It was 2002 and Mossad was losing steam. Several failures in the preceding years had dealt severe blows to its prestige; the much-publicized failure to assassinate a major Hamas leader in Amman and the capture of Israeli agents in Switzerland, Cyprus, and New Zealand had seriously damaged Mossad's reputation. The last head of Mossad, Efraim Halevy, didn't live up to expectations. A former ambassador to the European Union in Brussels, he was a good diplomat and a good analyst, but not a leader and not a fighter.
