How Hamas Caught U.S. and Israeli Intelligence Unaware.

"Hamas's attack on Israel should be a wake-up call to U.S. intelligence services. That a terrorist attack of this magnitude -- with seismic implications for global security -- came as a surprise to many in Washington shows that we need to reassess our own operations sharply to ensure that America has a comprehensive threat picture that can provide early warnings and prevent national-security tragedies.

The Israelis will no doubt examine this lapse thoroughly. Several possible reasons come to mind for why Israel and its allies, including the U.S., failed to report on the exact nature, timing and scale of the attack.

Disinformation could have played a role in diluting Israeli intelligence. Hamas has years of experience with Israel's intelligence methods and strategic priorities, giving the terrorists the know-how to feed Israeli operatives false information. Over the past two years, Israel had seemingly developed a working relationship with Hamas on issues like humanitarian-aid deliveries and work permits for Gaza residents. That would have given Hamas operatives opportunities to communicate regularly with Israelis and perhaps gain the Israelis' trust by sharing accurate information on other threats from Gaza -- lending credibility to Hamas's deceptions about its own plans.

Yet with a terrorist operation of this scope, there had to be countervailing information available. Hamas planned and trained for the attack for at least several months and reportedly had input from outside supporters, especially Iran. It's hard to imagine that not a single intelligence source warned of the coming onslaught among hundreds of Hamas members and their supporters both inside and outside Gaza.

This then also looks to have been a failure of politicians' and intelligence officials' analysis. Conventional wisdom might have led them astray. During my tenure at the Central Intelligence Agency, assumptions that became so-called conventional wisdom were the root of analytical failures more often than not. The Israelis' working relationship with Hamas might have led to an incorrect belief that the threat from Gaza was under control. That belief could have led Israel to undervalue or misread intelligence suggesting that Hamas was planning, or even capable of, such an attack.

Some media reports have already posited that the Israelis received foreign intelligence warnings about the potential attack but dismissed them because of a "failure of imagination." But a well-placed spy makes imagination unnecessary. Washington in particular should ask why our spies didn't surface the threat to the extent that it couldn't be ignored. The answer is likely one that has sobering ramifications for American intelligence, too.

The reality is that human-intelligence collection -- in other words, the recruitment and use of spies -- has stagnated. The U.S. and its allies have ramped up resources for technological intelligence solutions such as signals intelligence and digital surveillance, leaving spy networks underfunded. The total number of field operatives who handle spies today for the U.S., its North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies and Israel is less than the number of sailors who staff a single aircraft carrier. And the players who compete in the Super Bowl get paid more a year than all the spies worldwide combined.

Expanding the size and funding of the U.S. human-intelligence program is the first step, but we also need to adapt our methodology. Unprecedented high-tech counterintelligence capabilities like drone and electronic surveillance, biometric identification and artificial intelligence make it virtually impossible for American officials to go undetected abroad. There's an urgent need for a much larger number of spy masters who can work with natural, unofficial cover in real businesses doing legitimate work. Washington can't rely only on a handful of high-level sources but should recruit at multiple levels and cast a much wider net. Sources who can organically rise through the ranks will eventually have access to more sensitive and valuable information.

Our tactical programs could also do with some changes. The departure from Afghanistan and Iraq makes U.S. kinetic targeting programs, which were essential when we had a presence on the ground, far less relevant. The staff and resources devoted to these programs should be refocused on collecting strategic information on how our adversaries' leaders are making key operational decisions.

The U.S. needs to take a fresh look at longstanding threats that might have slipped to the bottom of our national-security priorities and reinvigorate its intelligence programs. We can't be caught unaware again.

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Mr. Devine is a former acting CIA deputy director of operations and president of the Arkin Group, a New York-based international intelligence and investigative company. He is author of "Spymasters' Prism," which will be released in paperback in November." [1]

1. How Hamas Caught U.S. and Israeli Intelligence Unaware. Devine, Jack.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 20 Oct 2023: A.17.