New York (CNN) -- The son of a founder of the Palestinian militant group, Hamas, Tuesday told CNN that he was a spy for Israel. For 10 years, Mosab Yousef said he gathered information about Hamas terrorist plots and fed them to Israel's domestic security service Shin Bet. Yousef, in an exclusive interview with CNN's Christiane Amanpour, said he did it because he came to believe that Hamas was practicing "exceptional cruelty" against its members and "killed people for no reason." He has now written a book, "Son of Hamas" detailing his exploits from his new base in the United States where he has lived since 2007. CNN could not independently confirm his story and Israel has refused to comment.
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The son of a Hamas leader says he spied for Israel for 10 years
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Mosab Yousef told CNN he saved Palestinian and Israeli lives
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He said: I care about my people, my problem was their ideology
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Israel has not commented in his story
But an intelligence source told Amanpour that the core claims are true, this is a "modus operandi of how @placeholder agents work," to penetrate the opposite side, to try to get as much information as possible.