Israel Matzav

Killed because he was about to expose preparations for the Yom Kippur War?

Nearly 40 years ago, an Israeli military attache in Washington was gunned down outside his Bethesda, Maryland home. The family was flown back to Israel with the body in Air Force 2. Then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger asked for daily updates into the investigation of the murder. But the murderer(s) was never found. The investigation was closed three years later and the FBI destroyed all the evidence. Why?

One possibility is that Alon was about to expose an agreement between Moshe Dayan and Henry Kissinger to have Israel absorb a first strike in the Yom Kippur War (Hat Tip: Shy Guy).

“This was a political assassination, the kind of case that I would have extensive files about. But we later discovered that the FBI destroyed all the evidence in the case,” later closing it – for lack of evidence, says [Fred] Burton. “How does evidence of a political assassination get destroyed three years after the event – after all, the FBI keeps evidence back from the days of Al Capone.”

That, in and of itself, he feels, is a clear indication that “something” was amiss.

That “something”, Burton claims, was the likelihood that Alon was about to “spill the beans” about what Burton believes to be one of the biggest secrets in Israeli history – a possible “deal” between Israel and the U.S. to allow the Arabs to attack first in an upcoming war, in order, Burton says, to test the efficacy of American weapons versus what the Soviets had supplied Arab countries.

...

Burton, however, bases this belief on information supplied to him by Alon's wife Devora, who told Burton of experiences that he believes are part of a classical counterintelligence operation.

“She received strange phone calls, what are called 'ruse calls,' to see if they were home,” as well as “wrong numbers” from people speaking Hebrew - a very unlikely scenario in Maryland, long before the internet made it easy to find people, says Burton. “There was a strange visitor from the phone company' who wanted to get into the basement to do work that could easily have been done from the street.”

The FBI opened an investigation into the murder, but a rather halfhearted one, says Burton. Meanwhile, Henry Kissinger – who, he believes, worked out the deal whereby Israel would let the Arabs attack first with then Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan – took what Burton said was an unusually active interest in the investigation. “

"Kissinger requested daily upates on the investigation. I can't recall another example of such a high level official being so involved in a murder investigation like this,” said Burton, adding that the fact that Alon's body was sent home for burial in the Vice-President's plane. “I couldn't find another example of that plane for such a purpose. This set off some bells in my head,” he said.

In the end, the FBI theorized that Alon was killed by a Black September agent, although the case officially remains unsolved. In the end, it appears that it really was a Black September agent who pulled the trigger (Burton believes that the Mossad eliminated Alon's murderer earlier this year).

But, he asks in his book, just what was a Black September operative doing in Maryland? That is another mystery that remains unsolved, since it was the one and only time that the terror group carried out an operation like that in the U.S.

Was the terrorist recruited by one of the interested parties to “shut Alon up?” It's not clear, but Devora and her daughter received generous “hints” of their own on why Joe was killed from some of the elites of Israel's political and military establishment, according to Rachel Alon-Margalit in the documentary film “Who Killed My Father?”

Rachel tells of a conversation her mother had with former President Ezer Weizmann, who, when Devora asked for his help after years of stonewalling by Israeli officials whenever she asked for information about the investigation, said “Devora, I can't tell you anything. If I open my mouth there will be an earthquake. Go home and take care of your daughters.”

Other officials left Devora with a similar feeling - that Joe had stumbled onto a great truth that he was somehow not supposed to know, and that this information may well have gotten him killed, according to the documentary.

In April, Burton released a book about the murder. In an interview by email at the time, he told Haaretz:

Who do you think was negligent in conducting the investigation, and why?

"In my opinion the FBI and the local police did their best under the circumstances of 1973. None of them was equipped back then with tools for solving an international terror operation. There were plenty of extremist organizations at the time in the U.S. - the Black Panthers, the Weather Underground, and Palestinian radicals - that drew the FBI's full attention. The counterterrorism division I headed did not exist at the time. The information gaps and the lack of ability in terms of recruiting sources and agents were substantial and undermined every effort to solve the murder."

And what about Israel?

"Israel relied too heavily on the FBI to solve the case. It seems that in Israel, too, they were too busy hunting Palestinian terrorists. Let me remind you that the same month that Joe was murdered there was the Mossad fiasco in Norway [the killing of Ahmed Bouchiki, a waiter who was mistaken for the terrorist Hassan Salameh ]. The investigation into Alon's murder was neglected, and unfortunately the case simply petered out over the years. Solving the murder of a single person just wasn't top priority."

Well, maybe. At this link (in Hebrew), a senior IAF officer (unnamed) claims that Israel agreed to Alon's murder.

Here's a preview of the book. Let's go to the videotape.



More here, here and here (first and third links in Hebrew).

Labels: Henry Kissinger, Joe Alon, Moshe Dayan, Yom Kippur War

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 1:10 AM