Aletho News

CIA personnel land in Lebanon, ramp up intel gathering to support Israel’s war

Photo credit: US Embassy Beirut

The Cradle | October 14, 2024

The CIA has sent additional agents to Lebanon and has increased its communications with Lebanese military, security, and political officials in an effort to obtain information about Hezbollah, and may have played a role in Israel’s recent attempt to assassinate a Hezbollah political leader, Al-Akhbar reported on 14 October.

Three senior officials in the official security services acknowledged that Western parties, primarily the US, have initiated intensive daily communication with all Lebanese military and security forces since the outbreak of the open war between Lebanon and Israel, Al-Akhbar editor Ibrahim al-Amin wrote.

The officials told Amin that the content of the communications had nothing to do with obtaining information about threats to western interests. Instead, they wish to obtain information about changes in Hezbollah’s political and military leadership structure after the recent assassination of the party’s secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah.

US intelligence officials were very interested in whether Hezbollah leaders are “still communicating with the military, security and executive forces in Lebanon after the war, with questions about the form and content of the communication,” one official told Amin.

The same official revealed that a security team of 15 CIA officers arrived at Beirut airport last Thursday, 10 October, and moved in a convoy of armored cars without license plates to the headquarters of the American embassy in Awkar.

He explained that the team “joined the work cell based in one of the embassy wings in Beirut, to help manage the Beirut station, which includes 12 main officers, in addition to others with different specialties, including recruiting and managing agents, collecting information through technical means, and analyzing data.”

Another official told Amin that a new director for the CIA’s Beirut station, Sherry Baker, had been appointed and that Baker had previously participated in meetings with Lebanese security officials during visits to Washington.

The official said he knew of “five working visits by Lebanese officers of various levels to the United States, who held meetings with American intelligence officials at their headquarters in Langley.”

In this context, Amin reports that these contacts between the CIA and Lebanese security officials may have played a role in Israel’s recent attempt to assassinate a Hezbollah political leader, Wafiq Safa.

On 10 October, Israeli airstrikes leveled a residential building in central Beirut, killing 22 people. Israel stated that Safa was the target of the attack. However, they were unsuccessful in killing him.

One of the three officials revealed to Amin that just prior to the assassination attempt, the leadership of Hezbollah had asked Safa, in his capacity as head of the resistance movement’s Liaison and Coordination Committee, to communicate with a number of Lebanese security officials on matters related to the ongoing war.

The official explained that “the contacts took place despite the fact that the resistance knew that the mere occurrence of the phone call would constitute a security threat to Safa.”

These fears were confirmed when Israel carried out the bombing in Beirut and leaked news that the target was Safa.

The same official said that Hezbollah “estimates that American intelligence had a direct role in the attempt to assassinate Safa” and that “the operation was carried out based on information provided by the Americans.”

The official stated that the US wanted to kill Safa, who has no military role in Hezbollah, as part of a campaign launched by the US Ambassador to Beirut, Lisa Johnson, who recently “called on Lebanese political and non-political forces to begin working to establish the stage of “post-Hezbollah Lebanon.”

October 14, 2024 - Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | CIA, Israel, United States, Zionism