- JERUSALEM (Reuters) -- Israel
overestimated Iraq's military capabilities but the miscalculation in no
way influenced the U.S. decision to topple Saddam Hussein, a parliamentary
inquiry found Sunday.
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- It was rare public criticism of the secret services in
Israel, issued even as Britain and the United States -- partners in the
Iraq invasion -- conduct their own investigations into intelligence failures
which preceded the war.
-
- The Knesset Subcommittee on the Secret Services also
assailed Israeli intelligence as slow to pick up on Libyan leader Muammar
Gaddafi's weapons of mass destruction program until shortly before he abandoned
it in December.
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- "The military and political echelons are responsible
for an intelligence foul-up regarding Iraq and Libya," the panel said
in the 80-page report calling for an overhaul.
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- Officially at war with Saddam, its avowed enemy, Israel
shared intelligence with Washington, its closest ally, before last year's
invasion. Then, as now, it played down its cooperation to avoid deepening
Arab ire at the campaign.
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- Yuval Steinitz, a lawmaker from the right-wing ruling
Likud party who led the inquiry, said Israeli input played "a very
minor role" in Washington's prewar planning.
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- "The American and British intelligence services
had much better access to Iraq by simply sitting in Kuwait and being able
to fly almost freely over Iraqi soil," Steinitz told reporters.
-
- Having failed to uncover weapons of mass destruction
in Iraq, the United States and Britain have been at pains to defend the
assessments that drove them to war.
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- SNOWBALL EFFECT
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- The report complained of a snowball effect in intelligence
sharing, whereby some Israeli assessments, analyzed by U.S. counterparts,
eventually found their way back to Israel in repackaged form.
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- "It is not inconceivable that (such) analyzes had
a bolstering and authenticating effect as though authoritative," said
the report, parts of which were kept classified.
-
- Before the hostilities, Israel issued its citizens with
gas masks for fear Iraq would strike with non-conventional missiles --
an escalation of its 39 Scud salvoes in the 1991 Gulf war.
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- After the U.S. invasion passed without attack on Israel,
the army came under criticism for having ordered the public to put protective
plastic sheeting on windows and open sealed gas mask kits at a replacement
cost of millions of dollars.
-
- The subcommittee widened its probe beyond Iraq after
the U.S.- and British-brokered disarmament pledge by Gaddafi caught Israel
by surprise. Last October, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said Libya was seeking
nuclear weapons.
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- The Steinitz report urged better coordination between
the Mossad, which carries out espionage and counter-terrorism operations
abroad, and Military Intelligence, charged with keeping an eye on the armed
forces of hostile states.
-
- Leading Military Intelligence's efforts is a signals
interception unit known as 8200. New Yorker magazine recently said the
unit tipped off the United States on Iran's procurement of nuclear know-how
from Pakistan.
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- The subcommittee report suggested 8200 be streamlined
and upgraded as a civilian unit.
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- U.S. officials declined comment on the findings. A spokesman
for Sharon, who oversees secret services, said the report "will be
taken into consideration."
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