Shin Bet is Israel’s internal security and counterintelligence service. In John Kiriakou’s account, the CIA’s day-one counterintelligence briefing named it as one of two declared Israeli services operating out of the Washington embassy — one Mossad officer, one Shin Bet officer.[1]
Kiriakou describes his first liaison briefing, six weeks into the job, as a joint session with a Mossad officer and a Shin Bet officer held in a rented safe house rather than at headquarters — because, he says, Israeli officers kept bringing bugged gifts to CIA conference rooms and were ultimately banned from the building.[2][3] When he introduced himself under his true name, the Shin Bet officer pushed his glasses down, asked him to spell it, and said, “You are Jewish?” Kiriakou answered, “I am not recruitable. Don’t even think about trying to recruit me.” His boss later told him the Israelis pitch every officer they meet, reasoning that if they approach a thousand, one will eventually say yes.[4][5] He tells the same story elsewhere, adding the specific gift that got Israeli officers barred from CIA headquarters in the first place: a large ceremonial CIA seal, meant for display in a conference room, that concealed a transmitter with enough batteries to last a year and a half — discovered only when the agency X-rayed it.[6] In that telling, briefed jointly by the Mossad and Shin Bet officers at an off-site location as the most junior analyst present and using his real name for the first time, Kiriakou again recounts being told “You are Jewish” and replying, “I am not recruitable,” reading it as an attempted recruitment approach five minutes into their first conversation.[7]