WHEN INTELLIGENCE FALTERS
By Avi Davis

When we think these days of faulty intelligence leading to a prolonged  military entanglement, one recent image comes to mind: the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq .   But exactly 35 years ago another failure of intelligence led to a confrontation that would  have a similarly long  lasting impact on the Middle East.

Throughout  September and early October, 1973,  Israel intelligence services had been  reported Egyptian  troop build ups on the Western bank of the Suez Canal to the government of Golda Meir.  Facing  the Egyptians across the canal were a series of Israeli fortifications, known as the Bar Lev Line and set in place following Israel’s lightening victory over Egyptian troops in the Sinai Peninsula, during 1967’s Six Day War.   On the Golan Heights in the country’s north, over 1600 Syrian tanks had massed below the Hermon Range.  The idea of a new coordinated attack by the two nations had, however, been dismissed by the IDF’s military intelligence service AMAN.   It was a matter of doctrine in Israeli intelligence circles that Syria would not attack without Egyptian support and that Egypt, although arming for war since its ignominious defeat by the Israelis six years earlier,  was not yet ready for such a new military  confrontation.

What, then, were the obvious military build ups in the south and the north all about? 
Eli Zeira, the new installed chief of intelligence, who was informed ( as his predecessors had been)  by a source close to Anwar Sadat, considered the Egyptian President unwilling to go to war until he had  fulfilled two ambitions: the receipt of sufficient  Soviet fighter bombers capable of neutralizing the Israeli air force and long range Scud missiles capable of hitting Tel Aviv.  Both were necessary to deter an attack on the Egyptian heartland, as had occurred in 1967.    Since Sadat had neither in his possession, Zeira considered an Egyptian attack ( and thereby  a Syrian invasion) as of very low probability.   Over the objections of Israel’s Chief of Staff, and dire reports from the field, he was able to convince Golda Meir’s government that the Arab troop deployments amounted to little more than maneuvers and war games.    

Ignoring what has happening on the ground and considering only military intentions was not a new phenomenon in the history of military intelligence.   In November and December, 1941, American military intelligence, aware of an ominous naval flotilla being readied in Japan, ignored the threats of an attack on the American fleet at Pearl Harbor.  At the time, the Navy was listening for a signal of intent to deploy that flotilla  while ignoring the reality of  the fleet’s positioning and movement.  Similarly, in 1914, British intelligence failed the British government in its assessment of German and Austrian troop deployments by focusing on the political  and diplomatic intentions of the German Kaiser and his High Command, assuming that none of the Great Powers intended to go to war.

For Israel, the failure to appreciate the approaching dangers, led to near catastrophic results.   When war broke out on the Day of Atonement, 1973  the Israeli military was unprepared and only possessed relatively  thin defenses on the Bar Lev Line and the Golan Heights.  Egyptian early successes in punching through the Bar Lev Line and advancing several miles into the Sinai Desert, shattered the IDF’s confident assessment of Arab tactical and strategic weakness and placed the Middle East conflict on an entirely new footing.  The rout of the Syrian attack in the north, which took several days and was only achieved with great casualties, has given the Israeli political establishment ever since, pause when asked to  rely exclusively on military  intelligence. 

It should be no news that  intelligence can often be dangerously refracted through doctrinaire thinking,  political bias or personal idiosyncrasy.  But that is often the case and one made by Douglas Feith in his recent book  War and Decision( Harper, 2008) .   As  Under Secretary of  Defense for Policy at the Pentagon, Feith has taken enormous heat  as one of the chief architects of the policy decision to invade Iraq.    Feith’s 500 page tome is a carefully documented  attempt to reveal  how that decision was made and identify the actors responsible for any errors or misjudgments.  In the course of the book, Feith reserves special venom for the failures of the intelligence community, whom, he feels, not only got the data wrong, but used bad information to hurt the Bush Administration politically.  Since a number of high level CIA officials opposed the President on an ideological level, they found it to their own political advantage to chastise the Administration over its own policy errors.  Once the war turned sour, they turned on Bush and through a series of leaks, claimed that Administration officials themselves had manipulated or distorted  the very information supplied by CIA operatives.

Of course Feith’s book is only his own view of events and  books written ( as there surely will be ) by State Department officials or members of the CIA itself, may contradict many of his claims.   Nevertheless, Feith makes an excellent point  that commentators who worry so much  about policy officials filtering or distorting intelligence, should be just as worried about intelligence officials who may undertake the same kind of filtering or distortions of their own.    His summation includes some vital recommendations to intelligence communities around the world in this regard, that all governments would be wise to heed:

1. Don’t pretend to know more than you know. ( The CIA apparently knew little about Iraq and made    
    up for its deficiencies with speculation)
2. Seek out important information ,even when it hard to obtain
3. Don’t scorn information from scholars, exiles and other open sources
4. Don’t be wedded to pre-conceptions
5. Oppose politicization of intelligence
6. Be honorable about government secrets and prevent leaks
7. Stand behind the government decisions and do not work against them.

These simple admonitions would normally be taken as givens in any modern democracy.  But to consider them par for the course is our mistake   Intelligence briefings, like all human communications, are  words spoken and written with a desire to influence the opinions, beliefs or understanding of intended recipients.  As the events of October 1973 prove, relying too earnestly on intelligence from one source, even one apparently trusted, can lead to dire consequences.   Accepting that all men and women possess prejudices and idiosyncrasies that can distort the information they gather, must therefore remain a key understanding of any modern day leader attempting to address the security issues of his nation. In a time of increasing  threats from rogue regimes and terrorist organizations using as many sources to obtain information and then maintaining an apparatus to process and vet that information, is mandatory.

The Western Word - An International Weekly Digest   10-10-2008