Another Mossad mess up

A year ago, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with top US officials and gave them information which stunned them. Netanyahu told the Americans that Iraq was much closer to manufacturing nuclear arms than had been thought. Netanyahu relied on a briefing that had been given by Uzi Arad, a high-ranking Mossad agent who subsequently was appointed to be the Prime Minister’s political adviser.

The story, reported in part by Gulf Today on Sunday, was first broken by Israel's Channel 2 on Friday night. It is now believed that Arad pressured Netanyahu into giving the Americans the information. “That is not what is known to us,” the Americans replied. “We have other information.” But Netanyahu gave the Americans categorical insistence on the authenticity of his information saying it was "reliable and based upon good sources.”

The US officials made urgent calls to the CIA, asking how was it that they were trying to dispel anxieties about the Iraqis while the Israelis know that Iraq was close to developing nuclear arms? Then it was the CIA director’s turn. His rage boiled over. He called his Israeli Mossad counterpart and inquired how was it that they had such hot information about the Iraqis and were concealing it from him. The Mossad’s reply was muddled. The military intelligence corps also didn’t have solid information that could confirm Netanyahu’s judgment.

“They started to scratch their underwear, trying to salvage our reputation,” one senior intelligence official was quoted as saying in Sunday's Hebrew papers, “but in the end we had no choice and we were compelled to tell the Americans that the information involved inconclusive evaluations alone.” After the error was revealed, senior intelligence officials were sent to Washington to apologize and correct the faulty information.