Raid on the Sun (28 page)

The three generals stood off the runway, next to the taxi vans: Ivry, the commander who had conceived the raid; Eitan, the general who had ordered it; and Saguy, the intelligence chief who had once opposed it. After years of planning and worry and failure, they were spectators now, impotently standing on the sidelines, each left to his thoughts.

Ivry squinted down the tarmac at the fighter-bombers, the wavy, superheated air from the jet exhausts obscuring the outline of the planes as though some flawed pane of glass had been dropped between them. Soon the Falcons would hurl down the runway and lift off to the sky, two at a time, climbing eastward, looking very much like the birds of prey they were named after.

Would their pilots come home safe? Would they be successful? What would the world think? What would be the final reckoning of this Raid on the Sun? Ivry thought.

The general turned wordlessly back in the direction of the command bunker, where he would wait and wonder what the night would bring.

                                                                                                                                       
NOTES

Author’s note: The first time a work or interview is referenced, I have included all relevant information. All subsequent references to the work are sourced by the last name of the interviewee or author only.

PROLOGUE: THE ROAD TO BABYLON

“General David Ivry’s wife . . . ‘Shalom.’ ”
The episode was told to me by former ambassador David Ivry during my first interview with him in September 2001. Other observations come from discussions with Mark Regev, the Israeli embassy’s communications director.

“A staff car . . . planning this mission.”
Ivry.

“Waiting for him . . . minus six hours and counting.”
Ivry; also
The Life and Times of Menachem Begin,
Amos Perlmutter (Doubleday: New York, 1987).

“The planes below stood menacingly anonymous . . . either side of the fuselage.”
There is very little written about the Osirak raid. An early and almost completely overlooked book about the mission is
Bullseye One Reactor
by Dan McKinnon (House of Hits: San Diego, 1987), a former USAF pilot who wrote a remarkably well-researched telling of the attack, especially considering the muzzle the IDF had kept on the media and a lack of access to the pilots, who are referred to by pseudonyms. The out-of-print book was recommended to me by Amir Nachumi, who shared many of his early recollections with McKinnon.

“As Ivry walked up . . . Israel for trial.”
Perlmutter.

“Raful’s son, Yoram . . . seven days of seclusion.”
McKinnon; Ivry; interview with mission pilot Doobi Yaffe.

“Eitan caught Ivry’s look . . . Eitan said.”
Conversation is a reconstruction through discussions with Ivry and Regev.

“Eight pilots would have to fly . . . nuclear reactor.”
Interviews with mission pilots Zeev Raz and Hagai Katz.

“The modeling experts . . . antiaircraft fire.”
Interview with mission pilot Gen. Amos Yadlin.

“The two generals moved . . . ‘the mission blown.’”
Interview with mission pilot Amir Nachumi and Ramat David commander Iftach Spector; McKinnon.

“The crew chiefs . . . four planes to a line.”
Ivry, Yaffe, Nachumi.

TERROR OF THE TIGRIS

“Before the birth . . . since the earliest days of the regime.”
The section of the chapter dealing with Saddam Hussein’s early life and rise to power was compiled from interviews, background research, and the invaluable help of several good books on Iraq and its Ba’thist president:
Instant Empire: Saddam Hussein’s Ambition for Iraq,
Simon Henderson (Mercury House: San Francisco, 1991);
Saddam Hussein: A Political Biography,
Efraim Karsh and Inari Rautsi (MacMillan, Inc.: New York, 1991);
Saddam Hussein: The Politics of Revenge,
Said K. Aburish (Bloomsbury: London, 1999);
The Continuing Storm: Iraq, Poisonous Weapons and Deterence,
Avigdor Hasekorn (Yale University Press: New Haven and London, 1999); J. Snyder, “The Road to Osirak: Baghdad’s Quest for the Bomb,”
Middle East Journal,
vol. 37, no. 4, 1983; interview with Sayyed Nassar, an Arab nationalist who befriended Saddam Hussein when the Ba’thist was in exile in Cairo in the 1960s.

“Halfway across the world . . . it already had close to one hundred of them.”
This section of the chapter, recounting Dr. Khidhir Hamza’s experiences in Iraq’s Nuclear Research Center, is based on both a 2002 interview with Dr. Hamza outside Fredericksburg, Virginia (hereafter referred to as “Hamza”), and his autobiographical book about his adventures,
Saddam’s Bombmaker
(Scribner: New York, 2000).

“The year was 1956 . . . except Saddam Hussein.”
The section recounting Israel’s secret atomic bomb program beginning in 1956 is drawn from numerous sources, chief among them author Seymour M. Hersh’s excellent investigative history,
The Sampson Option
(Random House: New York, 1991);
Nuclear Deterrence,
Shai Feldman (Columbia University Press: New York, 1982);
Six Days of War,
Michael B. Oren (Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2002); interview with Tom Moberly, engineer with TRW; reports of the Canadian Nuclear Association; Hamza, McKinnon.

“By 1971, Khidhir Hamza . . . in the brown flatlands of the Tigris.”
Hamza, McKinnon;
Saddam’s Bombmaker; Le Monde,
Paris, p. 1, September 25, 1975; interview with Entifad Qanbar, a former Iraqi civil engineer who worked for Hussein’s interior ministry. He defected to the United States in 1985.

“The two Israeli generals . . . ‘we may have one or two ideas.’”
Ivry, Perlmutter;
Flames over Tammuz,
Shlomo Nakdimon (Edanim Publishers: Jerusalem, 1986). A respected veteran Israeli journalist, Nakdimon was the first to reveal the deep political infighting over Osirak within Begin’s cabinet, from the earliest days of mission planning until its final execution in 1981;
Gideon’s Spies: Mossad’s Secret Warriors,
Gordon Thomas (St. Martin’s Press: New York, 1999).

MISSION IMPOSSIBLE

“The drivers of the two cargo trucks . . . Hofi and Mossad still had work to do.”
Many of the precise details of the sections dealing with Mossad’s secret missions to derail the construction of Osirak come from Victor Ostrovsky and Claire Hoy’s fascinating
By Way of Deception
(St. Martin’s Press: New York, 1990). A former Mossad agent, Ostrovsky revealed many of the Israeli secret service’s classified operations over three decades, outraging the spy agency. I was able to verify much of his account of the agency’s Osirak exploits through other sources, who asked to remain anonymous. Also, Thomas, McKinnon, Hamza, Karsh & Rautsi, Ivry.

“In July 1979, just months . . .
nineteen
nuclear reactors for Saddam.”
Hamza, Karsh.

“Butrus Eben Halim was an unremarkable . . . Meshad’s murder would go unsolved, if not unforgotten.”
Once again, I have drawn heavily from Ostrovsky, as well as from several other sources speaking on the condition of anonymity. The Mossad terms come from Thomas and Ostrovsky. Also, Hamza, Karsh, McKinnon.

“The French, however, soon . . . French scientists were still in charge.”
Hamza, Karsh, Nakdimon, McKinnon.

“From the earliest days . . . After all, what were friends for?”
Technical details about the F-16 come from
Jane’s Aircraft Upgrades,
Ninth Edition, David Baker (Jane’s Information Group Limited, 2002) and interviews with USAF Lieutenant Colonel Jeff Dishart, as well as McKinnon, Ivry; interviews with mission squadron leader Zeev Raz and mission pilot Doobi Yaffe.

“Conceived as a faster . . . perhaps, a little crazy.”
Jane’s,
Oren, McKinnon, Ivry, Raz; interviews with mission backup pilot and present military attaché to the Israeli Embassy, Washington, D.C., Rani Falk.

“In the fall of ’79 . . . the second team to Hill.”
Interview with second team leader Amir Nachumi; Ivry, Raz, Yaffe, Oren.

“By February, the Italian . . . buying Ivry more time.”
Interview with mission pilot Hagai Katz; Ivry, Karsh, Ostrovsky, Hamza.

THE WARRIORS

“Hagai Katz couldn’t believe his luck . . . What could Ivry be thinking?”
Interviews with mission pilot Relik Shafir and IAF F-16 pilot Dubi Ofer, one of the first twelve to go to Hill AFB; Falk, Yaffe, Raz.

“The reports out of Baghdad . . . November was set as a tentative date.”
Ivry, Hamza, McKinnon, Nakdimon, Perlmutter; IAF website.

“Raz and his squadron . . . ‘defending their own plants or destroying
someone else’s
.’”
Ivry, McKinnon, Raz;
Washington Post
article, p. 1, by George C. Wilson, June 15, 1981.

“Curiously, the NRC was not . . . Osirak would be hot by midsummer 1981.”
Hersh.

“Soon after Kivity and Saltovitz . . . God help them, probably nuclear.”
Ivry, Raz, Nachumi, Katz; phone interview with mission pilot Ilan Ramon in Houston.

THE WAITING

“For months, Operation’s engineers . . . And then things got complicated.”
Ivry, Raz, Falk, Yaffe, Shafir, Katz, Nachumi; interviews with Raz’s wingman, Amos Yadlin.

“Ever since Ayatollah . . . only hope of completing the mission and returning to base.”
Hamza,
Saddam’s Bombmaker,
Karsh & Rautsi, Ivry, Nakdimon, Falk, Yaffe.

“While the pilots practiced targeting . . . accomplished was taking one another out?”
McKinnon, Dishart, Raz, Falk; Raz interview with operations commander Aviem Sella for use in this book.

“In January 1981 . . . not going to change anything.”
Nachumi, Raz.

“Several weeks later . . . Syria’s new SAMs.”
Yadlin.

“Commander Spector was both . . . too late to turn back.”
Oren, Yadlin; interview with mission pilot Iftach Spector; Ivry, Nachumi, Raz, Falk.

“By March 1981 . . . would do it anyway.”
Ivry, Raz, Katz.

“By the end of March . . . ‘call it Operation Babylon.’”
Nakdimon, Perlmutter, Ivry, Raz.

“A week later, at Ramat David . . . ‘what else matters?’”
Falk, Raz, Yadlin, Nachumi.

WHEELS-UP

“Heading back after the security . . . Ivry wondered.”
Ivry, Perlmutter, Nakdimon, Falk, Yadlin, Nachumi.

“Begin read the note . . . Would this be the Sunday?”
Peres’s letter is reprinted in Perlmutter, McKinnon, and, in original Hebrew, in Nakdimon. The political ramifications are recounted by Perlmutter and Nakdimon, who reportedly had a source inside Begin’s security cabinet.

“The friction between the two . . . he alone was feeling now.”
Raz.

“On Wednesday, June 3 . . . dinner that night.”
McKinnon, Ivry, Yaffe.

“The question of whether . . . And that was that.”
Raz; Yaffe and his wife, Michal; Katz; Yadlin.

“The Friday before the mission . . . ‘I hope I collect.’”
Yadlin, Yaffe, Spector, Shafir, McKinnon.

“Sunlight from the first . . . ‘God be with you.’”
Raz, Spector, Ivry, McKinnon, Sella, Yadlin, Nachumi, Yaffe. Eitan’s speech was first reprinted by McKinnon in 1986.

“The pilots suited up . . . he could have drawn.”
Spector, Katz, Raz, Nachumi, Yaffe, Falk.

SIXTY SECONDS OVER BAGHDAD

“The brown banks of . . . in their headsets: ‘Grazen.’ ”
Raz, Ivry, Yadlin, Katz, Nachumi, Spector, Shafir. The checkpoint codes were given to me by Katz and Ivry.

“Miles behind . . . lights from a small town.”
Raz, Spector, Yadlin, Katz, McKinnon.

“Khidhir Hamza stood outside . . . all Israel, it seemed, waited.”
Hamza, Yadlin, Nachumi, Yaffe.

“As Raz began to nose . . . any pursuing MiGs.”
Raz, Yadlin.

“One of the French electricians . . . the man exclaimed, astonished.”
Hamza, McKinnon, Katz, Yaffe, Nachumi, Shafir. The descriptions of the bombing runs and the targeting are based in part on voice tapes from the pilots’ helmet microphones and videotape from the F-16 nose cameras, which I was able to view. The quality of the tapes is quite good. Spector himself told me about blacking out, though he wasn’t sure what had happened. He said he just missed. Nachumi was convinced Spector experienced blackout, a not-uncommon occurrence during high-G maneuvers.

CHECK SIX

“Khidhir Hamza stood frozen . . . Everyone suddenly felt thirsty.”
Hamza, Raz, Ivry, Nakdimon, Michal Yaffe, McKinnon, Yaffe, Katz.

“Five hundred and eighty miles . . . across the installation.”
Hamza;
Time,
June 15, 1981.

“As darkness fell at Etzion . . . ever celebrate that holiday again.”
Falk, Nachumi, Katz, Raz, Yadlin, Yaffe, Shafir, Ivry.

“Richard V. Allen . . . ‘terrific piece of bombing!’”
President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime,
Lou Cannon (Touchstone/Simon & Schuster: New York, 1991); Hersh; interview with Caspar Weinberger; interview with Richard Perle.

“Monday morning, July 8 . . . ‘which is near Baghdad. . . .’”
Katz, Raz, McKinnon.

“That Sunday, the cavernous . . . deliver within the month.”
Thomas.

EPILOGUE: BLOWBACK

“Monday morning, June 8 . . . ‘start from scratch.’”
Hamza, Karsh.

“The storm of indignation . . . was quietly resumed.”
McKinnon, Perlmutter, Hersh; IDF website;
New York Times,
editorial page, June 9, 1981;
Time,
cover story, June 15, 1981; Cannon, Ivry.

“Perhaps in somewhat . . . whom Hofi was referring to.”
The anecdote about Begin accidentally referring to Dimona comes from Hersh.

“The Arab nations . . . chemical weapons programs.”
Thomas, Hamza.

“On June 7, 2001 . . . signed: ‘Dick Cheney.’ ”
Falk, Katz, Raz, Nachumi, Ivry.