Dear friends:

Some details on the Ehud Barak commando raid in Beirut apparently
need correction.  I reported it as I received it several years ago.

It was 1973 and not 1974.  And Barak was not alone.  Below is the
story as reported by CBS News.  Full story and more details at
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2001/11/20/60II/main318655.shtml

Jim
_________________________________________________

It took an Israeli speedboat seven hours to reach the coastline off
Beirut. Just after midnight on April 10, 1973, 16 commandos slipped
ashore here for an operation code named Spring of Youth. It was the
most audacious attack the Israelis had ever planned. The mission: To
kill three of the PLO's top leaders in their homes downtown. Three
cars were waiting for the Israelis on the beach road. The keys were
in the ignition, the engines were running. Leading the attack were
two women: a blonde and a brunette.

The brunette was Ehud Barak, Israel's future prime minister. At that
time, he was commander of the nation's special forces.

"We decided maybe some of us will go like women. It will reduce the
suspicions," Barak recalled recently. "We put everything in place. A
wig, and a breast, and everything. And I had my lieutenant Muki
Betser, he was kind of a half a head taller than me. And we were a couple."

The couple's first date was with a PLO guard in front of the building
that was their prime target. Barak shot him with a silencer.
Commandos crept up the stairs to the apartment of Kamal Adwan, the
PLO's chief of operations. The civilian disguises turned out to be a
good idea.

"The moment that they opened the door, the terrorist was there with
his Kalashnikov and an AK-47 in his hands," says Barak. "And it was
only the split second of hesitation of the terrorist when he see that
it's civilian people that, that ended up our officer shoot the
terrorist and not the other way around."

Kamal Adwan's young daughter Dana was 5 when the Israelis stormed
their apartment and shot Adwan 55 times.

"Glass was being shattered on our heads," she remembered. "And he
just fell. And his face was somehow turned like that. And I was
telling my brother, 'They're playing cowboys and Indians here.'"

When the smoke had cleared, three PLO leaders were dead in their
homes. The Israelis returned to the beach and their boats. It had
taken them 30 minutes. If Beirut wasn't safe, the PLO now knew no
place was safe.
_____________________

Jim