Yossi Langotsky, a reserve colonel in the IDF and senior member of the army's intelligence service, is considering filing a complaint with the police or taking other legal action against outgoing Mossad chief Yossi Cohen, following Cohen's interview with the "Uvda" (Exposé) show last Thursday.
"I am looking into the possibility of initiating criminal proceedings against Yossi Cohen," Langotsky told Ma'ariv's Ben-Casspit yesterday. "Cohen made serious mistakes and revealed [classified] information. This can't become part of our regular protocol."
"During the interview, Cohen committed very serious security breaches which cannot be forgiven. If any of the people under his command had done the same, they would have been behind bars a long time ago," he stressed. "I'm not able to provide examples [of classified information that was revealed by Cohen] without exposing state secrets," explained Langotsky.
A spokesman for Cohen responded to the allegations, saying that, "The outgoing Mossad chief's interview passed the required censorship and field security approvals, no secrets were disclosed, and it did not contain anything out of the ordinary compared to interviews given by previous Mossad chiefs."
During a farewell event honoring Cohen's 40 years of service in the defense establishment, then-Prime Minister Netanyahu praised the outgoing Mossad chief for his unrelenting quest to prevent Iran's aspirations of a nuclear breakout.
"I do not want to and I cannot list here everything we do to fight the Ayatollah regime that threatens to destroy us. It's better this evening, too, that most of these things remain in the shadows. Despite this, one must linger on one of the Mossad's most glorious achievements throughout its years: Locating Iran's secret nuclear archive and bringing it to Israel in 2018," said Netanyahu at the time.
"We penetrated the heart of the Iranian enemy. We worked tirelessly to gather and reveal its dark secrets and undermined its self-confidence and arrogance. We brought the Iranian nuclear archive and exposed to the whole world the Iranian military nuclear program, the intent, the preservation of the capabilities of the military nuclear field and the deception and lies of Iran, which it has tried to hide from the world over the years," continued the Prime Minister.
Cohen began his service at the Mossad in 1989, at the age of 22, climbing the ranks of the organization, and in 2006 was appointed head of the recruitment division.