Washington – The main conclusion of a new CIA report on US intelligence gathering during 1973’s Yom Kippur War is that Israel may have purposely downplayed its intelligence to side-step mounting pressure from the US to enter into peace talks.
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Haaretz (http://bit.ly/WORKl4) is reporting that the new study, “President Nixon and the Role of Intelligence in the 1973 Arab-Israeli War,” reveals very little in the way of new revelations, but instead attempts to clarify existing information.
The study cites CIA documents stating, “Since [Secretary of State and National Security Advisor Henry] Kissinger had been prodding Israel toward peace negotiations its leaders did not want, they may have deliberately understated their degree of alarm about a surprise attack for fear that the White House would push them all the harder towards such negotiations.”
Also of notable im portance is the study’s assessment of US intelligence failures both before and during the war. Reasons given for these failures include; an over-reliance on Israeli intelligence; preconceptions, with regard to the preparedness of Arab armies; and faith in diplomacy, which points to the failure of the CIA to thoroughly consider the ‘rationale’ of the parties involved in the war.
Wow. Some things never change.
More evidence that Kissinger was bad for Israel
Unfortunately, the Israeli leadership in 1973, were still thinking of how incompetent the Arab forces were in 1967. Its intelligence had no idea that the Egyptians were planning to breach the Sinai defenses with high pressure water hoses, and that they only planned to smash through the Bar Lev line, but eventually stop. Also, it had no knowledge of the new, hand held, anti-aircraft shoulder fired missiles, which the Egyptian soldiers, were equipped with. Over half of the tanks of the IDF in the Sinai were out of commission, even before the war started, as they had maintenance problems. Recently, I found out from a veteran of the Yom Kippur War, that the soldiers in the Sinai were not given enough food, and they had to depend on packages sent from home, to survive! Communications were also a problem. We will probably never know the extent to which EY was ill prepared for the Yom Kippur War.
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