Mossad is organized into departments, numerous branches, and sections within branches.
Stations are situated in many friendly base countries with the notable exception of the United States and Canada at the time of writing. All are located in the heavily reinforced underground of the embassy or consulate.
Target countries are distinguished from Base countries: the former are enemy countries; the latter are friendly countries in which, or from which, Mossad operations are handled.
You can RETURN to main menu
Agent is a widely misused term. An agent is a recruit, not a domestic employee of an intelligence agency. The Mossad has about 35,000 agents in the world, 20,000 operational and 15,000 sleepers. In the spyspeak of the Mossad, Black agents are Arabs, while White agents are non-Arabs. Warning agents are strategic agents used to warn of war preparations in a target country.
Agents are nearly always recruited in base countries. Black agents and warning agents are therefore usually recruited when they are away from their homeland for a time as diplomats, students or on business.
Arab agents are often recruited with the help of an Ot-ter finder who sets up the meeting with a katsa because there are very few Arabic speaking katsas.
Agents are recruited by the Tso-met or Me-lu-cha recruitment department of Mossad which operates about 35 kat-sas an elite corps of highly trained case officers it dispatches individually around the world to set up operations.
The Tso-met branch is divided into geographical departments in which desks are assigned to support stations.
For example, one branch of Tso-met has a Benelux desk Belgium, The Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Scandinavia to support stations in Brussels and Copenhagen; a French desk Paris and Marseilles stations; and a British desk London station.
You can RETURN to main menu
Recruitment in Cyprus, Egypt, Greece and Turkey is handled by Hoppers from Tel Aviv The Israel station who move in for a few days at a time to operate agents and sayanim. The operations are considered dangerous because of the PLO sympathies of the governments.
Note: Refer to the diagram of Tso-met for an inventory of stations as they existed prior to publication of By Way of Deception.
Security arrangements for recruitment operations is handled in Europe by a yarid team of agents who arrange for logistics by using Say-a-nim Jewish volunteer helpers as needed, identify and observe target recruits, and provide counter-surveillance support.
The Ya-rid branch of the security department consists of 3 teams of 9 people each, 2 teams working abroad and 1 acting as backup in Israel.
An attack case officer is chosen from a total of about three dozen case officers or katsas. He has the ability to make fast contact with a target and proceed quickly to recruit him as an agent for the Mossad.
There are only about five men in this select group, usually stationed in Mossad European headquarters in Brussels. Once a subject has been recruited, the attack case officer will transfer the everyday handling of the agent to a regular case officer, then start a new recruiting operation elsewhere. Double blind operation
For an excellent example of what yarid does, see The Other Side of Deception, p. 217. This example illustrates the use of a Ya-rid team and attack case officers working together in a double blind operation, disguised to look like something else because the enemy is watching.
You can RETURN to main menu
The Ne-vi-ot branch like Ya-rid consists of three teams of experts to support station operations. These teams are skilled at obtaining information from still objects. This is accomplished by break-ins, photography e.g. of documents, and the installation of surveillance equipment.
Ne-vi-ot have master keys for most major hotels in Europe and specialize in defeating security systems. They also act as saboteurs in an Mossad operations.
In support of Jewish organizations in Western nations, the Mossad dedicates another department Tsa-fri-rim, which has the ability to mobilize whole communities in support of foreign policy objectives made in the Mossad. This is the base from which the Mossad drives the activity of Jewish lobbies, particularly in the United States, to orchestrate influence upon legislation, Middle East policy and the especially the media.
Logistical support for station operations comes from sayanim, or Jewish helpers, residing in the base country and listed on a register kept in the station. Sayanim must be 100% Jewish. They are not Israeli citizens, but are often reached through their relatives in Israel with a simple plea to help save Jews.
In London, for instance, there are 2,000 active and another 5,000 on the list. They are paid only costs and act as a pool of logistical services to be used when needed and to keep quiet about it. They are never put at risk, nor are they privy to classified information. frames or misgerot
Tsafririm is also responsible for setting up Jewish defence groups, called frames, or Mis-ge-rot. Often people with particular skills, such as doctors, are on reserve and called in for short periods to help with these frames.
Normally, heads of the stations for the frames in the various countries are retired Mossad workers. Their main job is to help leaders of Jewish communities outside Israel plan for their own security.
Part of this is done through the Hets va-keshet, or "bow and arrow", Israel's paramilitary youth brigades. Often youths from other countries are brought over to spend the summer learning about security and picking up such skills as how to complete obstacle courses, pitch tents, use a sniper rifle and Uzi assault rifle.
Some learn how to build a Slick for hiding weapons or documents, when and how to do security checks, as well as the basics of investigation and intelligence gathering. And after filling the kids with a large dose of militant Zionism, the Mossad sends them back as the spies of the future.
Ma-sh-ov, the communications department of Mossad has a division called Tra-k-sin for paraphrasing information. Paraphrasing is done to eliminate the possibility of tracing the source of information, an important factor when the Mossad is passing secret information from one intelligence source to another, as it so often does.
You can RETURN to main menu
Me-tsa-da operates like a Mossad within the Mossad. It is a highly secretive department that handles combatants Israeli spies sent to Arab countries under deep cover, dispatches squads of assassins Ki-don, and provides technical support from a special operations division to operations in both target and base countries. combatants
A combatant is an Israeli recruited to carry out dangerous operations behind enemy lines. Combatants are recruited from the Israeli general public and trained apart from the rest of the Mossad. A combatant doesn't possess any information about the organization so that, if captured, he or she will have no information to disclose.
Their families are paid an average salary as compensation for four years' absence of the combatant, and a bonus for overseas work, amounting to $20,000 to $30,000, is deposited at the end of the assignment into a separate account for the combatant.
Combatants do not gather direct intelligence physical observations, such as movement of arms or signs of readiness for war but rather fiber intelligence, the observation of economics, rumours, feelings, morale and such. They can come and go easily and observe things without any real risk to themselves.
They do not broadcast reports from a target country, but they sometimes deliver things there, such as money and messages.
There is a small internal unit within the Me-tsa-da department called Ki-do-n or bayonet, divided into 3 teams of about 12 men each. They are assassins.
All assassinations carried out by the Mossad are the work of Ki-d-on squadrons. Normally, there are two such teams training in Israel and one out on an operation abroad. They know nothing about the rest of the Mossad and don't even know each other's real names.
Mossad doesn't execute people unless they have blood on their hands. But this includes the rationale that the victim might cause unintended harm. Such was the case with the prostitute in Operation Sphinx who had reported her innocent involvement to the French police. As an operational execution, the decision to take her out should have been made by the head of Mossad.
Assassinations normally require personal approval by the Prime Minister of Israel. An execution list is prepared with anywhere from one or two to one hundred names for approval, upon the request of the head of Mossad.
Each request is sent by the Prime Minister to a extra-legal, and secret, judicial committee that sits as a military court to try the "accused" in absentia. Two lawyers are appointed to argue the case, one for the prosecution and another for the accused, who is ignorant of his trial.
To continue with Mossad orgenization.
You can RETURN to main menu