Mossad Used a Honeytrap Agent to Kidnap Israel's Nuclear Whistleblower

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A man walked into a London newspaper office in 1986 with one of the most explosive secrets of the Cold War era. Mordechai Vanunu, a technician who had worked inside Israel's secretive Dimona nuclear facility, wanted the world to know that his country had developed between 100 and 200 nuclear warheads—a fact Israel had spent decades denying. The Sunday Times published his revelations, complete with photographs Vanunu had smuggled out, confirming what Western intelligence agencies had long suspected but could never prove.

Israel's government responded with fury, but not through official channels. Instead, the country's foreign intelligence agency, Mossad, executed what would become a textbook case of international espionage and kidnapping. Within weeks, Vanunu vanished from Rome under circumstances that seemed almost cinematic in their execution—until it became clear they were entirely real.

The mechanism was straightforward: a Mossad operative using the codename "Cindy," later identified as Cheryl Bentov, approached Vanunu in London. She posed as an American tourist interested in him romantically. Vanunu, isolated and perhaps vulnerable after his nuclear revelations, accepted her companionship. Bentov cultivated the relationship over several weeks, gradually building trust. Then she suggested they travel together to Rome for a romantic getaway.

Once in Rome, the operation shifted. Vanunu was drugged and rendered unconscious. Mossad agents bundled him onto a boat headed toward Israel. He woke up in an Israeli jail cell, where he would remain for the next 18 years. For 11 of those years, he endured solitary confinement. The BBC and other international outlets later documented the operation in detail, confirming not just that it happened, but exactly how it happened—the romantic lure, the drugging, the abduction across international borders.