It’s Tuesday, September 23. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: Why Erika Kirk could be the first woman president. Why Tyler Cowen thinks the American economy is headed for rougher days. And what’s going on with Trump’s new H-1B policy?

But first: A look inside Israel’s version of the CIA.

What is Mossad? If you look online, you’ll read that it has been behind everything from tsunamis to floods to political assassinations of famous Americans.

I could think of no one better to answer that question—and to address the endless conspiracies that swirl around Israel’s version of the CIA—than Yossi Cohen. He is the former director of Mossad.

Mossad recruited Cohen when he was 22 years old—and then, after a lifetime of service operating in the shadows, Benjamin Netanyahu appointed him to lead the agency in 2016.

As Cohen writes in his gripping new book The Sword of Freedom—which we recently excerpted—he was “a ghost, never to be seen and unable to be heard. I was invisible. A breath of wind in human form.”

Cohen has operated under thousands of different identities in some of the most dangerous places for an Israeli in the world—and he has personally orchestrated some of the most daring operations in the country’s history.

In this conversation, he takes us into his world of shadows. He talks about spycraft, the operations he helped run, the war in Gaza, Palestinian statehood, Iran, Qatar, and Israel’s recent mind-boggling missions, like the pager attack on Hezbollah.

Cohen also says why he thinks intelligence failed on October 7, his relationship with Bibi today, and whether he is running for prime minister.

You will not want to miss this.

—Bari Weiss