Long before al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden became a household name, a young Lebanese bodyguard for the PLO began a decades-long crusade of bombings, kidnappings and assassinations that would leave hundreds of people dead in dozens of attacks across the globe. Few people knew what he looked like or knew his actual name.
The man known as “the Ghost” was a founding member of Hezbollah and was responsible for the bombings of Israeli and U.S. military installations in Lebanon in the early 1980s. Imad Mughniyeh was also believed responsible for a kidnapping spree in Lebanon and the bombing of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires the following decade, among other crimes. In 2008, the CIA and Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, finally caught up to Mughniyeh in Damascus, Syria.
Mughniyeh remains a mysterious figure, but his impact on history is more clear. His rise and fall are the focus of a new Showtime dramatic series, “Ghosts of Beirut.” From the intractable Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the assassination of Lebanon’s new prime minister in 1982, from the murders of CIA station chiefs to the withdrawal of U.S. Marines, Mughniyeh either witnessed or played an important role in events that continue to shape the modern world.
In this episode of History As It Happens, the filmmaker behind “Ghosts of Beirut,” Greg Barker, discusses why he made a series about the shadowy terrorist operative and Hezbollah commander.
“It came through a trip I made to Iran in 2007 for Frontline on PBS… When I was there, my fixer was boasting to me about how he was part of this small vanguard in the early days of the [Iranian] revolution in Beirut and helped set up Hezbollah. I was fascinated because I didn’t know that aspect of the story. Fast forward a few years, I was doing a project about the hunt for bin Laden and got to know a couple of the [CIA] people who were behind that. And they were telling me that their real, long-term obsession was Hezbollah and Imad Mughniyeh,” Mr. Barker said.
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