meta_pixel
Tapesearch Logo
Log in
Honestly with Bari Weiss

Inside the Mossad

Honestly with Bari Weiss

The Free Press

News, Society & Culture

4.6 • 7.8K Ratings

🗓️ 23 September 2025

⏱️ 92 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

If you’re anything like us, you’re a sucker for a good spy show: Homeland, Tehran, Fauda, The Bureau. We’re fascinated by the life of spies—the secret meetings in Beirut cafés, the wigs and false identities, the double and triple lives, always one step away from exposure, risking everything for their country. Most of the time, those TV characters are pure fiction and the stories are the stuff of Hollywood. But our guest’s new book, The Sword of Freedom, reads just like one of those fantastical thrillers—except every word of it is true. Yossi Cohen—the former director of Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency—spent most of his 38-year spy career in the shadows. He was known only by a letter: Y, or sometimes “The Model,” apparently for his looks. He was, as he writes, “a ghost, never to be seen and unable to be heard. I was invisible, a breath of wind in human form.” Cohen operated under dozens of different identities in some of the most dangerous places for an Israeli, and he personally orchestrated some of the most daring operations in Israel’s history: stealing half a ton of Iran’s most secret nuclear documents from a warehouse in Tehran; assassinating Iran’s top nuclear scientist using an AI-powered machine gun operated remotely via satellite; setting the stage for the pager attack that crippled Hezbollah last year; creating secret relationships with Arab leaders—relationships that changed the direction of the Middle East. If you look online, you’ll hear that Mossad has been behind everything from tsunamis to floods to political assassinations of famous Americans. So we could think of no one better to answer the question of what Mossad actually does—and to address the endless conspiracies that swirl around Israel’s version of the CIA—than Cohen.  Today, we talk about all of that. It’s a rare glimpse inside Mossad, inside the world of real espionage—and a conversation with a man who helped shape history from the shadows, and who clearly is considering a run for prime minister. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Get a free bet when you bet five pounds every week of the Premier League season and a big boost every day.

0:06.1

That's satisfaction from Ladbrooks.

0:08.0

And for extra satisfaction, here's the D's D's and C's garage style.

0:11.0

18 plus 1st of September to 24th of May.

0:13.4

Opting weekly.

0:14.4

Selected Premier League markets.

0:17.2

Match one free bet per week.

0:18.8

Values vary.

0:20.9

Restrictions in TNCs apply.

0:24.3

Daily odds boosts TNCs on labbrooks.com.

0:28.6

Gamblerware.org.

0:31.6

From the free press, this is honestly an Einberry Weiss.

0:35.8

If you're anything like me, you are a sucker for a good spy show.

0:39.9

Homeland, Tehran, Fowda, the Bureau, I could go on, I have seen it all.

0:45.1

I'm fascinated by the life of spies, the secret meetings, the double and triple lives,

0:49.9

always one step away from being exposed.

0:53.0

Perhaps because I could never imagine myself doing something like that.

0:57.1

Most of the time, those characters that we see on TV are pure fiction.

1:01.4

The stories are the stuff of Hollywood.

1:03.7

But my guest's new book, The Sword of Freedom, reads just like one of those fantastical thrillers,

1:10.8

except every word of it is true.

1:14.2

Yossi Cohen, the former director of the Mossad, Israel's intelligence agency,

...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Free Press, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of The Free Press and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.

Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.