Mike Livingston

“He also explained Operation Trojan, where Mossad relayed disinformation to be received by the US and Britain. They planted the Trojan, a communication device, deep inside the enemy territory. The device would rebroadcast prerecorded digital transmissions, which would be able to be picked up by Americans and the British. On the night of February 17th, two Israeli missile boats headed through the Mediterranean, letting four submarines and two speedboats disembark just outside the territorial waters of Libya. The submarines headed for shore and the agents headed inland with the Trojan device. They were picked up by a Mossad combatant who was already there, then they headed to the city, where they went to an apartment building less than three blocks away from the Bab al Azizia barracks known to house Qadhafi’s headquarters. They brought the device to the top floor of the building, activated it, then headed back to the beach. The combatant monitored the unit in the apartment for the next few weeks. The Trojan broadcasted messages during heavy communication traffic hours. They appeared as long series of terrorist orders to Libyan embassies around the world. The Americans began to perceive the Libyans as active sponsors of terrorism, while the French and Spanish were suspicious. The Mossad used America’s promise to retaliate against support for terrorism, to manipulate them into the ploy. Their intention was to get a country with better weapons to attack Libya. They succeeded. On April 14th, 1986, one hundred and sixty American aircrafts dropped over sixty tons of bombs on Libya. A deal for the release of American hostages in Lebanon was cut, forty Libyan civilians died, and an American pilot and his weapons officer died. For the Mossad, this mission was incredibly successful. However, it doesn’t highlight the intelligence agency in the same ways as other stories of operations. It showed deceit toward the Americans, who they would normally try to cooperate with. It “by ingenious sleight of hand, had prodded the United States to do what was right.” It showed the world what side the US was on in the Arab-Israeli conflict.”
― Mike Livingston, Mossad: The Untold Stories of Israel’s Most Effective Secret Service