EXPERT PERSPECTIVE / OPINION — Intelligence agencies are a country’s first line of defense, and this means the stakes surrounding their actions are always high. When an intelligence agency makes mistakes, people can die.
Many of my 37 years as an analyst and manager at CIA were spent working on the Middle East and terrorism, so I am acutely aware that intelligence agencies have the impossible task of being right a hundred percent of the time, while terrorists—like those that struck Israel last week—only have to get it “right” once.
This is not said as an excuse. It is understandable that many want to assign fault to intelligence organizations for their failure to foresee the attacks that occurred in Israel last week, although the fact is that the blame lies squarely with the terrorists who committed the atrocities.
There are clearly lessons to be learned from the horrid HAMAS attack. But I am also aware of the many unheralded instances when Israeli and US intelligence agencies prevented attacks. Or put another way, the myriad of times that they got it right. These successes should not be forgotten in any future reform.
The best intelligence agencies—among which I count Israeli services—are adaptable learning organizations, and I am confident that in the future there will be painful lessons drawn and incorporated across the entire intelligence cycle from collection to analysis. But this should not be their top priority right now.
The same people needed to meaningfully perform such work are currently trying to prevent future attacks, find hostages, and ready for more intense combat. They are also likely dealing with their own grief and anxiety. Given the high number of Israelis killed and wounded, almost everyone in the Israeli intelligence and security services knows someone who died or was wounded.
The fatalities in Israel are proportionally more than ten times the deaths of 9/11. And those Israelis who don’t know someone who died or was wounded on October 7, undoubtedly know a reservist who has since been called to action.
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There are only so many hours in a day, and managing competing priorities in a crisis is key. Those pushing Israeli intelligence for answers now on what went wrong, are unintentionally encouraging shallow answers and are detracting from the immediate work that needs to be done. I know this from personal experience.
In the aftermath of 9/11, Benghazi, and the fall of Afghanistan, many analysts were forced to focus backwards, pulling together binders of information on the warnings we gave, rather than looking ahead. This is so often the case that in my personal definition of analytic tradecraft—being able to explain why an analyst thinks what they think—I always add that it also means being able to explain why you thought what you thought years later when there is an investigation. Legislators and the press often fail to see these trade off’s not out of malice but differing priorities.
Once in the wake of a terrorist attack, I was asked by a Senator about remarks made on television by an Administration official. When I said that I had not watched the Sunday talk shows because I was at work and, along with my colleagues, focused on trying to prevent additional attacks and identifying the perpetrators, he expressed true bewilderment at our differing priorities, saying we lived in different worlds. He was right.
He swam in the world of public opinion, which is important in a democracy but isn’t usually forward looking in times of national tragedy. Onward is the first direction, on the other hand, intelligence officers must look in a crisis.
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History has shown us that “intelligence failures” usually are some combination of insufficient collection, analysis that goes too far or not far enough in making a call, and policy choices. Underestimating that adversaries like HAMAS, are also learning organizations who adapt also plays a part. As one of my mentors, former Acting Director of Central Intelligence John McLaughlin pointed out in The Cipher Brief last week, it is “always difficult to anticipate something the adversary is doing for the very first time and that exceeds all the capabilities it has demonstrated in the past.”
History has also shown that eliminating surprise is impossible, and that the only way intelligence analysts will always be right is to avoid making calls, which isn’t helpful to policymakers or warfighters.
I am confident that Israeli security services want to know what they could have done better, and they will be asking themselves hard questions. After 9/11, US intelligence officials – myself included – felt a deep sense of guilt and wanted to do our utmost to avoid future attacks. I know that my former Israeli colleagues, who have never shied away from a difficult conversation, feel the same obligation to always improve. Thoughtful and thorough inquiries take time and expertise. But, for right now, all intelligence and security hands are needed on deck to focus on more immediate tasks. If I were in their shoes, which every good intelligence officer humbly knows could easily be the case, I would be keenly aware that the key intelligence question today is not what went wrong but rather what will Israel’s adversaries and allies do now, and how can Jerusalem affect the decisions of both.
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