ALBAWABA - An American intelligence source said that Israel was engaged in the 15-year scheme to manufacture pagers that detonated in Lebanon. The operation, which targeted the supply chain of these devices, was painstakingly organized over a period of more than fifteen years, the source told ABC News.
The insider said that since there was such a high danger harming innocent bystanders, the CIA has long been hesitant to use such measures. Israel, however, proceeded with a clandestine plan that included fictitious businesses and many tiers of Israeli intelligence agents. These agents operated via reputable businesses, many of whose staff members were not aware that they were involved in a bigger plot.
ABC News contacted the Hungarian company BAC Consulting, which was hired to create the pagers for Taiwan-based Gold Apollo, but they did not reply. The pagers had never been physically present in Hungary, according to a government spokesman, and BAC Consulting was only a business middleman with no manufacturing facilities there.
At least 37 people have died and 2,931 have been wounded in the explosions that occurred in Lebanon, which were set off remotely by explosives buried within pagers and communication equipment, according to Firas Al-Abiad, the country's health minister.
