but the would-be assassins were caught and arrested by the Jordanian
police and interrogated.
This fiasco caused enormous embarrassment to both governments
and jeopardized Israel’s relations with one of its very few Middle
Eastern allies. King Hussein threatened Netanyahu that he would put
“Beads” and “Kendall” on trial if the Mossad did not immediately
provide an antidote to save Mash’al’s life. If Israel did not cooper-
ate, the agents’ confessions to interrogators would be sent to U.S.
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, their false Canadian pass-
ports would be made available to the media, and the whole affair
would balloon into an international scandal. Israel acceded to King
Hussein’s demands, and Danny Yatom, the Mossad director, went
to Amman in an attempt to appease the king.
The antidote was provided and Mash’al’s life was saved. Israel’s
tactics in such clandestine operations were fully exposed; it is doubt-
ful that that particular one will ever be tried again, anywhere. The an-
tidote for this specific poison is now known. Furthermore, at the de-
mand of Hussein, Israel released the Hamas leader Sheikh Yassin,
imprisoned in Israel for his role in terrorist acts. The two Mossad
agents were delivered to the Canadian embassy in Amman. Later
they were driven across the Allenby Bridge from Jordan to Israel. The
Israeli government assured the Canadian government that it would
never again use false Canadian documents, and the Canadian author-
ities remained silent. See also BEN-DAVID, MOSHE.KHRUSHCHEV’S SPEECH.On 25 February 1956, at a secret ses-
sion of the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet
Union (CPSU), Nikita Khrushchev, the party first secretary, launched
an extraordinary attack on the policies of his late predecessor, Joseph
Stalin. Khrushchev denounced Stalin’s cult of personality and his ap-
parent support for the concept of individuality. He denounced Stalin’s
supporters for a list of crimes they had committed against humanity,
many of which had previously been denied by the Soviet Union. The
speech was not intended for anyone other than the Communist dele-
gates from party branches across the Soviet bloc, as it was essentially
a quiet reversal of years of Soviet propaganda, which had maintained
that Stalin was a wise, peaceful, and fair leader.
The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the British MI5
wanted a copy of this secret speech to expose Stalin’s real face to the144 • KHRUSHCHEV’S SPEECH06-102 (03) H-P.qxd 3/24/06 7:24 AM Page 144