CIA saved Mossad agents trapped abroad, Pompeo says in new book

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo details how CIA helped Israeli agents escape operation on foreign soil.

By World Israel News Staff

The Central Intelligence Agency rescued a team of Israeli agents caught in a perilous situation during a mission overseas, former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo revealed in his newly published book.

Pompeo, who also served as director of the CIA in the Trump administration before becoming Secretary of State in 2018, wrote in his newly published memoir, Never Give an Inch: Fighting for the America I Love, that during his tenure at the helm of America’s top foreign intelligence agency, then-Mossad director Yossi Cohen made a personal overture, asking him to intervene on behalf of Mossad agents stuck abroad.

Without disclosing details to identify the operation or the country where it took place, Pompeo called the Mossad operation “one of the most significant clandestine operations ever conducted.”

“The call from Yossi Cohen, the head of the Mossad, arrived shortly after I had stepped off a plane in a European capital. I turned around and went back onboard, where we had communications equipment suitable for a classified conversation with the leader of Israel’s intelligence agency.”

“The voice on the other end was calm but serious: ‘Mike, we just had a team complete a very important mission, and now I’m having a bit of trouble extracting some of them. Can I get your help?'”

Thanks to the CIA’s intervention, the Mossad team was successfully extracted.

“Whenever Yossi called, I took it. He did the same for me,” Pompeo wrote. “I was there to help our friends, no questions asked, no matter the risks.”

“My people swung into action across the world. We connected with his team, and within 24 hours we had guided them to safe houses,” he continued.

“Within the next two days, they were back in their home countries without the world ever knowing that one of the most significant clandestine operations ever conducted was now complete.”

Multiple Israeli intelligence sources told The Jerusalem Post in a report published Tuesday that the operation in question was not the February 2018 Tehran nuclear document seizure, in which Israeli agents obtained some 55,000 documents exposing Iran’s nuclear weapons aspirations.

Mossad agents were nearly captured during the 2018 operation, Hadashot News reported in 2019.

CIAMike PompeoMossadUS-Israel relations