Wikileaks: State Department Lied, Denying Dubai Asked for Assistance in Tracking Mossad Assassins

On February 25, 2010, State Department spokesperson Philip Crowley lied when he told a press conference that he wasn’t aware of any request from Dubai for assistance in tracking the Mossad killers of Mahmoud al-Mabouh.  To those who say that Wikileaks hasn’t told us anything we didn’t already know–think again.

Wikileaks has just released a February 24, 2010 cable in which the embassy relays the specific credit card numbers used by 14 of the 27 known Mossad suspects to State with a request for assistance from authorities investigating the killing, and confirms that the UAE foreign minister made the exact same request directly to Secretary Clinton on February 23rd:

On the margins of a meeting with visiting Secretary [of Energy] Chu, on Feb 24 MFA Minister of State Gargash made a formal request to the Ambassador for assistance in providing cardholder details and related information or credit cards reportedly issued by a U.S. bank to several suspects in last month’s killing of Hamas leader Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh in Dubai.   According to a letter Gargash gave the Ambassador (which transmitted details of the request from Dubai Security authorities to the UAE Central Bank), the credit cards were issued by MetaBank, in Iowa.

Comment: Ambassador requests expeditious handling of and reply to the UAEG request, which was also raised by UAE Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed in a February 23 meeting with Secretary Clinton in Washington.

Twelve of the cards were provided by MetaBank and Payoneer, the latter a payment processing service with close ties to Israeli intelligence services.

At the time, I expressed strong doubts about the interest on the part of the U.S. in playing any constructive role in rooting out these killers.  Which of course is tremendously ironic considering that we’re the ones wagging our fingers at Muslim states for not doing enough to root out terror from their midst.  Here we have a case of Israeli intelligence committing cold-blooded murder, using the financial services of U.S. companies to do so, and we take a pass on investigating or cooperating.  How do you spell h-y-p-o-c-r-i-s-y?

Yesterday, I reported that incoming Mossad director Tamir Pardo was prepared to concede Israeli responsibility for the Dubai hit.  To any who might view this as an Israeli official seeking to take responsibility for Israeli misdeeds or some such…Wikileaks is rumored to be about to publish cables in which the lid is blown on Mossad involvement.  So it’s no skin off Pardo’s back if he admits to a crime which was about to be exposed anyway by others.

This article was originally published at Tikun Olam and is reprinted with the author’s permission.