Hunting for the Mastermind Behind the 1983 US Embassy Bombing with 'Ghosts of Beirut'

On April 18, 1983, a van drove onto the U.S. embassy compound in Beirut and parked under the portico at the front of the building. At 1 p.m. local time, the van blew up, killing 63 people and the driver, and crumpling the front of the building. It had been packed with an estimated 2,000 pounds of explosive material.

Along with tourists and passersby, the blast killed four U.S. troops and eight operatives for the Central Intelligence Agency, including CIA Station Chief Kenneth Haas and the agency's top analyst in the region, Robert Ames. The terrorist organization Islamic Jihad, precursor to Hezbollah, claimed responsibility.

A new four-episode limited series from Showtime, "Ghosts of Beirut," dramatizes the manhunt for Lebanese terrorist Imad Mughniyeh, the founding member of Islamic Jihad and a high-ranking Hezbollah planner and leader.

Mughniyeh is also believed to have played a role in the October 1983 bombing of U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, which killed 241 U.S. military members. A second bomb on the compound that day also killed 58 French paratroopers.

Throughout the 1980s, Mughniyeh and his organizations kidnapped Americans in Lebanon, including journalist Terry Anderson, who was held for six years, and the next CIA station chief, William Francis Buckley, who was executed. Hezbollah also orchestrated the hijacking of TWA Flight 847 in 1985, which saw the torture and murder of U.S. Navy Seabee Robert Stethem on the tarmac of Beirut's airport.

The list of Mughniyeh's crimes against American and Israeli targets goes on and on. The CIA believed he was responsible for more American deaths than any other terrorist until the Sept. 11 attacks.

Mughniyeh was just 21 years old when he began his career of terror in 1983, and he was active until his death at the hands of a joint CIA and Israeli Mossad operation in 2008. "Ghosts of Beirut" comes from extensive research of classified events, following the rise of the young terrorist as he originates the tactic of suicide bombing in Lebanon and weaves in the clandestine manhunt to capture or kill him.

It also includes firsthand, real-life interviews with officials from the CIA and Mossad, who provide insight into the decade-long civil war in Lebanon, the violence that engulfed Beirut in the 1980s and links it all to spy operations of the modern Middle East.

The series comes from Avi Issacharoff and Lior Raz, creators of the hit Israeli show "Fauda." It stars Dina Shihabi ("Jack Ryan"), Dermot Mulroney ("Scream VI"), Garret Dillahunt ("12 Years a Slave"), Iddo Goldberg ("Snowpiercer"), Hisham Suliman ("Munich," "Fauda"), Amir Khoury ("Fauda," "7 Days In Entebbe") and Rafi Gavron ("A Star is Born").

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