Hezbollah began attacking Israel after the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas that started the Israel-Hamas war.
Agents spoke with CBS “60 Minutes” in a segment that aired Sunday night. They wore masks and spoke in altered voices to hide their identities.
One agent said the operation began 10 years ago using walkie-talkies packed with hidden explosives, which Hezbollah did not know it had bought from its enemy, Israel. The walkie-talkies didn’t explode until September, a day after the booby-trap pagers were set.
“We created a make-believe world,” said the officer, who goes by the name “Michael”.
A second phase of the scheme, using booby-trap pagers, began in 2022 after Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency learned that Hezbollah had bought the pagers from a Taiwan-based company, the second official said.
The pagers had to be made slightly larger to accommodate the explosives hidden inside. They were tested several times on dummies to find the right amount of explosives that would only hurt a Hezbollah fighter and not anyone else nearby.
The Mossad also tested several ring tones that were urgent enough for a person to pull a pager out of their pocket.
A second agent, who went by the name “Gabriel,” said it took two weeks to convince the Mossad director to sell the heavy pager, which was advertised on YouTube using false ads promoting the devices as dustproof, waterproof, and available. Long battery life and more.
He described the use of shell companies, including one in Hungary, to defraud the Taiwanese firm Gold Apollo, unwittingly partnered with the Mossad.
Hezbollah was also not aware that it was working with Israel.
Gabriel compared it to a 1998 psychological film about a man living in a false world and unaware that his family and friends are actors paid to maintain the illusion.
“When they buy from us, they have zero clue that they’re buying from the Mossad,” Gabriel said. “We make it like the ‘Truman Show,’ everything is controlled by us behind the scenes. In their experience, everything is normal. Everything was 100% kosher, including businessmen, marketing, engineers, showrooms, everything.”
By September, Hezbollah fighters had 5,000 pagers in their pockets.
Israel launched the attack on September 17, when pagers all over Lebanon began beeping. If the person fails to press the button to read the incoming encrypted message, the devices will explode.
The next day, the Mossad activated the walkie-talkies, some of which exploded at the funerals of the approximately 30 people killed in the pager attack.
Gabriel said the goal was to send a message rather than actually kill Hezbollah fighters.
“If he’s just dead, then he’s dead. But if he’s injured, you have to take him to the hospital, take care of him. You have to invest money and effort,” he said. “And those people without hands and eyes are living proof, walking in Lebanon, saying, ‘Don’t mess with us.’ They are walking around the Middle East as evidence of our superiority.”
In the days following the attack, Israel’s air force struck targets across Lebanon, killing thousands. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was killed after Israel bombed his bunker.
In November, the war between Israel and Hezbollah, the product of a deadly attack by Hamas fighters in southern Israel on October 7, 2023, ended with a ceasefire. More than 45,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war between Israel and Hamas rebels in Gaza, health officials say.
The agent, who used the name “Michael,” said that the day after the pager went off, people in Lebanon were also afraid to turn on their air conditioners for fear of an explosion.
“There is real fear,” he said.
Asked if that was intentional, he said, “We want them to feel vulnerable, which they are. We can’t use pagers again because we’ve already done that. We’ve already moved on to something else. And what’s the next thing they want to do?” You have to try to guess that it is.”