The Pager Bomb Plot

Israel pager bomb plot was a DECADE in the making: Former Mossad agents reveal full scale and details of the plot that hit Hezbollah

Two former Israeli intelligence officials have revealed how the plot to embed Hezbollah's walkie-talkies and pagers with explosives was 10 years in the making. 

Over two days in September, Israel detonated thousands of handheld communication devices used by the terror group killing at least 42 people and injuring at least 4,000 people. 

Victims of the simultaneous explosions plot, which was carried out by Mossad and is understood to have been done on the orders of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, lost limbs, hands and the use of their eyes. 

Two former Mossad agents told CBS news that Hezbollah unwittingly bought over 16,000 of the walkie-talkies 'at a good price' from a fake company it controlled that was named after a real Taiwanese company, Gold Apollo, more than 10 years ago following an aggressive marketing campaign at the time, while around 5,000 pagers were bought around two years ago. 

Hezbollah, which has long been an enemy of Israel, used the low-grade pieces of tech to communicate with their fighters in order to avoid intelligence gathering by its foes. 

One of the agents, who CBS called Gabriel, said: 'When they are buying from us, they have zero clue that they are buying from the Mossad. We make like [the movie] Truman Show, everything is controlled by us behind the scene.'

His fellow ex-Mossad officer, who CBS called Michael, added: 'We have an incredible array of possibilities of creating foreign companies that have no way of being traced back to Israel. Shell companies over shell companies to affect the supply chain to our favour.

'We create a pretend world. We are a global production company. We write the screenplay, we're the directors, we're the producers, we're the main actors, and the world is our stage.'

One Mossad agent (pictured) said Hezbollah had no idea they were buying modified communication devices from Israel

At least 42 people were killed in the pager explosions in September

Gabriel said that each device only had enough explosive in them to hurt the users. 

'We test everything triple, double, multiple times in order to make sure there is minimum damage.' 

Mossad ensured the ringtone was urgent enough to compel the user to check the devices moments before they blew up. 

After succeeding with its plan to embed explosives in the walkie talkies, and seeing that Hezbollah was in the market for pagers, Mossad decided to up the ante, according to the Washington Post. 

The shadowy spy agency bought up masses of Taiwanese Apollo-branded pagers, piggybacking off a recognised trademark and product line with worldwide distribution and no discernible links to Israeli or Jewish interests that might've aroused Hezbollah's suspicions. 

The sales pitch to Hezbollah came from a marketing official trusted by the group with links to Apollo, whose name was not disclosed by the sources the Post spoke to. 

She sold the terror group the AR924 model, according to an Israeli official: 'She was the one in touch with Hezbollah, and explained to them why the bigger pager with the larger battery was better than the original model.'

One of the main selling points about the AR924 was that it was 'possible to charge with a cable. And the batteries were longer lasting,' the official said.

Mossad's pagers, which weighed less than three ounces each, held a battery pack that carried a tiny amount of a powerful explosive, enough to cause severe damage. 

Remnants of a pager carried by a Lebanese militant that detonated

Explosions rocked Lebanon to its core in mid-September

At least 40 people were killed, and thousands more injured, in Lebanon across two days in mid-September after Israel set off explosives that were embedded within communication devices

Photo taken on Sept. 18, 2024 shows a wireless communication device in the hand of a Hezbollah member, the battery of which was removed after a wireless communication device exploded during a funeral, in Beirut, Lebanon

The bomb-battery component was reportedly so carefully hidden that it evaded Hezbollah's attempts to disassemble and analyse the devices.  

Another trick up Mossad's sleeve was to ensure that the signal to trigger the explosives required two hands to use. 

The pagers had a special 'encrypted messages' function that could only be accessed if the user was holding the device with both hands, which Mossad used as cover for the instruction to detonate the explosive. 

In the ensuing explosion, the users would almost certainly 'wound both their hands,' an official said, and thus 'would be incapable to fight.'

Thousands were killed and injured in the pager explosions

Scenes posted to X as scores of Hezbollah members were severely injured by pager explosions that Hezbollah had used throughout southern Lebanon

The pager and walkie-talkie detonations brought Hezbollah to its knees, and last month it signed a ceasefire deal with Israel to end the bitter war. 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14221505/Israel-pager-bomb-plot-DECADE-making-Former-Mossad-agents-reveal-scale-details-plot-humiliated-Hezbollah.html

A police officer inspects a car in which a hand-held pager exploded, in Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2024

The stunning incident saw scores of Hezbollah members severely injured throughout southern Lebanon and in its capital Beirut

Chaotic scenes inside hospitals in Lebanon were seen following the blasts

Police officers inspect a car inside of which a hand-held pager exploded, Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2024

Lebanon's crisis operations centre, which is run by the health ministry, asked all medical workers to head to their respective hospitals to help cope with the massive numbers of wounded coming in for urgent care

The sudden and unexpected detonations gave way to widespread panic and chaos

Civil Defence first-responders carry a wounded man whose handheld pager exploded at al-Zahraa hospital in Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2024

People gather outside a hospital, as more than 3,000 people, including Hezbollah fighters and medics, were wounded on Tuesday when the pagers they use to communicate exploded across Lebanon, according to a security source, in Beirut, Lebanon September 17, 2024

Mojtaba Amani, the Iranian ambassador to Lebanon, lost an eye when a pager exploded in his face during the deadly pocket bomb attack which tore through the country

A walkie-talkie that exploded inside a house, in Baalbek, east Lebanon

Explosions occurred in radio equipment across the country and south of the capital Beirut

Pictures from inside a residential building showing blast damage

Flames rise up in a building in Lebanon amid the explosions

Lebanese soldiers gather outside a damaged mobile shop after a walkie-talkie exploded inside it, in the southern port city of Sidon

Smoke billows from a house in Baalbek in east Lebanon after an explosion

New Book: Christine McVie (of Fleetwood Mac)

In unearthed interviews, Fleetwood Mac's Christine McVie reveals the truth of her chaotic cocaine-fueled orgies and reckless partying that nearly killed her

• By leading British rock music biographer Lesley-Ann Jones, author of Songbird: An Intimate Biography of Christine McVie

Hunched over a glass of cider, staring into a candle flame night after night, nothing much about her later days said multi-millionaire rock star.

Who would have thought that the rangy blonde in a shabby tweed jacket was Christine McVie, the singer and song-writing legend who once toured the globe with Fleetwood Mac and contributed the lion's share of hits to their 1977 triumph 'Rumours', one of the best-selling albums in music history?

The pub in question, The Rose in Wickhambreaux, close to England's historic city of Canterbury in the country's southeast, was anybody else's chocolate-box idyll.

But to Christine, it was a daily escape from the fortress in which she had imprisoned herself: a large Tudor house and estate nearby, The Quaives, where she resided alone.

That Chris was there at all, however lonely, was no small triumph. Fleetwood Mac had lived so recklessly, it was a miracle any of them survived.

The biggest group in the world following their 'Rumours' success, they had once acquired mansions the way the rest of us buy books.

They purchased a private Boeing jet and became their own travelling orgy, bathing – sometimes literally – in champagne and wafting from continent to continent on clouds of cocaine.

Band members slept in specially redecorated hotel suites and indulged relentlessly in sex with friends and strangers, often in limousines the size of small yachts.

Pictured circa 1977, left to right: John McVie, Christine McVie, Stevie Nicks, Lindsey Buckingham and Mick Fleetwood

Fleetwood Mac had lived so recklessly, it was a miracle any of them survived. (Pictured, left to right: Stevie Nicks, Lindsey Buckingham, Christine McVie, John McVie and Mick Fleetwood in 1977)

Fleetwood Mac eventually upgraded to a jumbo jet and became their own travelling orgy, bathing – sometimes literally – in champagne and wafting from continent to continent on clouds of cocaine.

It was said that Fleetwood Mac made even Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones look like the Salvation Army.

Drugs and drink might have stimulated their vast success – and all five band members' consumption of both was astronomical – yet the debauched, hedonistic dream almost killed them.

I first knew Chris during the '80s when we both lived in Los Angeles. I found her again at her estate near Canterbury after we each moved back to England, where we discussed writing her autobiography. We never got around to it.

When she died two years ago at the age of 79, only a handful of people had known she was gravely ill. In tribute to the woman whose lifestyle once almost destroyed her, I have written her life anyway in a new biography of rock's most reluctant superstar.

A war baby born in England's Lake District, Chris's childhood was unusual. Her music teacher father, Cyril Perfect's, unrequited dream was to play first violin in a symphony orchestra. Her mother, Beatrice, a faith healer, psychic and medium, had a spirit guide and danced with ghosts.

Chris studied piano, discovered the blues and enrolled at art school, thinking she might eventually teach sculpture.

But she found the local live gig scene, teamed up with blues outfit Chicken Shack and was even voted Female Vocalist of the Year in a music magazine's 1969 readers' poll. The previous year, at the age of 25, she married John McVie, bass player with the recently formed Fleetwood Mac.

Yet a professional music career was the last thing on Chris's mind; her ambition, then, was motherhood.

In tribute to the woman whose lifestyle once almost destroyed her, I have written her life anyway in a new biography of rock's most reluctant superstar, said biographer Lesley-Ann Jones (above right with McVie in 2015)

When Fleetwood Mac rented a large Hampshire house in southeast England in the county of Hampshire and they all moved in together, Chris happily cooked, cleaned and painted walls. The band coaxed her into contributing keys and backing vocals and soon she was an inextricable part of it.

The group relocated to California in the mid-70s, adding Lindsey Buckingham and girlfriend Stevie Nicks to the line-up. It was there on the West Coast that real success arrived and hedonism took hold.

Cocaine was acquired in bulk. On the road, each evening ahead of the gig, both band and crew would queue for their rations. The time allowed for the apportioning of drugs was even listed on their daily tour schedule.

During recording sessions, coke was dispensed in the studio like cups of tea.

White powder 'peeled off the walls in every room of the studio,' confided Mick Fleetwood.

On stage during a show, said Christine, 'the boys were served their doses in Heineken bottle tops. Stevie and I did the tiny little spoons, and I washed mine down with dainty glasses of champagne.'

'But…I got through bucketsful. We were all permanently intoxicated: addicted to booze and drugs, but ultimately to recklessness itself.'

Singing superstar Stevie Nicks and drummer Mick Fleetwood were the most prodigious users.

Cocaine was acquired in bulk. On the road, each evening ahead of the gig, both band and crew would queue for their rations.

During recording sessions, coke was dispensed in the studio like cups of tea. McVie is pictured aboard the band's private jet in 1975

McVie found her dream home, spent eight years renovating it, learned to cook, read a thousand books, watched TV, and drowned her sorrows and loneliness in wine and pills

Cocaine, Fleetwood once said, 'turned us into nutcases.'

Nicks later claimed that she spent more than $1 million on coke during the ten years of her addiction. To this day, she has a coin-sized hole in her septum, the result of snorting the drug.

As for their tour rider – the demands that bands make of their promoters when they are on the road – the Mac's were off the chart. Not only did they insist on a fleet of 14 sleek, black, polished limousines permanently at their disposal in every city, but also demanded that hotel suites be redecorated for them.

Stevie would not stay in a hotel unless her rooms were repainted pink, with a white grand piano brought in specially. 'The piano often had to be hoisted up the side of the building and in through a window,' explained Chris.

'The expense was eyewatering. The funny bit was that Stevie couldn't even play piano … whereas I was the keyboard player, and I never asked for one!

'That was a bit of role play on her part,' Chris laughed. 'Part of Stevie saw herself as an accomplished pianist, whereas I never saw myself as a twirling chiffon-clad dervish up at the mic center-stage, commanding the audience from behind all that hair.

'She was the Welsh witch [Nicks liked to channel a Welsh goddess called Lady Rhiannon], I was Mother Nature and Mick was our resident raving lunatic.'

Devoid of inhibitions, the band became a sexual free-for-all.

Cocaine, Mick Fleetwood once said, 'turned us into nutcases.' (Pictured in 1978, left to right: Lindsey Buckingham, Stevie Nicks, Fleetwood, Christine McVie and John McVie)

'We used to say that cocaine was our curse,' commented McVie (pictured with her arm around Stevie Nicks at the 20th Grammy Awards in 1978). 'But was the curse in fact the band itself?'

Nicks (at left with bandmate, and on-and-off partner, Lindsey Buckingham at the 1978 Grammy Awards) said she spent more than $1 million on coke during the 10 years of her addiction

'It was easier somehow to live in that permanent haze than face reality. Those things made me who I was. Until they made me who I wasn't,' said McVie, pictured at left in 1970

After Nicks separated from her long-term love, the guitarist and vocalist Lindsey Buckingham, and Mick dumped his wife Jenny, the drummer and the frontwoman fell on each other and conducted a raging affair, not caring who knew about it.

Christine kept her liaisons outside the group and went for the crew instead, indulging in affairs with a sound engineer and a lighting director.

The fall-out from such a lifestyle was catastrophic.

Mick went bankrupt for the first time in 1984, never saved money and spent what he did have on multiple divorces.

John McVie suffered addiction-related seizures. Stevie was admitted to the Betty Ford clinic for her cocaine addiction, wound up addicted to prescription drugs instead, and underwent several abortions.

Like Christine, she has always mourned her childless state.

'We used to say that cocaine was our curse,' commented Christine. 'But was the curse in fact the band itself?'

Christine stayed with the band because she didn't know how to get out of it – but with a growing sense of unease.

Stevie Nicks would not stay in a hotel unless her rooms were repainted pink, with a white grand piano brought in specially

'The greater the success, the more money, the more opportunities, the bigger our world became, the more I found myself shrinking inside,' McVie told the author. (The band is pictured after being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998)

'The greater the success, the more money, the more opportunities, the bigger our world became, the more I found myself shrinking inside,' she told me.

'[I was] reducing. Becoming … less. Less confident. I needed – I thought I needed – a man to validate me. I need coke and booze to fortify me to go on [stage].

'It was easier somehow to live in that permanent haze than face reality. Those things made me who I was. Until they made me who I wasn't.'

Chris quit Fleetwood Mac in 1990, blaming her departure on fear of flying, 'aviophobia'. She could no longer tour.

She found her dream home, spent eight years renovating it, learned to cook, read a thousand books, watched TV, and drowned her sorrows and loneliness in wine and pills. 

When she fell down the stairs one night, injuring her back, she realized that no one could hear her scream.

In 2014 – because she had nothing else to do – Chris went back to Fleetwood Mac, but the moment had passed.

She was, she told me, unlucky in love. Two failed marriages plus a disastrous engagement to Beach Boys drummer Dennis Wilson – and a chain gang of unsuitable others – had left her washed up and alone.

Christine (above right with Stevie Nicks and her dog) stayed with the band because she didn't know how to get out

'She was the Welsh witch [Nicks liked to channel a Welsh goddess called Lady Rhiannon], I was Mother Nature and Mick was our resident raving lunatic.' (McVie, at left, pictured with Nicks at Radio City in 2018)

'Rock stars age in dog years in reverse,' she told me cryptically. (McVie, above, performs at the O2 Arena in London in 2015)

'I need coke and booze to fortify me to go on [stage], said McVie, pictured in concert with Fleetwood Mac circa 1970

At the age of 25, she married John McVie, bass player with the recently formed Fleetwood Mac. The pair are pictured (above) at a party for the band in London on Feb. 20, 1969

Virtually every song she ever wrote – Little Lies, Everywhere, You Make Loving Fun, Songbird – had been about romantic love, and her lack of lifelong love and children would be her greatest regrets.

'Rock stars age in dog years in reverse,' she told me cryptically. 'We are much older than our chronological ages. We are weary and worn. Our skin is thin. We have seen too much. We have caused as much damage as we have survived.

'All that excess, all that having everything you could want, money no object: it drains and numbs you. It ceases to be exciting after a while.

'All you want is your mother's kitchen with a scrubbed table, old-fashioned crockery and a stool to put your feet up on. The road, my love, is never a luxury. It is a drudge.'

Write a song like Songbird, she said of her signature hit, 'and people assume you have all the answers. 'If only they knew.'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14202857/Fleetwood-Mac-Christine-McVie-reveals-cocaine-sex-orgies-Rumours.html