Mossad agents who commanded Operation Grim Beeper were interviewed by the American television network CBS on the "60 Minutes" program, revealing new details about the sophisticated operation, for which the prime minister first took responsibility at the end of November.
The interviews revealed new details about the operation that led to the injury of thousands of terrorists in Lebanon and Syria as a result of the explosion of the pagers and walkie-talkies in their possession. The pagers were a kind of Trojan horse that the Mossad created - a bomb in the pockets of Hezbollah terrorists.
According to the interview, it began 10 years ago, when Hezbollah bought more than 16,000 radios – which Israel had not activated until that day.
Interviewer Leslie Stahl spoke with two "portfolio officers," nicknamed Michael and Gabriel, who were said to be the officers who commanded the operation.
Ten years ago, the operation began, but not only with the summons (APPOLO) – but also with the radios (I-COM). The idea was that the device's battery would turn the radio into a bomb – in a way that would make it unrecognizable.
The radios were intended for use in the pocket of the tactical vest that a terrorist of the Radwan Force, Hezbollah's elite unit, would wear close to his heart. Hezbollah bought more than 16,000 radios that the Mossad manufactured in Israel – but did not operate for 10 years, until September 17.
Agent Michael went on to describe that the Mossad "has a huge variety of possibilities for creating foreign companies that have no connection to Israel." These are shell companies designed to penetrate the enemy's supply chain "through a global production in which the Mossad writes the script, we are the directors, we are the producers, we are the main actors, and the world is our stage."
The problem was that the terrorists carried the radios only in battle. Therefore, the Mossad has begun to develop a new device, which Hezbollah terrorists will keep in their pockets all the time – a "pager."
In 2022, the Mossad began developing the second phase of the operation: Gold Apollo's booby-trapped pagers. This was done after intelligence information that Hezbollah was buying them from a company in Taiwan called Gold Apollo. But in order to turn them into a bomb, the original model had to be slightly enlarged.
The agents explained that unlike radios, the pager is a very stupid and one-sided device – it only receives messages and cannot take it out. This is also the reason why the institution chose to use it. In addition, the Mossad even thought about how to get the terrorists to take the device out of their pocket together with precise timing, and found a sound urgent enough to cause them to take the pager out of their pocket exactly at the appointed time – and in accordance with the timing that is seven seconds before the explosion.
Agent Gabriel said that there is a rumor that Nasrallah saw the pager operation with his own eyes, "When we were operating the pager operation, right next to him in the bunker, there was a beeper for several people who received the message, and with his own eyes he saw them collapsing."
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