The Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations, popularly known as Mossad, is the national intelligence agency of the State of Israel. It is one of the main organizations in the Israeli intelligence community, along with Aman (military intelligence) and Shin Bet (internal security).
Mossad is responsible for intelligence collection, covert operations, extrajudicial killings and counterterrorism. Its director answers directly and only to the prime minister. Its annual budget is around (billion), and it employs around 7,000people, making it one of the world's largest espionage agencies. The organization has orchestrated many assassination plots across a variety of locations.
History Mossad was formed on December 13, 1949, as the Central Institute for Coordination at the recommendation of Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion to Reuven Shiloah. Ben Gurion wanted a central body to coordinate and improve cooperation between the existing security services—the army's intelligence department (Aman), the Internal Security Service (Shin Bet), and the Political Intelligence Service (Mossad). The central body governing the three security services was Va'adat; today it is the Ministry of Intelligence.
In March 1951, it was reorganized and incorporated into the prime minister's office, reporting directly to the prime minister of Israel. Due to Mossad's accountability directly to the prime minister and not to the Knesset, journalist Ronen Bergman has described Mossad as a "deep state".
In the 1990s, Aliza Magen-Halevi became the highest-ranking woman in Mossad's history when she served as the agency's deputy director under Shabtai Shavit and Danny Yatom.
Mossad made an unusual move on Israel's 68th Independence Day by releasing a secret recruitment ad for its Cyber Division. The ad featured seemingly random letters and numbers, which turned out to be a hidden puzzle. Over 25,000 people attempted to solve it, and while most failed, dozens succeeded and were recruited. In a rare 2012 interview with "Lady Globes", Mossad fighters talked about the recruitment of men and women to the Mossad, the screening tests, their work in the Mossad alongside starting a family, the relationship between the time to prepare for the actions and the actions themselves, working in teams, the emotional intelligence required of them, the nature of the activity, avoiding fame and omnipotence, and conversations with enemies.
Organization Divisions The organizational structure of the Mossad is officially classified. Mossad is organized into divisions, each led by a director who is equivalent to a major general in the Israel Defense Forces.
Tzomet: Mossad's largest division, staffed with case officers called katsas tasked with conducting espionage overseas and running agents. Employees in Tzomet operate under a variety of covers, including diplomatic and unofficial. The division was led from 2006 to 2011 by Yossi Cohen and from 2013 to 2019 by David Barnea, both of whom later served as Mossad directors. Caesarea: conducts special operations and houses the Kidon (Hebrew: כידון, "bayonet", "javelin" or a "spear") unit, an elite group of assassins.Israel Vs. Iran: The Shadow War, Potomac Books, Inc, 2012, page 91, By Yaakov Katz, Yoaz Hendel Keshet ("Rainbow"): electronic surveillance, break-ins, and wiretapping Human Resources A special unit called Metsada allegedly runs "small units of combatants" whose missions include "assassinations and sabotage".Workings of Israel's secret service exposed, London Times, 2 August 1996
Venture capital Mossad opened a venture capital fund in June 2017, to invest in high-tech startups to develop new cyber technologies. The names of technology startups funded by Mossad are not published.
Personnel Katsa A katsa is a field intelligence officer of the Mossad. The word katsa is a Hebrew acronym for , "intelligence officer", literally "gathering officer". A katsa is a case officer who runs agents to clandestinely collect intelligence.
Kidon The kidon are Mossad's elite assassins. Recruits receive two years of training at Mossad's training facility near Herzliya.
Sayanim Sayanim (, lit. helpers, assistants) are unpaid Jewish civilians who help Mossad out of a sense of devotion to Israel. They are recruited by Mossad's field agents, katsas, to provide logistical support for Mossad operations. A sayan running a rental agency, for instance, could help Mossad agents rent a car without the usual documentation. The usage of sayanim allows the Mossad to operate with a slim budget yet conduct vast operations worldwide. Sayanim can have dual citizenships but are often not Israeli citizens. According to Gordon Thomas, there were 4,000 sayanim in Britain and some 16,000 in the United States in 1998. Israeli students called bodlim are often used as gofers for Mossad.
Motto Mossad's former motto, be-tachbūlōt ta`aseh lekhā milchāmāh () is a quote from the Bible (Proverbs 24:6): "For by stratagems you wage war" (NJPS).
The motto was later changed to another Proverbs passage: be-'éyn tachbūlōt yippol `ām; ū-teshū`āh be-rov yō'éts (, Proverbs 11:14), translated as "Where there is no guidance a people falls, but in a multitude of counselors there is salvation."
Directors
About half of the Mossad's leaders rose through its ranks, while the rest are retired IDF soldiers appointed to head the agency. The Prime Minister personally appoints the head of the Mossad for Intelligence and Special Duties without needing government or other supervisory body approval (unlike the Chief of Staff or the Shin Bet's head). The appointment undergoes review by the advisory committee for appointing senior civil service officials. The term is five years, extendable by the Prime Minister for another year without conditions.
Until 1996, the head of Mossad's name was kept confidential. Mossad argued that secrecy allowed the head to move freely worldwide. In response to public criticism, the government began revealing the head's name when Danny Yatom assumed office. #ImageDirectorTerm1Reuven Shiloah1949–19532Isser Harel1953–19633Meir Amit1963–19684Zvi Zamir1968–19735Yitzhak Hofi1973–19826Nahum Admoni1982–19897Shabtai Shavit1989–19968Danny Yatom1996–19989Efraim Halevy1998–200210Meir Dagan2002–201111Tamir Pardo2011–201612Yossi Cohen2016–202113David Barnea2021–202614Roman Gofman2026–
Major operations
Mossad has been linked to a large number of covert operations since the 1950s, including espionage, sabotage, targeted killings, cyber warfare and the covert emigration of Jewish communities. The agency rarely confirm or deny its activities, and most operations attributed to it are known only through leaks, foreign intelligence assessments, memoirs of former officers, journalism and, rarely, through subsequent official acknowledgement. Many attributions remain unproven.
A number of operations have attracted international attention, either because they were officially acknowledged, because they produced a diplomatic or legal crisis, or because they are widely held to have altered the course of a war or a weapons programme. These include the 1960 capture of the Nazi fugitive Adolf Eichmann in Argentina; the penetration of the Syrian leadership by Eli Cohen; the campaign of killings that followed the 1972 Munich massacre; operations against the nuclear programmes of Iraq, Syria and Iran; the Stuxnet computer worm; the 2018 removal of Iran's secret nuclear archive; the 2024 Lebanon electronic device attacks; and a reported effort to install former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at the head of a post-revolutionary Iranian government.
Several of the best-known operations are failures. The Lillehammer affair of 1973, in which a Moroccan waiter was killed in mistake for a Black September commander, and the 1997 attempt of assassination of the Hamas official Khaled Mashal in Amman, Jordan both caused serious damage to Israel's foreign relations. Various activities by Mossad have been described as acts of state-sponsored terrorism.
Pursuit of Nazi fugitives
Capture of Adolf Eichmann
In 1960, Mossad discovered that Adolf Eichmann, a Nazi war criminal, was living in Argentina. A group of Mossad agents flew to the country and confirmed that he was living under the name Ricardo Klement. He was captured on 11 May 1960, held in a hideout, and smuggled to Israel, where he was tried and executed.
Argentina protested that its sovereignty had been violated, and the United Nations Security Council noted that "repetition of acts such as [this] would involve a breach of the principles upon which international order is founded", while also acknowledging that "Eichmann should be brought to appropriate justice for the crimes of which he is accused".
Other operations against war criminals An operation intended to capture Josef Mengele, was abandoned.Posner, Gerald L.; John Ware. "How Nazi war criminal Josef Mengele cheated justice for 34 years". Chicago Tribune Magazine. May 18, 1986.
In 1965, Mossad assassinated the Latvian Nazi collaborator Herberts Cukurs in Uruguay. Letter bombs were also used: an attempt on 25 September 1963 to kill the SS-Hauptsturmführer and concentration camp doctor Hans Eisele failed when the device detonated early, killing a postal worker instead, and a 1980 letter bomb sent to Alois Brunner exploded early and he lost only four fingers of his right hand.
Human intelligence
Eli Cohen in Syria
Eli Cohen infiltrated the highest echelons of the Syrian government, became a close friend of the Syrian president and was considered for the post of Minister of Defense. He supplied his handlers with a complete plan of the Syrian defences on the Golan Heights, the Syrian Armed Forces order of battle and a full list of the Syrian military's weapons inventory. He also arranged for trees to be planted beside every Syrian fortified position, ostensibly to shade the soldiers; the trees in fact served as targeting markers for the Israel Defense Forces. He was discovered by Syrian and Soviet intelligence, tried in secret and publicly executed in 1965. His intelligence was central to planning of the Six-Day War.Our Man in Damascus, 1969.
Wolfgang Lotz in Egypt Wolfgang Lotz, who held West German citizenship, infiltrated Egypt in 1957 and gathered intelligence on Egyptian missile sites, military installations and industries. He compiled a list of German rocket scientists working for the Egyptian government and sent some of them letter bombs. After the East German head of state made a state visit to Egypt, the Egyptian government detained thirty West German citizens as a goodwill gesture; Lotz, assuming he had been discovered, confessed to his Cold War espionage activities.
Operation Diamond
In 1966, Mossad assisted the defection of Munir Redfa, an Iraqi pilot who flew his MiG-21 to Israel, and smuggled his entire family out of Iraq. Previously unknown information about the MiG-21 was subsequently shared with the United States.
Rescue and emigration operations In September 1956, Mossad established a clandestine network in Morocco to smuggle Moroccan Jews to Israel after a ban on emigration to Israel was imposed (Operation Yachin). Mossad also assisted Operation Moses, the 1984 evacuation of Ethiopian Jews to Israel from a famine-stricken region of Sudan, and helped evacuate Bosnian Jews from war-torn Sarajevo in 1992 and 1993.Traynor, Ian. Cover story: Those who are called, The Guardian 10 December 1994 Between the 1950s and the 1980s the agency maintained contact with refuseniks in the Soviet Union, helping them obtain Jewish religious items banned by the Soviet government and passing communications into and out of the country.
Counter-terrorism and targeted killings
Response to the Munich massacre