The Mossad is the primary external intelligence service of the State of Israel. In John Kiriakou’s account — drawn from his fifteen years at the Central Intelligence Agency and his subsequent decades as a commentator — the Mossad is operationally formidable, organizationally distinctive in its near-total focus on operations rather than analysis, and uniformly hostile in its professional dealings with U.S. counterparts:
My experience is universally negative. Universally negative. I’ve never had a positive encounter with Mossad. I have never met a CIA officer who has had a positive encounter with Mossad. Because the Mossad doesn’t give two shits what you think or what you are trying to focus on in your job. They care only about Israel. And if that means shoving their fists up your ass or trying to recruit you or telling you to go fuck yourself while they try to recruit the guy sitting next to you or the guy in the defense contractor’s office, they don’t care what you think of them because for them it’s an issue of survival.[1][2]
Operational orientation
Mossad is described as nearly exclusively operational rather than analytical — “It’s all about ops” — a posture conditioned by the need to manage the heterogeneous Palestinian political environment in Israel’s immediate neighborhood (the Palestinian Authority, Hamas, the Quds Force, Islamic Jihad, and others). Per Kiriakou, the requirements of “allowing a simmer” among these factions without permitting it to boil compel constant infiltration and active management.[3][4]
CIA prohibition on counter-spying
A categorical CIA prohibition on intelligence operations against Israel was in effect during Kiriakou’s tenure: “We’re not permitted to spy on the Israelis. We’re not permitted. The potential for blowback is outrageous. Can you imagine if we spied on the Israelis and got caught? Every member of Congress would be demanding the CIA director’s head.” The prohibition reflects AIPAC’s political reach and is treated by Kiriakou as the structural exception in the U.S. intelligence community’s posture toward other states.[5][6] Kiriakou dates the prohibition specifically to the Nixon administration — the CIA has not spied on Israel since Nixon was president, he says, and if the agency’s interest in a Mossad-linked figure like Jeffrey Epstein ever existed, it would be limited to “doubling him back” as a source, never to collecting against Israel itself.[7] He is emphatic that CIA and Mossad only cooperate on foreign operations in foreign countries — on anything touching Epstein, or any other matter involving American citizens or American soil, he says there would be “zero” chance of cooperation.[8] He describes the resulting relationship as asymmetric and, in his word, “one-way”: Mossad spies on the CIA, but the CIA has been barred from spying on Israel since Nixon, while Israel actively spies on the CIA, FBI, NSA, and Department of Defense — especially its contractors — and gives relatively little useful intelligence in return, beyond material Kiriakou says is meant mainly to encourage the U.S. to bomb Iran.[9]
Kiriakou states the rule flatly elsewhere: “It’s written in stone. The United States does not spy on Israel. But Israel actively, consistently has spied on the United States.” He adds that people dispute the claim every time he makes it.[10] He calls the overall relationship “always … just a terrible relationship,” specifically because Mossad actively spies on the U.S.; he treats the Pollard case not as an isolated incident but as “indicative of the broader problem,” saying there are “lots of Jonathan Pollards out there.”[11][10] He says the relationship has never been close, dating back to the start of his own career, because Mossad constantly tries to recruit CIA officers, plant bugs in CIA headquarters, and harass CIA officers as a matter of policy — even as, on pure operational competence, there is deep and genuine CIA respect for Mossad’s abilities, a respect he says was heightened further by the pager-and-cell-phone operation against Hezbollah.[12][8]
Israeli spying on the United States
In a Piers Morgan appearance in approximately 2024 Kiriakou debated a former Mossad director who denied any post-1985 Israeli espionage against the United States. Kiriakou’s response was that Jonathan Pollard had been caught in 1985 — “and you were spying on the United States in 1998, you know, or 2004.” The former director declined to comment.[13]
Tradecraft and reputation
Kiriakou says Mossad and Shin Bet communicate with their agents through the chat functions built into ordinary gaming apps, such as backgammon apps, because intelligence services do not monitor gaming chat traffic and, even if intercepted, no human analyst is likely to review it.[14] He considers Mossad and Shin Bet among the most sophisticated intelligence agencies in the world.[15]
Bug-laden gift practice and the off-campus meeting protocol
A documented practice of Mossad liaison delegations to the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters — recounted by Kiriakou on numerous occasions, with the rate of bugged gifts always put at 100 percent — was to bring gifts at the start of each visit that, on X-ray inspection, routinely turned out to contain listening devices and batteries.[16][17][18][19] Per John Kiriakou:
Every time they would come, they’d say, ‘Hey, we brought gifts. Here’s a gift for you.’ And it’s all packed full of listening devices and batteries — every one of them. … And we’d say, ‘You guys, you can’t come back here every single time and try to bug our conference rooms.’ What’d they say to that? ‘Oh, sorry. We’re not sure how that happened.’[20][21][22]
The agency’s response, by the 1990s, was to relocate all U.S.–Israeli liaison meetings off the CIA campus to a rented external office — eventually, Kiriakou says, a safe house in Virginia — after a director finally banned Israeli officers from CIA buildings entirely. “So we rent an office where we meet the Israelis off campus. Yeah — ‘cuz you just can’t trust them.”[21][17][23][19][24]
The Shin Bet recruitment-attempt protocol
A separate documented pattern is Mossad’s (and Shin Bet’s) institutional practice of attempting recruitment of every U.S. CIA officer they encounter in a liaison setting. Kiriakou records this happening to him on his first liaison briefing — held within two and a half months of his joining the agency — when a Shin Bet officer asked him to spell his surname, noted it down, looked at him over his glasses, and said: “You are uh Jewish.” Kiriakou’s response: “I am not recruitable. Don’t even think about trying to recruit me.” On returning to the office, his furious report to his boss was met with general laughter and the observation that “they’ve done that to every single one of us. It’s like they can’t help themselves.”[20][25] He has described the same meeting elsewhere as having taken place in 1990, and said the Mossad and Shin Bet officers that day were “so offensive and so aggressive” that he returned to headquarters and told his boss, “Never again. I will never work with the Israelis ever again” — a resolution he says he kept for the rest of his career.[26][27][28]
Kiriakou has given a fuller version of the same episode: about six weeks into his CIA career, his boss told him he would be giving his first liaison briefing to Mossad and Shin Bet, explaining that Israeli officers were barred from entering CIA buildings because they had repeatedly tried to bug conference tables with gifts containing listening devices.[29][22] During that briefing, a Mossad officer and a Shin Bet officer wrote down every word he said, and the Shin Bet man asked him to spell his name, then asked in front of his colleagues, “You are Jewish?” — prompting Kiriakou to respond that he was “not recruitable.” His boss later told him the Israelis tried the same approach on every officer.[30][31][32] Kiriakou has told the story with the added detail that his boss’s exact words were that Mossad and Shin Bet try this on every single CIA officer on the theory that if they pitch a thousand people, one will eventually say yes.[33] Kiriakou says that after the attempt he deliberately avoided assignments involving Israel for much of his CIA career, declining the annual U.S.–Israel officer exchange program and instead working in Arab countries, where he felt more comfortable and built his career.[34] He has retold the gift-bugging story with the added detail that the Israeli response to being confronted was to shrug it off — “We knew you’d find it. We’re just kidding” — and meetings were moved miles from headquarters to rented spaces.[35][36]
Documented operational style
Two operations are routinely cited by Kiriakou as exemplifying the Mossad’s operational character:
- The 2010 assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in a Dubai hotel room — including the unresolved question of how the assassins locked the door from the inside after the killing.[37]
- The 1997 attempted assassination of Khaled Mashal by poison in Jordan.[38]
- During the Iran 12-Day War, the Farsi-language phone-call campaign to Iranian nuclear scientists by Iranian-Jewish Mossad and Shin Bet officers, followed by apartment-block strikes that killed fourteen scientists and their families.[39][40]
- A false-flag recruitment in Benghazi, Libya, in which a Mossad officer posed by phone as a wealthy French businessman representing a consortium of European interests to recruit the Benghazi harbor master as an unwitting intelligence source; the harbor master reported shipping manifests to Mossad for years, never learning he had been recruited by Israel.[41]
- A long record of false flag operations that Kiriakou says dates to the founding of the state of Israel, and which he was taught about at the CIA as “legendary” tradecraft.[42]
Coercion and surveillance
Unlike the CIA, which Kiriakou describes as having moved away from coercive recruitment methods in the 1970s, MOSSAD uses coercion as a standard tool. In the context of the Jeffrey Epstein operation: “The Israelis do use coercion. Then you wire every room including the bathrooms for both audio and video. Just in case you need to smash somebody over the head.”[43]
Morality
Kiriakou’s assessment: “I think for the most part, most intelligence agencies have zero morals. I think that most intelligence agencies also will draw the line somewhere. Like with child sex, for example. That would never happen at the CIA or at any other intelligence service that I’m aware of. And I think the Israelis were comfortable with it.”[44][45]
Espionage inside the United States
John Kiriakou has stated that MOSSAD actively conducts espionage operations inside the United States, placing hundreds of intelligence officers primarily within American defense contractors. According to Kiriakou, the United States shares approximately ninety-nine percent of its defense industry technology with Israel through official channels; Mossad’s domestic intelligence effort is directed at obtaining the remaining one percent that Washington withholds.[46] “We give 99% of what we have in the defense industry to Israel. And they are out there stealing that last 1% that we’re withholding from them.”[47]
Most impressive intelligence service
John Kiriakou said that of all the intelligence services he encountered during his CIA career, the Israelis were the most impressive — specifically because they have no rules: “They’ll kill anybody.”[48] Kiriakou draws the basic organizational distinction as: Shin Bet is Israel’s domestic security service, the equivalent of the FBI or Britain’s MI5, while Mossad is its foreign intelligence arm, equivalent to the CIA or MI6. He calls Israeli intelligence probably the best in the world, crediting cutting-edge technology and a bureaucracy far thinner than the CIA’s own.[49] He has also framed the same judgment more starkly: Israel is the best, he says, simply because it has nowhere to go — with its back to the Mediterranean, it is a matter of win or die — while separately rating Cuban intelligence as especially accomplished at counterintelligence.[50]
Afghan-refugee network — Iran operation
Kiriakou described MOSSAD’s operation against Iranian military and scientific leadership during what he called “the 12-day war.” Iran housed more than two million Afghan refugees who, as undocumented residents, could not access medical care or the welfare system and survived by begging. The Israelis approached these refugees and offered $200 a month in exchange for information: the home addresses and cell-phone numbers of Iranian generals and nuclear scientists. The Israelis killed the top twelve generals across the entire Iranian military and nearly every nuclear scientist by geolocating their cell phones and firing missiles at the coordinates. When Iran ordered senior military officials and scientists to stop carrying cell phones, the Israelis began tracking the bodyguards instead — who had not received the same order — and killed them alongside the principals.[51][52][53][54]
Pager operation — Hezbollah
Kiriakou described the MOSSAD pager operation against Hezbollah in detail. Knowing Hezbollah had switched to pagers to avoid cell-phone interception, the Israelis purchased a pager-manufacturing company in Hungary, ensured Hezbollah ordered pagers from that company, inserted explosives into the devices during manufacturing, and allowed the pagers to route through Taiwan, Thailand, and Syria before reaching Lebanon. The Israelis then simultaneously activated all the explosives, killing every Hezbollah official of consequence. Those not killed in the pager explosions were killed when the Israelis bombed the apartment buildings where they lived.[55][56][57]
Kiriakou’s characterization: “totally illegal” and “a work of genius.”
He has also described receiving a call from a Russian television network the day after the operation, asking him to comment on whether it constituted a war crime. His response: “It might be, because innocent people were killed. But I said it was freaking brilliant.” He added: “Even after fifteen years at the CIA, nobody at the CIA would have come up with an operation that was this incredible and outside the box. Deep respect to the Israelis, whether it was legal or illegal.” His conclusion: “Somebody at Mossad’s getting promoted today, because that’s the most incredible operation I’ve ever seen in my life. Kudos to them.”[58][59][60]
187 undeclared officers / the 5% they steal
The CIA’s director of security told Kiriakou’s new-hire class that the FBI had identified 187 undeclared Israeli intelligence officers operating across the United States, concentrated at defense contractors. Kiriakou noted the paradox: the United States gives Israel approximately 95% of its defense secrets — F-35 designs, advanced missile systems — and MOSSAD steals the remaining 5%.[61][62] He gives the F-35 avionics dispute as a concrete case: refused the undegraded avionics given to no other export customer, Israel worked through American defense contractors to steal the upgrade instead.[63] Kiriakou has told the 187-officer figure elsewhere as roughly 35-year-old information from his own new-hire counterintelligence briefing, delivered alongside a warning never to eat at a specific steakhouse near CIA headquarters — the nearest restaurant to the building — because the KGB was believed to monitor it for CIA employees who forgot to remove their badges.[64][65]
Peter Mandelson and Prince Andrew — classified-document collection
John Kiriakou cited the cases of Peter Mandelson, former British ambassador to the United States, and former Prince Andrew as evidence that Jeffrey Epstein was collecting classified defense material on behalf of MOSSAD. Mandelson initially denied ever meeting Epstein, then said he may have met him once at a party, and was subsequently shown a photograph of himself in his underwear with a sixteen-year-old girl on Epstein’s island. Kiriakou stated that Mandelson gave Epstein classified documents from the UK’s Defense Ministry. He added that it was revealed shortly before the interview that Prince Andrew had also given Epstein classified Defense Ministry documents.[66][67]
Ehud Barak and Yoni Corin
Kiriakou cited reporting that former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak had a monthly check-in with Epstein at Epstein’s Manhattan property, and that an Israeli intelligence figure named Yoni Corin also paid regular visits. Kiriakou further noted that Epstein introduced Benjamin Netanyahu to Chase Bank for financial relations.[66]
CIA married couple in Jerusalem — harassment campaign
John Kiriakou has repeatedly described the same harassment campaign, conducted by MOSSAD against a married couple of declared CIA officers posted to Israel — one on rotation doing legitimate State Department work, the other ostensibly studying Arab studies at the University of Tel Aviv, with no secrets and nothing being run against the Israelis.[68] After a welcome reception at the ambassador’s residence in Tel Aviv, the couple came home to find all of their living-room furniture rearranged — Mossad’s way, Kiriakou says, of sending the message “we’re watching you and we can do whatever we want and there’s nothing you can do about it.”[69][70][71]
At Christmas, the couple attended the ambassador’s holiday party; when they got home, someone had defecated in every toilet in the house and left them unflushed.[72][73][74]
As they were preparing to leave after roughly two years at the posting, the ambassador hosted a farewell party for them. When they returned home after the party, someone had broken into the house and cut off the dog’s tail, wrapping the wound in gauze and medical tape; the dog was found whimpering under the dining-room table. Kiriakou’s characterization: “We’re supposed to be allies. God knows the Israelis ask us for everything under the sun — and then that’s how you treat our people.”[72][75][74] He has told the same story elsewhere with the summary line: “That’s the relationship we have with the Israelis” — messages, he says, that “we can do whatever we want.”[76][77][78]
Christmas gifts stolen during intelligence exchange
A colleague of Kiriakou’s who was excited to visit Israel went to MOSSAD for a standard intelligence exchange — sharing what the CIA was doing on a particular issue, receiving an update on what Mossad was doing. It was the Christmas season and the officer had spent approximately $1,000 on Christmas presents. When he returned to his hotel room, all of the presents had been stolen. His suitcase was empty.[79]
Cultural assessment
Kiriakou’s characterization of MOSSAD and Israeli intelligence culture: “The Israelis really believe that they’re alone in the world, even though they’re not. And because they’ve convinced themselves that they’re alone in the world, they treat everybody else with disrespect."[80][81]
"What are you going to do about it?”
Kiriakou described the CIA’s response protocol when MOSSAD harassed U.S. officers in Jerusalem: a senior CIA officer would go to Mossad and say “Hey, cut it out, come on, why are you harassing our people?” Mossad would say “Oh, okay, sorry.” Things would be good for a year or two — and then it would happen again.[82][83]
85% money — counterintelligence assessment
When asked why American officials spy for or cooperate with Israel, Kiriakou cited the counterintelligence community’s standard assessment: for 85% of spies, the motivation is money — a straightforward cash transaction. A small number act for ideological reasons; a small number act out of revenge (passed over for promotion, anger at a boss or government): “For the most part, this is a cash transaction.”[84]
Targeting intelligence vs. policy intelligence — the Iran gap
John Kiriakou drew a distinction between two categories of intelligence MOSSAD provides to the CIA on Iran, describing the first as strong and the second as structurally compromised.
On targeting intelligence, Kiriakou described Mossad as highly effective. Their method: recruit Afghan refugees inside Iran at approximately ten dollars per month to report the residential and operational locations of Iranian generals and nuclear scientists. This granular location intelligence is what enables cruise-missile targeting.[85][86]
On policy intelligence — the day-to-day operations and decision-making of the Iranian government — he said the information largely comes from Iranian Jews living in the West and from the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK). He noted the MEK has a direct vested interest in the United States going to war with Iran, as their ultimate objective is to govern the country. Their intelligence should therefore be understood as motivated rather than objective.[86]
Stealing the last one percent (Dornik v2)
John Kiriakou stated that MOSSAD maintains hundreds of active intelligence officers across the United States, primarily embedded in American defense contractors with the specific goal of stealing American defense secrets. His characterization: the United States gives Israel ninety-nine percent of everything it has in the defense industry. Mossad is actively stealing the remaining one percent that America withholds.[87][88]
Glenn-Symington — the nuclear fiction
Kiriakou described the Glenn-Symington Act, co-authored by Senators John Glenn and Stuart Symington, which prohibits the United States from providing aid of any kind to any country that has a nuclear weapons program and has not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Israel is the only country in the world meeting both criteria.[89][90]
Neither Israel nor the United States officially acknowledges that Israel has a nuclear program. As long as both governments maintain this fiction, American law does not formally apply and billions in U.S. aid can continue to flow. Kiriakou described a former CIA boss who wrote a historical book on 1950s American foreign policy; the only phrase the CIA redacted from the manuscript was “Israeli nuclear program.”[90][91][92]
Kiriakou’s assessment: “We need to clean up our act because this is not just disgraceful, it’s dishonest and it’s unfair to the American taxpayer.”[92]
The ambassador’s briefcase
John Kiriakou described a story he said he had never told before. The U.S. Ambassador to Israel was being driven from the embassy to his residence when the car appeared to suffer a blowout. As the driver pulled over, two Israelis pulled up offering to help change the tire; while the ambassador stepped out to watch, they stole his briefcase, which contained classified documents. Subsequent investigation found the tire had not blown out at all — it had been deflated by a precisely placed small-caliber shot. Kiriakou’s framing: had Spain or the UK done this, the relationship would be “damaged for a generation”; with Israel, there were no consequences.[93][94][95][96][97]
The Iraqi electrical towers
John Kiriakou described an incident in the days before the United States attacked Iraq in 2003. Israel asked to join the U.S.-led coalition; the U.S. refused, knowing the Arab members would withdraw if Israel participated, and asked Israel to stay out. Shortly after, 150 miles of Iraqi electrical-transmission towers in the Western Desert were toppled one at a time — explosives placed on a single leg of each distinctive three-legged Iraqi tower (unlike American four-legged designs), enough to bring each down. Kiriakou’s supervisor’s reaction: “These damn Israelis. They just can’t leave well enough alone. They just don’t ever do as they’re told.”[98][99]
Dubai — locked from inside, German cameras
John Kiriakou described the 2010 Mossad assassination in a Dubai hotel room as technically remarkable on two counts. After killing the target, the team was somehow able to lock the hotel room door from the inside — despite having exited. The CIA studied this at length and could not immediately replicate the technique. Asked about the cameras at the facility, Kiriakou noted they were German, not Israeli-made. Twenty-six people were identified on Dubai CCTV footage from the operation; none were apprehended.[100][101][102]
‘CIA equals Mossad’ is false (JK Podcast)
John Kiriakou pushes back on the online claim that “CIA equals Mossad.” While the operational relationship is close, Mossad actively spies on the United States and was ranked at the CIA as a “critical threat” for counterintelligence, alongside Russia, China, Cuba and North Korea — recruiting Americans to betray their country. That, he says, is unlike the Five Eyes relationship of genuine sharing; the tie with Israel is “fraternal” at the political top but “not so nice” at the working level, even under a director as pro-Israel as Mike Pompeo.[103][104][105] He notes reporting that an Israeli UN security team installed the surveillance systems in Epstein’s Manhattan building, and compares it to Jonathan Pollard, whose spying was “managed from the Israeli defense minister’s office.”[106][107] He has made the same “critical threat” comparison elsewhere, naming Israel alongside Russia, China, Cuba, and Iran — a grouping he calls bizarre given Israel’s public status as one of America’s closest friends — and noting Five Eyes relations, by contrast, were always smooth sailing, with genuine information sharing rather than merely “not spying on” one another; Israeli officers, unlike Five Eyes counterparts, are barred from entering CIA headquarters at all and are met off-site instead.[68][108][109] He ties this back to the underlying trade: the U.S. shares roughly 99% of its defense technology with Israel through official channels, and Israeli intelligence maintains spies at American defense contractors specifically to take the risk of stealing the remaining 1% still being withheld.[108]