Reuven Shiloah

Reuven Shiloah (December 1909-1959) was the first Director of the Mossad from 1951 to 1952. Born in Ottoman ruled Jerusalem as Reuven Zaslanski, he would later shorten his last name to Zaslani and use the codeword Shiloah. Living in an Orthodox Jewish family and with a rabbi for a father, Shiloah abandoned the religious life of his family at an early age. In the mid-1930s he met Betty Borden of New York and the two were married in 1936.

Shiloah was involved in Israeli political and defense matters since before its creation, and was a close friend of David Ben-Gurion. Before the 1948 Arab-Israeli War Shiloah obtained the invasion plans of the Arab League, and he began building relationships with other intelligence agencies, particularly in the West. At the urging of Shiloah, Prime Minister Ben-Gurion created the "Central Institute for Coordination" (Mossad) in December of 1949 and appointed Shiloah as it first Director. However, it was not until April 1, 1951 that the Mossad became operational under Shiloah because bureaucratic fighting had delayed Ben-Gurion's initial order. After his tenure at the Mossad Shiloah worked in the Israeli Embassy in Washington DC and continued serving as an advisor.

References

Biography from the Mossad
Black, Ian. Morris, Benny. Israel's Secret Wars: A History of Israel's Intelligence Services. New York: Grove Press, 1991. ISBN 0-8021-1159-9, 82-84 p.
Raviv, Dan and Melman, Yossi. Every Spy a Prince: The Complete History of Israel's Intelligence Community. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1990. ISBN 0-395-47102-8 p. 20

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Further reading