The Cambridge Incident

Beth Edelman was the first woman Director of Central Intelligence, the head of the Central Intelligence Agency. She was the first foreign-born individual to head the Central Intelligence Agency, having been born in Israel in 1960. And she was the first Director of Central Intelligence to be kidnapped.

Abducted from the streets of Cambridge, Massachusetts, by captors unknown, she was whisked away to a location where she would be secure but out of touch with the outside world. The collective resources of the nation's law enforcement and intelligence communities were enlisted to determine her whereabouts and bring her home.

In the mean time, in the Middle Eastern offices of both Hezbollah and the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the level of activity and communications increased geometrically. In recent years the world's, and specifically Israel's, attention to Iran had been focused upon its headlong efforts at developing a nuclear weapons capability.

In the halls of the CIA, FBI, NSA and the Pentagon, discussions were under way to assess whether Director Edelman's kidnapping and the accelerated pace of progress in Iran's quest for a nuclear weapon were connected.