Former Israeli chief of staff recounts secret 1992 plan to assassinate Saddam Hussein during a training exercise

But there were times of crisis, and high tension, as well. Only five months after the election, Rabin and I faced one of the most painful periods during my entire time as chief of staff. It began with the gruesome death of five Sayeret Matkal soldiers during a training exercise in the Negev desert. I’d made preventing such accidents a top priority. By the end of the 1980s, they were claiming as many as 80 lives a year. During Dan’s tenure, we’d brought the number down to about 35. But I knew we had to do more. When I’d addressed the officers after becoming chief of staff, I told them: “Parents are giving us their children in order to allow us to protect the country. They know there is risk involved. But they expect their children not to be brought home in coffins because of our own negligence, or stupidity.” What happened at the military base of Tze’elim in the Negev on November 5, 1992 was not only a reminder of how far we still had to go, however. It occurred during a dry run for an operation unlike any that Israel had ever considered. For that and other reasons, it would erupt into a major political controversy. Though the reason for the exercise was meant to have remained a closely guarded secret, foreign newspaper reports in the weeks after the training accident made secrecy impossible. We were planning to infiltrate a Sayeret Matkal unit into Iraq, and to kill Saddam Hussein. The Gulf War had blunted any immediate threat from Iraq. But Saddam had proven he could launch missiles into the heart of Israel. We knew from our intelligence reports that, in addition to his unabated desire to acquire nuclear arms, he retained facilities to produce chemical weapons. He was trying to acquire and develop new biological weapons. In fact, the Iraqis had actually acknowledged a biological weapons program to UN inspectors, claiming it was for “defensive purposes.” The idea for an attack on Saddam had first been raised a year earlier, when my former Sayeret Matkal comrade, Amiram Levin, asked to see me. He was between military postings, but had come up with the outline of a plan he felt would allow us to isolate Saddam during a public appearance and kill him. With my approval, he and a small group of officers in the sayeret began working further on the idea, with the initial aim of seeing whether it was really workable. Since Misha was still Defense Minister, I briefed him on what we were doing. I 245 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_028093