Wadie Haddad

To secure the operative's release, Israel had to provide an antidote.

Then there's the case of Wadi Haddad, the Palestinian militant that mysteriously died in East Germany at the age of 50.

Doctors in Iraq suspected that he had been poisoned, but they couldn't prove it.

Officially, he's classified as a leukemia death.

Haddad becomes a major character in the story.

He becomes... and ultimately Carlos's mentor and boss.

And he's quite a striking figure.

He's not very prominent in the sense he doesn't want to put his name out there as being in the leadership, but he was one of the founders of the movement along with a guy named George Habash.

So he becomes a personal supporter of Wadi Haddad and his hijackers and his greater movement.

And later on, as you see in the story, he becomes a supporter of Carlos as well.

Yeah, so it's striking that Carlos's mentor is almost dependent on two ideological worlds, which were supposed to be bitter enemies.

Yeah, yeah,

He's really not the leader of this group, actually.

He's under the tutelage and control of a man named Wadi Haddad.

And Haddad is a really interesting guy.

He is funded directly by the KGB.

Right.

But he passed his first test as far as, as the Palestinian leaders thought.

Yeah.

The tough part was, was to actually do the shooting.

Carlos made it all about him.

He had to announce to everyone that he was the famous Carlos.

"I'm the, I'm the guy in charge here." And, and, you know, his leaders, his bosses just didn't take well to that.

"This is, this is not about you.