Newly declassified documents reveal that a secret alliance of Western spy agencies provided Israel with key information that enabled the Mossad to assassinate Palestinians in Europe during the early 1970s.
The declassified cables, revealed by The Guardian on Wednesday, say that Mossad’s manhunt was supported by an intelligence-sharing network that spanned 18 Western countries.
The findings come from the work of Dr Aviva Guttmann, a historian of strategy and intelligence at Aberystwyth University, who accessed a cache of previously classified communications stored in Switzerland.
“When it comes to intelligence-sharing between services of different states, oversight is very difficult. International relations of the secret state are completely off the radar of politicians, parliaments or the public,” Guttmann said.
At least ten Palestinians were killed in cities including Paris, Rome, Athens and Nicosia in operations carried out by Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence agency.
The assassinations were part of a broader operation known as Wrath of God, launched in response to the Munich Olympics attack of 1972, in which 11 Israeli athletes were killed by the Palestinian group Black September Organisation (BSO). The operation also inspired a Hollywood film.
Guttmann said the Kilowatt revelations raise urgent questions about intelligence-sharing in today’s war in Gaza. “Even today there will be a lot of information being shared about which we know absolutely nothing.”
Here is a look at what is behind the little-known telex system codenamed “Kilowatt”.
The Kilowatt network
Established in 1971, Kilowatt was an encrypted intelligence-sharing system linking 18 Western nations, including the US, UK, France, West Germany and Switzerland.
Initially created to coordinate counterterrorism efforts in Europe, the platform quickly evolved into a covert conduit for exchanging highly sensitive information—names, addresses, travel itineraries and the locations of safe houses—on suspected operatives.
The Kilowatt network proved especially effective due to its level of detail. “A lot was very granular, linking individuals to specific attacks and giving details that would be of great help,” said Guttmann.
As Israel hunted individuals allegedly tied to Black September Organisations and other Palestinian groups, Kilowatt became the backbone of an international manhunt that blurred the lines between security cooperation and extrajudicial killing.
According to Guttmann, Mossad’s campaign would likely have been impossible without the intelligence provided by European services.
“I’m not sure the Israeli (assassination) campaign would have been possible without the tactical information from the European intelligence services,” she said.
Who was assassinated?
One of the first to be targeted was Wael Zwaiter, a Palestinian intellectual and translator working at the Libyan embassy in Rome. He was shot dead in the lobby of his apartment building weeks after Munich. While his family and friends long denied any militant ties, Kilowatt cables reveal that Western agencies had accused Zwaiter of providing logistical support to BSO.
Another target, Mahmoud al-Hamshari, the Palestine Liberation Organisation’s official representative in France, was killed in Paris in December 1972. He, too, appeared in Kilowatt communications, which described him as a diplomatic figure suspected of forming terror cells and raising funds for operations.
The reach of Mossad’s campaign extended across the continent. Swiss authorities played a key role in aiding the 1973 Paris assassination of a logistician for the BSO and Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the cables show.
In June 1973, a former Algerian resistance fighter and theatre director, Mohamed Boudia had allegedly become a key figure in both the PFLP and BSO. Swiss intelligence provided key information for the operation, including car details found during a raid on a Geneva safe house.
The cables also reveal a major blunder. British intelligence agency MI5 supplied Mossad with the only known photograph of Ali Hassan Salameh, the alleged mastermind of the Munich attack. In July 1973, Israeli agents used the photo to identify a man in Lillehammer, Norway—believing him to be Salameh. He was, in fact, a Moroccan waiter.
The botched operation—later known as the Lillehammer affair—resulted in several Mossad operatives being arrested and drew international condemnation. According to reports, Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir subsequently ordered a halt to the Wrath of God campaign.
Yet, Guttmann’s findings suggest that intelligence-sharing continued even after Mossad’s actions became widely known.
“At the beginning, perhaps [Western officials] were unaware [of the assassinations],” she told The Guardian, “but afterwards there was a lot of press reporting and other evidence strongly suggesting what the Israelis were doing.”
Despite this, agencies continued to assist, according to Guttmann, sometimes even sharing their own investigative findings about the killings with Mossad itself.
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