“That was a wake up call that you should never dismiss your enemy,” London said. Whatever hubris existed, London said, had to be reined in.
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The events, portrayed in the series over a 25-year span leading up to Mughniyeh’s assassination, catalyzed introspection among CIA agents and the rest of the intelligence community. Mughniyeh’s barbaric influence, mimicked by those who have sought to replicate his actions in the years since, continue to scar the region. In his destructive wake, a trail of mangled bodies, innumerable families torn apart. embassy and sent a shock through the Reagan administration.įrom bombings to kidnappings, Mughniyeh’s bold but calculated sway began to leave its mark around the globe, with terror operations stretching from Lebanon and Iraq to Israel and Argentina. Buckley had only just assumed the role after agency officer Robert Ames was killed in the April 1983 blast that rocked the U.S. High-profile kidnappings were also employed, including the broad daylight abduction of CIA station chief William Buckley in March 1984. He was very inventive in finding ways to sow chaos and fear.” “Suicide is forbidden by the Quran, but Hezbollah, with Iran’s support, was able to put another stamp on it - just like we saw al-Qaida and the Islamic State put their own stamp on things. “The idea of martyrdom for Islamic terrorist groups was unheard of at the time,” said London, who now teaches at Georgetown University’s Center for Security Studies. The method was popularized during his rise to power and developed into a routine threat in the conflicts that followed. Suicide bombing, in particular, became a staple of Mughniyah’s terror operations. “What made him particularly effective was his ability to go beyond what had been done and to be inventive.” “Mughniyah had a great deal of ingenuity,” London told Military Times. One source consulting on the series was Douglas London, a Marine Corps veteran who spent 34 years with the CIA’s clandestine service and came to understand Mughniyah’s reputation over the course of 17 years overseas. “So, that meant talking to numerous sources about what might have happened or what they think happened.” “We’re telling it as a fictional story, but I wanted it to be as authentic as possible,” Barker said. The dramatic retelling, which oscillates between early-1980s Lebanon and 2007 Iraq, weaves in journalistic research and first-hand accounts of CIA and Mossad officials to produce a spy thriller that, while technically fictionalized due to the classified nature of some subject matter, is delivered with “truth at its core,” Barker told Military Times. The decades-long search for Mughniyah, who was also known as al-Hajj Radwan, now form the foundation of the four-part Showtime series “Ghosts of Beirut,” a massive undertaking shepherded by Emmy Award-winner Greg Barker (“Manhunt: The Inside Story of the Hunt for Bin Laden”).
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