2011-09-02 Did the CIA know where Imad Mughniyeh was all the time?

Who said that CIA didn’t know where Imad Mughniyeh was, or what was his job, or didn’t have any hints!?

This is from Wikileaks 95BEIRUT2749 cable released 3 days ago, in its para 8:

"for what it is worth, papers also report trends which suggest business as usual for Hizballah. The often inaccurate daily ‘Nida Al-Watan’ reported the re-election of Imad Mughniyah as the central security chief, with four assitants named Mustafa Badr Ad-Dine …"

Have you noticed who was mentioned too? Yep, the suspect in Rafiq Hariri’s murder as per the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (as of 2011), Mustafa BadrEddine. What a coincidence!

Ironically, the partisan newspaper Nida Al-Watan was right in this reporting. The cable is written in a tone suspecting this report, with no further comment on Mughniyeh who was one of the most wanted men by the CIA at the time. For me, it seemed business as usual to the cable author.

It’s not clear why the US didn’t make a big fuss out of it in Lebanon or with its government. It may be because they knew they couldn’t reach him in diplomatic means as they would have had to go via Syria, Iran and Hezbollah. And they may have simply waited for 9 years before they got him in their democratic way.