The whole world was shocked out of its wits on September 17-18, 2024, when the Mossad brought the mighty 150,000-rocket-wielding Hezbollah terror army to its knees in an instant with a “fleet” of exploding beepers. Or, rather, almost the whole world, excluding the Mossad operatives and defense officials who ran the operation, such as “Adam Feyn,” who recently published a book in Hebrew, Hoda’ah Goralit (Fateful Message), about the operation and gave his first English-language interview about it to The Jerusalem Post.
In his interview with the Post and in his book, Feyn made a series of stunning dramatic reveals about the operation.
These include how the Mossad lured a Hezbollah operative into an ambush to prevent him from exposing the beepers; the true story regarding how close Iran was to uncovering the plot; fleshing out how hard it was to get Hezbollah to lower its suspicions sufficiently for it to buy the beepers; showing how unwitting third parties were used by the Mossad to sell Hezbollah on the beepers; how the Mossad later tried to make good to such innocent third parties where it could; and how the Mossad’s gym and many other leisure areas were effectively converted into a beeper assembly line when the agency had to jump the pace of its production and had insufficient space to do so using its standard operations areas.
During the interview and in the book, Feyn also provided new insights into, and details of, key strategic moments when top Mossad or other Israeli officials gambled and took history in one direction instead of another, despite the “right” choice being covered in a haze of fog.
Feyn only recently retired from the defense establishment after decades in operations, including as one of the top managers with unique insider information about the beepers operation. He may still do other future work with the defense establishment, and so published the book under a fictional name to protect his identity. Another twist regarding the book is that Feyn wrote it as a partially fictional account, but which is meticulously based on the insider history of what actually happened, which only he and a small number of other top Mossad senior managers and defense officials know.
The best way to understand the breakdown of truth and fiction in the book is that the vast majority of the actions taken by the Mossad officials mentioned in the book, especially Mossad chief David Barnea (referred to only as the Mossad chief), actually happened, but sometimes in the book one character is a composite of multiple real agents to simplify the storytelling, which would otherwise become cumbersome and kill some of the pace. Such is the difference sometimes between Hollywood versions of intelligence operations and the real world. In both versions, the final result can be awesome and truly sweep readers or viewers off their feet. But in the real-life version, the culminating drama comes only after painstaking and agonizingly slow steps and meticulous spy tradecraft which laymen would never understand or tolerate.
The Mossad lured a Hezbollah operative into an ambush to prevent him from exposing the beepers
According to the book, around July 2024 the Mossad chief (Barnea in the real world) called the air force chief (Tomer Bar in the real world), who sent a senior air force operations colonel to a critical Mossad meeting, usually one not attended by outsiders (including the IDF). The Mossad officials at the meeting warned the colonel that a Hezbollah operative was getting too close to figuring out that the beepers were booby-trapped and requested that the air force kill him to save the operation. This was only around two months before the beepers were activated. In the book, the air force colonel responded to the Mossad officials by saying he needed the agency to trick the Hezbollah technology reviewer into leaving Beirut and also to give the air force his exact location when he left.
Next, the book said that Israeli defense and intelligence officials fooled the Hezbollah operative into traveling to southern Lebanon, where they bombed him. Questioned about such operations, Feyn told the Post, “it’s highly sensitive. The situation was problematic. There was more than one problematic situation that the Mossad had to deal with. Sometimes the problems went away on their own or more easily, and sometimes the Mossad had to act.” This operation did not end Hezbollah’s suspicions.
The book noted that the group tried to ask the manufacturer, Gold Apollo, about the last message that the Hezbollah technology reviewer had sent to them before he was lured away and killed. This message was intercepted by the Mossad, and in any event the agency stalled Hezbollah’s review process long enough to get to the point when Israel decided to use the beepers.
How close did Iran come to blowing the beepers operation?
According to the book, in parallel to multiple Hezbollah operatives pursuing suspicions and carrying out various checks of the beepers, separately they also asked Iran to carry out its own check. This involved a specific Hezbollah operative planning a meeting with a specific Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps official during the latter’s travels so that he could bring a beeper to Tehran.
Previously, the Post has reported, based on multiple exclusive interviews, that there was a disagreement between top IDF and top Mossad officials about why and when the beepers were finally activated. The IDF narrative has been that the Iranians were about to expose the beepers, and the operation was forced into action earlier than planned and possibly earlier than ideal, according to certain parameters. In contrast, the Mossad narrative has been that there were many points when the beepers were in danger of being discovered, that mid-September 2024 was only one of these points, and that a separate major reason they were finally used was that the government had just recently taken a strategic decision to shift its primary focus from Gaza to Lebanon.
Feyn explained in his book that at the time that the beepers were activated, it was the most dangerous situation among the many episodes until then, because the Iranian checks into technology were of a higher standard than Hezbollah. He said that the same way Israel wanted the US involved in fighting Iran, because it has unique capabilities, Israel was uniquely worried about the beepers being discovered by Iran as opposed to Hezbollah.
Hezbollah debated about the suspicious devices
According to the book, Hezbollah had a robust debate about whether to purchase the beepers. There were definitely dissenting voices against the new device. They were extra suspicious when any manufacturer pitched a product, as opposed to if Hezbollah had approached a manufacturer on its own initiative, the book explained. Those opposing the new device said that Hezbollah would first need to perform a thorough check and would need to review competing options.
“One thing that helped push the deal through,” Feyn added, “was that the original communication device they [Hezbollah] had been using” would not work for much longer and was no longer being sold, “such that they needed to switch no matter what.” There was even pressure on Hezbollah, said the book, to race forward, after it had tried to drag out using the old device as long as it could. “Once they would switch to a new device, they would not switch again for a long time. They viewed every switchover to a new device as a risk, and as a trigger for a new market survey in order to reevaluate other new, available products,” said Feyn, noting that this meant the Mossad had a very short window of opportunity to penetrate the supply chain of the Lebanese terrorist group. If one tiny thing changed in the supply chain network between Taiwan and Lebanon, Hezbollah would demand explanations, including from their own people, the book indicated.
The book shows what a large challenge it was to find a person who could successfully influence Hezbollah to decide to overcome its concerns. One of the reasons the Mossad pulled off such a systematic surprise attack was that Hezbollah’s technology guardians were worried and checking for eavesdropping devices, not for explosives, Feyn noted. Keeping this advantage regarding Hezbollah’s ability to imagine how the devices might be tinkered with by inserting explosives was a major challenge. If Hezbollah found out, then once they knew about the new threat, they could become much more suspicious and better at exposing it, Feyn warned.
How ‘Theresa’ convinced Hezbollah
According to the book, in March 2024, Theresa received a call from Hezbollah to jump its order of beepers from the existing 500 per year to 5,000. This gigantic spike in Hezbollah’s volume of ordering new devices did not just happen. In the book, it was part of a campaign by senior female Mossad manager “Einat,” who connected with Theresa under the cover of a businesswoman named “Lilly.” Theresa came from an existing company which already knew and worked with Hezbollah. “The company was authentic and Israel did not control it,” which is a very powerful combination for intervening in a suspicious terrorist group’s supply chain, said Feyn.
Only through a mix of Theresa already having some contact with Gold Apollo President Hsu Ching-kuang, and Lilly coaching Theresa about how to get to and handle Hsu, did the original sale happen, and eventually blossom exponentially. All of this raises a rough ethical issue. Just as in war, militaries that follow international law seek to keep collateral civilian harm to a minimum, the Mossad tries to do the same. But this is not always possible. With the beepers operation, in the real world, the owner and CEO of BAC Consulting, a front company established for Mossad purposes, a woman named Cristiana Barsony-Arcidiacono, was one moment interviewing with NBC, and the next moment disappearing.
Without confirming specific details, Feyn told the Post that “we work on this; we try to help with collateral damage. We also soul search before we recruit and handle” someone and ask: Is this okay? Is it justified? Do the ends justify the means? In the book, the Mossad chief asked Oz to compensate and take care of persons who were unwitting agents as much as possible, to reduce the price that they would pay.
The beeper ‘assembly line’
According to the book, when the Mossad received the huge order of 5,000 beepers in March 2024, the Mossad high command did not pop its bottles of champagne. In fact, multiple top officials said they should refuse the order. They said that it would be physically impossible for the agency to produce a sufficient number of beepers fast enough. Furthermore, they said that rushing the operation could lead to errors, which could blow the entire patient, meticulous operational success to date. In the book, the Mossad chief pushed to get the 5,000 beepers. He ordered multiple divisions of the Mossad to reassign resources and personnel from other projects to help produce the beepers. Yet, top Mossad officials still objected, saying there was simply insufficient space within Mossad facilities to properly assemble that many beepers at the requested pace. In response, the Mossad chief ordered that the agency’s gym and other leisure areas be converted temporarily into beeper assembly line areas.
In a comical scene in the book, Mossad agents not in the know showed up at the gym hoping to exercise and were bewildered when they were turned away due to top-secret “gym” activities. Feyn said, “insane efforts were made to make sure this new order could happen. There is no magic. It could not be done in one moment, in one place.”
Beeper policy debates
The first debate that the book and Feyn unveiled is a previously unreported September 2019 internal Mossad debate about whether to try to develop a sabotage operation (which would eventually become the beepers operation) to be added to the existing walkie-talkie operation. According to the book, a man referred to only as “the deputy Mossad chief” (but which open sources can confirm was Barnea, around two years before he was promoted to become the chief) opened a meeting raising the idea, which almost incited rebellion from multiple top Mossad officials.
In layman’s terms, the question was whether to try to produce a risky game-changing sabotage operation against Hezbollah after the top Mossad officials present had spent half a decade to pull off a prior such operation, which was now one of their flagship successes. Previously, the Post has reported that the walkie-talkie operation started around 2014.
Feyn explained to the Post that a central question that worried the Mossad officials in attendance was: “What happens if the walkie-talkies get exposed? We would lose an already built and existing capability. They [Hezbollah] would figure out both the old and new plots. The resources used up already and needed for such a new operation are not trivial to obtain. These are not regular operations and investments. This could have major consequences for the organization. The question was: is all of this justified? Eventually, the deputy Mossad chief decided to go for it,” Feyn noted.
In the book, some of the senior Mossad officials told the deputy Mossad chief that his request was impossible anyway because there was no device for Hezbollah that was large enough to be able to plant explosive material inside it. However, the book then recounts how the one senior female Mossad agent present broke ranks with her even more senior boss, telling the deputy Mossad chief that a junior female intelligence agent had recently published a report about a new device that would be large enough for planting explosives, and could be pitched to Hezbollah. A large model designed and manufactured by the Mossad was later presented to Hezbollah. Feyn confirmed that a female Mossad commander had a key role in these developments, while noting that the specific “Einat” in the book is a composite of multiple people.
Ultimately, Feyn said, the deputy Mossad chief went in the direction of this new risky device idea because “we started to understand that we could not always activate the walkie-talkies. They would only work optimally if the IDF was undertaking an invasion of Lebanon, so the two [the walkie-talkies and an invasion] are complementary and would be needed to be combined. The beepers could be used all of the time, including during routine peacetime periods,” making them more versatile as a sabotage weapon, he asserted.
Pieces of this same debate would be famously reenacted on Oct. 11, 2023, when the IDF high command pushed for carrying out a massive preemptive strike on Hezbollah. This might have changed the course of history by beating the Lebanese terrorist group nearly a year earlier. However, most Mossad sources said that the beepers were not fully developed yet then, and the walkie-talkies might have flopped if Hezbollah left most of them in warehouses where they were then being stored – awaiting a moment when Hezbollah fighters might be called to put on their battle vests and rush to the border.
Beepers in September or October 2024?
The book recounts a meeting at Tel Aviv military headquarters in the first half of September 2024 when the IDF chief of staff (who we know was then Herzi Halevi) held a meeting with top Mossad officials on his turf, but without the presence of the Mossad chief. According to the book and Feyn, the IDF chief said, “We should not open up a general war at a moment that is less advantageous. If you buy an engagement ring, it does not mean that you ultimately must get married,” if it turns out that the timing or some other factor is off. In the book, and according to independent sources who have spoken to the Post, Halevi made similar pronouncements at a decisive meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on September 14, 2024, only three days before the beepers were activated.
Halevi knew that the beepers operation was a great potential initial strike to throw Hezbollah off, but other military timing and readiness factors were possibly even more important. Feyn told the Post, “It was a legitimate substantive disagreement. They [the IDF] were coming at it from a different perspective. They had conceptual responsibility for the ‘entire body’ of Israel. The IDF is responsible for the entire war: the sufficiency [in volume] and quality of attack munitions, the ground forces, the volume of aerial defense interceptors, the home front in a broader sense – it was not grossly unreasonable.”
But in the book and in real life, the Mossad chief (Barnea) and also Feyn argued that once the government had decided that it needed to bring the northern residents back, Israel needed to use all of its capabilities. “This weapon could have real strategic value.” In colorful fashion, Feyn added into his book one of the Mossad officials responding to Halevi that it is one thing to rethink an engagement ring in a vacuum; it is another thing to rethink an engagement if the groom has already gotten the bride pregnant. In the book, Halevi disregards this comment, and various officials present decry the Mossad official’s crudeness. But the point behind it was that the beepers operation was so far along and so close to success that it was like a woman who was pregnant and about to give birth. To call off the wedding, metaphorically, or, the Mossad official was saying, to call off the beepers operation in the real world so late in the game, would be an unthinkable, last-second wasteful decision.
Feyn argued that the defense establishment needed to assess what would be the best timing. The timing could be very strategic for how large of an impact the beepers would have, he noted. This could even have been the decisive factor, if the Mossad had proved Israel could have achieved killing far more Hezbollah officials. True, if Israel had fooled Hezbollah fighters into rushing to the border in their full gear, the walkie-talkies could have killed three times as many of them. But even if Israel missed that achievement, it had an alternate history-changing achievement. The beepers as they were actually used – even if the impact was more limited in total numbers – achieved breaking Hezbollah’s spirit.
Furthermore, the Mossad worried that if Israel had followed the IDF view and delayed springing the beepers on Hezbollah until October, such a move might have sacrificed the whole operation by exposing a number of beepers. “In any event, the prime minister decided. And it turned out to be a very correct decision. The beeper capability was tremendous,” said Feyn.
Walkie-talkies right after beepers, or wait and see?
Another debate that Feyn revealed to the Post, and which the book describes, but which was unreported until now, was whether the walkie-talkies would be used immediately after the beepers (as they were the next day in the real world), or whether Israel would take some time to observe how the beepers affected Hezbollah before deciding if and when to activate the walkie-talkie explosions. Once again, the book portrays the IDF as wanting more time, concerned about the consequences of rushing in with yet another Mossad operation.
In real time, the book says, the IDF chief thought it was possible that if Israel only hit Hezbollah with the beepers, it might take the hit without launching a massive counterstrike. But if Israel hit it consecutively with the beepers and then the walkie-talkies, this might drive Hezbollah into such a counterstrike before the IDF could launch its own general war to head off that threat.
Feyn confirmed to the Post that this was a real and serious debate, and that using the two Mossad flagship sabotage operations consecutively, one right after the other, was not an automatic decision - meaning Hezbollah could have theoretically discovered the walkie talkies in the interim
In the end, Netanyahu decided to go with the walkie-talkies the day after the beepers, and Hezbollah was thrown into even greater confusion and paranoia, helping the IDF strike it soon after with its guard down completely. But none of this was obvious or a foregone conclusion in real time.
The price paid by Mossad and defense officials’ families
Feyn readily acknowledged that “there was a price on the family. Anyone in the defense establishment who spends extended times in operations overseas knows how much of a challenge it is to preserve a loving family.”
“You can be ‘present’ even when not physically present, such as speaking on the phone to make sure children study for a test and to be really happy with them when they achieve things,” he said. Feyn stated, “We need to work on this all the time. You need to help them have a normal life. And you need their willingness, resilience, and support over many years. When you are in Israel, you cannot just go out alone or with friends on a long biking trip. The family must always come first,” added Feyn.
Part of the formula does often involve Mossad and defense officials taking a year or multiple years off to refresh themselves in the normal civilian world in between an otherwise intelligence-focused career. Both of the last two Mossad directors, Barnea and Cohen, spent time outside of the Mossad before returning for higher positions.
Ultimately, Feyn emphasized, while marriages and families with inherent problems may find it even harder under the stress, those with strong foundations can emerge even stronger in some ways.
Feyn's new book, Hoda’ah Goralit (Fateful Message), can be purchased at: https://www.e-vrit.co.il/Product/39098/%D7%94%D7%95%D7%93%D7%A2%D7%94_%D7%92%D7%95%D7%A8%D7%9C%D7%99%D7%AA