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Every Spy A Prince: The Complete History Of Israel's Intelligence Community

Dan Ravin and Yossi Melman
Reviewed by By John C. Campbell
Fall 1990
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Dan Ravin and Yossi Melman
Houghton Mifflin
1990
450 pp.
$22.95

Written by two Israeli journalists, this history is neither complete nor based on primary sources (which necessarily remain secret), but it is investigative journalism of the first rank. It gives the most expansive account yet of the Mossad, its leading personalities (both spymasters and spies), striking exploits and bumbling failures since independence. If the narrative has gaps, it also has revelations as it runs through cases such as the Lavon affair, the nuclear program, the assassinations of Arab enemies, the rescue of Ethiopian Jews, the Pollard embarrassment and Irangate. Neither a whitewashing nor an indictment, the book shows how well, on most but not all occasions, the intelligence agencies have served Israeli interests.

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