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Every Spy a Prince: The Complete History of Israel's Intelligence Community by Dan Raviv and Yossi Melman. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1990. 466 pp. $24.95, cloth.
During the past four decades, Israel's espionage, counterintelligence and security agencies have acquired an unparalleled reputation for proficiency, ingenuity and daring. In Every Spy a Prince, Dan Raviv (CBS News correspondent in London) and Yossi Melman (an Israeli journalist) provide a comprehensive, fascinating yet sober account of Israel's intelligence community and its evolution, accomplishments and shortcomings.
On the basis of declassified documents of the Israeli State Archives, dozens of interviews with former chiefs of the various intelligence agencies, and discussions with former CIA directors, the authors examine in painstaking detail the modus operandi of the major branches of Israel's intelligence establishment: Mossad, responsible for foreign operations; Aman, the intelligence-gathering unit of the military; and Shin Bet, the agency in charge of domestic security.
Rivaling the suspense and intrigue of the best fiction by John le Carre and Ken Follett, Every Spy a Prince recapitulates the most spectacular exploits of Israeli intelligence: the capture of Adolf Eichmann in Argentina in 1960, the smuggling of vast quantities of enriched uranium from...