Signalling A Stop To Secrets’ Strip-Tease
By Amir Oren
Earlier this week, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu surprised the Israeli public – and his own Defense Minister, Benny Gantz – by issuing a terse statement. Netanyahu, it said, decided that the next chief of MOSSAD intelligence and special missions agency would be the current deputy chief, to be identified by the initial D until the appointment process is completed.
The surprise was on several levels. Firstly, there was no rush. The current chief, Yossi Cohen, whose term was about to end in early January, was recently given an extension until June per a Netanyahu request. There was time enough to decide on his successor by late March or early April, especially should Knesset elections be held in March, a distinct possibility known to Netanyahu above all.
Secondly, MOSSAD has nothing to do with law enforcement, which is the main bone of contention between Netanyahu – who is on trial for bribery, fraud and breach of trust – and Gantz, who set out to topple him but turned around and joined him as his understudy. Gantz controls the Justice portfolio, which can have some impact on the selection of prosecutors and judges, Likud kept its hold on Public Security, including the appointment of Police Inspector General. But MOSSAD acts abroad, presumably with no domestic implications having to do with Netanyahu’s legal troubles. It would seem to be outside the tug-of-war between the government’s dueling heads, with Gantz assured by special law (but with a yawning loophole) of elevation to the PM’s position and with it supervision of MOSSAD next November.
Indeed, in the model and precedent for this government, the one headed by Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Shamir in 1984-88 with Yitzhak Rabin as Defense Minister throughout, a consensus had to be reached on all key appointments, regardless of whoever was formally in charge at transition’s time. In less than a year, D is supposed to be Gantz’s subordinate. It made sense to coordinate his appointment with his designated next boss. But Netanyahu made a public point of ignoring Gantz.
The reasons are personal and political. Cohen’s immediate predecessor, Tamir Pardo, once noted that the media focus on exploits assumed to be MOSSAD’s, such as sabotage and targeted killings, misrepresent the true balance of the agency’s activities in intelligence collection and secret diplomacy. “These actions do not even amount to one percent of MOSSAD’s operations,” he said.
Yet this is the stuff of legend, glory and political credit Netanyahu and Cohen bask in. The Israel Defense Forces come under the jurisdiction of the Defense Minister, and there is not a lot of credit to share there. MOSSAD is every Prime Minister’s private army. Its triumphs are his, and if he makes the confrontation with Iran regarding its nuclear weapons project his calling card, he needs a like-minded chief who is willing not only to follow that line, but also expose it to the public in a splashy fashion benefiting them both.
Cohen, a telegenic and glad-handing professional agent recruiter and runner, has never denied his political ambitions once he retires and undergoes the cooling period legislated by envious rival politicians protecting their turf. The heads of military, security and police agencies have to wait outside Knesset and cabinet for the first three years, post retirement, though early elections can partly expedite this process.
During Israel’s formative years, long-time MOSSAD chief Isser Harel, who was also over-all boss for the SHABAK internal security agency, was politically close to David Ben Gurion, Moshe Sharett and Golda Meir – three of the country’s first four Prime Minister. His power rested on his secrecy – his identity was never made public during more than a decade in office – but he also craved recognition, with Peres, a colleague and rival, saying he aspired to become Deputy Prime Minister.
Ben Gurion acted to promote three of his administration stars into the top ranks of his party and government. They were IDF Chief of General Staff Moshe Dayan, “Israel’s voice to the nations” Abba Eban who was recalled from double duty in Washington and the UN, and Defense Director-General Peres. There was no room left for Harel, who promptly allied himself with the ruling Mapai party veterans fearful that the Dayan age group would leapfrog over them. After Harel fell out with Ben Gurion and was pushed out, he ran on a Knesset list – with Ben Gurion.
Harel was an exception, though not the only one. Two other MOSSAD chiefs ran for office after they retired. Both were Army Major-Generals rather than career MOSSAD officers – Meir Amit and Danny Yatom – who were elected to the Knesset, Amit also serving for a while in Menachem Begin’s cabinet. As a rule, though, MOSSAD chiefs shunned politics.
Enters Cohen, who grew so close to Netanyahu that his name started to float as a heir-apparent. Of oriental extraction and religious upbringing, along with the derring-do and sophistication ascribed to MOSSAD leadership, Cohen would seem an ideal combination for Likud, while military officers mostly gravitate in retirement to center-left parties. Netanyahu had an uneasy relationship with all of his military chiefs. It would make sense, for him, to build up Cohen as a counterweight. And much like Dayan and Eban for Ben Gurion, Cohen and outgoing Washington Ambassador Ron Dermer could be presented as a security-diplomacy duo.
When Netanyahu chose Pardo in late 2010 and Cohen five years over other contenders from both within and without the agency, he made the decision only a few weeks before the handover was scheduled and also made a public spectacle of it, especially in an Oscar-like drama regarding Cohen. This was also the case, in a more subdued tone, when Pardo’s predecessor Meir Dagan was appointed by Ariel Sharon in 2002 and when Netanyahu brought back former MOSSAD deputy Efraim Halevy from Brussels to head the agency.
So why the sudden reluctance to reveal D’s full name, though oblique references to his presumed nickname soon turned out on social media?
Up until mid-1996, the identities of MOSSAD and SHABAK heads were kept secret for operational reasons – they personally met with key agents (the most famous example being Zvi Zamir with Ashraf Marwan on the eve of the Yom Kippur War) and ran operations from forward bases abroad. With their titled pictures in the papers and on TV, someone might recognize them and in turn unmask their assets.
But following the Rabin assassination, as SHABAK chief Carmi Gilon was an obvious target of the Commission of Inquiry’s focus on security lapses, the initial C would no longer do. Once he resigned, with a recently retired Admiral – Amy Ayalon – taking over and a fellow General, Danny Yatom, appointed MOSSAD chief, secrecy imposed by censorship became untenable. Yatom, Halevy, Dagan and Pardo emerged from the shadows in various degrees, contingent on their personalities and their relationship with their political masters – Netanyahu, Ehud Barak, Sharon, Ehud Olmert and again Netanyahu.
Critics of the current Prime Minister were surprised by the lack of drama and competition surrounding D’s selection over Cohen’s first deputy, U. Military officers were apparently not in the running, or at least the play-off. One obvious candidate could have been Maj.-Gen. Herzi Halevy, former Director of Military Intelligence and designated Deputy Chief of the General Staff, but as Prime Minister Shamir, a MOSSAD veteran himself, said about Amnon Lipkin-Shahak, his favorite, in a similar situation three decades ago, a Chief of Staff timber is too precious an asset to waste on MOSSAD. War, after all, is the most perilous threat hovering over Israel, and the IDF is the organization most vital to the nation’s survival. The military is mundane and MOSSAD and SHABAK may impress laymen as sexier, but if a person could serve in either position, better he should be preserved for Ramatkal – CGS.
Out of an abundance of caution, should the vetting process be frozen by politics and D’s appointment collapse and he reverts to the status of any MOSSAD officer, active or retired, whose name can be redacted by the censor, his full identity has not been released. There could still be a hitch if he clears the first hurdle, a commission headed by a Supreme Court Justice, but has to wait until Netanyahu and Gantz reach a broader deal on several senior appointments.
In Spring 1996, with Peres as PM about to defend his job against a Netanyahu challenge considered unlikely to succeed, Yatom – Rabin’s Military Secretary and then Peres’ – was approved for the MOSSAD position (though Rabin intended it for another General, Director of Military Intelligence Uri Sagi) – with his first day in office scheduled to be shortly after the elections. When Peres was defeated, Yatom did not ask for renewed confidence from the victorious rival of his own political patrons. He showed up for work as a civil servant would. His relations with Netanyahu, his junior in their military unit 25 years earlier, never improved, and in two short and tumultuous years he was out.
This is not a scenario likely to be repeated early next year. D is not politically close to any major figure. He is considered a professional in the mold of Halevy and Pardo. In presenting D and U as the in-house finalists, with Netanyahu of course free to go outside for other candidates, Cohen chose not to replicate himself. Better to keep his brand unique – and there could be a backlash, as many of his colleagues and other professionals viewed with alarm the strip-tease of secrets and security performed following MOSSAD operations.
If Cohen dreams of stepping on the mutilated bodies of Iranian nuclear scientists up the political ladder, he will find a much fiercer opposition than the Revolutionary Guards. Likud ministers waiting for the end of Netanyahu’s long reign will not welcome him warmly. They have history on their side. Dayan and Eban seized the Defense and Foreign Affairs portfolios after Ben Gurion was no longer Prime Minister, but this was as far as they went. Cohen and Dermer would probably not fare better in today’s politics and electorate.
When Cohen returned to MOSSAD from the National Security Staff, which he headed under Netanyahu, he already had a public profile. Not so D, who is going to have a day or a weekend of stories about his service in the Sayeret Matkal elite unit as a conscript and then his record for innovation in intelligence and operations as a senior MOSSAD officer, up to Division Chief and Cohen’s deputy. Then he will go back into the shadows, without the media circus which thrived on Cohen’s penchant for publicity.
MOSSAD chiefs serve five-year terms, unless cut short by incidents or extended due to special circumstances. Cohen’s tenure happens to run out when the Biden Administration team takes over at the relevant agencies – NSC, DNI, CIA – and while a coincidence, it is a positive move. When Donald Trump won in 2016, Cohen distegarded protocol and good manners to hastily establish relations with the incoming team in order to block the Obama Administration still in power. It generated a lot of bad blood – and veterans of that Obama group are now coming back in more senior positions. It is time for a new and nuanced page at MOSSAD in general, and vis-a-vis the White House and Langley in particular.