American intelligence agencies essentially abandoned their spying efforts involving Hamas and other Palestinian terror groups in the wake of the September 11 attacks, according to a Wall Street Journal report. In the intervening years, the United States outsourced the task of monitoring Hamas almost entirely to Israel…and that decision may have contributed to the intelligence failure surrounding Hamas’ October 7 attack.
“In terms of intelligence failures, which really do lie mostly on Israel, I think we should also share some blame for missing this event,” retired CIA operations officer Marc Polymeropoulos told the Wall Street Journal. “Ceding the target to the Israelis now looks to have had consequences.”
The counterterrorism expert’s assessment was echoed by a number of other current and former intelligence officials, most of whom agree that America’s lack of attention may have enabled Hamas to conduct its deadly raid that led to hundreds of kidnappings and 1,400 Israeli deaths.
After the attacks on 9/11, American intelligence was primarily concerned with fighting al Qaeda, followed by the Islamic State in the next decade. Based on reports that the Gaza-based forces of Hamas had never directly threatened attacks on US soil, the CIA believed that Israel’s own robust spying capabilities would allow it to detect and deter any impending threats. In hindsight, intelligence sources say this may have been a mistake.
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At the time of the Hamas incursion, the CIA and other agencies had analysts monitoring events in Gaza but relied exclusively on Israel for data-gathering, human intel, and surveillance. For that reason, the Biden administration says that neither American nor Israeli officials were warned of the strike, despite the lengthy planning process that would have been involved.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu previously blamed the security failure on his country’s defense and intelligence services, but later issued an apology and echoed calls to avoid assigning blame until Hamas is defeated.
At the same time, American intelligence reports indicated that no new wars were expected in the Middle East anytime soon. In an essay published in Foreign Affairs Magazine just before the Hamas invasion, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan wrote that “the region is quieter than it has been for decades.”
“The Israeli-Palestinian situation is tense, particularly in the West Bank, but in the face of serious frictions, we have de-escalated crises in Gaza and restored direct diplomacy between the parties after years of its absence,” he wrote.
The Wall Street Journal notes that Sullivan updated the online version of his remarks in light of the invasion.
As Israel’s war with Hamas escalates and fears of a regional spillover grow, American intelligence groups are now calling for a reassessment of its approach to Palestinian terror groups like Hamas. As one former analyst said, “There should be one. If there isn’t, it’s foreign policy malpractice.”
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