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Peter Metcalfe Hounam (born 1944) [1] is a British journalist who has worked for Sunday Times , Daily Mirror , the London Evening Standard , and BBC Television, as well as having published several books. In 1996, Hounam founded Vision Paperbacks, of which he is the chairman.
He is most famous for his role in the case of Mordechai Vanunu, Israeli nuclear technician who revealed Israel's secret nuclear bomb programme. Hounam's interview with Vanunu appeared in the Sunday Times in 1986. [2]
In April 2004, Hounam traveled to Israel for Vanunu's release from prison on 21 April 2004. Vanunu had spent 18 years in Israeli jails, following his abduction from England (via Italy) by the Mossad in 1986.
Hounam helped produce the 2002 BBC documentary Dead in the Water, which delves into the background of the 1967 Israeli attack on the USS Liberty. [3] [4] [5] The documentary suggests that the attack was a deliberately-staged false flag operation meant to catapult the United States into the ongoing Six-Day War on Israel’s side by sinking the Liberty and blaming the attack on Egypt. Interviews include former U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, former CIA Director Richard Helms, former head of the Israeli Navy Admiral Shlomo Errell, and many USS Liberty survivors, including Captain William L. McGonagle. [6] [7] [8] [9] [10]
Hounam continued to research the USS Liberty incident, which culminated in the 2003 publishing of the book Operation Cyanide: Why the Bombing of the USS Liberty Nearly Caused World War III, which expands on the false flag theory. [11] [12] [13]
Hounam also appeared in the 2020 docuseries Sacrificing Liberty, produced by TruNews , which features extensive interviews from USS Liberty survivors. [14]
| This section of a biography of a living person does not include any references or sources .(March 2022) |
At 9.30pm on 26 May 2004, while working on a BBC documentary about Vanunu, Hounam was taken from his hotel in Jerusalem by five plainclothes Shin Bet officers, reportedly for having contact with Vanunu, who is not allowed to see foreigners. Before being taken, Hounam was able to inform an Amnesty International activist of his arrest, but did not get access to a lawyer.
On 27 May 2004, the Jerusalem District Court imposed a gag order, preventing further details of the arrest from becoming known. Hounam was scheduled to make a court appearance, as the security services request permission from the courts to continue holding him.
Reportedly, on 22 May 2004, Vanunu was secretly interviewed for The Sunday Times, by Yael Lotan, an Israeli journalist. Her two-hour interview was videotaped by an Israeli television crew. Hounam apparently knew of the interview, and was planning to use portions of it in his documentary. He had been on his way to meet Lotan when he was arrested.
Hounam's wife, Hilarie, disputed the allegations that her husband violated the conditions placed upon Vanunu's release. Speaking from the family's home in the Scottish town of Aberfeldy she said: "Peter has been absolutely scrupulous in following the letter of the regulations. He hasn't talked to him [Vanunu] since the day of his release, and everything has had to be done second- or third-hand, through his brother and through lawyers." She added: "I think the secret services can pretty much do what they like in Israel, and this is of no surprise to Peter – he's known Israel well for 18 years and has been following Vanunu's case all that time."
Hounam was detained for a day, during which the case attracted intense media coverage, and after which he was released without charge. Israeli Attorney General Menachem Mazuz ordered his release, after consulting with Shin Bet officials and representatives of the Israeli Justice Ministry. [15] Hounam returned to the UK on 28 May 2004, and the BBC announced it would broadcast the Vanunu interview the following Sunday.
The Lillehammer affair was the killing by Mossad agents of Ahmed Bouchikhi, a Moroccan waiter and brother of the renowned musician Chico Bouchikhi, in Lillehammer, Norway, on 21 July 1973. The Israeli agents had mistaken their target for Ali Hassan Salameh, the chief of operations for Black September. Six of the Mossad team of fifteen were captured and convicted of complicity in the killing by the Norwegian justice system in a major blow to the intelligence agency's reputation.
James Bamford is an American author, journalist and documentary producer noted for his writing about United States intelligence agencies, especially the National Security Agency (NSA). The New York Times has called him "the nation's premier journalist on the subject of the National Security Agency" and The New Yorker named him "the NSA's chief chronicler."
Ari Ben-Menashe is an Israeli-Canadian businessman, security consultant, and author. He was previously an employee of Israel's Military Intelligence Directorate from 1977 to 1987, and an arms dealer. He lives in Montreal, Quebec, Canada and runs an international commodity exporting firm, Traeger Resources and Logistics Inc.
Mordechai Vanunu, also known as John Crossman, is an Israeli former nuclear technician and peace activist who, citing his opposition to weapons of mass destruction, revealed details of Israel's nuclear weapons program to the British press in 1986. He was subsequently lured to Italy by the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad, where he was drugged and abducted. He was secretly transported to Israel and ultimately convicted in a trial that was held behind closed doors.
Aluf Mordechai (Motti) Hod was the Commander of the Israeli Air Force during the 1967 Six-Day War.
René Zagger is an English actor, known for playing PC Nick Klein in The Bill from 1999 to 2004 and as the voice of Emet-Selch in Final Fantasy XIV from the Stormblood expansion onward. He has also made several guest appearances in Casualty, Doctors and Wycliffe.
The State of Israel is widely believed to possess nuclear weapons. Estimates of Israel's stockpile range between 80 and 400 nuclear warheads, and the country is believed to possess the ability to deliver them in several methods, including by aircraft, as submarine-launched cruise missiles, and via the Jericho series of intermediate to intercontinental range ballistic missiles. Its first deliverable nuclear weapon is thought to have been completed in late 1966 or early 1967; which would make it the sixth country in the world to have developed them.
Cheryl Ben Tov, born Cheryl Hanin in 1960, is an American real estate agent and former Israeli Mossad agent who became well known in 1986 when, under the name "Cindy", she persuaded former Israeli nuclear technician Mordechai Vanunu to go with her to Rome, in the context of an extraordinary rendition with the purpose of ultimately taking him to Israel. Vanunu faced a secret trial and was sentenced to 18 years in prison, spending nearly 12 of them in solitary confinement. Vanunu publicly released confidential information on Israel's nuclear reactor and stated that Israel had created nuclear weapons, becoming the sixth nuclear power and the first since the 1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, of which Israel was not a signatory.
Nuclear Secrets, aka Spies, Lies and the Superbomb, is a 2007 BBC Television docudrama series which looks at the race for nuclear supremacy from the Manhattan Project through to Pakistan's nuclear weapons programme.
The Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations, popularly known as Mossad, is the national intelligence agency of Israel. It is one of the main entities in the Israeli Intelligence Community, along with Aman and Shin Bet.
Wendy Robbins is a British radio and television presenter and producer. She presents The House I Grew Up In broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and reports for The One Show on BBC1.
Events in the year 1986 in Israel.
Giora Tzahor was an Israeli military and Mossad officer, known for having headed Israel's efforts to abduct Mordechai Vanunu.
Israel and the Bomb is a documentary film about nuclear weapons and Israel and policy of "nuclear ambiguity", produced and directed by Florian Hartung and Dirk Pohlmann, It was broadcast by ARTE on November 7, 2012.
Secret Weapon is a 1990 American-Australian film.
Between 2010 and 2012, four Iranian nuclear scientists were killed in foreign-linked assassinations; another, Fereydoon Abbasi, was wounded in an attempted murder. Shahriari and Ahmadi Roshan were killed by magnetic bombs attached to the side of their cars, while Ali-Mohammadi was killed by a motorcycle-attached bomb and Rezaeinejad was shot dead. According to the private American intelligence agency Stratfor, a fifth Iranian scientist, Ardeshir Hosseinpour, was poisoned by Mossad in 2007.
Yael Lotan was an Israeli writer, journalist, editor, translator, peace and human rights activist.
TruNews is an American far-right conspiracy theory and fake news website owned by Rick Wiles. The website frequently publishes racist, anti-LGBTQ+, antisemitic, and Islamophobic content. It has been designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
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