Mossad

Mossad (Hebrew for 'institute') is an Israeli intelligence service. It is responsible for human intelligence collection, covert action, and counterterrorism. The headquarters is located in Tel Aviv, with an estimated staff of 1,200 agents. Mossad was formed on April 1, 1951, established by then Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. The identity of the director was kept secret, until March, 1996 when Major General Danny Yatom was appointed director.

There are 8 departments within Mossad, although internal details on the organization remain obscure:

• Collections Department: the largest, responsible for espionage. Consists of a number of desks in specific geographical regions.
• Political Action and Liaison Department: conducts political activities and liaison with friendly intelligence agencies
• Special Operations Division: conducts highly sensitive assassination, sabotage, paramilitary, and psychological warfare ops
• Lohamah Psichlogit Department: psychological warfare, propaganda, and deception ops
• Research Department: produces intelligence reports, including weekly summaries and detailed monthly reports
• Technology Department: develops advanced technologies in support of Mossad operations

Mossad is responsible for a number of assassinations throughout the Arab world. In 1960, Mossad kidnapped Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann from Argentina. During the 1970s a number of Arabs connected with the Black September group were assassinated by Mossad agents. In April 1988, Yasser Arafat's deputy Abu Jihad, a principal planner of military and terrorist operations against Israel was assassinated. The Iraqi 'supergun' project was halted in March 1990, when Canadian scientist Gerald Bull was assassinated by Mossad.

Sources:
http://fas.org/irp/world/israel/mossad/index.html

For our state which since its creation has been under siege by its enemies. Intelligence constitutes the first line of defence...we must learn well how to recognize what is going on around us.
-David Ben-Gurion

• Collections Department
  The Collections Department is the largest department in Mossad. It is in charge of espionage and other forms of intelligence gathering. Like the Research Department, it is organized into "desks" that are responsible for different geographical regions.
  
  
• Political Action and Liaison Department
  The Political Action and Liaison Department is responsible for dealing with foreign intelligence services. It also deals with nations that Israel has no formal diplomatic relationship with.
  
  
• Special Operations Division AKA Metsada
  The Special Operations Division conducts most of the messy operations involving assassination and sabotage.
  
  
• LAP (Lohamah Psichlogit) Department
  The LAP Department is responsible for conducting psychological warfare as well as operations involving propaganda and deception.
  
  
• Research Department
  The Research Department is responsible for producing intelligence reports using traditional information as well as information from the Collections Department. This includes generating daily, weekly and monthly situation reports. There are 15 sections or "desks" that are responsible for geographical regions.
  
  
• Technology Department
  The Technology Department is responsible for evaluating and creating technologies to be used by the Mossad.
  

• Reuven Shiloah 1951-1952
• Isser Harel 1952-1963
• Meir Amit 1963-1968
• Zvi Zamir 1968-1974
• Yitzhak Hofi 1974-1982
• Nahum Admoni 1982-1989
• Shabtai Shavil 1989-1996
• Danny Yatom 1996-1998
• Efraim Halevy 1998-2002
• Meir Dagan 2002-present

No Extradition Treaty? No Problem.

Stealing a MiG