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The checkered history of the Mossad, Israel's spy agency

The murder in a Dubai hotel room of a Hamas leader has grabbed headlines around the world as rumors and speculation swirl about the team that allegedly assassinated him.

Fingers -- in the media and the intelligence community -- point toward Israel's spy agency Mossad as responsible. The agency is keeping quiet but has a history of operations in the Middle East, South America and Europe.

Dubai's police chief told the Dubai newspaper, The National, he was confident that a Mossad hit squad was behind the assassination of Mahmoud al Mabhouh.

In Israel, editorials have already moved on from asking if Mossad was responsible to querying if Mossad has made a mistake. An editorial in The Haaretz newspaper read: "Assassinations are neither effective nor legal and sometimes not moral -- when the target is a political leader or someone who could have been detained."

But Mossad and the Israeli government has stuck to the policy of ambiguity -- neither confirming nor denying a role in killing Mahmoud al-Mabhouh. By remaining silent, there are less likely to be international repercussions and any intelligence agency in the world likes to keep its enemies guessing.

But many operations in the past have been credited to Mossad. Undoubtedly one of the agency's greatest achievements was capturing Adolf Eichmann, an architect of the Holocaust....
Read entire article at CNN