Haaretz
August 8, 2004
Last week, just a few months after the special
investigative committee into the state of Israel's intelligence
preparedness before the war in Iraq published its unclassified report,
several people received the classified section of the report. It is
unfortunate that it was not the other way around - first the release of
the confidential report and only afterward, or at the same time, the
publication of the unclassified section.
The bottom line in the
report is that no "serious black holes" were discovered, as promised, in
Israel's intelligence community. It is impossible to come away from the
general report convinced that a sign has been posted to warn against the
danger that an intelligence assessment "could turn out in the future too
to be unreliable," as it says on page 13 of the unclassified report. Was
the intelligence indeed unreliable?
It may be hoped that the head
of Military Intelligence, Brigadier General Aharon Ze'evi-Farkash, will
soon present MI's position regarding the report. It cannot be ignored that
a rift has developed between the chair of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and
Defense Committee MK Yuval Steinitz, on the one hand, and Chief of Staff
Moshe Ya'alon and the army, on the other.
In a recent interview of
Steinitz published in Malam, a periodical on intelligence matters, he
bitingly accused the army, saying that "the democratic norms regarding the
intervention of the government and the parliament in security matters have
not been sufficiently assimilated by the Israel Defense Forces." Clearly,
military intelligence was wrong in its assessments on the eve of the war,
for example, in the view that Saddam Hussein might "run ahead" and attack
Israel, that is, preempt the American strike.
Another mistake
involved the estimate of the number of missiles that Iraq had. At first,
the estimate was 20-50 missiles, and later that appraisal was raised
(following pressure from air force intelligence) to 50-100 missiles. In
any case, it is clear that this was not the result of negligent
intelligence. There was a dearth of information on Iraq, especially
outstanding in the area of human intelligence (HUMINT) capabilities, which
falls under the responsibility of the Mossad.
The most serious
accusation made by the committee relates to the subject of Libya's nuclear
capabilities ("partial blindness," "a serious intelligence failure").
Paradoxically, it was in this area that an extraordinary complaint was
voiced. Chief of Staff Ya'alon and MI chief Ze'evi-Farkash maintain that
in their testimony they were not asked anything at all about Libya. They
are joined by former Mossad chief Ephraim Halevy, who in a letter to
Steinitz dated April 13 wrote: "I served as chief of the Mossad in the
years 1998-2002 and I hereby state that I was not asked even a single
question by the committee about Libya. The subject of Libya was reported
to, and debated by, the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee
before the appointment of the current chair. If he had examined the
minutes of the committee, he could have avoided publishing a mistaken
report."
Another astonishing aspect, which is not related directly
to the report, is that MI proposed to the Mossad that they investigate the
subject of Libya together. The current head of the Mossad rejected the
offer and carried out a separate investigation - the Mossad of the Mossad.
Yet another matter involves the recommendations made by the Steinitz
committee.
Some are reasonable, such as the formation of a
ministerial committee on intelligence, the appointment of a special
secretary on intelligence affairs for the prime minister, the
establishment of an academy of intelligence professions and the need to
strengthen the satellite system.
Other recommendations have a clear
tendency toward strengthening the Mossad at the expense of military
intelligence. This is the case regarding the special electronic
surveillance Unit 8200 and the strategic-national intelligence assessment.
Thought must be given to improving the determination of priority
intelligence requirements (PIR) for the intelligence establishment in
general, with the integration of the political echelon, or the
establishment of an advisory board in conjunction with Unit
8200.
But the situation today is that the Mossad is faltering - or
failing, in the view of others - in the area of HUMINT, terror prevention
and other roles. Instead of improving, we have recently been seeing the
agency's unfortunate blunders in New Zealand and Canada. In such a
situation, new tasks should not be added; instead, the Mossad should be
required to do its job properly.