Here's a 2006 story from The Guardian that didn't get much play in the American media:
Menachem Begin 'plotted to kill German chancellor'
· Bomb aimed at Adenauer killed disposal expert
· Clash over reparations for Holocaust behind attack
Luke Harding in Berlin, Thursday June 15, 2006, The Guardian
Israel's former prime minister Menachem Begin was involved in a plot to blow up West Germany's first post-war chancellor, Konrad Adenauer, Germany's leading newspaper claimed yesterday.
The respected Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung claimed that the Zionist leader approved and helped organise the assassination attempt using a bomb hidden in an encyclopaedia, even offering to sell his gold watch as the conspirators ran out of money.
The bomb, arranged in March 1952, was detected before it reached Adenauer, but exploded killing a disposal expert and injuring two of his colleagues. French detectives arrested five Israeli people in
One of the alleged conspirators, Elieser Sudit, now 82, implicated Begin in a memoir written 40 years after the bomb went off. Begin, who was to become
But Mr Sudit told Haaretz this week: "The intent was not to hit Adenauer but to rouse the international media. It was clear to all of us there was no chance the package would reach Adenauer." [More]
Well, I certainly don't know the full story of Menachem Begin and Konrad Adenauer, but this does remind me of the time the police suspected me of intending to blow up Margaret Thatcher with a letter bomb.
In 1999, I was invited to speak at a small conference in
The day before I left, I got a phone call from the chief of police in the Maryland town, who told me that a small but suspiciously dense package addressed to me had been delivered to the hotel where Mrs. Thatcher was to arrive the next day. "Before we have the bomb disposal robot throw it in Chesapeake Bay, I figured I'd give you a call and see what you have to say for yourself," he said.
I finally figured out what the chief was talking about, and fulsomely reassured him that I wasn't an IRA terrorist. Eventually, some brave soul opened my package and confirmed that it was indeed full of business cards, so it wasn't dunked in the Bay.
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer