“It appears, then, that the United States had a separate reporting stream it didn’t pass on to the Israelis…So now everyone is attempting to shift blame for the miscalculation of how messy the result would be, while leaving U.S. sponsorship for the author of the attack untouched.”
The D.C. blame game is about avoiding responsibility while protecting a policy that is written in blood
Lee Smith, TABLET October 16, 2023
The continuing proliferation of conflicting and contradictory stories leaked by U.S. intelligence services regarding what they knew—and, more importantly, didn’t know—about the planning for Hamas’ assault on Israel, is more than just a D.C. bureaucratic comedy act. Taken together, the profusion of leaks suggests there are people in offices and agencies across the Beltway who are worried they’ll be blamed for missing signals and human intelligence outlining plans for the largest one-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.
The gaps in U.S. knowledge of the attacks and Iran’s role must also be understood in the context of a separate but related intelligence scandal. As Tablet reported six days before the attacks, the Biden administration’s former Iran envoy Robert Malley supported and facilitated an Iranian spy ring and brought one of the clerical regime’s assets, Ariane Tabatabai, into the government. She is still at the Pentagon, where as chief of staff to the assistant director of defense for special operations, Christopher Maier, she holds top secret clearances. It’s hardly surprising then that the administration is eager to conceal Iran’s supporting role in the Hamas operation and clear the American spy services of any foreknowledge of the murderous incursion of the Iranian-backed terrorist group into southern Israel, no matter how unlikely such claims are in reality.
“We were not tracking this,” a senior U.S. military official told NBC News the day of the attacks. “There’s no particular reason why the U.S. would be training enormous intelligence assets on Hamas, which has never been a threat to us,” former U.S. diplomat Dennis Ross insisted. “It’s pretty hard to say this was a failure on our part. But I think it’s unmistakable that it’s an Israeli intelligence failure.”
Indeed, Israel’s own failures are plain and glaring. At least 1,400 Israelis were killed within Israel’s borders, and the country’s intelligence officials will have to answer to the Israeli public, and investigators, for the massive intelligence and operational failures that led to the slaughter of civilians on a massive scale.
But Ross is wrong: Hamas has long been an obvious threat to the United States and to American lives. Indeed, Hamas violence against Americans is why Congress passed the 2018 Taylor Force Act to prevent the United States from funding the “Pay for Slay” program by which hundreds of Hamas terrorists and their families benefited directly from over half a billion American taxpayer dollars that the United States funnels to the Palestinian Authority.
And the Palestinian terror group has killed Americans before the 30 it slaughtered on Oct. 7, including 3-month-old Chaya Zissel Braun who was murdered at a Jerusalem light rail stop in October 2014 when a Hamas member drove a car into the stroller pushed by the child’s mother.
It’s also not true the United States doesn’t train enormous intelligence assets on Hamas. As everyone now knows, the NSA collects on virtually everyone in the world. Further, the largest U.S. military base in the Middle East is in Qatar at Al Udeid Air Base, which is also the forward headquarters of U.S. Central Command. The Gulf emirate hosts Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh, and former chief Khaled Mashal, to the consternation of many who wonder why Washington lets Qatar get away with its double game. U.S. intelligence officials believe that it’s easier to keep tabs on Haniyeh in Qatar where they have plenty of visibility into what he’s doing. And yet according to U.S. officials, they weren’t tracking Hamas?
So what about the claims that the United States knew nothing about the attack—but that U.S. allies like Egypt were indeed aware, and warned Israel?
None of those stories add up, either.
Egypt is a U.S. listening post, which is why it was strange to hear that the Cairo government had given a heads-up about the attack to Jerusalem but not Washington. Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee Michael McCaul, R-Texas, said he was briefed on the Egyptian intelligence story. But if the account were true, he might have asked what the United States is getting in exchange for a $2 billion annual aid package if not previews of every piece of intelligence the Egyptian military and intelligence services collect. Obviously if the Egyptians did have something on a major Hamas operation designed to murder hundreds of Israelis, especially while Washington was in the midst of trying to broker peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia, they’d have given it to the Americans immediately. No, the purpose of that Egypt story was simple and obvious: to keep the media’s focus on Jerusalem’s failures, not Washington’s.
Yet ad hoc ass-covering by U.S. intelligence bureaucrats raises a larger complication: If the United States was really blindsided by the attack, as Biden administration officials claimed, why are they out there arguing against the idea that the Iranians played an operational role? “We have not yet seen evidence that Iran directed or was behind this particular attack,” said Secretary of State Antony Blinken. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said that the administration was going to take another look at its collection to see what they had, suggesting that new information could turn up in the coming days and weeks.
@Bear Then, why did you bring it up? We know that Russia is allied with Iran and that weapons that come into Ukrainian hands, whether captured or donated, often wind up on the black market so, it is to be expected that some of the enemy’s weapons will be from Russia. But, unlike the rest of the axis of evil, Russia didn’t necessarily have to be a player as, no longer being Communist, it didn’t have an axe to grind against us until we gave it no choice. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Moreover, the U.S. took from the weapons in storage in Israel to send to Ukraine and it was reported that it was running low on supplies just before the Hamas invasion.
Is it still about the war between the Rothchilds and the Rockefellers!
An interesting story on GETTER by someone by the username: cia36!!!
In the meantime, the war of the West against the Jews goes unabated as the article from Lee Smith on Tablet indicates.
@Seb, I am focused on Israel and not Ukraine at the moment. I do not want to spend time debating that conflict. I think I accurately state that some of the commentators here lean towards Russia and against Ukraine. I am sure I will not change their minds including yours. You will not change mine either. By the way most of my family was killed in the holocaust. I am a child of Holocaust survivors.
I am opposed to Russia and think they are danger to the free world including Israel, Europe and USA. I hope they lose the war. I have Ukrainian friends who have relatives inside Ukraine and to be understated they want Russia to lose. I am on the side of my Ukrainian friends.
US Navy destroyer in Red Sea shoots down missiles fired by Houthis in Yemen, official says
It’s said the Iranian-backed Houthis’ missiles were not aimed at the ship. They were shooting northward. The USA ships also downed drones sent by the Houti’s.
@Bear So, are you opposed to a ceasefire in Ukraine? Do you want to continue pouring billions of dollars into this war?
@ Michael Russia made weapons have also been found in use against Israel. They are part of the AXIS of enemies which includes Hamas, Iran, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, Houtis.
Inside the arsenal: Iranian-sourced weapons used in Hamas and Islamic Jihad’s Israel assault
https://observers.france24.com/en/middle-east/20231013-inside-the-arsenal-iranian-sourced-weapons-used-in-hamas-and-islamic-jihad-s-israel-assault
Hi, Felix. I’ve never heard of wsws.org (World Socialist Web Site) before, but I imagine you read it quite a lot. Of course, you call them “Left Revisionist” and “Stalinist”, bringing me back to the Vietnam War and Great Cultural Revolution days during the days of the Nixon administration. Let me grab a couple of their headlines:
1. AOC backs US funding of Israeli missile defense
In an interview on CNN, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said she no longer had any reservations about US military aid to Israel.
Patrick Martin•13 hours ago
So, as Israel backers, we’re all now “in bed” with AOC. I never imagined THAT would happen! Let me see what President Trump has to say about that…
https://rumble.com/v3q066j-aocluvstrump.html
Moving right along,
2. Mass opposition emerges to Sir Keir Starmer’s support for Israeli war crimes as UK Muslims desert Labour Party
Starmer’s support for Israeli war crimes has aroused mass opposition and 10 resignation of Muslim Labour councillors.
Robert Stevens•21 hours ago
I take that to mean, that Labour backs Israel? I want to cross-check this later. Meanwhile,
3. Biden declares total support for Israel’s destruction of Gaza
…right in there with you, me and AOC. Elsewhere, Communist China (who has been implicated as the puppeteer of Iran, who is the puppeteer of HAMAS) seems to get a clean bill of health:
4. China marks ten years of Belt and Road Initiative
11 hours ago
Be it far from Chairman Xi to make war! He’s got his construction hat on, building belts and roads (and signing Molotov-Ribbentroff deals with Putin). Lastly,
5. Sri Lankan IYSSE public lecture: An Introduction to Historical Materialism
12 hours ago
Sri Lanka? Wasn’t that the bailiwick of the Trotskyites, back in the day? This is a walk down Memory Lane! OK — the British Labour Party. Let me see if I can find an angle from, say, Nigel Farage and the Brexiteers:
https://twitter.com/i/status/1711700673979425276
OMG! I’ve stumbled upon a British election! Total confusion.
From inside the Biden Government
These turns and new vital information about Biden and his NeoCon forces like Nuland
SHOWS
How wooden and behind the curve and politically stunted the Kremlin Stalinists are
All the Stalinists and left revisionists Fascists especially wsws.org must answer their crimes against Jews.
I have much more to say connected to THE HOLOCAUST IN UKRAINE in regard to all these information developments
Hi, EvRe
All the lies that have been spread about Israel’s intelligence failure were spread for the purpose of hiding the fact that the US knew of the war in advance, Iranian spies were working and spying for Iran from inside the Biden government, and the US was funding an organization responsible for destroying Israeli intelligence from Lebanon.
The goals were/are to
(1) destroy Israel’s ability to prevent an attack on their own soil
(2) destroy Netanyahu politically by a surprise attack that the US could have prevented
(3) destroy Israel
(4) show the world that Islam is superior to Judaism and Christianity
(5) Turn the land of Israel over to the Palestinians
(6) Hide the fact that the US government through Iranian agents and through the State Department conspired and are conspiring TO THIS DAY with Iran and Hamas to destroy Israel
No kidding.
The FBI, CIA and the rest of our intelligence agencies have been focussed on investigating and throwing in prison American PTA moms, Trump supporters and people looking for the truth in our elections.
Meanwhile, a Pro-Hamas mob has taken over our capitol. There is a war going on, after a fashion; but it is better described as a massive, diabolical crime.
God is not mocked. What a man sows, he shall reap.