Foreign Correspondence

[thepennyking]

How Quickly-Lawmakers Rebuke Israeli Intelligence Services Over Iraq
By GREG MYRE

Published: March 29, 2004


ERUSALEM, March 28 — A parliamentary subcommittee on Sunday delivered a rare criticism of Israel's intelligence services, saying the agencies overestimated Iraq's weapons programs before the beginning of the war because they could not obtain "hard facts."

The subcommittee on Israel's intelligence agencies cited the same kinds of apparently inaccurate assessments on unconventional weapons that have also prompted inquiries in the United States and Britain.

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The lawmakers said they found no evidence that Israel's intelligence services intentionally misled the country's political leaders. They also noted that Israeli assessments did not play any significant role in the decision by the United States and Britain to go to war in Iraq.

"The most serious mistake was that we were not able to form a solid system for assessing Iraq's capabilities," said Yuval Steinitz, the chairman of the subcommittee and a leading member of the rightist Likud Party, which is led by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

Despite Israel's vaunted reputation for gathering intelligence, particularly in the Middle East, Mr. Steinitz acknowledged that the United States and Britain were better positioned to evaluate Iraq.

With powerful satellites, the ability to send planes over Iraqi territory at will and troops on Iraq's border before the war, the United States and Britain had substantial intelligence advantages, Mr. Steinitz said.

The subcommittee found that Israel's intelligence had been strong in monitoring Iran's nuclear program but failed to detect Libya's nuclear efforts, which Libya says it has now abandoned.

"For Israel, it is intolerable that an Arab country like Libya can develop a nuclear program without the intelligence services providing current, up-to-date information," Mr. Steinitz said.

Though the report did not harshly criticize specific individuals or agencies, it was clear the findings were directed primarily at the Mossad, the external intelligence service, and the military's intelligence wing.

Israel was an enthusiastic supporter of the invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein, regarded as one of the country's most serious threats.

In Israel, the faulty intelligence estimates contributed to government decisions to spend tens of millions of dollars to supply gas masks to the entire population and to inoculate 17,000 emergency workers with the smallpox vaccine.

In the Persian Gulf war in 1991, Iraq fired 39 Scud missiles with conventional warheads at Israel, causing damage but relatively few serious casualties. Israel feared a similar assault last year, with the possibility of chemical or biological weapons packed in the warheads.

The committee's report did not include classified findings that are being presented to the government. But the subcommittee cited several specific flaws in Israeli intelligence.

After the first gulf war, Western governments stated that Iraq still possessed an estimated 25 Scud missiles. As the war approached last year, Israeli intelligence estimated that Iraq had 50 missiles, and then raised the figure to 100, Mr. Steinitz said at a news conference.

The subcommittee found "no information to support this escalation," he said.

Information sharing among allies sometimes produces an information loop in which speculation just keeps getting passed on, he said. "Israel gave information to foreign intelligence services, which they used for their own purposes," Mr. Steinitz added. "Then it comes back around to Israel without any substantiation from the field."

A leftist lawmaker, Yossi Sarid, a critic of Mr. Sharon's government, has alleged that Israel knew Iraq had no unconventional weapons but did not tell the United States because Israel wanted the war to proceed.

Mr. Steinitz rejected that claim, saying that any mistakes "were made in good faith."

However, one opposition member of the subcommittee, Haim Ramon, issued a dissenting opinion and attacked both Israel's intelligence gathering and the government's handling of it.

"Just as British and U.S. intelligence failed, Israeli intelligence failed," Mr. Ramon said. "Unfortunately, I think we exaggerated the threat."

While Israel's prewar assessment of Iraq appeared to be generally in line with the United States', Mr. Steinitz cited at least one difference.

The United States claimed that Mr. Hussein was trying to rebuild his nuclear program, "but this was not the claim of Israeli intelligence," Mr. Steinitz noted.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/29/international/middleeast/29ISRA.html?ex=1081227600&en=16d7010d...