Israeli had a massive intelligence failure before October 7th. Hopefully they don’t “reform” intelligence like the US after 9/11.
We trained hard—but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we were reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing, and what a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while actually producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization.
Petronius Arbiter
In the immediate aftermath of 10/7, I called a Jewish friend to check if any of her family were hurt. Thank God, they were north of the targeted area and no one they knew was attacked by Hamas.
As the discussion continued, she was like many people asking, “How did Israel not see this?” She was adamant that, “BB is going down for this…” In full disclosure, she is very opposed to him (she is very progressive) and about the only thing they agree on is their love of fine cigars. I on the other hand am a great admirer of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and I also share his love of fine cigars (although I’m not much for champaign, I prefer scotch).
I found this article interesting. In the immediate aftermath of the 10/7 attack, there was some talk about how Israeli intelligence missed the buildup for the Hamas attack. In the immediate aftermath, there are bigger issues handle. But as the war between Israel and Hamas is entering its third month, I think it’s acceptable for the beginning of an inquiry into how Hamas’s preparation was missed. From the UK Guardian, a report in the immediate aftermath of the attack.
Egypt warned Israel of Hamas attack days earlier, senior US politician says
A senior US politician said Israel had received an official warning from Egypt of a possible attack from Gaza three days before Hamas launched its deadly cross-border assault on Saturday.
Michael McCaul, the chair of the US House foreign affairs committee…
“…We know that Egypt has warned the Israelis three days prior that an event like this could happen,” McCaul, a Republican, told reporters on Wednesday. “I don’t want to get too much into classified [details], but a warning was given. I think the question was at what level…”
…Earlier this week, the country’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, denied Israel had received any advance warning from Cairo, when reports first emerged that an alert had been passed on from the country’s intelligence services….
…An Egyptian official told the Associated Press that Egypt, which often serves as a mediator between Israel and Hamas, had spoken repeatedly with the Israelis about “something big”.
The unnamed official claimed Israeli officials were focused on the West Bank and had played down the threat from Gaza. “We have warned them an explosion of the situation is coming, and very soon, and it would be big. But they underestimated such warnings,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity…”
Israeli’s intelligence agencies are legendary in both the operations and collection/production sides of the house. They have to be, with multiple nations and non-governmental groups threatening to wipe the country off the map. But before we go too deep into this, I would like to set this report up with a war story of my own.
In 1988-89 I was assigned as the Assistant S-2 (intelligence and security officer) of the 1st Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, Camp Casey Korea. One of my routine duties was to go the G2 (division intelligence office) and review the weekly Black Book, a summary of current intelligence. I found something I thought would be interesting to the brigade commander (on North Korean anti-tank capabilities) and checked it out for my boss, the brigade S2 to review.
To say the least, Major WS (only using initials) was not impressed by it and said so. He also wrote it, scribbling on the back of the page, “Vague general bull s^&&!,” with a few other adjectives added. I got to bring it back to the G2 staff, and the deputy G2 was not happy at what was written on the back of a document his staff prepared.
While I didn’t appreciate having to explain to a very annoyed major about how an above top-secret report got that on it, as I went on it did teach me something. The analysis was “vague and general,” and the brigade commander was vicious on staff officers who didn’t give him specifics. “Intelligence is for the Commander” was a focus of Army Intelligence back then, and yes, this is something that taught me to insure the intelligence I presented my commander was relevant, clear, concise, and lucent.
A more recent example is a portion of a Presidential Daily Briefing reviewed by then President George W Bush at his ranch in Crawford TX in August 2001. Afterwards the then president reportedly said, “All right. You’ve covered your ass.” But looking at the document, I recalled Major WS’s comments from the Black Book report when I was a lieutenant. It was “Vague general bull s^&&!,” and I would not brief my commander with that.
Why do I bring this up? The “reforms” in the months and years after 9/11 have been at best worthless and if anything more damaging to American intelligence. The greatest error is establishing another level of bureaucracy between the national command authority and the actual collectors and producers of intelligence. The more layers, the homogenized the intelligence becomes, and less useful.
The Central Intelligence Agency was established to handle the issue of intelligence coordination, collection, and tasking of assets to make the effort more efficient. But as it had limited tasking, planning, budget and administrative authority over the (prior to 9/11) sixteen agencies, it could not function as envisioned during the Truman administration. Now the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) is supposed to handle that issue, but as it has limited tasking and budget authority over most of the intelligence community, the issue still exists.
In the foreseeable future, our greatest ally in the Middle East will have to look at how their intelligence agencies did miss this build up. Hopefully the results of Israeli’s review will be improvement, not change for the sake of change (see DNI and CIA). It will likely have to reorient their collection targets, and may have to get more nasty with collection methods (intelligence collection can be a dirty business). It may have to change some of the targeting of the Mossad, from Iranian nuclear scientist to Hamas and Hezbollah assets (would be very bad as the Biden administration wants to put Tehran’s nuclear program on overdrive). But it must not just push positions and paper around. Like the US did after 9/11.
Michael A. Thiac is a retired Army intelligence officer, with over 23 year’s experience, including serving in the Republic of Korea, Japan, and the Middle East. He is also a retired police patrol sergeant, with over 22 years’ service, and over ten years’ experience in field training of newly assigned officers. He has been published at The American Thinker, PoliceOne.com, and on his personal blog, A Cop’s Watch.
Opinions expressed are his alone and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of current or former employers.
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2 thoughts on “Israeli Intelligence.”