Ex-Mossad chief accused of sharing classified intel with flight attendant — TV

Former Mossad intelligence agency director Yossi Cohen is suspected of sharing classified information with a flight attendant with whom he was in close personal contact for the past two years, Channel 13 reported Monday night.

A complaint has been filed with the Justice Ministry, which is being reviewed by Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit, the report said.

Cohen flatly denied the allegations, telling the network: “There is no flight attendant, there is no close relationship, the attorney general has not contacted me” about the complaint.

Cohen was criticized last month over an interview in which the ex-spymaster intimated that his agency blew up Iran’s underground centrifuge facility at Natanz, gave a precise description of the 2018 operation in which Mossad stole Iran’s nuclear archive from safes in a Tehran warehouse, confirmed that Iran’s assassinated top nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh had been in Mossad’s sights for years, and said the regime needs to understand that Israel means what it says when it vows to prevent Iran attaining nuclear weapons.

The interview, which appeared to be the most revelatory ever given by a Mossad chief so closely following the end of his active service, was broadcast after Cohen ended his term as the spy agency’s leader on June 1, and was succeeded by David Barnea.

Cohen, known as “the model” inside the Mossad, had an unusually public persona for an Israeli spy chief, even as he oversaw operations against Iran’s nuclear program and helped guide Israel’s clandestine ties with Arab nations.

Appointed by former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Cohen has said he does not rule out seeking to become prime minister one day, though he was not contemplating such an ambition at the moment.