Israel's Secret Plan to Kill Saddam

J E R U S A L E M, Jan. 11 -- — During the first Gulf War in 1991, the United States pressured Israel to ignore is long-standing policy of sure and swift retaliation when Saddam Hussein sent nearly 40 Scud missiles into the country, leading to 13 deaths.

But it now turns out that Israel quickly began planning a delayed response — a bold, top-secret plan to assassinate Saddam.

It ended only when a training exercise for the mission went horribly wrong, killing five Israeli soldiers. At the time, the Israeli military claimed the target of the plot that led to the tragic accident was Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Details of the plan were reported for the first time last month in Yedioth Ahronoth, Israel's largest-circulation newspaper.

Pro and Con

The Israeli government was sharply divided on whether to even try to undertake an assassination plot, according to the newspaper's account. The intelligence services were highly skeptical that it could succeed. But the military, led by Ehud Barak, then the army's chief of staff and later prime minister, championed the plan.

Not only would it even the score for the Scud missile attacks during the war, but Israeli officials were frustrated by the fact that Saddam had held onto power after the war.

"This guy was a distorted character that presented, in my judgment, a profound, long-term, critical kind of threat to the state of Israel as well as to the whole region," Barak told ABCNEWS in his first television interview about the plan.

The assignment was given to Israel's most elite special forces unit, the equivalent of the U.S. Army's Delta Force. The unit had executed some of Israel's most daring military operations, including the 1976 raid on Entebbe, Uganda, to rescue hostages held by Palestinian hijackers.

Planning began under Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir and continued after he was replaced by Yitzhak Rabin.