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By Way of Deception

By Way of Deception

By Way of Deception

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312 BY WAY OF DECEPTIONSo it was that in the late 1970s, Admony, then head <strong>of</strong> liaison forthe Mossad, made solid contact through the CIA and hisEuropean connections with Lebanese Christian Phalangist BashirGemayel, a man as brutal as he was powerful, persuading theMossad that Lebanon needed their help. The Mossad, in turn,persuaded the Israeli government that Gemayel — a close friend <strong>of</strong>Salameh, the Red Prince — was sincere. It was a picture theyperpetuated for years through the selective distillation <strong>of</strong>intelligence to the government.Gemayel was also working for the CIA at the time, but for theMossad the notion <strong>of</strong> having a "friend" inside an Arab country —no matter how double-dealing he might be — was exciting. Inaddition, Israel had never feared Lebanon. The joke was that if thetwo countries went to war, Israel would send its military orchestrato defeat the Lebanese.In any case, the Lebanese were too busy fighting amongthemselves at the time to take on anyone else. The various Muslimand Christian forces were fighting for control, as they still are, andGemayel, his forces under siege, decided to turn to Israel for help.As an added bonus, the Mossad saw this as a way to get rid <strong>of</strong>Israel's Public Enemy Number One, the PLO. Throughout thewhole period, long after Israel's actions had backfired, theLebanese connection remained critical for the Mossad, becauseAdmony, its head, was the man who started it all and saw it as hiscrowning achievement.In many respects, Lebanon today is like Chicago and New York inthe 1920s and 1930s when the various mobs, or mafia families,were openly fighting for control. Both violence and ostentationwere the norm, and for a time, government <strong>of</strong>ficials seemedunable, or unwilling, to do anything about it.Lebanon, too, has its families, each with its army or militia loyal tothe "don." But religious and family loyalties have long playedsecond fiddle to the power and money <strong>of</strong> the drug trade andnumerous mafia-type activities that feed the engine <strong>of</strong> Lebanesecorruption and maintain the current state <strong>of</strong> anarchy there.There are the Druzes, the fourth largest <strong>of</strong> more than a dozenLebanese sects, an <strong>of</strong>fshoot <strong>of</strong> Isma'ili Muslims, with

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