Mossad Tried to Kill Saddam With Exploding Book: Report

Nov. 12, 2012 — -- The Israeli intelligence agency Mossad, which has a long history of using techniques like exploding phones and assassins in wigs to take out Israel's enemies, tried and failed to kill Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein with a book bomb in the 1970s, according to documentary that airs in Israel Monday night.

But the film "Sealed Lips" says that the notoriously paranoid Hussein refused to open the package containing the book himself, and instead had another Iraqi official open it. The official was killed.Brigadier-General Tzuri Sagi, the mastermind of the alleged operation, told filmmakers the device was prepared by an Israeli bombmaker identified only as "Natan."

The movie, which details the career of Yitzhak Yofi, head of the Mossad from 1974 to 1982, reveals that Mossad also used a letter-bomb in a failed hit on Nazi Alois Brunner, Adolf Eichmann's right-hand man in the extermination of Jews. Brunner had been living in Syria for decades. He is reported to have died of natural causes in 1996.