Mossad
Last month, Israel's vaunted
intelligence agency, Mossad, botched an assassination attempt on a Hamas leader
in Amman, Jordan. Soon after agents had injected a poison into their target,
they were captured by Jordanian police. Jordan demanded that the agents hand
over the antidote, which they did. Bemused reporters wondered how the
legendarily effective agency had been foiled so easily. What is Mossad? Does
its track record live up to its reputation?
The
Institute for Intelligence and Special Tasks, a k a "Mossad" (Hebrew for
"institute"), is the Israeli equivalent of the CIA. It engages in foreign
espionage and covert action . (Another agency, Shin Bet, is in charge
of domestic intelligence-gathering and security.) Only rarely does the Israeli
government publicly acknowledge Mossad. The agency is accountable only to the
prime minister and has little civilian oversight; even the size of its budget
remains a secret.
Mossad was founded in 1951 when newly independent
Israel reorganized its national defense. It assumed control over the network of
agents in Europe and the Middle East that had organized illegal Jewish
immigration to Palestine. Mossad stationed its agents in Israel's European
embassies, where they cultivated "volunteers"--Jews working in foreign
governments who fed them information. Other newly recruited agents were
assigned to infiltrate Arab governments. The most famous example: In the '60s,
Mossad agent Eli Cohen befriended Syrian President Amin al-Hafez and was nearly
named Syria's defense minister.
Mossad
established its international credibility with two important finds . It
obtained a copy of Khruschev's 1956 Party Congress speech about Stalinist
atrocities, much sought after by American and British spies. And Mossad
uncovered a 1961 plot by right-wing French army officers to assassinate
President Charles de Gaulle. The agency traded information about the plot with
France for nuclear-weapons technology.
Mossad's covert missions have been more
successful than its intelligence gathering. In 1960 agents kidnapped Nazi war
criminal Adolf Eichmann from Buenos Aires, Argentina, spiriting him away
to Israel. And in 1976 Mossad planned the famous raid on Entebbe, Uganda,
rescuing passengers on an Air France jet hijacked by Palestinian terrorists.
Only one passenger and one Israeli commando--Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu's brother Yonathan--died during the raid.
Mossad has been largely
unable to procure intelligence that would prevent Arab terrorist attacks such
as the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre by the Palestinian group Black September.
Instead, Mossad has attempted to deter terrorism by assassinating terrorists.
Unlike the CIA, which tries to keep its covert actions secret, Israel has meant
for its assassinations to be highly visible . After Munich, for example,
it killed Black September's most important operatives, forcing the group out of
operation by the end of the '70s. In 1996, Mossad assassinated the "Engineer,"
a notorious Hamas bomb designer, by wiring his cell phone with explosives.
Mossad
has tried to incite conflict within Arab countries to mixed effect.
Egypt foiled a 1954 plot to discredit Egyptian ultranationalists by
planting bombs in Cairo buildings. Egyptians hanged the two Mossad agents
behind the campaign. More successful was Mossad's arming and training of
Kurdish rebels in Iraq. Between 1963 and 1975, Israeli-affiliated units killed
more than 10,000 Iraqi soldiers.
The failed Egypt plot and the bungled Amman mission are not
Mossad's only embarrassments . In 1973, the agency was widely chided for
assassinating an innocent man they mistakenly believed to be a Black September
operative. (It did kill its man--six years later.) Also in 1973, Mossad was
criticized for failing to predict the surprise Arab attack that began the Yom
Kippur War. It was similarly criticized for not foreseeing the intifada, the
Palestinian uprising that began in 1987. These breakdowns are attributed to
Mossad's failure to penetrate Arab governments. Israel has no diplomatic
relations with most Arab nations, making it difficult for its agents to gather
foreign intelligence.
Mossad has
weakened significantly in recent years. After Yasser Arafat's return
from exile in 1994, it has spent more resources tracking potential terrorists
within the West Bank and Gaza, a responsibility of Shin Bet rather than Mossad.
Interagency competition has eroded Mossad's morale.
Mossad has also been handicapped by U.S.
mistrust . In 1986, the FBI caught Jonathan Pollard, a Jewish-American
naval-intelligence officer, shipping sensitive satellite photos to Lakam--a
now-defunct arm of Israeli intelligence largely devoted to stealing nuclear
secrets. Following the Pollard affair, rumors circulated that Israel had
penetrated other agencies. The flow of information between the CIA and Mossad
is said to have slowed since.
And
revelations about the agency's Cold War malfeasance have damaged its prestige.
Recent best-selling memoirs by former agents tell of colleagues who ran
drugs and free-lanced as mercenaries . Mossad also brokered secret,
dubiously legal, private arms sales to Central American regimes and South
Africa's white government. The Israeli press, which historically has respected
the agency's request not to probe its workings, splashed these stories across
the front pages. Perhaps even more demoralizing has been a controversial TV
melodrama called Mossad , which, according to the agency, depicts agents
as buffoonish playboys.
Mossad, which employs about 1,200 people, now has
difficulty competing with private-sector recruiters . Its early agents
were well-educated, European-born cosmopolitans who ran the agency like an
exclusive club. But most current agents are career military men, and the
conventional wisdom is that they're less intelligent and creative than their
predecessors.
The Amman fiasco could cost
both Israel and Mossad. In exchange for Jordan's return of the captured Mossad
assassins, Israel released Hamas' spiritual leader, Sheik Ahmed Yessin ,
who had been imprisoned in Israel since 1989. Some worry he will become a major
political force in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, endangering peace
negotiations. Others worry that Mossad's botched mission will occasion a new,
high-profile panel that will dig up more dirt about the agency.
