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Failures in National Intelligence Estimates: The Case of the Yom Kippur War
Avi Shlaim
World Politics
, Vol. 28, No. 3. (Apr., 1976), pp. 348-380.
Stable URL:http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0043-8871%28197604%2928%3A3%3C348%3AFINIET%3E2.0.CO%3B2-H
World Politics
is currently published by The Johns Hopkins University Press.Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available athttp://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtainedprior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content inthe JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained athttp://www.jstor.org/journals/jhup.html.Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printedpage of such transmission.The JSTOR Archive is a trusted digital repository providing for long-term preservation and access to leading academic journals and scholarly literature from around the world. The Archive is supported by libraries, scholarly societies, publishers,and foundations. It is an initiative of JSTOR, a not-for-profit organization with a mission to help the scholarly community takeadvantage of advances in technology. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.http://www.jstor.orgMon Jun 25 18:46:56 2007
 
FAILURESINNATIONAL 
INTELLIGENCE
ESTIMATES: 
The
Case of
the
Yom
Kippur
War 
By
AVI
SHLAIM
A
FORMER Israeli Chief of Staff, Lieutenant-General Chaim Bar-Lev, divides strategic surprise or surprise at war into three types:surprise in method, surprise in place, and surprise in time.' Accordingto Bar-Lev, in October 1973 the only type of surprise achieved by theArabs concerned the timing of the attack. But it is arguable that Israelwas taken by surprise in all three spheres2 As far
as
the method ofwarfare is concerned, the Israeli armed forces were not adequatelyprepared for the dense deployment of antiaircraft and antitank mis-siles by the Egyptians and the Syrians, nor were they fully equipped foran amphibious crossing. As far as the place of the attack is concerned,Bar-Lev assumed that there could be no doubt that if the enemylaunched an attack, it would be on the defensive lines built by Israel.But it should be recalled that Israel's official theory of "secure borders"precluded the possibility of an attack. The theory assumed that theJune 1967 borders were so secure that an enemy attack was bound tofail, and that this would deter the enemy from launching a full-scalewar in the first place. Seen in this perspective, Israel was surprised notonly by the timing, but also by the method and place of the YomKippur attack. Military history offers few parallels for strategic sur-prise as complete as that achieved by Egypt and Syria on October 6,1973."In security matters," wrote Israel's Defense Minister Shimon Peres,"the problem of advance warning is
a
problem of life and death," quot-ing the example of America's investment of millions of dollars to gaina few additional minutes of ~arning.~srael's own defense doctrinewas based on maintaining a small standing force which could be rein-forced in
a
crisis by highly trained reserves through the operation of aswift and efficient system of mobilization. Advance warning was a
Ma'ariv,
I
August 1975.2This was argued by Major-General (Res.) Matityahu Peled in
Ma'ariv,
8
August1975.
3
Peres,
Hashlav Haba
[The Next Phase] (Tel-Aviv: HaSefer Publishers 1965),
114;
this and all following translations from Hebrew by the author.
 
349AILURES IN INTELLIGENCE ESTIMATES
crucial element in this conception; to ensure it, Israel developed anintelligence service of near-legendary competence. The strategic sur-prise attained by the combined Arab attack of October 6,1973, pro-vides a dramatic illustration of the momentous consequences which afailure in national intelligence estimates can have. It enabled the Arabsto dictate the opening moves in the war and to secure their initialsuccesses. More significantly, it radically changed the whole politicaland psychological balance of power in the Middle East to Israel's dis-advantage.When a nation suffers such setbacks as a result of being caught un-prepared, a search for scapegoats frequently takes place; the blame isoften laid at the door of the intelligence community. After the defeatof June 1967, for example, President Nasser dismissed the Egyptianintelligence chief although all the evidence indicates that a first strikeby Israel was an integral part of Nasser's strategy. Following the YomKippur War, the Israeli Director of Military Intelligence was removedfrom his post. (He was not dismissed from the army.) But the factthat failures in national intelligence estimates have taken place sofrequently and ubiquitously, and that they have not been confined toservices of low professional standing, would suggest that it is mislead-ing to attribute responsibility for mistakes of this kind to the incom-petence of the officers most directly concerned, and that there are deeperand more pervasive factors which need to be taken into account. In thepresent article I seek to use the Yom Kippur episode as a basis for anexploration of these basic factors which are conducive to incorrect eval-uation. The argument is based on the conviction that intelligencefailures display similarities that make it legitimate to generalize byusing a case study drawn out of a specific context to illuminate ques-tions of broader and continuing significance. The task must be ap-proached with the greatest caution, however, mindful of deTocque-ville's warning that misapplied lessons from history may be moredangerous than ignorance of the past.What the Israeli national intelligence failure has in common with alarge number of other historical examples is that it was not due to anydearth of information but to an incorrect evaluation of the availableinformation." This point cannot be over-emphasized: had the failure
"
The Chinese intervention in the Korean War, for example, came as a surprise tothe Truman Administration although the Chinese had explicitly stated that they wouldintervene if the American forces crossed the 38th parallel. From the study of the docu-ments,
H.
A. de Weerd has concluded that the evidence available to the policy makerswas good enough for reasonably vigilant statesmen to take seriously the threat of full-
of 00

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