Foriegn Intelligence Services - Essay Example

Israel’s version of the CIA is the Institute for Intelligence and Operations, or as it is more commonly known the Mossad. The Mossad is active worldwide. This agency spies on enemy and friendly countries in order to access threats to Israel. In order to protect Israel from perceived threats the Mossad has carried out rescue operations of Jews in different countries, abducted targets who were perceived to be threats to Israel, and assassinated men and women classified as terrorist worldwide.

Most of the time the Mossad’s interests are allied with the U.S. However, a few occasions of the Mossad spying on the U.S. (Jonathan Pollard and Ben-Ami Kadish) and the Mossad’s policy on abductions and assassinations have threatened the U.S. The Mossad’s threat to the U.S. is overall miniscule, yet when a threatening incident occurs the threat level is high. The Mossad’s mission is to protect Israel and Israeli citizens from any threat worldwide. The uniqueness about the Mossad is their mission also includes all Jews, Israeli or not.

In order to accomplish this mission, the Mossad has agents or spies worldwide from Tel Aviv to the U.S. The Mossad’s mission to save Jews in Africa has resulted in several operations. The most famous is Operation Moses. When masses were starving in the Sudan during 1984, the Mossad evacuated six thousand Ethiopian Jews during Operation Moses (Shimron, 204). Not only did the Mossad evacuate these refugees, they paid corrupt Sudan officials millions of dollars, plus picked up the tab of the evacuation (Shimron 203).

The goal was to save Jewish lives. Another famous Mossad mission was the capture of the former Nazi Adolf Eichmann in Argentina. In 1957, the Mossad received word that Eichmann, an infamous Nazi, was spotted in Argentina (Thomas, 75). Many Nazis had immigrated to Argentina, because Argentina would not extradite Nazis back to Germany, Israel, or any other European country. The Mossad decided to abduct Eichmann and bring him to Israel for justice. The operation ended in Eichmann being brought to trial in Israel.

He received the death penalty; the only death penalty handed down by an Israeli court and carried out in Israeli history. Assassinations are routinely carried out not only by the Mossad, but by the Israeli military. The Israeli military carries out assassinations inside of Israel, Gaza, and the other Occupied Territories. The Mossad carries out assassinations outside of Israel. The most notable was the assassination of terrorists responsible for killing the Israeli Olympic wrestling team members in Munich, 1972.

Not only did the Mossad assassinate all of the actual participants, but leaders in the groups as well (Thomas, 80). The attitude has been and maintains to be anyone with Jewish blood on their hands will pay, even if it means assassinations on foreign soil. Mossad agents also carry out spy missions, like with the case of Jonathan Pollard. The Mossad cultivated Pollard, a U.S. Naval Intelligence Officer. Pollard copied and passed “over one thousand highly classified documents” to Mossad agents (Thomas, 86).

This allowed the Mossad to interfere with CIA agents in the Middle East and for the Israeli government to handle the U.S. government more efficiently due to prior knowledge of American Middle Eastern policy. All of the instances cited above caused the U.S. diplomatic problems with their ally, Israel. However, Israel is an ally of the U.S. When Pan Am Flight 103 was bombed over Lockerbie, Scotland on December 21, 1988, the CIA had prior knowledge given in a memo from the Mossad (Posner, 24).

The Mossad’s memo on December 5, 1988 informed the CIA that a plane leaving from Frankfurt would be bombed; the Pan Am Flight was a Frankfurt-US bound plane (Posner, 24). Intelligence over a possible terrorist attack on U.S. soil before 9/11 was given to the CIA by the Mossad. The Mossad is only a threat to America when a conflict exists between Jewish lives and American policy. The Mossad will protect Jewish lives first and foremost, and then consider loyalty to the U.S. .Works CitedPosner, Gerald L.

While America Slept: The Failure to Prevent 9/11. New York: Ballantine, 2004.Shimron, Gad. Mossad Exodus; The Daring Undercover Rescue of the Lost Jewish Tribe. U.S.: Gefen Publishing House, 2007. Thomas, Gordon. Gideon’s Spies: The Secret History of the Mossad. New York: St. Martins, 2007.