Wanna be a spy? Or, maybe just a waiter?

conjur

No Lifer
Jun 7, 2001
58,686
3
0
http://news.excite.com/odd/article/id/405185|oddlyenough|05-24-2004::10:32|reuters.html

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - The Israeli spy agency Mossad emerged from the shadows on Monday when it launched a Web site to attract recruits for "special tasks" -- as well as intelligence analysts, waiters and drivers.

Long a secretive elite, Mossad is raising its profile to compete with the private sector in the search for talent.

"Mossad's mainstay is its people," reads the site's (www.mossad.gov.il) foreword by agency chief Meir Dagan, posted next to backlit photographs of unnamed intelligence analysts at their desks.

The launch of the site is the spy agency's second break with the era of the old-boy network whereby veteran agents would tap their friends when job openings appeared.

Dagan's predecessor Efraim Halevy began the trend in 2000 by placing advertisements for case officers in the Israeli press -- a big change for an agency whose motto is the biblical proverb "Without subterfuge, the nation falls."

Halevy argued market forces took precedence over mystique.

"The days when a security career was seen as the be-all and end-all of Israeli citizenship are over," he told Reuters. "Now we are an open society, and Mossad has had to appeal to the widest range of talented applicants who might otherwise head for hi-tech or other private sectors."

For decades, Mossad had a reputation for deadly derring-do.

In 1960, its agents captured Nazi fugitive Adolf Eichmann in Argentina. After 11 Israeli athletes were killed by Palestinian gunmen at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, Mossad hunted for the masterminds, killing some of them.

But Mossad has also been embarrassed by a series of bungles. In 1997 its agents botched an attempt on the life of a leader of the Palestinian militant group Hamas in Jordan. In 1998 a Mossad team was arrested in Switzerland while spying on a local man believed linked to Lebanese Hizbollah guerrillas.

Mossad's U.S. counterpart, the Central Intelligence Agency, has had a Web site since 1995. But Yossi Melman, senior security correspondent for Haaretz newspaper, said it was too early to trumpet a new American-style transparency in Mossad.

"This is basically a belated employment move which Mossad is making the most of," Melman said, noting that the Web site advertises for English-speaking waiters and bus drivers as well as analysts, translators and agents for "special tasks."
 

Balt

Lifer
Mar 12, 2000
12,673
482
126
Sign up, ya geeks! ;)

As hardcore as the Mossad is, though, I wouldn't expect them to even let you/me mop the floors.