Mossad: The Other Crisis

November 17, 2004

From AFP, via the Eurasia Security Watch, comes this:

The United States is not the only country currently weathering a massive intelligence shake-up. A similar situation is brewing in Israel, where the vaunted Mossad is undergoing an internal crisis of its own. In recent weeks, scores of Mossad employees are said to have tendered their resignations in protest over the policies of the agency's controversial chief, Meir Dagan. Dagan, who was elevated by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to the country's top intelligence post in 2002, is being blamed for overly risky foreign counterterrorism operations, and for a precipitous decline in relations with the agency's American counterpart, the CIA. In all, more than two hundred agents and departmental supervisors have reportedly quit the intelligence agency so far.

The CIA’s crisis is getting worse, as evidenced by the memo reported in the New York Times , in which Goss the Boss demands fealty to the Bush administration from CIA personnel. Expect more quittings.

The Mossad’s crisis is interesting, part of a pattern of anti-Sharon resistance from the security services and army in Israel, who don’t like Sharon’s occupation and settlement policies. Many of them, too, were not partisans in favor of the Iraq war, unlike the Sharon-allied U.S. neocons.