Forbidden History - CIA vs Mossad: Inside the World’s Most Powerful Spy Agencies

Episode Date: May 12, 2026

In this episode of Forbidden History, we trace the rise of the CIA and Mossad, from their origins in the aftermath of World War II to their role in shaping modern geopolitics. Former CIA officer Lindsay Moran provides a rare insider perspective on how these agencies function, and what sets them apart. Cast List: Eric Meyers: Narrator Lindsay Moran: Writer & Former Spy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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and ad-free listening. You'll also be able to join discussion boards and explore additional insights behind the stories we cover, coming soon. The Central Intelligence Agency and Israel's Mossad are two of the most dominant intelligence organizations in the world. Both have been linked to daring covert operations, and both have played defining roles in shaping some of the biggest events in history,

often far outside their own borders. But beyond those surface similarities, the comparison begins to unravel. Because these agencies were shaped by very different realities, One emerged from a global superpower with far-reaching political and military interests. The other developed within a far smaller state, one which has faced immediate and hostile threats ever since its establishment in 1948. In this episode of Forbidden History, join us on an investigation into two of the world's most powerful intelligence agencies.

Discover the secrets behind how they've operated throughout history. and what the future holds for these two giants of espionage. We will be joined by former CIA clandestine officer Lindsay Moran, whose insider analysis and expertise from working on real-life operations in the field will help us navigate through the shadowy world of intelligence history. Because both agencies have been widely reported for protecting their nation's security and sometimes criticized for the methods used to achieve it, the question is not simply what separates them.

It's whether they are truly as different as they appear. It's whether, in the shadows, they operate far more alike than either nation would admit. Conducting assassinations, you know, motorcycle, blowing people up, killing nuclear scientists. The CIA has made a number of missteps. throughout history. And that's what led to congressional oversight of the agency, become, some might say, even more aggressive, even more reckless, and, you know, carry out operations

that the CIA would never do or would certainly never admit to, that's for sure. At the broadest level, the CIA and the Mossad serve exactly the same purpose. They exist to protect their countries by collecting. foreign intelligence and in some circumstances carrying out covert operations. But the CIA's mission is actually larger and more layered because the U.S. has been a global superpower with worldwide interests. So the CIA's mission includes collecting foreign intelligence and producing analysis, conducting covert action when directed by the president, historically, and protecting U.S. secrets and U.S. interests.

Mossad is focused on some of the same things, but strictly in support of Israeli national security. The story of the Central Intelligence Agency does not begin in secrecy, but in shock. On December 7, 1941, the attack on Pearl Harbor exposed a critical weakness in how the United States understood the world beyond its borders. Intelligence had been gathered, warnings had existed, but they were scattered across different departments and never fully connected. In the aftermath, it became clear that the problem was not a lack of information, but a failure to bring it together. The Office of Strategic Services, or OSS, was America's first real attempt at a centralized

intelligence service, bringing together espionage, sabotage, and analysis under one roof during the Second World War. It operated across Europe and Asia, often in secret, laying the groundwork for what modern intelligence operations would become. The OSS, however, was only temporary. As the Cold War began, President Harry S. Truman established the CIA in 1947, turning war time necessity into a permanent institution. Officially, its role was to gather and analyze intelligence. In reality, from the very beginning, there were questions about how far that

role might extend, and whether just observing events would ever be enough. In 1949, under Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, Mossad was focused on coordinating intelligence efforts abroad and providing early warning of possible threats. In those early years, intelligence was fragmented across different military and security bodies. But as the pressure on the young state grew, so did the need for a more unified approach. So there's this overlap, but the scale and the geography and the urgency of the mission are very different. I would say that both conduct offensive and defensive operations. defensive operations.

But with Mossad, I think there's just much more of this sense of Israel exists surrounded by enemies. They think of themselves as a nation that has for a long time been fighting for their survival. And I think their mindset is that we will do anything at all costs to protect Israel. So it's like a narrower mission, but with maybe a more aggressive, some might even say reckless mandate. I mean, if I were to put it in totally layman's terms, I think the Massad has a reputation for being more badass than the CIA. And that's just a fact.

They will carry out operations that the CIA, because of government oversight and being because of public perception wouldn't even attempt. And we've seen the Mossad in recent years, or we've seen Israel in recent years, become, some might say, even more aggressive, even more reckless, and carry out operations that the CIA would never do, or would certainly never admit to, that's for sure.

The difference in approach these agencies possess is not simply just because of their procedural differences, There is also a much larger, more physical difference that dictates how they operate. So you think about the United States. We've got oceans on both sides. We've got friendly neighbors. Perhaps up until very recently, we've had friendly relationships with our neighbors. And we've had the luxury of kind of like a strategic depth for our intelligence agencies.

Israel doesn't have that. Israel's a small country in a dangerous neighborhood facing threats. that can feel very real, immediate, and even existential. And that produces a different tempo and a different tolerance for operational risk. And frankly, it can distort the moral lens as well. Compared to other larger agencies like the CIA or Russia's SVR, Mossad is described as a smaller, tightly organized agency built for operations. speed. This is because their directives often involve taking action against perceived threats

before they materialize. And so that's why you see Mossad, you know, conducting assassinations, you know, motorcycle, blowing people up, killing nuclear scientists, really acting in such a way that like Israel's interests and Israel's survival are paramount and nothing else matters. That is, you know, I think the CIA, whether they've adhered to it or not, U.S. intelligence services have always had, I think, of a moral code in keeping with our military moral code. Yes, the CIA is dealing with urgent threats, but not in the way that Israel perceives itself as seeing with urgent threats. The CIA also has this burden of managing like a huge global portfolio, for lack of a better word. Major power competition, terrorism, proliferation, cyber threats, regional wars, and even like long-term political trends. Decisions aren't just made quickly and acted on.

They move through layers. They're debated, weighed up, and often slowed down. because what happens in one place can have consequences across the world. For the CIA, the quote-unquote restraint isn't always a deliberate choice, but rather baked into the way the agency operates. I would also say politically, Mossad reports into a system where the prime minister's office plays a very direct role in directing intelligence operations.

In the CIA, covert action is embedded in kind of like a much larger statutory and oversight framework that involves, yes, it involves the president, but also historically has involved the input of Congress. And so the CIA historically has not had the leeway to just do whatever they want, that's. there is, you know, they do answer to the president. They do answer to Congress. And in the past, that has guided CIA operations and covert action. And I would venture to say that a kind of scary reality is the idea that the CIA could or would start to act with the kind of autonomy, reckless autonomy, one might say, of the Mossad. I think a reality, a kind of frightening reality, is that in the United States, we've

seen consolidation of power in the office of the president. So it begs the question, will we have an intelligence service that just follows the whim of the president? And will there be any oversight? The CIA has made a number of missteps throughout history. And that's what led to congressional oversight of the agency. One historical example of these missteps was the Iran-Contra affair. In the mid-1980s, officials in the Reagan administration secretly sold weapons to Iran, despite an arms embargo, and then diverted some of that money to fund Contra rebels in Nicaragua,

even though Congress had explicitly banned that support. It wasn't the CIA alone, but it heavily in the United but had heavily involved intelligence networks operating in secret. This caused uproar in the Senate, and after criminal investigations, 11 administration officials were indicted, including the Secretary of Defense. That being said, all officials who were indicted or arrested

received pardons on H.W. Bush's last day in office, and only one of those 11 ever served a prison sentence. The CIA has a reputation for being structured and bureaucratic, and it works hard to maintain that image. The Mossad, on the other hand, maintains a reputation as an intelligent structure that is action-oriented and more aggressive. Despite that, many argue that the reality behind those stereotypes is more complex. Like most stereotypes, there's a grain of truth,

but there's also a lot of oversimplification. Massad has built a public mystique around bold overseas operations. And some of its most famous missions absolutely reinforce that image. This was seen in 2010, with the killing of Mahmoud al-Mabhu, a senior Hamas figure involved in arm smuggling.

He was tracked to a hotel in Dubai, where a team of operatives, widely believed to be linked to Mossad, gained access to his room using cloned keycards. What followed was clinical brutality. Reports suggest he was subdued quickly, possibly with an electric shock or muscle relaxant, that prevented motor functions to immobilize him. He was then suffocated in a way designed to leave minimal obvious signs of violence. When his body was later discovered, it initially appeared as though he had died of natural causes. The team moved through Dubai using multiple false identities, blending into the normal flow of travelers in airports and hotels.

They carried out surveillance in plain sight, often just meters from their target, in a city saturated with CCTV. Within hours of the assassination, they had left the country. But when Dubai authorities later pieced together the footage, it revealed just how exposed and audacious the operation had been. I would say the CIA, by contrast, works on kind of a broader chessboard, and we might be willing to invest years in a source or a penetration. I saw that myself when I was working at the CIA, that, you know, there were targets that we considered hard targets,

and that we might spend a decade developing that source or penetration before ever thinking about trying to recruit them. Throughout history, the CIA has been the master of the long game. The Phoenix program was a covert initiative during the Vietnam War, aimed at dismantling the Viet Cong's underground network. Rather than targeting conventional fighters, it focused on the hidden infrastructure behind the insurgency. the couriers, informants, recruiters, and local organizers who kept it functioning. At its core, Phoenix was built on intelligence. Suspects were identified and added to detailed files, with information gathered through surveillance.

Operations often took the form of night raids, where individuals were captured and taken to interrogation centers. When details of the Phoenix program became public, the CIA came under scrutiny for for its involvement. While supporters praised its effectiveness in disrupting the Viet Cong's ability to operate, critics, however, condemned its reliance on questionable and heavy-handed methods, resulting in the deaths of a large number of prisoners

and even civilian non-combatants. Bureaucratic is not always a weakness, and this is something that I've come to see now on the outside looking in, having left the CIA. I used to always complain about the bureaucracy at the CIA and we couldn't get anything done because it was kind of maddeningly bureaucratic. So retrospectively, now as an ordinary citizen, I look back on that bureaucracy and to me it represents something different. Bureaucracy means that there are more checks. There's the opportunity for interagency

debate or internal debate and more effort to think through what a What are the second and third order consequences of what we're going to do? So while Mossad has always been heralded, I think, as, you know, an aggressive organization fighting for its life, we have to ask ourselves, is being aggressive in that way of virtue? This bureaucratic policy that the CIA engages in operations is not without historical setbacks. In April, 1961, the Bay of Pigs invasion unfolded as a cautionary tale of a plan slowly unraveled by its own constraints. What began as a bold CIA operation to topple Fidel Castro became entangled in layers of political oversight and hesitation. Air support that was promised

to destroy Cuba's Air Force was reduced to preserve deniability. Key decisions were delayed or softened as they moved through the White House, and the operation lost the decisive force it depended on. By the time the Cuban exiles landed, the element of surprise had gone, and the support they expected never fully arrived. Within days the invasion collapsed, not simply because the plan was flawed, but because it had been reshaped into something far more cautious and far less effective than originally originally intended. On the other hand, the Mossad, due to their willingness to operate overseas

with little political and government oversight, have had major success in completing their strategic goals, most notably in 1960, with the abduction of Adolf Eichmann. Rees knows a thing or two about great combinations. Chocolate and peanut butter, obviously, but there's more than one way to Rees's. From indulgent Rees's big cups with caramel, to crunchy Reese's pieces and Reese's miniatures. There's a delicious Reese's for every mood. It's the same combo you love, just with more ways to enjoy it. So whether you're snacking, sharing, or just treating yourself, nothing else is Reese's. I think the Eichmann operation is one of those defining intelligence stories for a few reasons. It combined operational daring

and international risk, the kind of things that we see Maasad doing today. But what makes a difference is that the Eichmann operation was guided and grounded in moral purpose. That is, you know, capturing a former Nazi. So, you know, that to me there's this kind of, before I joined the CIA, I remember reading a book about the Eichmann operation. And it was those kinds of operations that really drew me to intelligence work, because it was exciting and daring and full of international intrigue. But at the same time, it was guided by a moral purpose that was really inarguable.

And that's something that I think we don't see as much today. You know, we see Mossad operating in a way that is where there's a lot of daring, there's a lot of international risk, there's a lot of what some might call boldness. But is there moral purpose to their opposite? operations. You know, I think that there could be a lot of debate there and a lot who could say that, no, there's not. That, you know, many Mossad operations are at their core not moral. But to go back to the Eichmann case, I would say that is kind of the quintessential example of like that to me is like a perfect intelligence operation. Mossad located Eichmann in Argentina.

Adolf Eichmann was a senior figure within the SS. tasked with organizing the logistics of the Holocaust, transporting millions of Jews to ghettos and extermination camps across occupied Europe. As the war came to an end, Eichmann was captured by American forces, but managed to escape custody in 1946, slipping into a network of former Nazis and sympathizers. Using false papers and so-called rat lines, he traveled through Europe before eventually reached

Argentina in 1950, where he lived under an assumed identity for years, working ordinary jobs until his capture in May 1960, some 15 years after his escape. They surveilled him, then they abducted him, secretly brought him to Israel to stay on trial, and it tells you a lot of things. The first, Mossad was willing to operate unilaterally on foreign soil, when they believed that the target justified it. And I think any would argue that catching this, you know, high-level Nazi who had managed to escape to Argentina, you know, there is like you can't argue

against the rightness of that kind of operation. Second, Israel was prepared to act despite whatever the diplomatic fallout was going to be. It understood that operation not just as an intelligence success, but as a national mission, with profound historical meaning. And it worked out, you know, they were able to get him. I think that the Eichmann operation is part of what gave Massad a particular identity

that it enjoyed for many, many decades. This idea that intelligence work can be an instrument of historical justice. And I think that that idea that was so perfectly captured in the Eichmann operation is something that Massad doesn't enjoy today. It's something that they've lost. Israel has lost a lot of international support. And so these Mossad operations that were heralded in history now are looked at through a much. different lens. This policy of quick action and a boldness to operate beyond borders is not without its own mishaps, however. After the Munich Massacre in

1973 Mossad began a manhunt for a senior figure in the Black September Organization, the organization that was responsible for the deaths of 11 Israelis and one German police officer. The man was called Ali Hassan Salameh and Mossad believed they had found him hiding in northern Europe. In 1973, agents from Mossad, acting on faulty intelligence, assassinated an innocent Moroccan waiter, Ahmed Bushiki in the Norwegian town of Lillehammer. In front of his wife, Bushiki was shot 13 times from a Volkswagen Beetle while on his commute home.

The operation quickly unraveled as several of the agents were arrested, revealing the scale and methods of the mission to European authorities. Mossad's willingness to act quickly and across borders, which was before seen as a strength, led to devastating mistakes when intelligence was wrong, raising serious questions about the true cost of operating with such urgency, and without as large or as deep a network of intelligence as the United States. I would say that often the CIA's comparative advantage over an organization like the Massad

is our long-term human intelligence, our recruiting of sources, are penetrating foreign governments, or more rarely terrorist groups, and our analysis that enables us to understand intentions and to shape the environment over time. I would say like the Mossad doesn't spend a lot of time trying to understand the intentions of their enemy and put effort into that careful analysis.

They're much more about kind of shock and awe. Despite this reputation for quick operations, Mossad have been known to play the longer game too, especially in more recent years. In 2024, the Israeli intelligence agent accomplished one of their most cunning operations. I think it's important to say that intelligence services rarely confirm these things, but if, you know, public records and accounts are accurate, which I think they are. These kind of activities suggest an operational culture that prizes

ingenuity, deception, and frankly psychological and physical shock. physical shock. There were reports that Israel planted explosives inside pagers used by Hezbollah, and this was before the 2024 detonations that occurred in Lebanon. So this is an extraordinary example of turning an adversary's most trusted communication system into a weapon against itself. You know, it's incredibly genius, but it's also, you know, kind of incredibly deceptive and ruthless. Now, to be clear, does the CIA have a hand in Mossad operations? That's something that certainly the CIA would never confirm nor deny. But I think it's important to remember that the United States and Israel have considered themselves.

long and close allies. This brings forward another question in the difference between the two agencies. How does an intelligence agency respond to mistakes and failures? When there's an operational failure or some public controversy, there are three ways that intelligence services have to recover. And sometimes they just don't recover. just don't recover. But it's internal, it's political, and it's cultural. Internally, there should be investigations. There should be damage assessments. There should be efforts to figure out

whether the failure was tradecraft, analysis, leadership, or even policy. But I have to be honest, having been on the inside, sometimes when there are operational failures that are not public, they're just literally swept under the carpet. And these internal investigations and damage assessments often don't happen. And I think that that is part of the problem and why we see kind of cyclical or repeated mistakes and repeated fallout from intelligence failures. Precisely because unlike in the military where damage assessments are kind of baked in to every operation, that's less the case in intelligence. It's more, okay, let's move forward, that didn't go right, but what's our next step? And rarely is there kind of that effort.

to look back and figure out what went wrong. And that sets up, that sets us up for making the same mistakes again and again throughout history, which we've seen happen. Now publicly, there may be public hearings, sometimes there's media fallout, sometimes there's leadership changes. But let's look at a case like September 11th. I was sort of stunned, and I was working for the CIA when September 11th happened, that no heads rolled at the, at the top of the CIA.

You know, George Tenet, who was the head of the CIA, managed to maintain his position. And, you know, I liked George Tenant. He was a good popular leader within the CIA. But the fact that he withstood the largest intelligence failure of our time and managed to retain his position, I think speaks to a kind of lack of accountability that often happens in intelligence. intelligence agencies, that there can be these catastrophic failures and yet nothing changes. I would say culturally, the CIA has had to absorb lessons of the past without becoming paralyzed

by it. And that's kind of hard. Like, intelligence services need to have confidence. Too much confidence produces recklessness, but too much caution produces timidity. And one of the things that I saw when I was at the CIA was the agency had come out of a period of recklessness, and suddenly there was all this oversight. And then we kind of entered an arrow of bureaucratic timidity, and 9-11 really shocked us back into reality. And I remember after 9-11, I was developing a source

that had access to terrorist networks. And I wrote back to headquarters and, or I should say, I was developed, after 9-11, I was developing a source that had access to Islamic extremist networks in the Balkans. And I wrote back to headquarters that I was developing this promising source who might have access to information,

because I thought this is precisely what the CIA needs right now are these sources who have access to these extremist networks. And headquarters wrote me back and said, you know, stop talking to this person because he might have contacts to terrorist networks. And I think that, you know, it was so ironic, but that was the product of, of the CIA pre-9-11 being in an era where we had become kind of paralyzed by our oversight and paralyzed by timidity in a way.

With the Central Intelligence Agency, a failed operation often triggers formal review mechanisms. This is when the CIA is investigated internally. major failures like the Bay of Pigs invasion or 9-11, there were internal inquiries and political fallout that reshaped how covert actions were approved. The CIA operates inside a system where failure can become part of the public record, even if that takes years. By contrast, Mossad tends to handle failures quietly and internally, largely because of Israel's smaller political system and the immediacy of its security concerns.

Investigations still happen, but they are usually classified, and public accountability is far more limited. In cases like the Lillehammer affair, exposure came not from Israeli disclosure, but because foreign authorities arrested the operatives, forcing the issue into the open. The experts argue that the CIA now lacks the ability to act boldly. but that its scale and intelligence reach give it more options. Where Mossad may be forced to act quickly, the CIA can sometimes afford to wait, to watch, and to choose its moment. These differences in how failure is handled are not accidental.

They are built into the DNA of each organization. The same systems that determine how accountability is enforced also influence how decisions are made in the moment. how quickly an operation can move, and how much risk is tolerated before the first step is even taken. So what does that actually look like in practice? If both agencies were tasked with the same mission, the differences would begin long before the operation itself, in how it is planned, approved, and ultimately carried out. I would expect Mossad to operate with just a much shorter chain of command.

a tighter focus on immediate threat reduction, and really a much higher tolerance for bold, unilateral, or even lethal action. The CIA would move through a more layered interagency and legal process, and especially if the mission involved covert action rather than just intelligence collection, But I think it's important to consider that the climate we're in now, we're seeing both U.S. intelligence service. I think it's important to consider that the climate we're in now, we're starting to see the CIA operate with the same unilateral boldness. And some might say recklessness, some might say lack of moral clarity that the Mossad has been known for.

You know, we look at a case like Venezuela. Okay, the U.S. went in and we just enacted a regime change. Well, it kind of worked in Venezuela. There were no U.S. deaths. You know, it happened without a lot of bloodshed. and everybody's sort of forgotten about it. Okay, now we look at Iran. And I think the optic from the U.S. from the White House has been, okay, we did it in Venezuela.

Let's go do it in Iran. Well, if you were really listening to your intelligence services, I think even the most junior analyst at the CIA would have been able to tell. tell you that the regime change consequences in Iran were going to be messy and potentially catastrophically messy. You don't have to be a top-level CIA analyst to know that there was going to be blowback in the Straits of Hormuz. And so I would say there's a real danger right now that the CIA is kind of a doctor

the same mentality as Mossad and just like, we'll do what we want and, you know, we'll kill who we want. And that's just what we're going to do. And I think that attitude is incredibly short-sighted. So we're going to see a repeat of things that we've seen historically. Like in Chile, you know, we helped install a dictator who became a, brutal and repressive dictator. In Iran, we unbelievably took out a 90-year-old tyrannical despot and replaced him with an arguably more radical, more extreme tyrant who's young and fit. He's in his 50s. So the kind of what some might argue, bold actions on the kind of,

the part of U.S. intelligence right now, I think are going to have profound and potentially detrimental, I would say definitely detrimental, maybe even potentially disastrous consequences, not just for the U.S., but for the global world order. The difference between the Central Intelligence Agency and Mossad is due to their respective histories. One was built as the intelligence arm of a global superpower, designed to gather information across continents and influence events at a macro scale, with layers and layers of bureaucracy and oversight. The other, shaped in the shadow of their perceived existential threat, focused on immediate

survival, rapid action, and a far tighter chain of command, different functions, different pressures, but often pursuing the same result, which is security and influence at any cost. And that is where a more concerning question begins to emerge. If a smaller nation that exists under threat develops an intelligence culture built on speed, brutality, and unilateral action, what happens when a superpower begins to operate in the same way, but without the same constraints? History has shown that power, when left unchecked, can achieve remarkable results, but it can also carry consequences

that extend from the loss of innocent lives to alliances damaged irreparably. So, the question is not simply whether such an approach would benefit America, but whether any nation, no matter how powerful, can act without limits to avoid the bloody wake that follows.

Only history will tell. Thanks for exploring the past with us today. If you like this episode, please be sure to follow for more. We post new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday. Don't forget to leave a comment below, and feel free to leave us a rating or review. Your feedback helps us reach more listeners like you. And for more from the Like a Shot Network, check out Where Did Everyone Go, Histories of the Abandoned, a deep dive into the incredible stories behind Forgotten Places.

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