadly perfume have worked hard to provide us with the weapons to defend ourselves and destroy the Zionists should they ever attack us, or their allies should they, too, dare to attack us." Saddam told me.

It was the first hint that Iraq possessed biological weapons. The interview was published around the world.

I have reported all the major Middle East wars since 1956, including witnessing the effect of biological and chemical weapons in the notorious massacre of Kurds during the Iran/Iraq War. My intelligence contacts, particularly in Israel, helped to pave the way for me to go on producing Globe-Intel reports."

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