Institute Podcast Exposes Hezbollah Terror Operations Online, in Asia, Africa, Mideast, and the Americas

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Washington, D.C. – The Washington Institute for Near East Policy has launched the second season of its compelling podcast series, Breaking Hezbollah’s Golden Rule.

Listen to Season Two of Breaking Hezbollah's Golden Rule.

In season two, podcast host Dr. Matthew Levitt, the Institute’s Fromer-Wexler Fellow, speaks with an Israeli operative who helped thwart a planned attack in Bangkok, Thailand, in 2004; digs into Hezbollah’s online recruitment and propaganda efforts; discusses sleeper cells and surveillance in the United States; reveals the use of blood diamonds, rare artwork, and other types of illicit financing in Africa; and exposes Hezbollah's dedicated assassination unit, used to eliminate rivals in Lebanon, among other topics.

“Lebanese Hezbollah goes to great lengths to conceal its covert terrorist, militant, and criminal pursuits,” explains Levitt. “One Hezbollah operative said, the Golden Rule is ‘the less you know, the better.’ In this podcast, we break this rule by shining a bright spotlight on Hezbollah’s global terrorist and criminal activities.”

The eight podcast episodes will be released every Wednesday, starting on September 27.

• RISKY BUSINESS IN SOUTH AMERICA, September 27 (S.2, Ep.1) with Aurora Ortega, U.S. government official, and Armando Cortez, director, Anti-Terrorist Unit, Attorney General’s Office, Argentina.
• TERROR IN BANGKOK, THEN AND NOW, October 4 (S.2, Ep.2) with Col. Sakdawut ”Josh” Smanbut, superintendent, Special Branch, Royal Thai Police, and Oded Ailam, former deputy head of global operations, Mossad.
• “A JUMBLE OF OVERLAPPING PLOTS” IN BAKU, October 11 (S.2, Ep.3) with Zohar Palti, former counterterrorism chief, Mossad; Mahammad Mammadov, research fellow, Topchubashov Center; Amb. Arthur Lenk, former Israeli envoy to Azerbaijan; and Joby Warrick, investigative journalist, The Washington Post.
• BLOOD DIAMONDS, PICASSOS, AND ILLICIT FINANCING IN AFRICA, October 18 (S.2, Ep.4) with Joseph Palazzo, federal prosecutor, U.S. Justice Department, and Nathan Sales, former counterterrorism coordinator, U.S. State Department.
• HEZBOLLAH'S DIGITAL FOOTPRINT, October 25 (S.2, Ep.5) with Galen Lamphere-Englund, co-founder, Extremism and Gaming Research Network; Alma Keshavarz, official, U.S. Cyber Command; and Douglas London, former official, Clandestine Service, CIA.
• SLEEPER CELLS AND SURVEILLANCE IN THE U.S., November 1 (S.2, Ep.6) with Russell “Rusty” Rosenthal, former special agent, FBI, and Seamus Hughes, senior research faculty member, National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology, and Education Center (NCITE) at the University of Nebraska.
• OPERATIONS AND ILLICIT FINANCE IN THE GULF, November 8 (S.2, Ep.7) with Nathan Sales, former counterterrorism coordinator, U.S. State Department, and Marshall Billingslea, former assistant secretary for terrorist financing, U.S. Treasury Department.
• HEZBOLLAH ASSASSINATIONS UNIT 121, November 15 (S.2, Ep.8) with Monika Borgmann, German-Lebanese journalist and documentarian;  David Schenker, former assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, U.S. State Department; and Joby Warrick, investigative journalist, The Washington Post.

Dr. Matthew Levitt is the Fromer-Wexler Fellow at The Washington Institute and director of its Jeanette and Eli Reinhard Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence. A former official in the U.S. Treasury Department and State Department, he is the author of several books on counterterrorism, including Hezbollah: The Global Footprint of Lebanon's Party of God (Georgetown University Press, 2013). He is also the creator of the Lebanese Hezbollah Interactive Map, a groundbreaking and comprehensive interactive map and timeline of Hezbollah's global terrorist activity.