What caused Israel's October 7 intelligence failures? - opinion

Everyone, especially here in Israel, has been asking “How did this October 7 intelligence failure happen?” Many have hearkened back to the intelligence failure of October 6, 1973, almost exactly 50 years earlier, since the recent debacle is so reminiscent of the costly 1973 Yom Kippur War surprise. Could the answer to the 1973 failure shed light on the present failure?

While theoretically it should be considered, there hadn’t been a clear answer to the failure of 50 years ago. Yaakov Hasdai (who was a researcher for the 1973 Agranat Commission that investigated the war) had asked, “How did this befall us?” Then he answered: ”To this very day, we don’t have a clear answer.”

In October 1973, I was an Arabic intelligence analyst working at the US National Security Agency (NSA). According to testimony given under oath to the Congressional Investigation Committee, the Pike Commission, Ray Cline testified that all US intelligence agencies were fooled by the Syrian and Egyptian deception to invade Israel.

Cline, under oath, “so help him God,” lied.

We in G6, the branch of the NSA that targeted the Middle East, not only knew of Arab intentions, but we knew it for a certainty, knew it days in advance, and knew the attack would commence on October 6. Yet then-head of Israeli military intelligence (AMAN), general Eli Zeira, confided in me that he relied on US intelligence assessment that the Arabs were not preparing for an attack. This astounding, hard-to-believe admission was confirmed by a protocol released by the IDF Archives on June 6, 2022, in which Moshe Dayan stated unambiguously that he received an American intelligence assessment a mere 12 hours before the Arab attack began, that the Arabs were not going to attack.

Zeira had a remarkable power of persuasion and – relying on the American assessment over his own Israeli intelligence – convinced Israel’s political decision-makers, as well as the IDF’s chief of staff, that the probability of an Arab attack was “very low.” He maintained this stance up to the moment that the air raid sirens began screaming at about 2:00 p.m. on October 6.

Could a similar scenario have befallen Israel on October 7, 2023?

Never mind the surface similarities that both attacks began on a Jewish holiday that fell on Shabbat, what are the deeper similarities that warrant study?

In a panel discussion held at the Michael B. Hayden Center at George Mason University a couple of weeks after the October 7 horror, John Brennan – former director of the CIA (2013-2017) and chief counterintelligence adviser to president Barack Obama – said, “US intelligence had ‘some things’ also that were raising concerns there.” Could the US intelligence agencies have known more specific details than “some things”? If so, were these “things” shared with America’s ally, Israel? 

Michael Morrell, a former deputy director of the CIA, has detailed a three-layer partnership between US and Israeli intelligence agencies: first, sharing analytic views; second, sharing intelligence collection; and, third, conducting joint operations.

Given the above, one may ask two questions: First, how much did US intelligence know; and, second, if US intelligence had detailed knowledge of the impending attack, was it shared?

Of course, we can only speculate on answers to these two questions. In the early 1970s when I worked at the NSA’s G6, a close friend was head of the Hebrew Section. He subsequently became head of the NSA’s Arabic Section. The man is an absolute linguistic genius. It is hard to believe that with the NSA’s masterful spy craft today, they wouldn’t have had more than “some things” about Hamas’s evil plans.

Investigative reporter Laura Loomer has most recently revealed that US intelligence in fact did have certain, advanced knowledge of the October 7 surprise attack and purposely withheld the knowledge from the Israelis. 

Why wasn’t the intelligence in US hands shared? The answer may lie in the secret dirty shenanigans of 50 years ago. These details are provided in my recently published book, Deceit of an Ally.■

Bruce Brill is an independent journalist and former US National Security Agency Middle East analyst.