| Talkback | |
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Title: | Reporting from the Front Line of Israel`s Secret War | |||
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| Name: | Joseph E . Post 3 | | |||
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| City: | Givatayim | State: | Israel | | |
| FP: There were major intelligence failures ahead of the Second Lebanon War in the summer of 2006. Are Israel and the West in a better place today? RB: We are today in a better place. What happened in Syria on September 6, when Israeli jets bombed a nuclear installation built by Iran and North Korea, was a sign that we are back in business. That operation was a combination of exact intelligence and a great operation by the Israeli Air Force. The Iranian threat was right in front of our eyes from the beginning, when Khomeini came to Tehran in 1979, and we-the West-preferred to look the other way. A problem for the Israeli intelligence community has always been that it is part of the general society and as such suffers from the same problems, such as the opportunism that leads gifted people to prefer to make more money than to work in intelligence. The Mossad has been suffering from organizational and human resources problems for a while now, and that is because there is no one above them to give them direction. There is the prime minister, but he does not have the time to give the agency the attention it needs. There is not even one effective authority in the country that oversees the Mossad`s activities continually and professionally. The intelligence gathered about Iran has gotten better in the past few years. The improvement began from when Meir Dagan became head of the Mossad and made Iran not only the agency`s top priority, but basically its only priority. The Mossad almost doesn`t get involved in other issues. There are achievements vis-à-vis Iran, but there are still huge holes [with] no solutions. FP: What type of feedback do you get from the defense establishment with regard to your reporting and your book? RB: No organization likes to be criticized, and most of the time the Mossad feels-as an organization-that the criticism is too harsh and that I publish too many secrets. In this book alone, 750 corrections to the manuscript were made by the military censorship. But inside the organization there are people who cooperate without being mentioned and getting credit, because they think that the citizens of the state of Israel deserve to know the truth. FP: What are you working on next? RB: If I had time, I would want to write a book on military and intelligence cooperation between Israel and Africa. Point of No Return is being published in English in May by Simon and Schuster/Free Press. The book will be called The Secret War with Iran and will be very different from the Hebrew version. It will include a number of operations and affairs that did not appear in the Hebrew book and which closely concern the European and American publics. For example, there is an extensive chapter on the abductions of hostages in Lebanon and the disclosure of the operational file on the man who was on top of [the FBI`s] "Most Wanted" list before Osama bin Laden, namely Imad Mugniyah, the supreme military commander of Hezbollah, who has the blood of hundreds of Americans and Frenchmen on his hands. It will also bare new details of the Iran-Contra affair that will be very embarrassing to George [H.W.] Bush. Interview: Yaakov Katz, military and defense correspondent At Haaretz Competitor .. http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=4068 |
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