Israel Destroyed Syria's Nuclear Potential.
In the middle of April 2007, a short, bald and burly man with a limp and a cane walked into the West Wing of the White House. He carried a small briefcase with folders chaotically jutting out.
The man showed his diplomatic passport. He was under the impression that he would be brought directly to the Oval Office for a private meeting with the president, but instead the guards were under orders to keep his name off the official visitor logs and clandestinely escort him to the office of national security adviser Stephen Hadley. Inside, two additional men were waiting: Hadley's deputy, Elliott Abrams, and a surprise, Vice President Dick Cheney.
The man the trio had gathered to meet was Meir Dagan, the renowned and feared head of the Mossad, Israel's legendary foreign spy agency and equivalent of the CIA. A few days earlier, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had called President George W. Bush and told him that Dagan would be coming to Washington with some important information. "I'd appreciate if you could meet him," Olmert told Bush.
The request, phrased in a way that seemed urgent, took Bush and his staff by surprise. Heads of state—even close allies like Olmert—don't usually ask the president to meet the directors of their intelligence agencies alone. If they ever do meet them, it is almost always according to diplomatic protocol.
So the president's aides decided to stick to protocol. They would first meet Dagan, evaluate his information and, if needed, take him to see the president. Cheney was briefed about the pending visit and decided to sit in on the meeting. He knew Dagan and figured that, based on Olmert's special request, it must be urgent.
