I Spy Hezbollah

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Jeff Stein's CQ story is packed tight with fascinating tidbits about what the West's intelligence services know about Hezbollah -- and why they're not saying more. So make sure to read the whole thing. Here's a snippet.
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Irans role as quartermaster to Hezbollah missileers in Lebanon is beyond dispute...
"Lots of photographs exist" of the Iranian supply operations, Reynolds says... "The IDF [Israeli Defense Forces] are well aware of the location of rockets..."
"The transfers are also detectable by U.N. peacekeepers," Reynolds added, who are headquartered "near the airport, and [by] foreign military attaches in Damascus. These weapons are then followed into Lebanon by human and technical means..."
"The Israelis are very hesitant to reveal photographic electro-optical evidence from Mt. Hermon," Reynolds says, "because it would reveal to the Syrians some Israeli [surveillance] capabilities and the Syrians would then use that knowledge to counter them."
Washington, Reynolds says, resists "revealing them for the same reason" so as not to disclose the quality of its technical collection capabilities, which include satellites and ground-station intercepts of Iranian and Syrian electronic communications.
But pretty good pictures of the Hezbollah positions are available to anybody with a laptop, via Google Earth.
Reynolds even e-mailed me a couple of photos of the Lebanon-Israel-Syria border region that he had downloaded from Google arth and marked up around the Hezbollah sites.

Story Continues
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