WASHINGTON — Peter Malkin, 77, the Jewish guerrilla and Israeli intelligence agent who captured Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Buenos Aires, died Tuesday in New York.

No cause of death was disclosed.

Mr. Malkin was born in Poland, reared in the British mandate of Palestine and by age 12 had been recruited to fight with the Haganah, the Jewish underground forces. He became an explosives specialist and was known for donning disguises. For years, he posed as an itinerant painter. He also developed expertise in martial arts.

In time, he served as chief of operations for the Israeli intelligence agency, the Mossad.

His most famous exploit was the snatching of Eichmann on May 11, 1960. Eichmann, a key architect of the Nazi Holocaust who coined the term "Final Solution," had fled to Argentina in the early 1950s. He used a pseudonym, lived in a working-class suburb of Buenos Aires and worked at a Mercedes-Benz plant.

The Mossad received a tip that Eichmann was in Argentina, and after some unsuccessful investigations, sent Mr. Malkin there with an elite commando team.

To maintain his cover, he drew stained-glass windows in churches.

"I spent a lot of time in churches," he told The New York Times. "If you go to a synagogue, someone is always asking if you're alone, if you're married. In a church, in a hundred years no one would ask."

On the appointed day, he passed Eichmann in the street and, as planned, said in Spanish, "Un momentito, señor." They struggled, and Mr. Malkin overpowered Eichmann, dragging him into a waiting car.

In his memoir, "Eichmann in My Hands" (1990), Mr. Malkin described being surprised at how undistinguished and rather bony Eichmann looked. He was expecting a "monster."

Mr. Malkin said his interrogations of Eichmann were freakishly revealing, as when he confronted Eichmann about the death of Mr. Malkin's nephew in Poland: "My sister's boy, my favorite playmate, he was just your son's age. Also blond and blue-eyed, just like your son. And you killed him."

Mr. Malkin wrote: "Genuinely perplexed by the observation, he actually waited a moment to see if I would clarify it. 'Yes,' he said finally, 'but he was Jewish, wasn't he?' "

A diplomatic uproar followed Eichmann's removal from Argentina, but he was tried and hanged in Israel in 1962.

Mr. Malkin was born Zvi Malchin. In 1933, when he was 4, his family left Poland for Palestine.

In the comparative security of Palestine, Mr. Malkin described himself as growing "cocky and apparently fearless" as a young man.

He wrote: "Before long, I attached myself to a group, roaming the winding passageways every day after school, scaling ancient walls and exploring abandoned basements and storerooms, playing pirates and cowboys and soccer on cobblestoned streets beneath a thick canopy of hung laundry. These guys liked to regard themselves as tough, and, though younger and smaller, I was determined to keep up with them."

Petty thievery was part of their game, and Mr. Malkin found he had a "real talent" for it. A teacher in his school recruited him in 1939 to the Haganah, then fighting the Arabs and the British. He soon began pilfering ammunition from police stations. On one occasion, he covered his face in burnt cork, climbed a ladder to a second-story storeroom and picked the lock that stood between him and an arms cache. He peeled a layer of skin off his hands on the rope during his escape.

Mr. Malkin considered a career in engineering but found his reputation for safecracking preceded him at the Mossad, which he joined in 1950. As the new country of Israel built embassies abroad, Mr. Malkin instructed staff how to detect letter bombs.

He worked on anti-terrorism missions, helped capture spies and retired from the Mossad in 1976. After settling in New York, he wrote, painted and occasionally helped out a friend, Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, on investigations. Few other outlets were available to him.

"I found myself having to explain away to prospective employers a twenty-seven year gap in my résumé," Mr. Malkin wrote.

His memoir was turned into a television film.

Mr. Malkin's survivors include his wife, Roni, and three children.