Arab Websites report Mossad chief assassinated in Amman. Israeli sources deny

debkafile reports that Arab Internet sites, most of them Jordanian, claim that 10 days ago on Oct. 12, Meir Dagan, the head of Israel’s external intelligence service, the Mossad, was targeted by assassins while visiting Amman. Some describe a large bomb explosion alongside his convoy and add that Israeli and Jordanian guards with the convoy were injured. Others say Dagan himself was hurt or even killed in the attack. They claim Israel and Jordan are keeping the incident a secret.
debkafile‘s sources have no knowledge of any visit by Meir Dagan to the Jordanian capital.
Jordanian officials are trying hard to dismiss the incident. Without going on record, they maintain Dagan paid no recent visits to their capital and was not attacked. This has not been enough to dispel the rumors, according to one of which a hit-man or team linked to Hizballah or Iran managed to avenge the death of Hizballah military chief Imad Mughniyeh in Damascus last February.
The Arab world sees Dagan as master of the hidden Israeli hand which reached into Syria to target Mugniyeh and destroyed Syria’s plutonium reactor in September 2007.
According to another theory, Damascus is working the rumor mill to offset the unfavorable impression generated in the Arab world by its military concentrations on Lebanon’s borders.
Meir Dagan would need to make an appearance in person to dispel the rumors.
The movements of intelligence chiefs who travel in constant fear of their lives, especially in the Middle East, are strictly shrouded in secrecy.
Whether the US CIA director Gen. Michael Hayden, for instance, actually went through with a planned visit to Beirut on Oct. 16, has never been disclosed.
debkafile‘s intelligence sources confirm that he was indeed there. The visit was important to make sure that the new head of Lebanese military intelligence, Gen. Edmund Fadal, who traveled to Damascus directly after his appointment to meet his Syrian counterpart, Gen. Asif Shawqat, was not caught in the Syrian net. The service he heads is the staunchest pro-Western military outfit in Lebanon.