Post by Salem6 on Feb 22, 2004 10:40:30 GMT
Ghosts of 1973 still haunt Israel as its spies face Iraq probe, too
While the United States and Britain launch investigations into their intelligence services’ failures on Iraq, a special committee of Israel’s Parliament is putting the finishing touches to a seven-month probe of the Jewish state’s vaunted intelligence services which, on the face of it at least, were just as wrong as the American and British allies about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
But the Israeli lawmakers have an added wrinkle to worry about: allegations that Israel’s intelligence services provided the US with false information that Saddam possessed WMD because they wanted to encourage the Americans to attack Iraq and eliminate one of the Jewish state’s staunchest enemies without having to involve Israel.
Most of what the Israeli lawmakers conclude is expected to be classified, but sources close to the proceedings have already indicated that the report will note “serious shortcomings” in Israeli intelligence-gathering, especially in countries such as Iraq beyond the Jewish state’s immediate neighbors.
This could affect Israeli intelligence on Iran, which Israel sees as a major threat because of its nuclear arms and ballistic missile programs. Senior Israeli officials have warned that Tehran is within a year of reaching the “point of no return” in its nuclear efforts, that is to say, the point at which it will no longer need to depend on outside help. Such intelligence has deeply influenced US policymaking and if it were found to be flawed could cause great embarrassment to Israel and the US.
Some see these suspected imperfections in Israeli intelligence assessments as part of the lingering fallout from the intelligence failures that took Israel to the brink of disaster of the 1973 Middle East war and which has haunted the nation for the last three decades.
Amid great secrecy and considerable opposition from senior figures in the defense and intelligence establishments, the chairman of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Yuval Steinitz of the Likud Party, launched the Israeli investigation last summer after it became clear that contrary to the dire warnings of Israel’s intelligence community Saddam did not have WMD and did not use them against the Jewish state.
The investigating committee has held 50 sessions and some 70 witnesses have testified before it: including Prime Minister Ariel Sharon; Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz; Israeli Army chief of staff, Lieutenant General Moshe Yaalon; Military Intelligence director Major General Aharon Zeevi; Mossad director Meir Dagan; and Shin Bet chief Avi Dichter.
Steinitz insists that the investigation, which he heads, was necessary because “there has been no committee that has seriously investigated the intelligence services” since the commission set up after the near-disaster of the 1973 war. The final report by that commission, headed by the then-president of the supreme court, Shimon Agranat, published on Jan. 30, 1975, was scathing in its criticism of the inefficiency of Military Intelligence, known by the Hebrew acronym Aman in detecting the surprise attacks by Syria and Egypt.
Its main recommendation was to break Aman’s monopoly on the evaluation of intelligence and to introduce “pluralism in the various types of intelligence evaluations.” Top officials, like Moshe Dayan, were badly tarnished by the findings and senior intelligence officials were dismissed.
The perceived post-Cold War threats to Israel have undergone major shifts in recent years, particularly after Sept. 11, 2001, and the subsequent US-led “regime changes” in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the question of whether Israel’s intelligence establishment has not been able to keep pace with the changing security environment is causing considerable concern in Israel. This extends to its allies, particularly in light of European allegations that Israel exaggerated the Iraqi threat so the Americans and British would conveniently eliminate an Arab state that had fired ballistic missiles on Israeli cities in 1991, the first attacks on Israeli population centers since 1948.
One of the most vocal critics of the intelligence community is legislator Yossi Sarid, a member of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee who represents the dovish Meretz Party. He says that Israeli intelligence knew that Iraq had no WMD stockpiles and misled the Bush administration. Sharon’s office insists that Israel had doubts about Saddam’s weapons and advised Washington of that.
In the runup to the Iraq war, Israeli leaders warned of possible attacks with missiles carrying chemical or biological warheads and ordered a nationwide alert. Sarid says Israeli intelligence knew the threat “was very, very, very limited … It was known in Israel that the story that WMD could be activated in 45 minutes was an old wives’ tale. Israel didn’t want to spoil President Bush’s scenario, and it should have.”
Scott Ritter, a former top UN weapons inspector in Iraq, has also said that the Israelis overstated the Iraqi threat because they wanted to encourage the US and the UK to launch a war that would eliminate a threat to Israel. “As far back as 1995, Israel knew that Saddam Hussein had no capability to hit it with long-range missiles,” Ritter said in an interview with the Israeli Ynet website. Steinitz and others across the Israeli political spectrum insist that is untrue, although they acknowledge serious flaws in the intelligence community’s capabilities.
In the final analysis, there can be little doubt that Israel has benefited greatly from Sept. 11, 2001, and the US response to those events. The crushing of Saddam’s odious regime, the ravaging of Saudi Arabia’s alliance with the US, the isolation of Syria, Moammar Gadhafi’s amazing surrender of his nuclear arms program and Iran’s retreat on its nuclear ambitions in the face of international pressure have removed just about every strategic security the country faced.
There have been repeated allegations, even within the US, that all that was a key objective of the Bushite neocons, and had been long before Al-Qaeda struck and presented them with the opportunity to put their strategy into practice. More recently, new allegations have been surfacing that the ad hoc intelligence review cell made up of pro-Israel neoconservative hawks within the Bush administration, overseen by Undersecretary for Defense Policy Douglas Feith, prior to the March 2003 invasion of Iraq cooperated closely with Israel in pushing for the war against Saddam.
The entire team involved in the Office of Special Plans (OSP) championed by Vice-President Dick Cheney were political appointees and all are closely identified with Ariel Sharon’s right-wing Likud Party in Israel. Indeed, Feith’s law partner is a spokesman for the settler movement in Israel.
Whether there was intelligence linkage between the neocons in the Bush administration and the Sharon government or not remains to be conclusively determined. Still, domestic critics of Israel’s intelligence establishment contend that the data it provided the Americans to buttress their prewar assessment of Saddam’s WMD programs pointing to a threat that did not, in fact, exist damaged Israelis’ trust in their intelligence establishment and its credibility in the eyes of Israel’s allies and friends.
Shlomo Brom, an air force reserve brigadier general, intelligence specialist and a former deputy commander of the Israeli Army planning branch, believes there was a serious Israeli intelligence failure over Iraq, just as there was in the US and Britain.
In a report issued by the Jaffe Center for Strategic Studies in Tel Aviv in December, Brom wrote: “Israeli intelligence was a full partner to the picture presented by US and British intelligence about Iraq’s nonconventional capabilities … The failures in the war in Iraq point to inherent failures and weaknesses in Israeli intelligence and decision-makers. Similar failures could take place in the future if the issue is not fully researched and the proper conclusions reached.”
Brom wrote that Israeli intelligence chose to believe that Saddam had WMD, a “dogmatic concept” that was viewed with insufficient skepticism. He explained: “The intelligence agencies were taken over by a nondimensional view of Saddam that fundamentally described him as the embodiment of evil, a man in the grip of an obsession to develop weapons of mass destruction to harm Israel and others, without any other considerations … There was absolute indifference to the complexity of considerations that a leader like Saddam Hussein must have.”
The issue of the accuracy of Israel’s intelligence establishment in assessing threats to the nation has been highly emotive and sensitive since the failure to anticipate the attacks by Egypt and Syria in October 1973 that came within a hair’s breadth of defeating Israel.
Brom believes that the fallout from the intelligence disaster of 1973 was at least partially to blame for a flawed assessment of Iraq because since that time Israeli intelligence officials have tended to opt for the worst case scenario rather than be caught napping again.
Ed Blanche, a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, is a Beirut-based journalist who has covered Middle Eastern affairs for three decades. He is a regular contributor to THE DAILY STAR
www.dailystar.com.lb/opinion/21_02_04_c.asp
While the United States and Britain launch investigations into their intelligence services’ failures on Iraq, a special committee of Israel’s Parliament is putting the finishing touches to a seven-month probe of the Jewish state’s vaunted intelligence services which, on the face of it at least, were just as wrong as the American and British allies about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
But the Israeli lawmakers have an added wrinkle to worry about: allegations that Israel’s intelligence services provided the US with false information that Saddam possessed WMD because they wanted to encourage the Americans to attack Iraq and eliminate one of the Jewish state’s staunchest enemies without having to involve Israel.
Most of what the Israeli lawmakers conclude is expected to be classified, but sources close to the proceedings have already indicated that the report will note “serious shortcomings” in Israeli intelligence-gathering, especially in countries such as Iraq beyond the Jewish state’s immediate neighbors.
This could affect Israeli intelligence on Iran, which Israel sees as a major threat because of its nuclear arms and ballistic missile programs. Senior Israeli officials have warned that Tehran is within a year of reaching the “point of no return” in its nuclear efforts, that is to say, the point at which it will no longer need to depend on outside help. Such intelligence has deeply influenced US policymaking and if it were found to be flawed could cause great embarrassment to Israel and the US.
Some see these suspected imperfections in Israeli intelligence assessments as part of the lingering fallout from the intelligence failures that took Israel to the brink of disaster of the 1973 Middle East war and which has haunted the nation for the last three decades.
Amid great secrecy and considerable opposition from senior figures in the defense and intelligence establishments, the chairman of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Yuval Steinitz of the Likud Party, launched the Israeli investigation last summer after it became clear that contrary to the dire warnings of Israel’s intelligence community Saddam did not have WMD and did not use them against the Jewish state.
The investigating committee has held 50 sessions and some 70 witnesses have testified before it: including Prime Minister Ariel Sharon; Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz; Israeli Army chief of staff, Lieutenant General Moshe Yaalon; Military Intelligence director Major General Aharon Zeevi; Mossad director Meir Dagan; and Shin Bet chief Avi Dichter.
Steinitz insists that the investigation, which he heads, was necessary because “there has been no committee that has seriously investigated the intelligence services” since the commission set up after the near-disaster of the 1973 war. The final report by that commission, headed by the then-president of the supreme court, Shimon Agranat, published on Jan. 30, 1975, was scathing in its criticism of the inefficiency of Military Intelligence, known by the Hebrew acronym Aman in detecting the surprise attacks by Syria and Egypt.
Its main recommendation was to break Aman’s monopoly on the evaluation of intelligence and to introduce “pluralism in the various types of intelligence evaluations.” Top officials, like Moshe Dayan, were badly tarnished by the findings and senior intelligence officials were dismissed.
The perceived post-Cold War threats to Israel have undergone major shifts in recent years, particularly after Sept. 11, 2001, and the subsequent US-led “regime changes” in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the question of whether Israel’s intelligence establishment has not been able to keep pace with the changing security environment is causing considerable concern in Israel. This extends to its allies, particularly in light of European allegations that Israel exaggerated the Iraqi threat so the Americans and British would conveniently eliminate an Arab state that had fired ballistic missiles on Israeli cities in 1991, the first attacks on Israeli population centers since 1948.
One of the most vocal critics of the intelligence community is legislator Yossi Sarid, a member of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee who represents the dovish Meretz Party. He says that Israeli intelligence knew that Iraq had no WMD stockpiles and misled the Bush administration. Sharon’s office insists that Israel had doubts about Saddam’s weapons and advised Washington of that.
In the runup to the Iraq war, Israeli leaders warned of possible attacks with missiles carrying chemical or biological warheads and ordered a nationwide alert. Sarid says Israeli intelligence knew the threat “was very, very, very limited … It was known in Israel that the story that WMD could be activated in 45 minutes was an old wives’ tale. Israel didn’t want to spoil President Bush’s scenario, and it should have.”
Scott Ritter, a former top UN weapons inspector in Iraq, has also said that the Israelis overstated the Iraqi threat because they wanted to encourage the US and the UK to launch a war that would eliminate a threat to Israel. “As far back as 1995, Israel knew that Saddam Hussein had no capability to hit it with long-range missiles,” Ritter said in an interview with the Israeli Ynet website. Steinitz and others across the Israeli political spectrum insist that is untrue, although they acknowledge serious flaws in the intelligence community’s capabilities.
In the final analysis, there can be little doubt that Israel has benefited greatly from Sept. 11, 2001, and the US response to those events. The crushing of Saddam’s odious regime, the ravaging of Saudi Arabia’s alliance with the US, the isolation of Syria, Moammar Gadhafi’s amazing surrender of his nuclear arms program and Iran’s retreat on its nuclear ambitions in the face of international pressure have removed just about every strategic security the country faced.
There have been repeated allegations, even within the US, that all that was a key objective of the Bushite neocons, and had been long before Al-Qaeda struck and presented them with the opportunity to put their strategy into practice. More recently, new allegations have been surfacing that the ad hoc intelligence review cell made up of pro-Israel neoconservative hawks within the Bush administration, overseen by Undersecretary for Defense Policy Douglas Feith, prior to the March 2003 invasion of Iraq cooperated closely with Israel in pushing for the war against Saddam.
The entire team involved in the Office of Special Plans (OSP) championed by Vice-President Dick Cheney were political appointees and all are closely identified with Ariel Sharon’s right-wing Likud Party in Israel. Indeed, Feith’s law partner is a spokesman for the settler movement in Israel.
Whether there was intelligence linkage between the neocons in the Bush administration and the Sharon government or not remains to be conclusively determined. Still, domestic critics of Israel’s intelligence establishment contend that the data it provided the Americans to buttress their prewar assessment of Saddam’s WMD programs pointing to a threat that did not, in fact, exist damaged Israelis’ trust in their intelligence establishment and its credibility in the eyes of Israel’s allies and friends.
Shlomo Brom, an air force reserve brigadier general, intelligence specialist and a former deputy commander of the Israeli Army planning branch, believes there was a serious Israeli intelligence failure over Iraq, just as there was in the US and Britain.
In a report issued by the Jaffe Center for Strategic Studies in Tel Aviv in December, Brom wrote: “Israeli intelligence was a full partner to the picture presented by US and British intelligence about Iraq’s nonconventional capabilities … The failures in the war in Iraq point to inherent failures and weaknesses in Israeli intelligence and decision-makers. Similar failures could take place in the future if the issue is not fully researched and the proper conclusions reached.”
Brom wrote that Israeli intelligence chose to believe that Saddam had WMD, a “dogmatic concept” that was viewed with insufficient skepticism. He explained: “The intelligence agencies were taken over by a nondimensional view of Saddam that fundamentally described him as the embodiment of evil, a man in the grip of an obsession to develop weapons of mass destruction to harm Israel and others, without any other considerations … There was absolute indifference to the complexity of considerations that a leader like Saddam Hussein must have.”
The issue of the accuracy of Israel’s intelligence establishment in assessing threats to the nation has been highly emotive and sensitive since the failure to anticipate the attacks by Egypt and Syria in October 1973 that came within a hair’s breadth of defeating Israel.
Brom believes that the fallout from the intelligence disaster of 1973 was at least partially to blame for a flawed assessment of Iraq because since that time Israeli intelligence officials have tended to opt for the worst case scenario rather than be caught napping again.
Ed Blanche, a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, is a Beirut-based journalist who has covered Middle Eastern affairs for three decades. He is a regular contributor to THE DAILY STAR
www.dailystar.com.lb/opinion/21_02_04_c.asp