Mossad history starts almost immediately after the inception of the State of Israel.
In 1949 Central Institute for Coordination was set up to improve coordination between the Shabak, AMAN and political department of the Foreign Office. It was under the control of Foreign Ministry.
In 1951, CIC was replaced by Mossad under direct supervision of the Prime Minister. In June 1951 Mossad signed a clandestine agreement with the American CIA.
The first high profile operation of Mossad came in 1960 when it managed to kidnap Adolf Eichmann, a Nazi war criminal, from Argentina. Eichmann was sentenced to death for his role in killing Jews in Europe.
During the 60s Mossad provided critical information about Egyptian air force during the 6 day war. It helped an Iraqi defector Munir Redfa and his family escape Iraq.
Mossad was responsible for assassinating members of a group, who killed Israeli athletes in 1972 during the Munich Olympics.
Mossad Logo
In 1973 it killed an innocent Moroccan waiter Ahmed Bouchiki in Norway. The agency confused him as the leader of a Palestinian group Black September, which was responsible for the Munich massacre.
This was later known as the Lillehammer affair. The incident caused a diplomatic row with the Canadian government, as the six Mossad agents involved in the murder had used Canadian passports.
In 1975, Mossad arranged a secret meeting between the Israeli and Jordanian heads of state. It also arranged a second meeting in 1977. Mossad agents were sent to Uganda, to free 100 hostages held in a plane from Tel Aviv. The agency assisted in Operation Moses in late 70s. This operation was used to immigrate Jews from Ethiopia.
In 1980 Mossad agents killed Yahya al-Mashad, an Egyptian nuclear physicist. The agency provided vital information to the government about the Iraqi nuclear assets. This information was used in the air attacks on Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981. In the same year, the agencys attempt to use British passports to infiltrate china created uproar in Britain.
The agency provided intelligence during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. Mossad organized an attack on PLO headquarters in Tunisia that killed 56 Palestinian citizens. Mordechai Vanunu was kidnapped from Rome by the agency in September 1986. He was an Israeli citizen who informed western media about Israels covert nuclear program.
The agency failed to assassinate Saddam Hussein in 1991. It suffered several failures in 1997. Most notably the assassination attempt on Hamas leader, Sheikh Khaled Mashal. Israel had to release 70 Palestinian prisoners in order to save the life of Mossad agents involved in the affair.
Mossad helped Turkish intelligence kidnap the Kurdish separatist leader Abdullah Öcalan from Kenya in 1999.
In 2001, the agency warned CIA of Al-Qaedas plans but they not taken seriously. Two Mossad agents Eli Caram and Uriel Kelman tried to obtain New Zealand passports illegally in 2004. The New Zealand authorities apprehended the men, sentenced them to six months in prison and imposed diplomatic sanctions on Israel. The Israeli foreign Minister later apologized for the incident.Clinical and quick, the killing of Hamas military commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh looked exactly like a Mossad assassination.
Hours after checking into his five-star Dubai hotel room, al-Mabhouh lay suffocated and his killers were on planes out of the country on fake British, Irish and Canadian passports.
It is a technique perfected over five decades by Israel’s secret service.
Ordinarily the murder would have only made a few lines in Middle East newspapers.
But this time the killers were sloppy. As they fled Dubai their pictures were beamed around the world and Israel stands accused of state-sponsored murder.
Yesterday the country did not deny that the assassination of one of their major opponents was the work of Mossad, and international pressure was mounting as Gordon Brown announced a full investigation into the use of fake passports.
Now the spotlight is firmly on the inner workings of one of the world’s most feared intelligence agencies. murder
Mossad is usually so ruthlessly efficient that some observers have speculated that Israeli agents cannot have been behind the murder of al-Mabhouh because they would never have been so careless and allowed themselves to be identified.
But Mossad expert Gordon Thomas is convinced that a specially trained assassination team – known as a kidon – was behind the murder.
He says: “This is most definitely the work of Mossad. This was no opportunistic attack, months of planning have gone into this hit.
“Each member of the team will know their cover story backwards. They have to know who they are, what their background is, what food they like – everything.
“This was a very well organised and planned assassination.”
Formed in 1949, Mossad is a small but notorious intelligence agency.
It developed its reputation after it discovered Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann living in Argentina in 1960 under the name of Ricardo Klement. He was captured by a team of agents and smuggled to Israel where he was tried and executed.
But as tensions increased with its Arab neighbours, Israel changed tack and created the kidon – the Hebrew word for bayonet – assassination squads.
They quickly came to the world’s attention after striking back at the terrorists who had killed 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972.
Up to 35 Black September and Palestine Liberation Organisation agents were wanted for murder after Operation Wrath of God – immortalised in the film Munich.
Botched
The kidon team operated across Europe, assassinating Palestinians using everything from guns to exploding phones.
But the operation went spectacularly wrong when the murder of the man Israel believed to be the ringleader – Ali Hassan Salameh – was badly botched.
Mossad believed they had found him in the small Norwegian town of Lillehammer in July 1973.
They shot a man returning from a movie with his pregnant wife. The victim turned out to be a Moroccan waiter not Salameh. Six Mossad agents, including two women, were captured by Norwegian authorities while the rest of the team fled.
The scandal forced Israeli leader Golda Meir to end Operation Wrath of God. Yet five years later it was revived under orders of new Prime Minister Menachem Begin.
In 1979, a kidon car bomb in Beirut finally killed the real Salameh.
Gordon Thomas spent two-and-a-half years researching his book on the kidon –called Gideon’s Spies – and says the Dubai assassination bears all the hallmarks of a kidon operation.
“There are 48 kidon,” he says. “Six are women and they are all in their 20s and early 30s.
Mr Thomas says any Mossad assassination has to be approved by the Israeli Prime Minister.
“There are very clear rules set down that have to be met for each assassination,” he says. “There is a clear process that has to be pursued.”
The kidon, he says, are spotted early when taking part in compulsory Israeli national service. They are picked out to go into military intelligence and then on for further training as Mossad agents.
Only a few are then chosen to be the executive arm of the intelligence agency.
In the heart of the Negev desert, near the country’s nuclear facility at Dimona, they are taught how to use handguns, bomb making skills, poisons, seduction techniques and how to kill without leaving a trace.
The team have available all the latest intelligence on potential targets, their movements and activities, as relayed to them by Mossad spies around the world. But they are not alone. A system of sayanim - or support agents - provide help on the ground near where the target lives.
Mr Thomas says: “The sayanim can be anywhere around the world. They can rent you a car or own a fast food stall. A sayan will rent a car or pass money to a kidon with no questions asked. Every country has a network of sayanim built from the Jewish community.”
The assassination of al-Mabhouh has thrown an unwanted spotlight on to the workings of Mossad and the kidon and with it pressure that the Israeli government may find uncomfortable.
But it knows that again, it has sent out a message to its enemies abroad.
Dave Kimche, a former deputy head of the agency, said of one assassination carried out by a bomb planted in a telephone. “”We tried not to do things just by shooting a guy in the streets, that’s easy – fairly.
“By putting a bomb in his phone, this was a message that they can be got anywhere, at any time and therefore they have to look out for themselves 24 hours a day.”
A world of lethal spies
DISI Pakistan’s notorious Inter Services Agency supports Islamic extremists in Indian Kashmir, originally backed the Taliban in Afghanistan and is known to abduct and torture enemies.
DMSS China’s Ministry of State Security targets hi-tech firms in the US often using travellers, businessmen and students as spies.
DMOIS Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security has been behind almost 500 acts of terrorism in the past 30 years and murdered a string of dissidents in the 90s.
DCGIB The mission of North Korea’s Cabinet General Intelligence Bureau is to undermine the government of South Korea and gather information on US forces stationed there.
