On the night of 21 July 1973, within the quiet Norwegian city of Lillehammer, a pair walked residence from the cinema. The lady was seven months pregnant and was strolling slowly when a gray Volvo stopped close by. Two hitmen from Mossad, the Israeli overseas intelligence company, emerged and shot the person within the torso and head earlier than leaving as shortly as they’d come.
The person killed that evening was Achmed Bouchiki, a Moroccan waiter and cleaner, who – other than wanting much like the alleged terrorist Ali Hassan Salameh – had nothing to do with Center Jap terrorism. Mossad initially thought that they’d achieved a serious success as a part of ‘Operation Wrath of God’, a retribution marketing campaign initiated by the Israeli authorities in response to the 1972 Munich Olympics Bloodbath, during which members of the Palestinian terrorist group Black September kidnapped after which killed 11 Israeli athletes. However as an alternative of killing the alleged mastermind behind the Munich assault, they’d dedicated certainly one of Mossad’s worst blunders, embarrassing the company for years to come back and triggering a world disaster often known as the Lillehammer affair.
How did this occur? The assassination mission was accredited in haste and based mostly on a single image of Ali Hassan Salameh, which Mossad officers had held as much as Bouchiki earlier than deciding to go forward with the assassination. The image had been given to Mossad by the British home intelligence company MI5. Since 1971 the 2 businesses had been a part of the Membership de Berne, a covert intelligence-sharing group, established in 1969 by the heads of eight Western European home intelligence businesses. All through the Seventies the Membership de Berne hosted an encrypted telecommunication channel that established a straight line instantly between 18 businesses, together with extra-European companions equivalent to Mossad and the FBI. The codeword used for this secret correspondence was ‘Kilowatt’. So far some 40,000 paperwork from the Kilowatt recordsdata have been launched and are accessible to the general public within the Swiss Federal Archives. These embrace completed analytical merchandise but additionally so-called ‘uncooked intelligence’, studies that got here straight from an company’s sources, most frequently spies or different informants. The recordsdata present that Kilowatt members shared massive quantities of details about Palestinians. Not solely did this assist to anticipate and thwart terrorist plots, however it additionally supported Mossad’s covert assassination operation.
European companions helped Mossad find terrorist suspects, initially – as turns into clear from Kilowatt correspondence – with out figuring out that Israel was planning to kill them. After each assassination in Europe, the respective intelligence businesses then reported to the Membership de Berne in regards to the case, shared detailed police studies, and offered common updates in regards to the ongoing felony investigations.
That intelligence businesses such because the French Route de la surveillance du territoire (DST) or Italian Servizio Informazioni Difesa (SID) have been keen to ship police findings to the very intelligence company that had dedicated the crime despatched a message that Europe would proceed to ‘look the opposite manner’ and tacitly settle for Mossad eliminating Palestinians on their territory. For example, after the assassination by automobile bomb of Mohamed Boudia, a key determine in Palestinian terrorism, in Paris in June 1973, the DST despatched a report back to its European and Israeli companions. In it, they talked about numerous potentialities for Boudia’s dying, together with an unintended explosion and a attainable Palestinian feud – with no point out of Mossad, although by this level their involvement was identified to most individuals; the day following the assassination, the French newspaper Le Monde blamed Mossad. Moreover, Swiss intelligence had been significantly helpful within the planning of Boudia’s assassination: it had helped to establish his routine, cowl names he travelled beneath, addresses in Paris, and, crucially, particulars in regards to the automobile he was driving. Mossad was then capable of place a bomb within the automobile. Wrath of God is usually seen as an Israeli operation, however it couldn’t have succeeded with out the European businesses that actively supported it.
Following the Lillehammer affair, Operation Wrath of God was suspended for a number of years. The incident and public trial of the six Mossad officers concerned induced an outpouring of worldwide outrage and hostile press in the direction of Israel, and diplomatic relations with Western Europe have been embittered. Whereas Norway publicly confirmed outrage and refused to cowl up the story, it additionally confirmed relative leniency in the direction of Israel. In February 1974 the Norwegian court docket dominated that Mossad was liable for the homicide. 5 of the six brokers have been sentenced to jail, with phrases starting from one to 5 and a half years. Nonetheless, after 22 months all have been pardoned, most likely by a secret Israeli-Norwegian deal.
Different Western European states additionally confirmed solidarity with Israel. In the course of the course of the trial in 1974 the Palestine Liberation Group (PLO) demanded that investigations into the unresolved murders of Palestinians in France and Italy be reopened, however each governments ignored these requests. In Kilowatt intelligence exchanges, cooperation continued unchanged although their governments confronted an official diplomatic disaster and regardless of the plain fact that their intelligence had facilitated Mossad’s killing mission. The publicity of Operation Wrath of God had no impact among the many Kilowatt group.
The recordsdata thus give insights right into a parallel safety order. Away from public scrutiny and oversight, intelligence businesses have been free to pursue their very own overseas political agenda. Within the Seventies, for instance, whereas MI5 exchanged info each day with Mossad about Palestinian teams, together with the whereabouts of Palestinians who could possibly be placed on an Israeli kill record, Whitehall utilized a really essential overseas coverage in the direction of Israel. In the course of the October 1973 ‘Yom Kippur’ Struggle, prime minister Edward Heath refused to provide spare components for Israel’s Centurion tanks or to supply touchdown rights to US army provide planes on their option to Israel. For the reason that early Seventies the UK’s Center Jap coverage has had the express intention of offering ‘a “character” for the Palestinian folks’ – a coverage that may make sure the Palestinians had a stake in a future Center East settlement with out clearly mentioning an unbiased state. But when it’s assumed that an motion might be saved secret and plausibly denied, businesses can, and do, act in disregard of political or moral concerns.
Aviva Guttmann is Lecturer in Technique and Intelligence at Aberystwyth College and the creator of Operation Wrath of God: The Secret Historical past of European Intelligence and Mossad’s Assassination Marketing campaign (Cambridge College Press, 2025).
