How Jimmy Carter Used the CIA and NSA to Forge Middle East Peace

In Walter Mondale’s posthumous eulogy for Jimmy Carter, published yesterday by The New York Times, he summed up the record of their administration: “We told the truth, we obeyed the law, and we kept the peace.”

It sounds so simple. But how they kept the peace—or more precisely, forged peace between Israel and Egypt—required actions more morally nebulous than simple truth-telling and law-obeying.

Rarely emphasized in the history of the Camp David Accords is Carter’s use of the...