The Mossad (“Institute” in Hebrew) is the government intelligence agency tasked with collecting information, analyzing intelligence, and performing special covert operations beyond Israel’s borders. Its full name is Institute for Intelligence and Special Tasks.
The Mossad is based in Tel Aviv and was formed in 1951 by then Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion.
The identity of the Mossad director was kept secret until 1996, when the government announced the appointment of Major General Danny Yatom to replace Shabtai Shavit. Current director Meir Dagan was appointed in September 2002.
Israel's most celebrated spy, Eli Cohen, was recruited by the Mossad during the 1960s to infiltrate the top echelons of the Syrian government. Other successes attributed to the Mossad include the 1960 capture of Nazi war criminal Adolph Eichmann in Argentina, the 1986 abduction in Rome of Israeli nuclear technician Mordechai Vanunu, who revealed state secrets to a London newspaper, as well as a series of assassinations in the 1970s of Arabs connected to the Black September terrorist group behind the 1972 attack on the Israeli Olympic team in Munich.
Mossad agents are also said to have played a pivotal role in the 1988 assassination in Tunis of top Palestine Liberation Organization figure Abu Jihad.
The Mossad has also experienced setbacks. In 1974, agents killed an Algerian waiter they mistook for a terrorist believed to have masterminded the 1972 Munich attack. In 1997, Mossad operatives in Jordan were captured after attempting to assassinate top Hamas figure Khaled Mashal by injecting him with poison. In a bid to save relations with Jordan and free the Mossad men, Israel provided the antidote and released several Palestinian prisoners, including former Hamas spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.
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