Cloak & daggerIntel Agencies in an Age of “Nuclear” Cyberattacks, Political Assassinations
Even without the kind of network of global partners that many larger nations have, Israel manages to punch far above its weight in intelligence with the CIA as a partner. At a recent talk at Harvard, former CIA director John Brennan and Tamir Pardo, former head of Mossad, spoke about the close ties between the CIA and Mossad, and discussed the intelligence challenges the two countries face.
Regardless of who is leading their governments, U.S. and Israeli intelligence agencies maintain a quiet, steady relationship, as that link remains a vital part of national security for both countries.
During a recent talk as part of a Harvard global youth conference on foreign affairs, former CIA director John Brennan and Tamir Pardo, former head of Mossad, spoke about the close ties between the CIA and Mossad, the far-reaching “nuclear” threat posed by cyber, and state-sponsored assassinations, which both generally condemn but view as defensible in the case of “terrorists” who pose an “imminent” threat.
“As good as CIA is, the world is a very, very big place, and we need to work with our partners, such as Israel and Mossad. They have eyes and ears in places and capabilities that we depend on. Because we can’t be everywhere, all the time, that information-sharing is important,” said Brennan, who served as CIA director during President Barack Obama’s second term, from 2013 to 2017. “Tamir and I would share the most sensitive intelligence because our agencies trusted one another.”
Even without the kind of network of global partners that many larger nations have, Israel manages to punch far above its weight in intelligence with the CIA as a partner.
“We managed to do things that no one thought before that can be done in cooperation between agencies like us,” said Pardo, who joined Mossad in 1980 and served as its head from 2011 to 2016. “We never thought that [we] would be able to achieve that degree of cooperation.”
Even though the two heads of state at the time, Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, had a strained relationship at best, Pardo said “it never, never stopped the cooperation between the two agencies.”
The two former intel chiefs spoke as part of a three-day virtual conference hosted by the Harvard Undergraduate Foreign Policy Initiative last week. The event provided 615 high school and early college-age students in 62 countries, many of them thinking about future careers in foreign policy, an opportunity to hear from and speak directly to nearly 150 global figures and experts in intelligence, national security, and diplomacy.
