Knesset votes on bill to reshape intelligence oversight under PMO

The Knesset plenum voted 56-36 in a preliminary reading on Wednesday to pass a bill that would create a new intelligence adviser and staff within the Prime Minister’s Office.

The adviser would answer directly to the prime minister and be separated from the three big intelligence services – the IDF, the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency), and the Mossad.

The law is still far from reality, but already there is significant controversy about whether the new post would solve gaps in intelligence, some of which partially led to the October 7 massacre, or if it is being used as cover to further politicize the intelligence establishment.

There is a general consensus that both the intelligence community and the political echelon failed to foresee or prevent the terrorist attack, but there is no agreement about what to do about it.

This latest push by Likud MK Amit Halevi on behalf of the prime minister is, at first glance, simply following the recommendations of the post-Yom Kippur War Agranat Commission, which suggested establishing an independent intelligence body to second-guess the other agencies.

The problem is downplaying threats

In English, this would be called a “red team.” Often, an inspector-general’s office fulfills such a function to prevent surprises resulting from security groupthink. In Hebrew, this is called the ipcha mistabra. The IDF and Mossad often establish their own backup or opposition teams to counter whatever the accepted wisdom is on a certain security topic.

The problem has been – and was certainly the case on October 7 – that too often, such internal opposition teams pull their punches in criticizing conventional wisdom lest they endanger future promotion options.

Alternatively, the opposition teams sometimes express significant disagreement with the intelligence chief in question, but that chief pays no attention to their views and only has them filing their views so that he can check the box that he had entertained opposing views.

From this perspective, having a new intelligence czar who does not need to worry about promotions from any of the big three intelligence agencies would seem to be a good way to ensure that the prime minister hears opposing views in a full and strident manner.

One obvious objection could be that this role of giving the prime minister a counterview on intelligence and national security, where the advisers are not working for any of the agencies, is supposed to be fulfilled by the National Security Council adviser and his staff.

Appointing a new intelligence adviser may just add more bureaucracy and fights over resources between the NSC adviser and whoever the new adviser would be. Top defense officials have questioned why and how this would lead to a better result.

The NSC did nothing to challenge the agencies’ view of Hamas being deterred on October 7.

THIS NEW position would be different from the NSC, former intelligence officials told The Jerusalem Post. The NSC has too many responsibilities in foreign affairs, diplomacy, and security, they said, adding that analyzing intelligence is just a small piece that can easily fall by the wayside.

Moreover, the NSC almost never looks at raw intelligence when making its own fully informed, separate judgment on the significance of gathered intelligence, they said. Instead, the overworked NSC, at most, has time to look at the conclusions of the agencies based on the raw intelligence without knowing whether there could have really been a dissenting view, they added.

In addition, most of the NSC staff are immediate and future members of the agencies and on temporary “loan” to the NSC, the former intelligence officials said. This means that when they want to know about intelligence, they call their old and likely future colleagues and bosses in the agencies to find out what the conventional view is and then pass that on to the prime minister.

If the new intelligence czar and his staff are more separated – i.e., by a period of a few years from having worked for the agencies – and are not expecting future work there, then they might be more ready to question the agencies, according to the proponents of the bill.

Likewise, if their sole responsibility is intelligence, which is far narrower than the NSC’s role, they should have more time to go beyond the agencies’ conclusions to view the original materials.

Still, even if some of the existing intelligence agents seem to support the change, some oppose it, and others have not weighed in on it yet but have indicated concern that this is a new politicization power play by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

One part of the new role is that it would not need to be part of any public vetting process, meaning that Netanyahu could pick an intelligence agent whom he is sure will just support his policies – even if it opposes the entire defense establishment or a case where the prime minister’s motivations are entirely political or potentially corrupt.

For example, Netanyahu went against the entire defense establishment to push through the purchase of additional nuclear submarines from Germany – part of what became known as Case 3000, the Submarine Affair.

While Netanyahu was never indicted for corruption, many of his former top aides were. So far, any court or commission probing the issue has been highly critical of his ignoring the defense establishment’s view of the purchase. They have said it is difficult to explain his decision as being in the interest of Israel’s national security, and that the way he managed the process may have opened the door to corruption, even if he himself did not directly participate.

Some also suspect that a new intelligence czar could be used to drop all responsibility for the October 7 massacre on the other three agencies in an effort to whitewash Netanyahu’s role in the failure.

Another objection is that a new intelligence czar would be sidelined by the existing agencies and the NSC.

The new czar would have no intelligence-collecting capability, and the existing intelligence chiefs could decide to blacklist him from certain information or to give data only after they had directly told Netanyahu about it, which is what happened with the now-defunct Intelligence Ministry.

A similar fate happened to the Homeland Security Ministry. It briefly had some power in the same era but was eventually beaten out by the Defense Ministry and the IDF and became defunct.