ISRAEL
IN CONTEXT
COHEN, YANKEL COHEN
IN THE USA, THERE IS THE CIA; IN BRITAIN, MI5 AND
MI6, and the BSS; in Russia the KGB and
the GRU; in Germany the BND; in France
the DGSE; in South Africa the SSA and the
NIA; and in Israel the Mossad, the Shin
Bet and Aman. There are many more.
So, what do secret services do? While
they all overlap in many areas, there are
differences in theory – which of course is
what makes them so appealing to the man
in the street, who, with no knowledge of
their operations, is always quick to condemn
and criticise. Throughout history, they have
always been around in one or other guise;
they are a necessary albeit often controversial feature; and they are a reflection of
society from its earliest days, where trust in
one’s fellow man was slowly eroded as
unmitigated power became the raison d’être
of the ruling classes.
In some countries, secret service agents
34 JEWISH LIFE
ISSUE 86
provide protection for the country’s
president and vice-president and their
families, former presidents, presidential
candidates and visiting heads of state and
heads of government; and they investigate
people who make threats against these
VIPs. They execute criminal investigations
related to a nation’s financial security, and
they counter terrorism both international
and national. They supply their governments
with foreign intelligence; they eavesdrop on
communications throughout the world;
they are involved in internal and border
security and surveillance; as well as the
investigation of certain types of grave
crimes such as drug-smuggling and (in the
USA) federal law violations.
They also help to protect their country’s
interests across the world, employing
human intelligence, signals intelligence,
imagery intelligence and open sources
intelligence. They perform paramilitary
and counter-intelligence operations outside
of their borders, and support struggles
against rebellions in their former colonies,
primarily in Africa and in the Near East.
James Bond lookalikes, all of them.
At home, an examination of SASS
(South African Secret Service) reveals it is
responsible for all non-military foreign
intelligence and for counter-intelligence
within the service itself; it gathers,
correlates, evaluates and analyses this
intelligence; and performs at the request
of the president. The NIA (National
Intelligence Agency), now the Domestic
Branch of the State Security Agency, is
responsible for domestic and counterintelligence within South Africa.
In Israel, according to published
documentation, the Mossad is involved with
intelligence gathering outside of the State of
PHOTOGRAPH: BIGSTOCKPHOTO.COM
Some of the not-so-secret services of the Israeli intelligence
community I BY BEV GOLDMAN