A senior White House official has stressed that the United States intelligence community did not know anything about Hamas’s plans to target Israel.
A senior White House official has stressed that, to his knowledge, the U.S. intelligence community wasn’t aware of Hamas’s plans to target Israel ahead of the terrorist group’s Oct. 7 attacks.
In a Dec. 3 interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” National Security Council Coordinator John Kirby claimed that the United States didn’t have “any advance warning” or “any knowledge” of Hamas’s attack plan, despite reports that imply otherwise.
Mr. Kirby’s statements come amid a report from The New York Times that Israeli officials had found Hamas’s plans for its surprise attack more than a year before it happened, citing documents, emails, and interviews as evidence. The U.S. and Israeli intelligence communities have shared intelligence in the past.
The NY Times also reported a document, specifically a 40-page blueprint code named Jericho Wall, that it claims shows that Hamas’s plan was circulated among Israeli military and intelligence officials. It alleged that Israeli experts dismissed the plan at the time as one that would be too difficult for Hamas to execute without help.
Mr. Kirby doubled down on his assertion that, to his knowledge, nobody in the U.S. intelligence community had access to the document before the attack, calling intelligence gathering a complicated activity that isn’t infallible.
“The intelligence community has indicated that they did not have access to this document, there’s no indications at this time that they had any access to this document beforehand,” he said.
“Intelligence is a mosaic, and sometimes you know you can fashion things together and get a pretty good picture; other times, you know there’s pieces of the puzzle that are missing.”
Not the Right Time to Play Blame Game
Hamas, recognized as a terrorist organization by the United States and other nations, initiated a surprise attack against Israel from the air, land, and sea on Oct. 7. Hundreds of Hamas terrorists poured out of the Gaza Strip into Israel, raiding civilian homes and military bases and killing at least 1,200 people, while taking hundreds more hostage.
