Gordon Carrera (4:07)

She's credible.

David McCloskey (4:08)

Yeah, exactly. And this is actually another unknown piece of the story is how does Hezbollah make the purchase? Because it's probably not Hezbollah. Right. It's a front organization that they've established.

Gordon Carrera (4:17)

No, they use lots of fronts to buy stuff around the world. It's well known. Yeah.

David McCloskey (4:21)

And it's probably someone or some people associated with those fronts who might have known of Theresa Wu and actually purchased, you know, other goods from her in the past. Now, Apollo Systems HK is being paid by. Drumroll here. None other than BAC Consulting, the Hungarian company that we mentioned in the first episode that is kind of serving as the money pot for the fabrication. Right. And sourcing parts to the pagers. BAC transfers payments to Apollo Systems HK in the same period that BAC is being paid by Norta Global, which is a. Again, we had a caveat in the first episode that this is confusing by design.

Gordon Carrera (5:05)

It is.

David McCloskey (5:06)

The Mossad officers who drew this up on a whiteboard somewhere were not drawing it up to make it simple. They were drawing it up to make it hard to sort of get to the bottom of what's actually going on and to hide Mossad's hand. Right. But the point here being that the money is going through this chain. It's originating in an Israeli bank, it is going through Norta Global, it's going through intermediaries in Hong Kong, it's getting to Hungary, and then eventually it's going to Apollo Systems HK Apollo Systems HK really wants to sell a model of pager called the AR924 Gordon, and it has an associated battery with the wonderful, the wonderful name of LI BT783. Those are the two related products that Apollo Systems HK is really keen to get out on the market. And this brings us to the other thing you're going to need if you're trying to absorb or become your opponent supply chain is you need a perfectly doctored product. You've got a front door for Hezbollah to walk through with the polished Systems hk. You've got the money, you've washed it through this confusing web of intermediaries, but you actually need a product, right? And the Israelis have developed their own beeper and their own, their own battery. So the pager is offered only by Apollo Systems. You could see it listed on the overall Gold Apollo website. But the chairman of Gold Apollo, when all this breaks, comes out afterward and basically says he wasn't impressed with this product. But Apollo Systems has kind of the sole right to distribute this pager. And the pager, it's pretty simple, right? There's four functional buttons at the bottom, there's a kind of rubbery edge, it's bulky and rugged. It's maybe perfect, Gordon, for battlefield conditions. We mentioned the video the Israelis made in the last episode where it's dunked in water and it's fine. You can cover it in sand and it's fine, right? You can charge it with a cable, which is helpful and kind of interesting because most pagers you just have like what, double A batteries or AAA batteries or something, right? It's also got a unique two step DE encryption feature that also mysteriously happens to ensure users will be holding the pager with both hands when they receive an encrypted message.

Gordon Carrera (7:32)

And we should explain that. So if you get encrypted message, you basically have to pick it up, look at it. And we talked about having four buttons on the front. You have to press the buttons with your hands in order to be able to read that message.

David McCloskey (7:44)

Right? Crucial point. And I mean, would you just say it straight up? You know, the Israelis built it this way almost certainly so that they would end up blowing as many hands off as they possibly could. That was the goal here.

Gordon Carrera (7:56)

So that's the pager, the battery as well. The battery is the key though, isn't it?

David McCloskey (8:00)

The battery is the key. Now it has a big battery, apparently it's supposed to have a very long battery life, supposedly, as advertised by Apollo Systems, 85 days. Although as we'll see that's total bunk. And we'll explain why. And the battery is interesting because it's a totally new product. It's sold only by Apollo Systems hk and that Reuters team we mentioned in the first episode that was so critical to sort of uncovering all of these details got their hands on one of these actually and showed it to a, an expert on lithium batteries. And this battery is marketed as having 2.22 watt hours of energy capacity. And there's a mathematical calculation between sort of the, the energy capacity of a battery and its weight. And this battery weighs 35 grams and a 35 gram battery should actually have 8.75 watt hours of energy which means we're missing over 6 watt hours of energy which means there's a ton of unaccounted for mass.

Gordon Carrera (9:03)

I wonder what's in that.

David McCloskey (9:04)

What is in that? Well here's the answer. Now Reuters again got a great photo showing this kind of like a teardown, pulling the entire battery and pager apart and kind of putting it out on a table. They actually have this and they got it from an exploded pager, the pager sitting on a desk. There's a ballpoint pen at the top to show the scale. There's the battery pack assembly, there's the kind of outer case, the pager case and plastic explosives. P, E T N and the plastic explosives and the detonators we'll see account for the mass, the missing mass in the battery. And the design here Gordon is, I mean absolutely ingenious. You could think of a three layer sandwich or actually more of a calzone. Do you have calzones in the uk?

Gordon Carrera (9:51)

Folded pizza. It's a folded pizza. That's the way to think of it, isn't it?

David McCloskey (9:55)

That's right because it's not really a sandwich because the bread kind of folds around the outside. Right. And covers up what's inside. So think of the construction as first there's a thin square sheet that has a layer but maybe six grams. So like that's the weight of maybe two paper clips of white penta. I'm going to try to read this. Pentatheratyltech Plastic. It's plastic petn.

Gordon Carrera (10:21)

I like to call it petn. Now wait, sorry. In the calzone, is that the, is that the filling?

David McCloskey (10:26)

That is the filling. There's not enough in here to like necessarily and certainly kill a full grown human.

Gordon Carrera (10:33)

Six grams, I mean six grams is nothing. Two paperclips worth. It is really a tiny amount, isn't it? You could never get enough to kill someone with that, but it is enough.

David McCloskey (10:46)

To injure someone, as we'll see tragically in that 60 Minutes interview you read from at the beginning. Supposedly Mossad used dummies and conducted tests with the pager and kind of a padded glove to calibrate exactly how much explosive they needed to hurt the person who's sort of decrypting the message, but not the person next to them. Because obviously, the Israelis are assuming that many of these pagers will be answered with someone who's in their home or their bedroom or around family and civilians. So it does seem like there was some effort made to kind of limit the collateral damage. But as we'll see, the Israelis are more than happy to accept the collateral damage that came along with this. Now, Mossad also tested different ringtones to find a sound urgent enough to compel someone to take the whole thing out of their pocket. They tested how long it takes a person to answer a pager. It's on average, about seven seconds. So a lot of testing that was done to kind of get this design. Now back to the calzone. So the plastic explosive is sort of mushed between two lithium ion rectangular battery cells that effectively are the bread on the outside. Now, those regular battery cells are a little bit longer than the plastic explosive layer, which inside that kind of inner core means there's room for a thin strip of something else. And that remaining space between the sort of battery cell bread or the breading and the cheese of the plastic explosive is a thin strip of highly flammable material that acts as a detonator. Typically, a detonator for plastic explosive is almost like a metal plug that goes into the explosive. And when an electrical charge comes into the plug, that sets off a small explosion that then sets off the primary explosion of the plastic explosive and detonates the whole thing. This is not that design. And Reuters again showed this design to bomb experts who said this is fairly novel, but it does bear some resemblance to what is known as a slapper detonator. And how that works is basically a piece of metal foil explodes, which releases a kind of plasma, which then drives this, like, thin plastic slapper across a little gap, and it goes into the plastic explosive at high velocity. And that high velocity impact on the plastic explosive then creates the larger detonation. So essentially here what's happening is an electrical current is going into that foil and triggering a process that then detonates the overall plastic explosive. Critically, the explosive and the detonator inside this battery calzone are invisible to X ray. So if Hezbollah runs these things through a scanner, they won't see the explosive and the detonator. That three layer, that kind of sandwich or that calzone is then put in a black plastic sleeve, which is put in a metal casing about the size of a matchbox, and then it is connected into the overall pager. Hezbollah notices that the batteries drain much faster than expected. It's actually one of the problems they have with it. And the Israelis believe that Hezbollah did take some apart and maybe even x rayed them, but did not find the explosive or the detonator inside.

Gordon Carrera (14:00)

Because if, if it was like a movie, you'd open it up and you'd be like, ah, there's the kind of the bomb. But they've hidden it so deep within the b. Yeah. You can't spot it.

David McCloskey (14:08)

And I guess you don't maybe think to take the battery apart. You maybe think to look around it or to actually get inside the battery itself, which is essentially where this is hidden. Interestingly enough, the battery has four contact points, right. Which is kind of unusual for a low tech device, which might have been how it was triggered. But it does seem, in any case, like Mossad could trigger them simultaneously by sending an encrypted message. The user, you know, would then decrypt the message with that two step procedure. And doing so, you'd have both hands on it and would be incapable afterward of fighting. Now, that's the kind of product that the Israelis designed, but the battery is, is a brand new product. And so the battery has this problem. It's not backstopped effectively the COVID story. Right, because it's just brand new. And again, if you're a Hezbollah procurement guy, you don't want to take risk on a brand new battery, right? You might not even suspect it's the Israelis. You might be like, this is some cheap piece of junk thing that's brand new and there's no reviews on it. So how do you, how do you solve that problem if you're the Israelis? Well, you need a legend, you need a cover story. You need to backstop the battery. So if his ballot goes digging, there's information. So Mossad creates, as we discussed, they create that promotional video, they put it on YouTube pagers literally covered in dust and dunked in water. And I think this is fascinating. Between late December of 2022 and April of 2023, a few interesting users join some online forums, which I'm sure, Gordon, you are, you are already a member of power forum and batteriesforum.com.

Gordon Carrera (15:46)

There are websites for everybody. I mean, so these are websites where people compare batteries, basically, yes. I mean, that's fairly niche.

David McCloskey (15:55)

It is, it is. But if you start to search for the, you know, for this battery for information on it, Hezbollah would have come across posts like this one. The battery Li BT783 does not have a brand. Does anyone know the company and what that implies about the product? Two months later, a user named Mike Vog posts, sometimes there is no brand name on batteries. I know this product. It's got a great data sheet and great performance. Maybe you could ask the company to send you these batteries with your own branding.

Gordon Carrera (16:22)

Now, I have to say, this is a great exchange because you look at this exchange and you go, the only people buying these, we think are Hezbollah operatives or whoever's buying them on their behalf. So this is possibly a Hezbollah guy going, you know, I'd like a customer review. It's the equivalent of like looking for how many stars does my Airbnb have? And then someone's replying, and, and the only people who are using these batteries at this point, because no one else is using them, they're not for general sale. The only people who've got any are Mossad. So I'm assuming the reply is probably from a Mossad officer or a cutout or someone that they're using. So it does feel like that this exchange is possibly between Hezbollah and Mossad.

David McCloskey (17:05)

Hezbollah and Mossad, Yeah.

Gordon Carrera (17:07)

Hezbollah and Mossad are having a conversation on a review of a battery forum. Basically. I mean, it's just kind of nuts.

David McCloskey (17:14)

I like to think that the time lag in the two months was that one of the Hezbollah buyers or a cutout legitimately post something on here trying to figure out where this battery is from and if anyone's used it. And then someone in Mossad at some point is doing research online on the, on their own battery and comes across this post and says, oh crap, we need to respond to this. And so then they join the forum and, and respond and say that this battery is great. And again in September of 2023. So a year before the attacks, a site called electronics power batteries.com is registered. On 12th October of 2023, puristbattery.com is registered. And these are, these are battery stores, online battery stores that have the LIBT73 plastic explosive laden battery listed in their catalog.

Gordon Carrera (18:04)

What if someone else had tried to order the batteries from them? You can't sell them exploding batteries. So I guess you go, we're out of stock.

David McCloskey (18:11)

At the moment, apparently the Israelis went. When they did get legitimate outreach from buyers that weren't Hezbollah, they made the price so outrageous that the conversation just stopped. And we'll see they'll do the exact opposite with Hezbollah. So now all of these users disappear from these forums on the 20th of September, 2024. So immediately after the pager attacks and the websites are scrubbed from the web, now Hezbollah buys maybe 5,000 of the pagers. And as I just hinted, there apparently was a negotiation in which maybe some of the uncertainty around the newness of this battery was starting to give the Hezbollah buyers pause. But they are apparently convinced because the saleswoman, who may have been Theresa Wu, we're not sure, just kept lowering the price, just kept bringing the price down. So anytime the Hezbollah guys started to walk away, she would say, no, you know, we'll do it for less. And she offered the first batch free of charge. And. And Hezbollah takes delivery of these in February of 2024, which is right around this point where Nasrallah, Hasan Nasrallah, the Secretary General and the organization are. This sort of paranoia about the extent to which Mossad has. Has penetrated the organization has reached a fever pitch, and they finally have a potential answer to this penetration by Mossad, which is these dumb pagers that won't actually allow the Israelis to target us or to know where we're located or what we're saying to one another. And the pages are handed out and they just sort of sit there dormant for a while.

Gordon Carrera (19:49)

So there with Hassan Nasrallah and Hezbollah having obtained what they think are the perfect secure means of communication, freeing them from the tyranny of surveillance by the cell phone, will take a break. And when we come back, we'll look at how these pages get used and perhaps also if we can try and get to the reason why and what the impact will be. See you after the break.

David McCloskey (20:15)

Hi, David. Here from the Rest is classified. The very exciting announcement for our US Listeners. My new novel, the Perfect Persian, is available now. This book takes readers deep into the heart of the shadow war between Iran and Israel. The protagonist of this book, Kamran Sfahani, is a dentist living out a dreary existence in Stockholm, and he agrees to spy for Israel's foreign intelligence service, the Mossad. He proves to be a very skillful asset, helping Mossad smuggle weapons, run surveillance, conduct kidnappings. But when Cam tries to recruit an Iranian widow seeking to avenge the death of her husband, the operation goes through terribly wrong and lands him in prison under the watchful eyes of A sadistic officer whom he knows only as the General. Now, after enduring three years of torture and captivity, Kamran Isfahani sits in an interrogation room across from the General, preparing to write his final confession. Now, Cam knows it is way too late to save himself. But he has managed to keep one secret. And if he can hold onto it, he might at long last find redemption. The book is available now and can be found wherever books are sold. Do be sure to stick around to the end of this episode because I'll be reading an excerpt from the Persian.

Gordon Carrera (21:23)

Welcome back. So Hezbollah has taken delivery at these remarkably cut price pages which have been mysteriously supplied to them by someone, which this never happens to me, who's offering to keep lowering the price until he buys something. But they've got them unknowing, unbeknownst to them, what's hidden inside. The crucial question is are they going to get used and why with those explosives inside?

David McCloskey (21:49)

That's right. And this is probably the point to bring the conversation directly into kind of the Israeli decision making calculus because Hezbollah's got these things and as we had mentioned in the first episode, the Israelis, by the time we hit the fall or I guess Autumn Gordon of 2024, they are in this kind of war of attrition with Hezbollah.

Gordon Carrera (22:14)

Low level conflict, isn't it?

David McCloskey (22:16)

It has been deadly. But you're right, it's a, it is a low level conflict between Israel and Hezbollah that is going on in the north as the Israelis are fighting in Gaza. And I think it's, it's worth spending a little bit of time on kind of the view from Tel Aviv, the view from, you know, Netanyahu's chair, the Israeli prime minister, as he looks north. Right. So Hezbollah has for the, really the entire year of the conflict up to this point In September of 2024, Hezbollah has explicitly linked the northern front that they are maintaining to the conflict in Gaza. Even though Nasrallah doesn't want a full on war like he got in 2006, he wants this low level conflict to show solidarity with Hamas and frankly because the whole point of Hezbollah really is to fight Israel, given what Israel has been doing in Gaza as of 2024. This, this is a problem for Netanyahu because the Israelis are not going to stop in Gaza, as we've seen. So Netanyahu is facing the prospect of this two front conflict in perpetuity by summer of 2024 just to kind of see, set the stage for what Netanyahu and his team are looking at. There have been 8,500 cross border attacks between Israel and Lebanon. Israel has conducted about three quarters of them. They've killed maybe 600 people in Lebanon. 21 Israeli soldiers have died, maybe a dozen civilians. Hezbollah rocket fire from the north has started forest fires. It's burned about 3,000 acres. The Israeli government has evacuated 60,000 people from towns in northern Israel, sending them down south. And maybe 20,000 more people have left on their own. So this has created a kind of de facto buffer zone, which has then enabled Hezbollah to fire much more frequently at some of these northern towns without incurring the civilian casualties that would have escalated the conflict. So in kind of a way, the sort of depopulation of parts of the north has made it easier for Hezbollah to just keep firing without escalating things. So the Netanyahu government is in this kind of awkward and I think to them, unsustainable stasis because the Hezbollah attacks are growing much more sophisticated. They're using drones and precision guided munitions. It's kind of turning into a bit of a lab for Hezbollah to test Israel's capabilities, to kind of study the way the conflict is morphing. They can look at defense and surveillance systems in Israel. They can kind of poke around for weaknesses. And in the summer of 2024, Hezbollah has actually begun hitting Israeli positions with drones, in some cases without triggering air raid sirens. Hezbollah is sort of getting better at targeting the Israelis over the course of this conflict. And crucially, you know, we mentioned in the last episode that one of the things that had spooked Hassan Nasrallah was the assassinations by Israel of elite Hezbollah commandos, members of this Radwan force. And what the Israelis are concerned about in 2024, and I think we should say, I'm not sure how justified it is, but they are legitimately concerned about it, is that these Hezbollah Radwan forces, which are their kind of special operations units, might be considering or planning a kind of 7th October style attack across the northern border.

Gordon Carrera (25:33)

I mean, I remember some of that speculation because you're right, that the conflict had been going on. The Israelis are worried about it escalating. There was that talk about the northern front, but there is also, I think, that slight sense in Israel as well, which is we have an opportunity to strike at all our enemies. Now we're effectively in a war with Hamas, but we might as well take out other parts of the axis of resistance, because they're ultimately going to do it, of course, with Iran as well, and take on Iran. And Hezbollah is part of that. You feel like they are also seeking to use the moment and the opportunity to basically go after their enemies as hard as they can. I agree. It's hard to really be sure what the justification is versus the reality. And it might have been different as well between some of the military and some of the politicians because we know there are some differences there in Israel. And there is this also this question, I think, with the pages as well, whether there was a fear that the capability, which they've obviously put a huge amount of effort into to put in place could expire, it could be discovered and therefore needed to be used. So I think there is an element of mystery, isn't there, as to exactly why they decide to go for it at this moment.

David McCloskey (26:40)

I think you're right on all counts. I mean, it had been, I think, Israeli policy, but. But certainly, you know, sort of the aspiration was that eventually Hezbollah would be pushed sort of back from the border in the north, pushed north of the Latani river and forced to comply with the UN Security Council resolution that had ended the 2006 war, which Hezbollah did not comply with. And going back to just the aftermath 2006, I think most in the Israeli government and security apparatus that another all out conflict with Hezbollah was inevitable. Right. It was coming, it was just a matter of when.

Gordon Carrera (27:16)

My sense is just the Israeli risk calculus has changed about what they're willing to tolerate. Their willingness to tolerate things post October 7th has changed. Whether that's Hezbollah doing things north or whether it's Iran and its nuclear program. And that rather than it being a specific threat, they just made this decision, we're not going to tolerate these threats being on our BOR kind of mentality has changed post October 7th and they're going to go for it. But I do remember at the time there was definitely reporting and I don't think it was ever confirmed that someone in Hezbollah was also getting onto the pages and might have discovered something about them and that that was also a kind of trigger for Israel doing it.

David McCloskey (27:58)

And I think it is a both and situation, not an either or. I mean, I think, I think that Netanyahu and the people around him both thought that sort of a decisive burst of violence was in order in order to essentially reestablish deterrence with Hezbollah, but also to potentially do significant damage to the organization. And then at the same time, and I think some of the reporting from Ronan Bergman at the New York Times, who has broken, I think in addition to the Reuters team, a lot of the kind of more higher level political drama around this. I mean, because Ronan has exceptional sources inside Mossad. I mean, I think he has essentially said it was either use it or lose it on the pagers. You had a moment in the conflict where Netanyahu and his team thought, we need to do something about Hezbollah. It is becoming intolerable to have the north depopulated and constantly dealing with these attacks. And at the same time, we have this tremendous capability that's going to go away if we don't do anything. Right. So I think both of those sort of streams connect. It's interesting, though, because obviously there's tremendous risk to not doing something and there's also huge risks if you do something too, because you think about, you think about what happened in 2006, and if this burst of violence leads you into a, you know, sort of an unwinnable conflict like you faced nearly 20 years earlier, you know, maybe the Iranians join in too. You end up potentially with a disastrous situation.

Gordon Carrera (29:24)

It's an interesting one. If you've built up that capability, I think, and if you think it might be discovered whether you trigger it, I think that's an interesting call. Whatever the risks are, it's a tricky one. But I guess, I mean, all we know is that there's going to be a decision which must have come from the highest level in Israel. I mean, that's got to be a kind of prime ministerial decision to do that.

David McCloskey (29:45)

And so it is mid afternoon in Lebanon on 17 September 2024. Hezbollah Gordon apparently had actually handed out more of the pagers after conducting checks on them that morning. And in Arabic, a message appears on the screen which says, you have received an encrypted message, which of course means.

Gordon Carrera (30:05)

You'Ve got to pill it up, push.

David McCloskey (30:06)

The two buttons simultaneously to decrypt it. At around 3:30pm local, the explosions began. And you know, we should say the sort of scene is, in many of these cases is absolutely horrific, right? Many of the victims. Again, because as, as you read up front, the intent here wasn't necessarily to kill people, it was to dramatically injure them, right? So victims are rushed to the hospital. Many have eye injuries, they're missing fingers, they have holes in their abdomens. Reuters witnesses saw a bunch of this sort of indicating, like how close the devices must have been to these people at the time of detonation. The blast apparently sent grown men flying off motorcycles, slamming into the walls.

Gordon Carrera (30:44)

I remember a famous one of a guy, he's just at a. And he's walking along by the fruit market and you Just see this kind of bang next to him and he falls over. It's astonishing.

David McCloskey (30:54)

And in some cases, hands literally fly off of victims bodies. I mean, and there's some real tragic cases in here. I mean, in one case in a village out in the Bekaa Valley, there's a young girl named Fatima Abdullah who just come home from her first day of fourth grade. She hears the beeper going off, according to her aunt, and she picks up the device to take it to her dad and was holding it when it exploded. So she's, you know, a nine year old innocent girl. One of the injured was apparently the Iranian ambassador to Lebanon. And then less than a minute later, the Israelis detonate the rest of them, the ones that someone didn't decrypt the message, and the rest of them blow up. Now the early social media reports speculate that it's a, like a firmware hack that's actually designed to overheat the battery and trigger an explosion.

Gordon Carrera (31:40)

Yeah, there was a lot of speculation that instantly people that's a cyber attack because everyone's so attuned to cyberattacks that some somehow a cyber attack had sent a message to these things to overheat the battery. A bit like, you know, lithium ion batteries on planes sometimes catch fire, but it was pretty obvious straight away they heat up and catch fire. In those situations if you overheat a battery, they do not go bang like that. Because I can remember this very vividly covering it on the day. It was obvious very quickly that this was not a cyber attack, overheating a battery in that sense, but was something kind of very, very different.

David McCloskey (32:14)

And then the next day, on the 18th of September, remember those walkie talkies we talked about that the Israelis had rigged up years earlier with explosives? Those blow up in the same way. And across both of these, you know, sort of operations, at least 37 people are killed, including at least two children. 3,000 people are injured, including a bunch of civilians. And it really, I think, is the opening salvo of an Israeli attempt to sort of re establish deterrence with Hezbollah and to do precisely what the Israelis were unable to do in 2006, which is really flatten morale inside the organization and deal a blow to its ability to actually have command and control during a conflict.

Gordon Carrera (32:54)

Yeah, I mean, one of the things we maybe should have thought about discussed a little bit is who actually was given these pages because thousands were given out. And it looks like it's not just top military commanders in Hezbollah, is it? And it goes back to how we explained what Hezbollah was, which is it's a terrorist organization, but it's also part of the state and it has a kind of reservist militia. It has thousands of people who are, if you like, on their books, to fight, even if they are not soldiers on the front line fighting that day. And those are a lot of the people it looks like who had these pagers, because I'm guessing that these were people who might be summoned to duty to fight for Hezbollah by a pager message. Because there are pictures of people just shopping in a market who are suddenly getting these going off. This is not all fighters on the front lines and at battle. And it's people like that who are actually being targeted by the operation, which arguably is what, from the Israeli perspective makes it very successful. Because you are taking out a wide swathe of people who are associated enough with Hezbollah that they've been given a pager and are part of it, even if they are not fighting at that moment. And you can imagine the psychological blow that deals to head spotter as an organization.

David McCloskey (34:05)

The blow is much heavier than if you had just hit maybe more pure military targets. Right? It's much more devastating. I think. I think it speaks to an Israeli understanding of the psychology of the conflict. Because if you walk it down to the individual level and let's say you're a part time Hezbollah fighter who actually does some training, you have another job, you have a life, you actually probably consider yourself to be largely a civilian, but when called upon by the organization, you'll go fight. The ability for the Israelis to reach out and touch you and to maim you or members of your family, you just think about how that is just a devastating blow to your ability to recruit manpower for, for a wider conflict.

Gordon Carrera (34:54)

I mean, it does get us to the question, which is the kind of morality of it to some extent, because as you said, not only are they not soldiers on the front line, but nor are they, if you like, terrorist operatives who are in uniform or fighting at that time. They are in this weird kind of militia role within an organization which is, yes, internationally designated terrorist organization, but also as a resistance organization, also a political party. It's something very complicated. And you are hitting thousands of those people at one moment. Now I can completely see the Israeli viewers. You know, this is a group that wants to destroy you and wipe you off the face of the earth while you do it. But it is an interesting one, isn't it? Because as you said, those people are civilians rather than soldiers.

David McCloskey (35:37)

I don't think in The Israeli calculation, there's any, any real distinction between those, those two. I mean, I think there is a distinction on maybe the family members and certainly the children. And it, if the claims about the way the explosives were tested are to be believed, there was thought given to not killing people in the direct sort of vicinity of the person who was operating the pager. But I'm sort of harkened back to the episodes we did on the assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh in Iran, who is the head of their nuclear program. And we cited a quote from the former head of the Mossad, Merdagan, who talked about killing to save lives. And I think in the Israeli mind, the morality of this is to avoid the broader conflict where tens of thousands of people are killed. We are going to destroy Hezbollah's ability to fight, its will to fight, and its command and control structure. And part of that will be the pagers. Because I think also, you know, it's important to note here that it wasn't just the pagers and walkie talkies.

Gordon Carrera (36:37)

It's the start, isn't it?

David McCloskey (36:38)

It's the start. It's the opening salvo of what's Gonna become a 12 or so day campaign to do as much damage as possible to Hezbollah where there's, there's additional strikes that continue to hit Hezbollah leadership. I mean, the entire special operations command of the Radwan Force, that elite unit, is wiped out in an airstrike on 20 September. So two days later, there's an Israeli ground invasion of southern Lebanon. This time they don't actually get stuck like they did in 2006. Thousands of Hezbollah fighters are killed, and the air campaign in particular conducted by the Israelis, will destroy maybe half of Hezbollah's arsenal. So this was an extreme burst of violence designed to, to essentially decapitate Hezbollah and neuter its ability to fight. And then I mean most sort of dramatically after the pagers on the 27th of September, 2024, the Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah, is in a military operations command center down in a bunker kind of deep in south Beirut at this point. He has been leading Hezbollah for 32 years. And Israel has sent out a handful of aircraft that are carrying maybe up to 82,000 pound bunker buster bombs, probably of US manufacture, which can penetrate targets underground. And each has a lethal blast radius of maybe up to 1200ft, which is 58 soccer fields. It's still a lot of merc around this, but there's some reporting that there was a, maybe a human asset that had reported to Mossad handlers that Nasrallah had arrived at this bunker maybe 60ft underground. But we don't. We don't really know. The Israeli planes drop their payload, and it's described by some Beirut residents as one of the loudest explosions they've ever heard, which is saying something in Beirut. And it works. Hassan Nasrallah is killed by the Israelis, and then on 28 September in an attack. I think, Gordon, that sort of has vanished beneath the chaos after Nasrallah's death and all the headlines associated with that. A Hezbollah official named Nabil Kauk, who is leading the investigation into the pagers, is himself killed in an airstrike. And, of course, in the aftermath of all of this, I mean, I think this is where you sort of draw that comparison between 2006 and what happened in 2024. I mean, Hezbollah's ability to sort of run itself as an organization is, I mean, really destroyed. And the Israelis, as they always do in these things, don't claim responsibility. But very interestingly, when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu goes to Washington to meet Donald Trump in early 2025, he gifts him a golden pager. I mean, so that's claiming responsibility there without claiming responsibility, isn't it?

Gordon Carrera (39:20)

Yeah. Of all the gifts. So, I mean. I mean, it's an astonishing story. It's one of the more astonishing operations in recent years. I guess we've talked a bit about the morality of it, which I think is. Is more complicated than some other covert operations that we've seen. And we do know innocent people killed.

David McCloskey (39:37)

We would be remiss if we didn't say that there's. There's that Israeli perspective of killing to save lives. And then on the other side, there would be the perspective that, well, this is a terrorist attack.

Gordon Carrera (39:48)

Yeah. Because you're basically attacking civilians. You're blowing up a civilian device to attack a lot of people who are. I mean, you know, we discussed the kind of ambiguity of the status, but in many ways, certainly not traditional military targets. So it is a complicated one, that one. I mean, certainly in terms of efficacy, I mean, you can argue it worked as part of a campaign with all the other actions, because what didn't happen was Hezbollah didn't suddenly unleash rockets and start a war, and Israel didn't get kind of bogged down in Lebanon. I think you certainly felt in those days afterwards that the nature of the pager attack, plus the taking out of Nasrallah and the senior leadership basically left them kind of rudderless and weakened in a fundamental way. So, again, morality is certainly a question, but efficacy, from the Israeli point of view, I think they would have judged it as successful or effective.

David McCloskey (40:44)

I think the point you made on it being part of a broader campaign is the important one. And I think to show the achievement of that campaign and the pager attack played a role. I mean, after the attack, Haslan Nasrallah, who at that point is still alive on 17 September, gives a speech and he essentially says, you know, Hezbollah won't surrender. We're not going to give up. And then 12 days later, after he's dead, Hezbollah agrees to a ceasefire. It's not a full surrender, but essentially admits defeat. And it's a very unfavorable ceasefire to Hezbollah. Right. They agree to withdraw weaponry from south of the Litany River. And now, I mean, even a year later, there is sort of grow a growing chorus of international actors and Lebanese who are saying Hezbollah needs to put down his weapons. Finally, I think the efficacy piece is actually a pretty clear story. The Israelis won this round tremendously. And in part, that was because of this pager operation.

Gordon Carrera (41:36)

Yeah. And then the other broader thing that I think is so interesting about it is this notion of supply chain, I think, attacks. And it's interesting because, you know, in the last few years, whenever people have talked to me about supply chain attacks, they've normally been talked about cyber vulnerabilities. Is there a kind of back door in this piece of software or this piece of kit? Or is a defense company buying something from a supplier? And is that supplier, you know, have they been penetrated by the Russian or Chinese cyber intelligence hackers to kind of get in then to the American system? But this is about a very physical hack to get inside that supply chain and also, I think, to play on people's fears about communications and communication security. And I think that that element of it is particularly interesting.

David McCloskey (42:21)

I mean, modern supply chains offer just so much surface area for an adversary to muck around with you. I mean, as this story shows, because you have to think in the grand scheme of things, how important were these pagers to Hezbollah's kind of overall architecture and supply chain? Like, I would. I would wager, prior to this, it didn't seem all that important. It wasn't way down at the bottom, but it wasn't the sophisticated sort of military equipment and all the supporting architecture that they would need to sustain it. Right. It was somewhere down, down the line. I mean, looking kind of at just how complicated a modern supply chain is. I mean, the average American aerospace company Gordon relies on 200 tier one suppliers. So those are companies that directly provide materials for the manufacture of an airplane and as many as 12,000 tier 2 or higher suppliers. So suppliers that are then supplying the tier one. So you think about just the amount of space there is if you are trying to sabotage a weapon system, if you are trying to gain access to someone's production facilities. Like, it's just, it's astounding how much opportunity there is here. And that is a global point for spy services, irrespective of what's going on in Lebanon with Israel and Hezbollah.

Gordon Carrera (43:40)

That's right. I think it really highlights that vulnerability and what can be done with it. And you can bet that after this operation, not only is everyone looking at their kind of pages and electronic devices, but you know, what else could be done through those kind of supply chains. I mean, I remember at the time it was noted that, you know, not many people used pagers, actually. And I think it was Hezbollah and Britain's National Health Service, which I think had 10% of the, the world. Those were the two groups who are basically still using pages. So the, but the problem in the future is not going to be pages. It's going to be something else within that supply chain which someone is going to weaponize and use and cause trouble on either spy or sabotage. So I think it's a really interesting story, both in the context of Israel and Hezbollah, but also about technology, risk and dependency, I think.

David McCloskey (44:32)

I agree. I think that's a great place to end it, Gordon. I mean, we should note that this story isn't done because, Gordon, there's a club episode coming out on Friday, an interview that we've conducted with James Pearson, who's on the Reuters team who broke the story. And we're going to have a fascinating discussion with him all about kind of how this story broke and many of the interesting tools that he and his team used to get to the bottom of exactly how the Israelis built this, this pager and this battery. So go join the club and give that one a listen. It's an absolutely cracking interview.

Gordon Carrera (45:10)

Yeah, I found it fascinating because it is about how you investigate companies, front companies, how you do kind of open source intelligence and investigations, you know, as a journalist as well as an intelligence agency. So it gives a real insight, not just into this operation, but more broadly what the kind of tools an investigator can use which are out there. So thanks for listening everybody and we'll see you next time.

David McCloskey (45:32)

We'll see you next time. Hey, it's Anthony Scaramucci. And I want to tell you about my podcast, Open Book, which just joined the Goal Hanger network, which we're all very proud of. In my latest episode, I interviewed Goal Hanger's very own James Holland. We spoke about World War II and what World War II teaches us about today. Here's a clip. Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

Gordon Carrera (46:05)

Well, I think he was a great man. I think he was a man of vision. He was a man of enormous geopolitical understanding, and he was a man who offered possibilities.

David McCloskey (46:14)

When you're on a life and death struggle, you need people that can persuade.

Gordon Carrera (46:17)

You, you need people that can bind you.

David McCloskey (46:20)

Men.

Gordon Carrera (46:20)

A vision of charisma. That's the problem with the moment, is we haven't got those guys. I mean, you know, he's flawed, of course, all the great men are. But thank goodness for the developed world.

David McCloskey (46:30)

And the democratic world that he was political leader of Great Britain in 1940 and throughout the whole of World War II. He literally, in so many different ways, man of the century. I think, because Roosevelt was a charmer. Roosevelt was a great strategist. He pulled the Americans through the Depression and helped him manage the war. But without Churchill holding ground in May and June of 1940, it would have a much darker, much worse world. There would have been not a lot that the Americans could have done without Churchill's steadfastness and his inspiration to his fellow citizens. If you want to hear the full episode, just search open book, wherever you get your podcast.

Gordon Carrera (47:10)

You are not luminous, Watson, but you are a conductor of light.

David McCloskey (47:18)

Here they are.

Gordon Carrera (47:19)

Dr. Mortimer, I presume.

David McCloskey (47:20)

Yes.

Gordon Carrera (47:21)

Hi. John. Dr. John Watson. Who is your client? He was my client. Sir Charles Baskerville.

David McCloskey (47:35)

Keep reading.

Gordon Carrera (47:37)

A local shepherd.

David McCloskey (47:39)

Noted. I saw first that of the maid, Hugo Baskerville.

Gordon Carrera (47:43)

Pass me thence on his black mare.

David McCloskey (47:45)

And there behind him, running mute upon his track, such a hound of hell that, God forbid, should ever be at my heels.

Gordon Carrera (47:56)

I wish I felt better in my mind about it. It's an ugly business once, an ugly, dangerous business. And the more I see of it, the less I like it. I shall be very glad to have you back safe and sound in Baker Street. Password? Hello, Ghoul Hanger presents. You're not Sherlock Holmes. I'm Henry Baskerville from one of the biggest audio dramas of all time. Does it bother you?

David McCloskey (48:25)

Like in a creepy kind of way?

Gordon Carrera (48:27)

Like in there's an evil giant hound that likes the taste of Baskerville's kind.

David McCloskey (48:31)

Of way, the seminal gothic novel by Arthur Conan Doyle.

Gordon Carrera (48:35)

They're watching who, who who are watching?

David McCloskey (48:38)

It's not safe.

Gordon Carrera (48:40)

I could just make out its pitch black form. Welcome to deepest everything, a hellish void.

David McCloskey (48:47)

Darkest who are you?

Gordon Carrera (48:48)

This piercing yellow glow of eyes.

David McCloskey (48:53)

Dartmoor.

Gordon Carrera (48:54)

What do you want of giant fangs? No Sherlock and co. The hound of the Baskervilles. Listen now. Five stars, says the I Paper. Hugely popular, says the Guardian. A successful reinvention of Holmes for a younger generation, says the Times. Search Sherlock & Co. Wherever you get your podcasts.

David McCloskey (49:28)

Hey, this is David from the Rest is Classified. Again, here's that short excerpt from my upcoming novel the Persian, which is available now wherever books are sold. And even though I'm the one reading right now, the audiobook is wonderfully narrated by Fajr Al Qaisi. I hope you enjoy Where Am I? General Kamaran Isfahani loads his questions with a tone of slavish deference, because though the man resembles a kindly Persian grandfather, he is, in the main, a psychopath. The General is looking hard at Cam. He plucks a sugar cube from the bowl on the table, tucks it between his teeth, and sips his tea. Cam, typically, would not ask such questions, but during the three years spent in his care, hustled constantly between makeshift prisons, he has never once sat across from the General, clothed properly, with a steaming cup of tea at his fingertips, a spoon on the table, and a window at his back. Something flashes through the General's eyes, and it tells Cam that he will deeply regret asking the question again. It has been over a year since the General last beat him or strung him up in what his captors call the chicken kebab, but the memories are fresh. Each morning, Cam can still see the glint of the pipe brought down on his leg, can still remember how the pain bent time into an arc that stretched into eternity, and how that glimpse into the void filled him with a despair so powerful that it surely has no name, at least not in Persian, Swedish, or English, the three languages he speaks. And he's got more than the memories, of course. He's got blurry vision in his left eye and a permanent hitch in his stride. What is this spoon doing here? A spoon. Two thousand, 721 consecutive meals have been served without utensils on rubber discs, so Cam can't help but blink suspiciously at the spoon. A mirage, an eyeball scooper? A test, Perhaps the General plans to skin the fingers that pick it up. The General calms his fears with a nod, a genuine one, which Cam knows looks quite different from the version he uses for Trickery for lulling him into thinking there will be no physical harm. Cam puts a lump of sugar into his tea and slowly picks up the spoon. He stirs, savoring the cold metal on his fingertips. He sets it down on the table and waits, listening to the soft metallic wobble as the bowl of the spoon comes to rest. You will write it down again, the General says. He is rubbing the gray bristle on his neck, and Cam follows his eye contact as it settles on the portraits of the two ayatollahs looking down from the wall above. When Cam was a child, the sight of the ayatollahs frightened him. It still does. He looks away. You will write it again and you will leave nothing out. It will be comprehensive and final. Final. Cam considers another question. The General's silent gaze screams, do not. The first drafts, right after his capture three years ago, were utter shit. Like all first drafts. To call them stories would be like calling the raw ingredients spread across your counter a meal. No, they were just a bunch of facts, information wrung from his tortured lips and committed to bloodstained sheets of A4 paper. But Cam knows he's being too hard on himself. As a dentist, his writing had been limited to office memorandums and patient notes. As a spy, his cables adopted similarly clinical tones. Just the facts. Glitzmann, his handler, the man who'd recruited him to work for Mossad, liked to say. Leave the story to someone else. Mossad had preferred he write in English, not Swedish. The General, of course, demands that he write in Persian, and it is in Persian that Kamiyah has found his voice. Now the cell becomes Cam's scriptorium. In his dragging, tedious Persian script, he writes the Quranic inscription In the name of God, Honesty will save you. Across the top of the COVID page, Cam knows that the General appreciates this self talk reminder right up front. Beneath it, Cam titles this is the first part of his sworn confession and then signs his name. Someone will fill in the date later because though he does not know the date today, he also knows not to ask. The General's men will fill in the location for their own files. He writes the number one in the top left corner. But which story should he tell? The General said it was to be his masterpiece, perhaps the best of each. He thinks he would also like to write something the General will let him finish. He would like to reach the end across hundreds of drafts. No matter the type of story, Cam has only managed to write one version of the end. It is the part he fears the most. Someday he has told himself someday he will write a new beginning to the bleakness of the end. Will he find it here? On this last attempt, a prisoner can dream, he thinks. As always, Cam completes a final ritual before he starts this draft. He imagines writing down his last remaining secret in crayon on one of these A4 sheets right in front of him. One secret. Three years in captivity, Cam has held on to only one. Then he pictures a wooden cigar box. He slides the paper with the secret inside. In the early days of his captivity, he locked the real secret, written on imaginary paper in the imaginary cigar box, into an imaginary safe. But the general's man broke into every physical safe in his apartment, and Cam thought he should also improve his mental defenses. He now pictures the cigar box with his secret incinerated on a monstrous pyre, the light and heat so fierce that every dark corner of his brain burns bright as day. This way, Cam's not lying when the general asks him if he's been truthful. If the story is complete, he's written it all down, has he not? The prisoner cannot be held responsible for how management handles the papers. Cam presses the crayon to the paper and begins.