Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister who had been Dagan’s commander and mentor, famously if crudely declared that “Dagan’s specialty is separating an Arab from his head.” It was a brutal description, even in the macho world of the Mossad, Israel’s best-known intelligence agency, which Dagan ultimately led for nine years—an extraordinarily long tenure. While Dagan pretended to dismiss the stories as mythmaking, he nonetheless seemed to revel in them.
