Israeli drones secretly surveilled and humiliated a US Marine general in 1983

Evidence

Two days after a terrorist bomb destroyed the [U.S.] Marine Barracks in Beirut in October 1983, Marine Commandant Gen. P.X. Kelley secretly flew to the scene. No word of his arrival was leaked. Yet, across the border, Israeli intelligence officers watched live television images of Kelley arriving and inspecting the barracks. They even zoomed the picture in tight, placing cross hairs directly on his head. Hours later, in Tel Aviv, the Israelis played back the tape for the shocked Marine general. The scene, they explained, was transmitted by a Mastiff RPV circling out of sight above the barracks. — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 152

Categorization

• XREF: Concrete early case of drones-as-ubiquitous-invisible-eyes, foreshadowing the surveillance omnipresence theme.