assassination

Last week's arrests of a dozen alleged CIA agents in Iran threw a spotlight on long-standing, covert U.S.-Israeli actions in the Islamic republic -- including purported involvement by the CIA and Mossad in the recent killings of Iranian nuclear scientists. Though enduring, the collaboration between Western and Israeli intelligence agencies in intelligence and assassination operations reveals a relationship of cooperation and distrust.

The Mossad (Hebrew for "institution") is Israel's main intelligence agency. According to the Global Security site, Mossad also oversees "covert action and counterterrorism"; its operations are widely held to include targeted killings. At the time of its founding, the Mossad's motto was the biblical quote "By way of deception thou shalt make war." The motto was later changed to a different Proverbs passage: "Where no counsel is, the people fall, but in the multitude of counselors there is safety." Sources refer variously to the Mossad's international assassination unit as "Metsada," "Caesarea," or "Kidon" ("Kidon" is Hebrew for "bayonet"). Rafi Eitan, a former director of Mossad operations, compared its assassins to "the official hangman or the doctor on Death Row who administers the lethal injection. We are simply fulfilling a sentence sanctioned by the prime minister of the day."

Based in Fayetteville, North Carolina, Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) is America’s secret army. Members of this clandestine team have recently made news for assassinating alleged al Qaeda operatives Osama bin Laden and Anwar al-Awlaki; reportedly, they were also responsible for the killings of hundreds of civilians in the 2002 "wedding party" incident in Afghanistan.

In 2009 the investigative reporter Seymour Hersh spoke publicly about this elite military agency. Hersh stated:
"After 9/11 ... the Central Intelligence Agency was very deeply involved in domestic activities against people they thought to be enemies of the state. Without any legal authority for it ... the Joint Special Operations Command -- JSOC it’s called. ... They do not report to anybody, except in the Bush-Cheney days, they reported directly to the Cheney office. ... Congress has no oversight of it. It’s an executive assassination ring essentially ... Under President Bush’s authority, they’ve been going into countries ... and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving. That’s been going on, in the name of all of us. ...