Nearly a month after an Israeli military airstrike in Syria generated political aftershocks from Washington to North Korea, the Israeli government lifted its official veil of secrecy Tuesday. It didn't provide much new information about what took place on Sept. 6, however. While its government censor cleared the way for journalists here to report that the incident had taken place, rigid rules remained in effect that ban reporting what the target was, what troops were involved or why the strike was ordered. Israel lifted its ban on reporting that the attack took place after Syrian President Bashar Assad told the British Broadcasting Corp. that Israeli jets had hit an unused military building." But Israeli officials refused to say anything about the attack, and almost no one who would be expected to know -- from government officials to former intelligence officers -- is talking. The dearth of information has allowed fertile speculation: The strike was a dry run for an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities. The target was an Iranian missile cache bound for Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon. The attack hit a fledgling Syrian-North Korean nuclear weapons program. Or it was meant to thwart efforts to provide Hezbollah with a "dirty bomb" to use against Israel. One of the latest theories is that North Korea told the United States it had sold nuclear technology to Syria, which prompted the U.S. to pass that information to Israel, leading Israel to attack the technology. The problem of separating fact from fiction is compounded by the practice on all sides of routinely leaking distorted, exaggerated or downright bogus information to conceal the truth and wage psychological warfare. "Everything reported about the raid is wrong and is part of a psychological warfare that will not fool Syria," Deputy President Farouq Shara said in Damascus.

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