PRESENT TENSE:'YOU SAW too many movies about James Bond," Israel's foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, told the press this week, stopping only long enough to let his smirk settle and to add that they should see "more serious movies".
He’s right, in a way. We certainly need to watch different movies from now on. Until Mossad’s alleged assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, we thought the world of international espionage and assassination was like something out of a Bond or a Bourne flick. Not so. With its sprawling cast, odd names and bemusing costumes, it’s more like a Wes Anderson movie. Have a look at those suspects again. One of them is bound to be Bill Murray.
It is a serious subject, although the Israeli foreign minister did a fine job of almost turning it into a comedy routine. As it was, the hotel security camera footage was the first thing to suggest that this was a rather bemusing glimpse into a clandestine and dangerous world. Most notably, there were the suspects, who disguised themselves as tennis fans. They are clear in the footage, getting into a lift with al-Mabhouh. And it is as if they had decided that if they were going to dress as tennis fans, then they should leave no room for doubt. They would use their mastery of disguise to become the Most Obvious Tennis Fans In The World.
They’ve got the shorts, the shirts, the jumpers draped around the shoulders in a relaxed fashion. And they’re carrying tennis rackets. Swinging them. Brandishing them. Displaying them. No wonder al-Mabhouh felt no fear in stepping into a lift with them. He must have thought they were heading for a fancy-dress party. Yet, the footage carries with it the disconcerting knowledge that a man ends up dead only minutes later.
Fiction leads us to expect the clean hit, by a single assassin, based on the precision of his planning. Reality turns out to be less clear-cut. As this story has dribbled out, it has become clear that so much of the plan’s initial success lay in getting details just wrong enough that no one could become suspicious. Look, for example, at the names on the fake Irish passports: Gail Folliard, Kevin Daveron and Evan Dennings. The three that followed later, accused of giving logistical support, are equally odd: Ivy Brinton, Anna Shauna Clasby and Chester Halvey. Were these approximations of what some Irish names might sound a bit like if you happened to know next to nothing about Irish names?
Their cover has since fallen apart somewhat, of course, and it has been instructive to see how difficult it now is to prevent a group of spies from leaving a trail of bills for hotel mini-bars and breakfasts. They were just short of Tweeting about what they were up to. Although, as one expert said this week: “The game of espionage is not about to go out of business because of CCTV.”
You may wonder what happens to international assassins once they’ve had their pictures splashed across the internet. If the spy movies were truly accurate then their corpses would start showing up one by one, until it became clear that they had been double-crossed by a veteran spymaster who pines for the certainties of the Cold War. That is not the reality though. According to a piece in the Atlantic magazine, they’re “likely find themselves stuck at desk jobs at Mossad headquarters north of Tel Aviv for a while. But eventually, they’ll return to missions in the field. As professionals, they’ll make sure to change their appearances and cover stories yet again.” Although, their appearance across the world’s media will apparently make it difficult for them to return to the field.
And what tops off the bemusing nature of this story, the way it flips our Hollywood-grown ideas of the spy world on its axis? The international response.
Whatever about the Irish calling in the Israeli ambassador, the British and French have given a masterclass in pretending that they wouldn’t dare send spies scurrying across the world on false passports. Or if they did, they wouldn’t get caught. As Tom Clonan wrote in these pages last Saturday, Irish passports are popular among the world’s intelligence agencies. It reminds us of another fallacy of the Bond movies: the way he brazenly introduces himself to the bad guy every time he takes his seat at a casino table. If you’re a Mossad agent, your true name would possibly be a bit of a giveaway. It’s clearly easier, if less impressive, to introduce yourself as “Brinton. Ivy Brinton.”
No, the British and their allies don’t approve of such a thing. This is not how assassination works in their world. Recent years have taught us that they prefer their killings to be simple – a robotic drone, controlled from thousands of miles away, pulverising a house and vaporising the target and any unfortunate children and other civilians who might be nearby.
No need for passports. No need for false moustaches. No concerns about CCTV. And no need to see the consequences at first hand.
