No more secrets

Is nothing secret anymore? Apparently, in this age of the Internet, cell phones and Youtube, it’s even hard to be a secret assassin. According to a story recently published by the Associated Press, a group of disguised assassins with fake passports were accused of killing an operative in Dubai. The hit team got into the Persian Gulf city undetected, pulled off the highly complex killing, and escaped unscathed: mission accomplished, or so they must have thought. But then the photos on their doctored passports were released by Dubai police and published worldwide. So were their 26 aliases, more than half of which turned out to belong to real-life dual nationals living in Israel. This lead to backlash by some of Israel’s allies and speculation from experts that the days of secret operatives are done. ‘‘The last assassination of its kind,’’ said a headline in the Israeli daily Haaretz. I hope that's not the case for all those spies out there.