The 'Institute' Strikes Again

One of the least known but most feared intelligence operations in the Middle East is a special branch of Mossad--the Israeli version of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, known familiarly as the "Institute"--which was organized in 1972 to conduct anti-terrorist campaigns against the Palestinian guerrillas. Last week there were indications that Mossad was on the offensive again. In Paris, possibly as a result of a Mossad tip, French counterespionage agents moved in on a sleepy-eyed, Spanish-speaking foreign visitor known only as "Carlos," who had in his possession forged Peruvian, Venezuelan and U.S. passports. He also had an arsenal of explosives and weapons similar to those used in a series of terrorist attacks by Palestinian, Japanese, Turkish and German groups in Europe. As he was being questioned, Carlos shot to death two French agents, as well as a Lebanese informer accompanying them, and disappeared.

TIME has been told that agents of Mossad also took advantage of the recent fighting in Lebanon to assassinate some of Israel's most implacable foes within the Palestinian movement. The Israelis claim to have killed eight and wounded 15 others in and around Beirut. Here is how the campaign of revenge was carried out:

The objective of the latest mission, like that of a similar Mossad raid in Beirut two years ago, was to seek out and destroy Palestinians known to be connected with recurring fedayeen attacks on Israelis. Two teams of six people each were chosen for the mission: a killer team and a spotter team to pick out their targets. The killers went first, leaving Israel around 8:30 on the night of June 11. It was an ideal time: the moon had set early and the sky was black. The six--five men and a young woman--assembled at an airfield in northern Israel and stowed their guns and gear aboard a Bell 205 helicopter belonging to the Israeli air force. They kept their faces covered so that even members of the helicopter crew were not able to get a good look at them.

Accompanied by a second helicopter flying as gunship, the chopper lifted off its pad and headed for Beirut. The chosen route was along the border between Lebanon and Syria, so that radar scanners in either country might assume that the two helicopters came from the other side and were flying a routine mission. Meanwhile, other choppers with a back-up team aboard flew over the Mediterranean toward Lebanon; they would land near Beirut if the first team was discovered and shot down. It was not.

An hour after departure, the first helicopter set down gently in an area not far from Beirut while its gunship hovered overhead protectively. The killers were met by waiting Israeli agents, who drove them to a safe house in the Beirut suburbs. From there, a one-word code message was flashed to an Israeli monitoring station, informing Mossad that the team was in place and Operation Caesarea was go.

Meanwhile, three Israeli navy missile boats slipped out of their Haifa base carrying a spotter team up the coast to Lebanon. Accompanied by frogmen who secured the beach, the Mossad agents went ashore with their equipment in Zodiac rubber dinghies. They too were met by waiting colleagues as they landed and were driven away unseen in two automobiles. Next morning the six spotters, working independently, set out on their mission; all spoke fluent Arabic and they passed themselves off as visiting businessmen or tourists.

A week passed before the spotters found their first targets: three members of the Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a radical fedayeen group. The spotters trailed the Palestinians for another week, learning the pattern of their movements. Finally on June 25, the killers were summoned. Four of them took up positions outside an apartment house in which the Palestinians lived; the other two assassins--one of them the woman--waited inside the building on a staircase. About 6 o'clock that evening, four men approached the building. Three were identified as Popular Democratic Front members. The other was not known to the Israeli agents, but the mission commander did not wait. As soon as the quartet entered the apartment house, the two Israelis waiting inside opened fire with .22-cal. Beretta pistols favored in such work for their compactness and accuracy. One of the four died instantly, two more were wounded and the fourth escaped. The killers drove off in cars that had been waiting near by.

In the Dark. Next day the spotters identified another target for their hit men: an important member of George Habash's Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a larger but equally radical guerrilla group. The victim, who Mossad believed was responsible for many terrorist activities, was trailed to his apartment. This time the two killers used rifles with "starlight" telescopic sights that enabled them to pick out targets in the dark. From a nearby roof they sighted on the Palestinian's apartment. When he appeared in the window, they shot him dead. The Mossad team was not detected. So many men with rifles were crouched on Beirut rooftops at the time, it seemed, that two more were scarcely noteworthy.

The Mossad team also repeated an attack that they had carried out in Beirut two years earlier. They planted an explosive charge in the basement of a building used by the Popular Democratic Front. The charge exploded on June 29th, killing six and wounding 13 others. Palestinian leaders insisted that the blast occurred after a careless guerrilla had dropped a hand grenade in an area where other explosives were stored.

The raiding parties were extracted after that, some by helicopter, others by commercial flights from Beirut. By then, the Palestinians had probably suspected that the deaths were not the result of random shooting. Near Tyre, Palestinian leaders discovered with much fanfare weapons with Israeli markings on them and charged that Israel was interfering in Lebanon's domestic crisis. The Mossad agents involved in Operation Caesarea were incensed by the Tyre "discovery." They had indeed supplied guns and ammunition to Lebanese Christians--through third parties, to be sure. But beforehand, all numbers and identification on the weapons had been meticulously eradicated.

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