A thread about the assassination attempt against the US Ambassador to Lebanon, Gunther Dean, in August of 1980; about new revelations that might finally help reveal who was behind this attack; and a call on US journalists to investigate washingtonpost.com/archive/politi…
On August 28, 1980, the three-car motorcade of John Gunther Dean, the American Ambassador to Lebanon, was attacked on the motorway by several assailants armed with automatic rifles as well as light anti-tank weapons or LAWs. The ambassador and his wife escaped unscathed.
This attack is in RAND's “terrorism” database. Entry states that “responsibility for attack was later claimed by the Front for the Liberation of Lebanon from Foreigners, a shadowy right-wing group.” Various media outlets at the time reported on FLLF taking credit for the attack. 
RAND database contains several more attacks claimed by the FLLF between 1980 & 1983. Most of them were car bomb attacks, with purely civilian targets. The FLLF is described as a "shadowy right wing group." The START database also includes several bombings claimed by the FLLF.
Over the years Ambassador Dean has repeatedly argued that Israel was behind the August 1980 attempt on his life. In an interview for the Oral History Project in September 2000, he explained how the Lebanese Intelligence services had managed to retrieve the empty canisters of ...
...two of the light anti-tank weapons (LAWs) that had been used during the attack on his motorcade and, during raiding a house by the intersection where the assault had taken place, found 8 more. Dean collected the numbers on the 10 missiles &sent them to Washington to be traced.
Three weeks (and one angry phone call) later, the US Ambassador finally learned “where the light anti-tank weapons came from, where they were shipped to, on what date, who paid for them, and when they got to their destination.”
The LAWs had been manufactured in the US and “were sold and shipped to Israel in 1974.” In this interview, Dean further states that he “did find out a great deal about this incident” over the following years, and calls this assassination attempt “one of the more unsavory episodes
“one of the more unsavory episodes in our Middle Eastern history” and ends by noting that “our Ambassador to Israel, Sam Lewis, took up this matter with the Israeli authorities.” ( Link to interview: adst.org/wp-content/upl… )
In his 2009 memoir, "Danger Zones: A Diplomat’s Fight for America’s Interests," Dean reiterated his accusations, adding that experts in Washington had told him the LAWs had been sent by Israel to a Lebanese Christian militia. He concludes: amazon.com/DANGER-ZONES-D…
Dean concludes: “I know as surely as I know anything that Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, was somehow involved in the attack. Undoubtedly using a proxy, our ally Israel had tried to kill me." ( see Haaretz: haaretz.com/1.5060443 ; The Nation: thenation.com/article/us-env… )
All of this has been known for years, although it is very rarely discussed in the US media. When discussed, Dean's assertions / accusations are dismissed as conspiracy theories. In January however, a book was published that appears to reinforce the plausibility of Dean's position
The book is Ronen Bergman's "Rise and kill First." It has received rave reviews in the US press, and its author has been interviewed countless times since the book was published. The book focuses on Israeli "targeted assassinations" and it contains one truly remarkable revelation
In 1979, Eitan and Dagan created the Front for the Liberation of Lebanon from Foreigners, and ran that fictitious group from 1979 to 1983. In 1981 and 1982, Ariel Sharon used that Front to conduct a series of indiscriminate car bombings that killed hundreds of civilians
The objective of this massive "terrorist" car bombing campaign was to "sow chaos" amongst the Palestinian & Lebanese civilian population" and, in 1981-82, to provoke the PLO into resorting to "terrorism," thus providing Israel with an excuse to invade Lebanon
The FLLF operation is described in great details in Bergman's book. His account is based solely on first hand accounts from Israeli officials involved in the operation or who were aware of it at the time. It is also described in detail in my article here: mondoweiss.net/2018/05/remark…
As I show in this article, not a SINGLE review of Bergman's book in the US media has mentioned the FLLF operation. Nor has it been mentioned in a SINGLE of the countless interviews he has given on the topic over the last few months. The US media has thus been fully silent about
fully silent about the fact that Israeli officials directed a major &fully indiscriminate car bombing campaign that killed 100s of civilians in Lebanon. This silence also means that the US media has failed to notice the possible implications of this revelation about the Dean case
Bergman himself does not mention the assassination attempt against Dean. But we know that the FLLF took credit for this attack at the time. That Dean's own investigation pointed to Israel & to its Lebanese proxies. And we now know that the FLLF was CREATED and RUN by Israel.
None of this is absolutely conclusive, of course. Nonetheless, this topic might warrant investigation from US journalists (who might also want to write about the FLLF car bombing campaign, ie about Israeli officials resorting to "terrorism.") THE END.
A final note: Ambassador Dean's paper are located at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and might contain valuable information for the journalists and historians and researchers out there: jimmycarterlibrary.gov/assets/documen…
Another "final note": In his book Bergman also reveals that Israel used 2 FLLF operatives to assassinate Sheikh Ragheb Harb in 1984. Harb was a preacher, and had never been involved in any violent act / in "terrorism." Harb would become Hizbollah's second major "martyr."
A Lebanese man, Danny Abdallah, admitted to having participated in Harb's assassination. He lives in Denmark. Lebanon has a extradition request for him. If Bergman is correct, then Abdallah was a member of the FLLF & might thus also have been involved in car bombings in Lebanon.
Yet another "final note": Bergman does note on several occasions in his book that he is not allowed to write and talk about a lot of the operations that his sources talked to him about. I wonder if this FLLF operation vs Dean is one of those.
One final note again: Sharon only got involved with the FLLF in August of 1981 (according to Bergman.) In 1980 the FLLF was run by Eitan, Dagan and Ben-Gal.
Alright, ANOTHER "last note": one of the only references to the FLLF that can be found online is this article from 2016 in Haaretz, by Amir Oren: haaretz.com/israel-news/.p… It is especially valuable because of who it mentions among the Israeli officials involved with the FLLF
This is about the period 1980-1981. Oren mentions Eitan, Dagan and Ben-Gal, the 3 main characters in Bergman's book. But he ALSO mentions Shlomo Ilya. Ilya is not mentioned anywhere In Bergman's book. He also happens to be the only one of the 4 to still be alive...
Shlomo Ilya was, in the early 1980s, the head of the IDF liaison unit in Lebanon. He is also (in)famous for declaring, at the time, that he only weapon against terrorism is terrorism, and that Israel had options for "speaking the language the terrorists understand."
After leaving IDF, Ilya was engaged in selling weapons to countless countries (including dictatorships) around the world, & in training their armed forces. See for example here: upi.com/Israeli-arms-c… If Bergman is correct, his role with the FLLF clearly makes him a "terrorist"
Note: Several books have mentioned FLLF&included accusations that ISR was probably behind attacks
Khalidi's Under Siege,Fisk's Pity Nation,Sayigh's Armed Struggle,Clifton's God Cried,Davis' Buda's Wagon
Bergman is FIRST to have Israeli officials admitting their role on the record
Khalidi's Under Siege,Fisk's Pity Nation,Sayigh's Armed Struggle,Clifton's God Cried,Davis' Buda's Wagon
Bergman is FIRST to have Israeli officials admitting their role on the record
Note that these books were either NOT reviewed in the US press or, when they were, the accusations against Israel were dismissed as amounting to "conspiracy thinking." Now that Israeli officials are on the record, the US media has chosen to simply be SILENT about the topic.
FINALLY: As Bergman also shows, in 1981-82 Ariel Sharon used FLLF to conduct car bombings that killed hundreds of civilians (ie "terrorism") in order to provoke the PLO into using "terrorism", thus giving Israel an excuse to invade Lebanon in the name of fighting "terrorism"
The PLO saw the trap & refrained fm responding. In 1982, the Abu Nidal group tried to assassinate Argov, the Israeli Ambassador to the UK. The attempt failed, but the Begin government used this attack to claim that the PLO (Abu Nidal's arch-rival) had resorted to "terrorism."
Israel bombed Beirut and the surrounding areas, leading finally to a response by the PLO, and Israel had its excuse to invade. Note that of course, if trying to kill Ambassador Argov was "terrorism" then of course trying to kill Ambassador Dean was "terrorism" also ....
