Warfare and How the Israeli Intelligence Services Have Led the Way

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Elizabeth Hazelton 646-734-4243; [email protected] Joanna Pinsker 212-364-0562; [email protected] Explosive new book shows how the key to combatting terror is financial--not military--warfare and how the Israeli intelligence services have led the way The untold account of perhaps the greatest and most disruptive Israeli start- up of them all and its joint-venture with the United States’ counterterrorist community “It’s a cliché after Watergate that the key investigation in most circumstances is to ‘follow the money’ (in the words of Deep Throat). This is the story of how Mossad led this movement and substantially effected investigations of terrorism and similarly important matters and how this influenced the CIA’s later work in the same field. Bravo Mossad! Thanks for leading the way.” — R. James Woolsey, CIA director (1993–1995) The haunting images of the hijacked airliners crashing into the World Trade Center, the pools of blood on the streets of Paris, and the aftermath of the horrific massacres in a nightclub in Orlando and on the streets of Barcelona, have been seared into our collective conscious, leaving us all feeling frustrated, Harpoon: Inside the Covert War Against Terrorism’s Money Masters By Nitsana Darshan-Leitner and Samuel M. Katz / Hachette Books / November 7, 2017 / ISBN 9780316399050 / $27.00 / 304 pages vulnerable and afraid. Tragically, the universal approach to combating this ruthless global threat has been focused on the conventional responses anchored in dilatory military actions that have produced foreseeable and pedestrian results. However, with groups like ISIS bringing in billions of dollars annually to finance their attacks, and the Islamic Republic of Iran bankrolling its proxies Hamas and Hezbollah with an endless flow of cash, a small and covert group of intelligence operatives spearheaded a dynamic new front to combat terrorist armies by depriving them of the oxygen they require to breath: the money needed to carry out attacks around the world. This is a story of a pioneering and innovative method of fighting terrorism—financial warfare waged against the extremist organizations, their leadership and the rogue regimes that support them. It all began in Israel, the small and embattled nation that has become fabled for its cutting edge hi-tech creativity and the prowess of its espionage services. This is the previously untold tale of perhaps the greatest and most disruptive Israeli start-up of them all and its joint-venture with the United States’ counterterrorist community. In HARPOON: Inside the Covert War Against Terrorism’s Money Masters (Hachette Books; November 7, 2017; ISBN 9780316399050; $27), Israeli activist attorney Nitsana Darshan-Leitner and New York Times bestselling author Samuel M. Katz bring to light the previously classified account of how one nation, facing a tsunami of unstoppable suicide terrorism, forged its intelligence, military, law enforcement, and political leaders into a powerful task force, code-named Harpoon, to combat terror financing around the world. Traveling back to the 1990s, Darshan-Leitner and Katz introduce Meir Dagan, a legendary soldier and spymaster, who spent a lengthy military career serving the State of Israel in the up-close-and-personal world of deadly special operations ultimately becoming the director of the Mossad, the Jewish State’s famed espionage service. Dagan’s reputation was that of a warrior, a man who moved silently behind enemy lines with a dagger between his teeth. But as a commanding general frustrated with the limitations and inefficiencies of the conventional approach to warfare that failed to stem the waves of bus-bombings, drive-by shootings and suicide attacks in Israel, Dagan sought new and imaginative strategies. He pieced together an outside-the-box solution to target the source of the terrorists’ power, a complex underground economy of “blood money” that enlisted banks and charities to distribute funds to the diabolical masterminds behind the suicide attacks and catastrophic murders. Dagan assembled a dream team of specialists from the intelligence services, the Israel Defense Force, the National Police, and even Israel’s IRS, to fight the ever transforming terrorists groups and their money across the Middle East, South America, Africa, and around the globe. In the process, Harpoon fused an operational alliance with the highest reaches of the United States government to fight terror on a truly global front. This is the untold and remarkable story of modern day “Untouchables.” This elite and covert force intercepted banking records, perpetrated financial con games, unleashed invasive and destructive computer malware attacks, called in missile strikes against bankers, and violently eliminated financiers and bag men in foreign capitals. This is also the story of the private lawyers who pioneered the use of American counterterrorism suits to bring terrorist groups, and the countries and financial institutions that provided them material support, to their knees. Harpoon: Inside the Covert War Against Terrorism’s Money Masters By Nitsana Darshan-Leitner and Samuel M. Katz / Hachette Books / November 7, 2017 / ISBN 9780316399050 / $27.00 / 304 pages With exclusive and unprecedented access, Darshan-Leitner and Katz offer a front row seat into the top secret world of espionage tradecraft and special operations carried out by Israel and the United States. In HARPOON, they unveil bombshell revelations like: ● 9/11 changed the US-Israeli relationship and the U.S. government’s attitude towards addressing global terrorism into a full-fledged alliance ● Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement, was largely financed by and operated out of the U.S. in the form of charitable foundations, until the alliance between Harpoon and the U.S. Department of Justice worked together to shut down this practice ● The Harpoon task force saw to it that hundreds of millions of dollars mysteriously disappeared from Yasir Arafat’s private accounts ● In a move that caused great uproar in the White House, Harpoon spearheaded account seizures, condemned as armed robberies, in major Arab financial institutions in the West Bank ● The behind-the-scene account of the spectacular assassination of a Hamas financier in a Dubai hotel room ● Harpoon’s prevalence on the Israeli air force to rocket Lebanese banks transferring funds to Hezbollah during the 2006 war ● The unprecedented coordination of intelligences agencies with private lawyers to wage financial Lawfare, a new battlefield in the war against terrorist and their financial facilitators, so that nations, terror gangs, and even banks, could be forced to account for their role in death and destruction around the world ● Harpoon was instrumental in identifying Hezbollah, Iran’s proxy army in the Middle East, as one of the world’s largest traffickers in drugs, fighting these narco-terrorists from Venezuela to Lebanon’s Beka’a Valley, in conjunction with America’s law enforcement and intelligence services. ● Harpoon and Israel’s intelligence services employed malware, double agents, and operatives to deplete Hezbollah and its leaders of their vast fortunes ● Israel brought an ending to the 2014 fighting in the Gaza Strip by incinerating the Hamas finance minister’s millions of dollars in cash for salaries he was delivering to suicide terrorists ● The crippling sanctions that forced Iran to negotiate on nuclear weapons were brought about because of Harpoon’s alliance with the U.S. government ● Now, as intelligence agencies grapple with a new front in the global war on terror, social media, they are using the same principles used to combat terror financing to once again take down our global enemies A true story so gripping and masterful that it reads like a thriller, HARPOON discloses a litany of new information surrounding the U.S.’s involvement with taking down today’s most horrific and powerful terrorist organizations. ABOUT THE AUTHORS: An Israeli activist and attorney, NITSANA DARSHAN-LEITNER is the president of Shurat HaDin, a Tel Aviv based law center that represents the families of hundreds of terrorist victims in lawsuits worldwide. She is regularly interviewed and provides commentary in the global media and was Harpoon: Inside the Covert War Against Terrorism’s Money Masters By Nitsana Darshan-Leitner and Samuel M. Katz / Hachette Books / November 7, 2017 / ISBN 9780316399050 / $27.00 / 304 pages recognized by Forbes Israel as one of the Fifty Most Influential Israeli Women of 2016 and by The Jerusalem Post as one of the Most Influential Jews. Follow her @AttorneyNitsana. An internationally recognized special operations and counterterrorism expert, SAMUEL M. KATZ is the author of over 20 books, and is the co-author of the New York Times bestseller Under Fire: The Untold Story of the Attack in Benghazi. He has appeared on BBC World News, Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, and al-Jazeera as an expert on security issues and terrorism. The former editor-in-chief of Special Operations Report, he has written articles for worldwide editions of GQ, Playboy, FHM, and The Daily Beast, and his work has been featured in Vanity Fair. He is based in New York. Follow him @samuel_m_katz Advance Praise: “The riveting and untold story of the intelligence task force that launched a dynamic new front in the war on terror. A thrill ride with one of the most important Israeli start-ups of them all.” — Tamir Pardo, director of the Mossad (2011–2016) “Money drives terrorism. If

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