Mossad: Expectation of Cohen’s exit rises
Many of the Mossad’s 7,000 employees – certainly the senior ones at the highest level – are eagerly awaiting the retirement of their commander and chief, Yossi Cohen, in a month’s time.
Cohen, who met with U.S. President Joe Biden and also CIA
Director William Burns in Washington last week, is expected to continue with
his farewell events over the next month. The highlight will be a party
scheduled for the final week of May, apparently in the spacious hall of a new
building at Mossad headquarters in Glilot, just north of Tel Aviv. Invitations
(without an exact location) have already been sent out by email.
The sense of eagerness about Cohen’s departure does not stem
from operational or intelligence failures. In fact, the opposite is true:
During Cohen’s tenure – which was extended to five-and-a-half years – the
Mossad had a number of impressive achievements, not only in the fight to delay
and disrupt the Iranian nuclear program, but in gathering intelligence on
Hezbollah, Syria and ISIS’ activities all over the world.
The reason for the high expectations is that in Israel’s spy
organization, people are sick and tired of Cohen’s behavior, his cult of
personality; his close ties to the media and wealthy Israeli and foreign
businesspeople; the loyal service he provides to Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu; and the suspicion that has arisen more than once that his
considerations are political.
Cohen will turn 60 in September. He was born in Jerusalem to
a religious Zionist family, was a member of the Bnei Akiva National Religious
Party youth movement and served in the army’s Nahal infantry brigade.
At 24, without an impressive military or security record, he
joined the Mossad in 1984 and completed its cadets’ course. Upon graduation, he
was sent to serve as a case officer in Tzomet – the division responsible for
identifying, recruiting and operating agents. One of the cadets with him was
the renegade Victor Ostrovsky, who was kicked out and in revenge wrote a book
smearing the Mossad and his fellow cadets, including Cohen.
Ilan Mizrahi, one of Cohen’s bosses and later the agency’s
deputy director, spoke about him recently on Channel 13 News. He was full of
superlatives and said that back in the early stages, the Mossad realized that
Cohen was “destined for greatness.”
Cohen himself did not hide his aspirations. A former senior
Mossad official mentioned recently how he heard from him, even when he was
filling junior positions, that he believed that one day he would be the agency
chief. He spent most of his career in Tzomet. He stood out for his elegant
clothes. His colleagues used to mock his affectations and used them to play
tricks on him, even during operations.
He served in the Mossad station in Western Europe, and after
that was promoted and became the head of two other branches overseas.
In the 1990s, he took a break to go into business. He joined
up with a young man who had left the Mossad and was considered to be a
wunderkind, to found a digital ad firm called Image ID. Cohen was the marketing
manager.
Even back then he had a talent for public relations. In that
respect, he recalls to a great extent Netanyahu, who, after finishing his
degree at MIT, worked as a sales agent for the Israeli Rim furniture company.
When Cohen realized that Image ID was not going anywhere, he
returned to the Mossad, where he stood out once again. His creativity and
cunning, as in the organization’s motto, enabled him to rise to be selected as
the head of Tzomet.
Then-Mossad chief Meir Dagan was hugely impressed by Cohen
and, in 2005, appointed him head of a special project for recruiting agents and
running them in operations to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapons
program. Later, Cohen was named deputy director of the agency under Tamir
Pardo. He came to the attention of Netanyahu and his wife Sara after he
participated in a number of meetings on the Iranian issue in the Prime
Minister’s Office.
Netanyahu was not disappointed by Cohen after he named him
head of the National Security Council in 2013. Cohen wrote two controversial
opinions in support of Netanyahu’s stances: one justified the natural gas agreement
that enabled the company owners to sell it for inflated prizes, allegedly
because of its beneficial effect on Israel’s relations with Egypt and Jordan;
the other concerned the need for Israel to purchase more submarines and missile
ships.
In spite of his closeness to Netanyahu, Cohen spent a number
of nerve-racking months before he was appointed Mossad director in 2015. He
thought the job was his, but Netanyahu hesitated.
While he was waiting, Cohen began looking for career
alternatives, talking with the billionaire businessman Arnon Milchan and his
Australian partner James Packer about forming a cybersecurity company. Packer,
as Haaretz’s Gidi Weitz reported in a riveting investigation last week, offered
to compensate Cohen to the tune of $10 million.
Pardo thought Cohen was not a suitable fit to lead the
Mossad, but included his name among the three candidates he presented to
Netanyahu. The other two, who also served as deputy directors of the agency,
were Ram Ben Barak (now a lawmaker) and N. The latter was Pardo’s preferred
candidate, but Netanyahu did not ask Pardo’s opinion. Dagan, who was no longer
serving in any official position, recommended Cohen.
When Netanyahu interviewed the candidates, he asked if they
would be loyal to him personally. N. and Ben Barak were shocked, and replied
that they were loyal to the country. Netanyahu announced the news of Cohen’s
selection in a live broadcast.
Tehran in his sights
As Mossad chief since 2016, Cohen made a number of
organizational changes – including establishing a strategic-diplomatic
directorate, which handles Israel’s growing ties with Arab countries such as
Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco. These are
relations that Cohen’s predecessors had also nurtured and pushed.
From the very beginning, Cohen spoke about the need for the
Mossad to be a more “operational” organization, even though it was already that
during the days of Dagan and Pardo.
Among the operations attributed to the agency under Cohen’s
leadership are the killings of Hamas engineers in Malaysia and Tunisia, and
obtaining information on jihadists’ plans to attack Israeli and Jewish targets
outside of Israel and passing it on to respective foreign security services.
But Cohen sees his crowning achievement as the Mossad’s
daring operations against Iran – first and foremost the theft of Iran’s nuclear
archive in January 2018. The operation, urged on by Netanyahu and Cohen, put
the wind in the sails for then-President Donald Trump to withdraw from the
nuclear agreement with Iran that May and then impose harsh sanctions.
Like Netanyahu, Cohen thought all along that the nuclear
agreement was bad and looked for ways to thwart it. In July 2020, an explosion
took place in an aboveground facility for uranium enrichment in Natanz. Four
months later came the killing of Dr. Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who for two decades
was in charge of Iran’s “weaponization” – the most important stage in the process
of assembling a nuclear bomb.
Last month, Natanz’s electric system caused serious damage
to the underground chamber where the facility’s centrifuges are located. The
operation occurred under Cohen’s watch and should be credited to him.
Operations like these are the work of teams involving
hundreds of desk officers, intelligence analysts and researchers, cybersecurity
experts and agents in the field who risk their lives and remain anonymous. Many
of them are proud of their achievements but unhappy that their charismatic
commander leaves the impression that it was all done single-handedly.
The Mossad is an organization that operates on the principle
of continuity: Each chief harvests the fruits his predecessor grew and invests
in making sure his successor enjoys the same inheritance.
More than that, the operations described above, and many
more, are the result of long-term planning, information-gathering and
penetration. The final stage is only the tip of the iceberg. The decision about
if and when “to give the orders” is an operational-intelligence decision, but
it can unfortunately often be political.
That’s exactly where the claims of Netanyahu-Cohen critics
come in: They suspect that the timing of recent sabotage operations against
Iran attributed to the Mossad or the Israel Defence Forces isn’t accidental,
and that they were designed to undermine the United States’ intentions to
return to the Iran nuclear deal.
Problematic behavior
Alongside the many successful operations of the past
five-and-a-half years, it’s important to remember that Cohen’s tenure was also
filled with personal problematic behavior.
His close ties with businesspeople continued while he headed
the Mossad, based on the principle of “cast thy bread upon the waters.” Among
other things, real estate magnate Alfred Akirov and diamond dealer Beny
Steinmetz were invited to give lectures at Mossad headquarters. Cohen
befriended Milchan and Packer, who recently admitted that he is bipolar.
Just like the prime minister’s reckless son Yair Netanyahu,
the Mossad chief allowed himself to be hosted in Packer’s posh suite at Tel
Aviv’s Royal Beach Hotel and with his help (and that of Milchan), established a
connection with the Indian tycoon Ratan Tata. The Packer connection resulted in
Cohen getting several free tickets to a performance by Mariah Carey (Packer’s
girlfriend at the time).
The Civil Service Commission looked into the matter, but
decided to close the case. However, the latest revelation by Weitz, concerning
a $20,000 cash gift Cohen allegedly received from Packer for his daughter’s
wedding, is in a different league.
Cohen also tried to mediate a business dispute between the
car importers Rami Ungar and Michael Levi, an affair that also involved the
private detective and ex-Mossad operative Aviram Halevi.
But perhaps the culmination of Cohen’s problematic and
baffling behavior took place when he reportedly flew in a private plane to the
Democratic Republic of the Congo to meet with former President Joseph Kabila
and the diamond magnate Dan Gertler. Gertler is under U.S. sanctions in
connection with allegations of bribery involving Kabila. U.S. President Trump
lifted the sanctions on Gertler just before leaving the White House; Biden
reimposed them in March. It is unprecedented for a Mossad chief to travel to a
foreign country and meet with a former leader of that country without informing
the serving head of state first.
Cohen’s efforts to organize meetings between Netanyahu and
Arab leaders before the last election had the whiff of politics to them. Nor
did Cohen hide his aspirations to one day be the prime minister of Israel.
For better or worse, the Cohen era has shown that Israel can
no longer rely on a relationship solely of trust between the Mossad chief and
the prime minister (who has the power to appoint the agency head without any
need for cabinet approval). Whatever government comes to power in Israel next
must urgently pass a Mossad law, similar to the Shin Bet security service law
of 2002, that regulates the organization’s activities.
Twenty years ago, then-Justice Minister Yossi Beilin
proposed legislation that would have regularized the status of the Mossad like
the CIA bill does, and defined its authority, rights and responsibilities to
the public and legally, and established the responsibility of the state to
Mossad operatives – who in many cases work overseas on missions that violate
other countries’ sovereignty.
The idea has been raised again and again over the years, and
even reached the stage of a written bill during the terms of Dagan and Pardo.
Netanyahu and the Justice Ministry backed the draft, but after Cohen took over
as Mossad chief, the bill was shelved. We can only hope that D., the deputy
director of Mossad who Netanyahu picked five months ago to be Cohen’s
successor, will act to advance this law.
Through no fault of his own, D. finds himself in the midst
of a serious political crisis and so, contrary to his personal feelings and to
democratic norms, his name has so far been barred from publication. Orna
Barbivai, chairwoman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, said
recently she would look into the matter.
With the end of Cohen’s term, one of D.’s most urgent tasks
will be to restore the Mossad to its role of collecting intelligence and
engaging in special operations the way it has traditionally operated: As a
covert organization, operating behind the scenes and avoiding PR and
politicization – and where decisions are made in the interests of the state,
without fanfare.
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