Interview reveals state of mind of Israeli intelligence prior to October 7 attack
April 1, 2024 4 Comments
ON MARCH 23, CHANNEL 12 of Israeli television aired a remarkable interview with Sassi Elya, the former director of technology at the Israel Security Agency (ISA). Better known by the acronyms Shin Bet or Shabak, the ISA is Israel’s domestic security service. The interview had initially been scheduled for broadcast as part of the evening news on October 7, 2023. However, its airing was canceled due to the attack on Israel by Hamas, which occurred that morning.
But on March 23, after about 5 months, Channel 12 aired the original interview with Elya. The retired official spoke with glee about the advanced technological capabilities developed by the ISA in order to prevent terrorist attacks against Israel. Elya said Israeli intelligence had built a unique system, known as “the Tool”, which allegedly provided intimate knowledge about the life of every Palestinian living in the West Bank and Gaza. This technologically advanced surveillance system allegedly monitored every move of its targets, all for the purpose of preventing potential terrorist attacks against the Jewish state. Elya claimed that, as a result of this advanced technological system, there was no chance that Israel would be surprised by Palestinian militants. This system was so advanced, he said, that intelligence agencies from all over the world were coming to Israel to learn about it.
Thanks to Channel 12, we can now examine Elya’s interview retrospectively, and especially in light of the ISA’s poor performance on October 7, as well as its failure to warn Israeli authorities about Hamas’ preparations for the attack. Notably, Elya was interviewed again for the same television program. Predictably, he admitted that his prior assessment had been wrong and regretted being so overly confident about the technology.
This case demonstrates the overestimation by Israeli intelligence of its own capabilities, because of arrogance and over-confidence. This approach refutes the basic premise of intelligence work: be skeptical and be modest. Furthermore, this case highlights that Israeli intelligence agencies overly relied on technology (SIGINT) in the lead-up to October 7, while seemingly neglecting the low-tech activity of gathering information through human intelligence (HUMINT).
The system that Elya described in his initial interview as the ultimate counterintelligence tool was reportedly criticized internally by some in the ISA for gathering huge amounts of information without offering sufficient analytical capability. This imbalance between collection and analysis can render an entire surveillance system practically useless. The bottom line is that, almost by accident, we are now aware of the state of mind that the ISA was in before the sudden attack by Hamas on October 7, which cost so many lives as a result of the ISA’s complacency.
► Author: Avner Barnea | Date: 01 April 2024 | Permalink
Dr. Avner Barnea is research fellow at the National Security Studies Center of the University of Haifa in Israel. He served as a senior officer in the Israel Security Agency (ISA). He is the author of We Never Expected That: A Comparative Study of Failures in National and Business Intelligence (Lexington Books, 2021).
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Austria: Arrest raises broader questions about counterintelligence capabilities
April 10, 2024 by intelNews 6 Comments
Ott’s arrest came several years after intelligence was first shared with Austria by Western partner services —allegedly the Central Intelligence Agency— that reportedly date from as early as November 2017. Back then, Ott allegedly received classified material from his service’s email address to his personal Gmail account. However, Peter Gridling, director of the BVT from 2008 until its dissolution in 2021, stated in a recent interview that the ensuing investigations did not yield actionable results that could be used in criminal proceedings. This statement is highly interesting, as Gridling filed accusations about Ott with the State Prosecutor’s Office himself, and would hardly have done unless he had access to hard evidence. Ott was consequently removed from the BVT and placed in Police Academy Austria (SIAK), which is responsible for training police officers and conducts research related to police and domestic security.
Nevertheless, according to media reporting, Ott seems to have kept and illegally used certain forms of identification that presented him as a police officer. He is also alleged to have maintained access to several police databases and to have retained his network of trusted informants that provided him with intelligence.
These included contacts in friendly foreign police services, whom Ott knew from his time as a liaison officer in Italy and Turkey. According to Gridling, these contacts were unaware that Ott had been removed from the BVT under suspicion of being unreliable and potentially even working for Russia. They therefore continued to help him when asked. Ott allegedly deceived his contacts by claiming that he needed information on cases relating to different kinds of extremism. As it turned out, according to the leaked arrest warrant, several of the individuals referred to by Ott as “suspects” in terrorism investigations were in fact Russian dissidents or intelligence defectors who were living as protected persons in Austria and elsewhere outside Russia.
It appears highly probable that Ott also had people inside the Austrian bureaucracy, including former colleagues in the BVT, who continued to provide him with information and assistance, even after the first allegations against him arose in 2017. As of now, at least one other officer from LVT Vienna (the state unit of the BVT) has been found to have illegally provided Ott with Information. It is likely, given the publicly available descriptions of Ott’s activities, that other individuals may be implicated. It also remains to be seen whether individuals involved in this case were able to join the BVT’s successor agency, the new Directorate of State Protection and Intelligence (DSN). Read more of this post
Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Analysis, Austria, BVT (Austria), counterintelligence, Egisto Ott, espionage, intelligence reform, Jan Marsalek, Office for the Protection of the Constitution and Counterterrorism (Austria), Paul Schliefsteiner