Friday morning, Oct. 5, 1973. Yom Kippur eve. An emergency meeting is convened at the offices of Defense Minister Moshe Dayan. It is the second of five emergency meetings to be held that morning. Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. David (Dado) Elazar, his deputy Maj. Gen. Israel (Talik) Tal, Military Intelligence chief Eli Zeira, advisers and aides all crowd into Dayan's office. The winds of war are blowing in from the open window, and the already high tension is exacerbated by the constant influx of reports indicating that Soviet experts and their family members had been evacuated from Egypt and Syria the night before. The hasty, late night evacuation bodes badly for Israel, regarding the Egyptians' and Syrians' designs on war. Aerial photo intelligence also suggests that the Egyptian army is undergoing unprecedented preparations.
At some point during the emergency meeting, Dayan suddenly raises his head from the documents piled up on his desk and asks Zeira: "There is nothing unusual in all the chatter on the Egyptian lines-"
Zeira replies: "Totally quiet."
When Dayan asks about chatter, he is referring to special, extremely valuable listening devices installed by Israel, probably by the General Staff Reconnaissance Unit (Sayeret Matkal), on the Egyptian side of the Suez Canal. These devices have been referred to by a plethora of nicknames: "the special means of collection", "the special sources" or even "suspenders" as the Military Intelligence unit called them. To the handful who knew they existed, especially among Israel's decision makers, they were known as Israel's "insurance policy" -- a nickname that later also appeared in the report compiled by the Agranat investigative commission, which investigated the failures leading up to the Yom Kippur War.
Even now, 40 years after the war broke out, it still causes controversy: what once appeared clear cut is now being re-opened for discussion. When and how were the "special means of collection" used on the eve of the Yom Kippur War? Why were the decision makers so sure that they could completely rely on these special means to supply sufficient warning that would allow them to properly prepare for war? Could they really change the course of history in October 1973 and make the IDF commanders and the political echelon in Israel realize ahead of time that war was inevitable-
At the beginning of 1972, it already became clear that the IDF needed to improve its intelligence capabilities in a way that would provide effective warnings on the Egyptian front. In the summer of that year, when then-Prime Minister Golda Meir visited the base that housed Military Intelligence's Unit 848 (which evolved into what we know today as Unit 8200, the Intelligence Corps' Central Collection Unit) in Umm Hashiba in Sinai, the unit commander, Brig. Gen. Yoel Ben Porat, promised her that she could count on an adequate, timely warning. His promise rested on the "special means of collection."
American journalist and author Howard Blum wrote in his book "The Eve of Destruction" that Elazar relied on intelligence provided by "the crown jewel of the nation's electronic espionage network."
In the book, which was published in the U.S., Blum talks about the "series of battery-operated devices attached to phone and cable connections buried deep in the sand outside Cairo." He explains that when Unit 848 "sent the signal to a separate transmitter hidden underground not far from the cables, the devices went 'hot.' In real time, operators in Israel could hear not only what was said over the telephone and cable lines, but could also eavesdrop on conversations in the rooms where the telephone and telex consoles were located."
"There were, however, risks involved in using such electronic bugs," Blum writes. "A diligent enemy might 'sweep' the premises, discover the microphones, and rip them out. Or if they were cunning, begin planting disinformation. Another problem was that these high-powered bugs ran on a battery pack that had a relatively short life span. Replacing the batteries in enemy territory would be a technically complex and dangerous mission and would need to be done by a special commando force, and success could not be assured." According to Blum, the commando force who would be tasked with the mission would be the paratroopers reconnaissance unit, but other sources indicate that it actually would have been Sayeret Matkal.
"The special means of collection didn't yield strategic intelligence," says Col. (res.) Uri Naaman -- a young first lieutenant in the Military Intelligence unit in those days -- who was very well acquainted with the information collected from the special means. "There was no gold there, but it was enough to give us the ability to infiltrate and feel out what was happening on the other side, beyond the smokescreens and the Egyptian disinformation."
The "special means of collection" proved valuable as early as May 1973, when the Egyptians carried out a drill called "Tahrir 23", which prompted the Israeli side to prepare for war. Israel's listening capabilities provided testimony that this was a drill and not actual war, and the experience gave the higher defense echelons the confidence that the special means were capable of providing at least a 48-hour warning in the event of war.
But shortly afterward, in the summer of that year, there was a malfunction in the system and the Egyptians apparently discovered certain Israeli equipment, though it wasn't directly linked to the special means of collection. From that moment on, the means were used with extreme caution, and supreme measures were taken to avoid their detection. Therefore, starting in June of 1973, they were used only intermittently. A maintenance test was done every few weeks, only for a few hours. Due to their strategic significance, the authority to activate the special listening devices was placed solely with Zeira, who headed Military Intelligence.
Professor Uri Bar Joseph of the International Relations Department at Haifa University has for years researched the intelligence breakdown on the eve of the Yom Kippur War. In his understanding, the key to deciphering the surprise attack on Yom Kippur day lies with the listening devices.
"Israel's intelligence failure in 1973 is one of the biggest intelligence failures in history," he says. He doesn't attribute the massive failure to arrogance or complacency on the part of the decision makers, but rather to their certainty that they would have at least a 48-hour warning before the war erupted -- enough time to prepare the IDF for war both on the Egyptian and the Syrian fronts.
The week prior to the war was critical. On October 1, a Monday, the Egyptian army began the "Tahrir 41" exercise, concealing their preparations for an actual attack. According to Bar Joseph, the Military Intelligence echelon directly subordinate to Zeira, including the head of research Brig. Gen. Aryeh Shalev, collection department director Col. Menachem Digli and Unit 848 commander Ben Porat, demanded that the devices be activated and made operational. But Zeira refused "both because he was afraid of what would happen to them (the listening devices) and because he was convinced that no war would break out."
For example, upon discovering that the Soviet Union was evacuating nationals on the day before the war, Zeira confessed that "in my view, the Soviet thing is the most problematic and serious." But he still concluded by saying "I don't see the Egyptians and the Syrians attacking us."
Col. (res.) Yossi Langotsky, who served as the commander of the Military Intelligence Directorate's operational technology unit (in charge of operating the listening devices) confirms Bar Joseph's sentiments. "I can personally attest to the fact that during the week prior to the war Digli and Ben Porat approached Zeira several times and asked for his authorization to activate the devices, but to no avail. To assuage Zeira's concerns over the safety of the devices, Digli told him that 'after all, it is for emergency situations and times of uncertainty like this that these devices were designed.' There are no words to describe the height of Zeira's arrogance. Despite the terrible implications of a possible surprise attack, he stuck to his misguided conception and avoided activating the devices that were designed precisely to protect against such a surprise," Langotsky says angrily.
On the other hand, the officials to whom Zeira was himself subordinate -- the IDF chief of staff and the defense minister -- were convinced that the assessment indicating a low likelihood of war relied entirely on intelligence collected by the special devices.
"Hanoch Bartov, Elazar's biographer, said that the IDF chief of staff was convinced, up until the start of the war, and even shortly afterward, that Zeira had activated the special means of collection," says Adam Raz, a doctoral student in the Political Science Department of Tel Aviv University, who researched the topic. "Ben Porat recounted a conversation he had with Elazar, in which he said that between October 1 and 6 he had asked the Military Intelligence chief twice if all the sources were being utilized, and the answer was affirmative. Digli has also said in the past that Elazar had told him after the war that 'when I asked Eli (Zeira) if, when he says that there is a low likelihood, he is relying on those sources (the listening devices) as well, and his answer was affirmative.'"
Later, Elazar explained to Ben Porat: "the false information that I received about the activation of the means confused me even more, because I knew what they were capable of. If there was no intelligence of impending war coming from them (the devices), that means that everything is okay. It is now very clear to me that I was not told the truth."
When facing the Agranat commission, Elazar testified that "the incident (failure to activate the listening devices) was not decided by me nor was it brought to my knowledge I learned only after the war that the [ ] was not turned on in those days. That is precisely what it was made for -- to give us warning. That was its sole function, and in essence I did not know that it was turned off."
Israel Galili, who served as a minister in Golda Meir's cabinet and was considered the prime minister's close associate, also testified before the Agranat commission that he was convinced that the listening devices had been used, and could be relied upon. "I knew about the great technological accomplishments they fueled our self-confidence, especially since these sources served us game changing, valuable intelligence multiple times in the past. It undoubtedly gave us the confidence that there would be a warning."
The second IDF chief of staff Yigael Yadin, a member of the Agranat commission, asked Galili: "Were you certain that all the devices were activated all the time-"
Galili: "Completely certain. Is there evidence that they were not activated-"
Yadin: "Yes. Does that surprise you-"
Galili: "I am shocked, not surprised."
Zeira was asked by the Agranat commission why he had decided on his own accord not to use the devices rather than consulting with the chief of staff, while "his superiors were led to mistakenly believe that the topic had been incorporated into his assessments." Zeira's reply was that "it is not my nature to delegate authority upward I don't bring things that are under my authority to my superiors, usually, and I don't tell them 'I know it is my responsibility, but I am handing off the responsibility to you. You decide.'"
Bar Joseph argues that the decision makers' faith that the devices were operational but providing no indication that a war was imminent carried fateful weight in the decisions that were made. It is the reason they did not rush to deploy the army along the Sinai and Golan Heights fronts and why they did not recruit the necessary reserves units. That faith also painted the rest of the intelligence that came in from the region in a different light.
"During the week before the war broke out, the decision makers are confident that the listening devices are fully operational. They don't ask if the devices are working but rather what information they are yielding. They say so in their Agranat commission testimonies very clearly, and explain that their confidence that they would receive notice 48 hours in advance relied on them. Zeira knows that they think the devices are working, and for reasons known only to him he does not correct them. That is the most terrible part of this story. In my opinion, it was not a mistake. It was calculated," Bar Joseph says.
According to Langotsky, "Zeira first gave the green light to activate the devices only on Thursday afternoon, and only for a technical check. The check began overnight between Thursday October 4 and Friday October 5. His instructions were to complete the test and report the findings to him personally at his house no later than 6 a.m. Friday morning, Yom Kippur eve." In other words, when Zeira says to Dayan that it is "totally quiet" in the "chatter on the Egyptian lines" it is, according to Langotsky, at least three hours after the devices were shut off, following a mere technical check. Bar Joseph claims that due to a malfunction, one of the devices continued to work for several hours more, but since it was just a technical check and not full operational eavesdropping, it did not really help.
The devices were finally fully activated only hours before the war erupted, when their contribution to the intelligence assessment was already irrelevant. At that time, a warning had already been issued by Mossad director Zvi Zamir who met the agent Ashraf Marwan in London, indicating that a war was about to begin.
* * *
Over the years, Zeira avoided any in-depth discussion of the special means of collection, despite the unrelenting criticism he sustained. Even in the book that he published in 1993 he refrained from touching the subject.
In a conversation with us last week, Zeira said that "today's talk has no value. If there is anything that has any value it is a document or written testimony. I have a document, written by the operator of the system (of listening devices) proving that it was activated Thursday night until Friday at 11 a.m. That means that it was on for more than nine hours. In all that time, the operator didn't hear anything of value or significance. That proves that the Egyptian mechanism of disinformation and concealment succeeded in keeping their plan to launch a war secret, mainly from their own forces."
The claim is that it was merely a technical check, not full operational activity.
"It wasn't a technical check, because a technical check lasts only fifteen minutes, not nine hours. The only document that proves this has been in my possession all these years."
Much like Zeira, historian Dr. Yigal Kipnis argues that the devices were actually used, but failed to yield any useful information about the coming war. "It was not a technical check. On Friday at 2 p.m., a telegram was sent from the man who operated the devices to Digli detailing the list of lines that were targeted and the few and largely insignificant pieces of information that was collected. When I wrote this in my book, everyone criticized me claiming that Zeira had lied. But the moment I saw the classified information, I wrote about it. I didn't come to exonerate Zeira, but the devices were activated upon his orders. A technical check would not have required his orders. Technical checks were done periodically as a matter of routine."
But even if we assume that the devices were in fact turned on a day and a half before the war began, could they have made any kind of contribution this late in the game? And how does that change the claim that Zeira misled the decision makers, leading them to believe that the devices had been turned on long before-
"They didn't yield any intelligence, that's all. But most importantly, much earlier, they gave the decision makers the impression that there was an insurance policy. Starting with the people who designed the devices all the way to the chief of staff -- people thought that if there are listening devices then we are safe. The biggest mistake was not made by the person who allegedly misled, but by the people who fell for this illusion. A decision maker has to know that intelligence cannot possibly provide accurate information with complete certainty. It is merely yet another means of understanding the bigger picture. The Egyptian reality was out in the open, and the Egyptians, knowing that the Israelis were listening, gave the order to switch from exercise to actual attack at the last minute, and they did it manually, in paper envelopes. Therefore, this kind of information would not have gone through those lines anyway. They relied too heavily on the devices, and that was everyone's mistake."
So the political echelon was responsible for the failure-
"I don't want to take away from the failure of the intelligence directorate in assessing the likelihood of war, but its weight was relatively small in the grand scheme of things. The diplomatic issue is the main thing, and the decision makers' entire constellation of considerations was guided by internal diplomatic and political issues -- like the fact that the elections were several weeks away and a war was not desirable at such a time. It is more apt to direct the blame at Golda [Meir], and especially at Dayan."
"Up until the very last minute, Dayan held onto the misguided conception that Sadat would not go to war before giving a chance to the diplomatic process that was secretly taking shape behind the scenes in 1973. At the end of September and the beginning of October Dayan believed that the Egyptians were willing to enter another round of diplomacy, and he didn't think they would jeopardize the process with an attack. Golda supported this viewpoint, and it was this viewpoint that guided the decision making in those fateful days, much more so than the assessments provided by the Military Intelligence Directorate."
"Zeira's disgrace is fully noted. His assessment was that there was a low likelihood that a war would break out, and he blocked out any assessment that contradicted his own. The key to good intelligence is to listen to other opinions and other assessments in order to understand whether they are wrong. But he was also blamed for things he didn't do. The war didn't break out just because of an intelligence failure. The diplomacy aspect was far more significant."
Col. (res.) Noam Shapira, a networks intelligence officer during the war, was responsible for collecting SIGINT (electronic intelligence rather than information collected by agents) on the Egyptian front. He believes that the role of the listening devices in the intelligence picture has been greatly exaggerated. "I am among those people who were very close to the events," he says. "I am not against investigating history, but what we need is just a little less pride and arrogance when dealing with something that we don't understand. The special means of collection were not a part of the war alert mechanism, regardless of whether they were turned on for a technical check or not. What matters is that they were not used in a professional capacity; there is no argument about that. All I ask is that we keep things in proportion. To say that if they had been activated, Israel would be in a different place -- that is an exaggeration. In my view, it would not have changed anything in any dramatic way. If anyone thought that they were yielding valuable intelligence, they were not. Eli Zeira deserves to be criticized because he missed the warnings that were presented to him on a silver platter, but to say that the special means of collection were the reason for his mistake would not be true. There was enough intelligence even without them. Judging from my own professional experience, there was no chance that they would have provided any information that wasn't already there anyway. It would not have changed the conception."
The problem is that the decision makers relied on them, assuming that they were activated.
"I don't want to discuss the decision makers. I was not with them. If Eli Zeira made promises, he should have kept them. But in terms of the intelligence mechanism and the collection mechanism, the unit did its job in the best possible way and brought everything that it possibly could. I pray that Israel will have that kind of intelligence in the coming years as well."
Lt. Col. (res.) Sefi Ben Yosef, who also served as a networks intelligence officer in Unit 848 (later becoming a tour guide) describes himself as "one of three people in the world who truly know what is being discussed when talking about the special means of collection." As a reservist, Ben Yosef was not occupied with intelligence work on the day before the war began. He was on a long vacation with his friends from school, diving in Eilat.
"In light of supposedly historical investigations, the entire world and their sister, and self-appointed babblers, are using the term 'special means of collection' without really knowing what they are talking about. They don't know what it looks like, or what it does," says Ben Yosef. "Everyone is under the impression that they are this kind of hocus pocus -- something that could have changed the outcome of the battle in advance. They talk and talk and talk. It is like a group of tailors conducting an in-depth discussion about how much a meter of fabric would cost to make a suit for an orphan. Do you have an answer for such a stupid question-"
"I kept quiet for 40 years, and I intend to keep quiet for another 40 years. I don't think that it is anyone's business to lay out the meaning of this thing. I have no authority, certainly not on my own accord, to reveal this issue to the public. What I can say is that I was the only one who dealt with this thing, and I wasn't dealing with it before the war because I was not recruited. I was diving in Eilat."
* * *
Brig. Gen. (res.) Ephraim Lapid, who served as the deputy director of the Military Intelligence Directorate's collection department (and was later appointed IDF spokesman), believes that the disconcerting thing is that even with 40 years of hindsight, there is still a debate about two very fundamental aspects of this issue.
The first aspect is the actual value of the special means of collection on the eve of the war, and the second is whether these devices were active or not during the three days prior to the war. "To this day, I still don't really know what the true intelligence value of these devices actually was, and if anyone could have really made an accurate assessment based on intelligence. As to the activation of the devices, there are reports that they were activated and there are reports that they weren't, so I can't really say," Lapid says.
"Ahead of the war, there were meetings every day or two, not just with Military Intelligence. A lot has been said about Zeira's dominant personality and how it may have prevented people from contradicting him. But even in meetings where there was nothing preventing anyone from speaking out, like the meetings conducted by Aryeh Shalev for example, the participants were asked whether anyone disagrees with the Military Intelligence Directorate's views and no one raised their hand. It is very sad, and infuriating, even after all these years."
Two days before the start of the war, when it was "obvious that a war was about to break out," the young first lieutenant in the Military Intelligence Uri Naaman convinced Digli to fight Zeira on activating the special devices. "We couldn't understand why the 'suspenders' weren't being used. Digli gave Zeira an organized and clear presentation on why the devices need to be activated, and in response, Zeira started yelling at him, saying 'stop being a bunch of punks; I will decide when to activate the means.' As far as I know, a technical check was conducted on Thursday evening, but no one saw the materials that came out of that test."
And what did you hear when the devices were finally activated-
"We got confirmation that the Egyptians were preparing for actual war. That is what we needed, after all, that was the purpose of those devices -- to provide a warning of any serious action. We had enough information at that point to know that the situation was dire; ten days earlier, during a Rosh Hashana toast, Digli told us that war could break out at any minute. The devices could have very much supported the feeling that indeed, a war was about to erupt," Naaman says.
"I remember being completely exhausted, and I decided to go home to grab two or three hours of sleep before the war began. I even told my NCO Shlomo, to get me when they start shooting. When the phone rang at my house and woke up my mother I had no doubt as to what was happening. I put on my uniform, took my mother's last cigarette, and I knew that I was going off to war.
"This story taught me that people need to be without pride and arrogance, and to look at the information that they have in their hands. If they feel a threat or any kind of danger, they mustn't remain quiet. Never freeze in place, but rather talk, insist, yell, reach the highest echelons. My excuse is that I was just a 23-year-old first lieutenant, but in the higher ranks at the Military Intelligence Directorate, there were people who took it really hard that we couldn't communicate the message to our superiors that a war was coming. The lesson is that when you have the means to uncover the truth, you must use them in the critical moments, and certainly at moments of real existential threat."
No one had to convince Zeira that the listening devices were high quality resources. In his testimony before the Agranat commission, he remarked that "the research people came to me and painted a picture which seemed logical to me. The question that I ask myself is this: where is my insurance in case the research people are wrong? My insurance was in [certain sources that had excellent access and reliability]. I said to myself: let's just say that they are wrong. In that case I have to access those sources to get unequivocal confirmation. That is the whole story. I have [excellent sources] through which I can get an indication whether their conception is accurate or compromised. That is precisely the very essence of my thought process."
Professor Bar Yosef contests: "This testimony suggests that Zeira valued the special devices more than anyone, and still, he didn't activate them until the very last minute."
And you think that the information that would have been procured by them would have changed the intelligence assessment-
"I can't tell you what would have been procured. But it is very likely that there was a good reason why the people who knew about the project believed that it could yield an accurate indication of whether a war was about to erupt or not. It was based on experience in operating special devices, not on hot air.
"There is a big paradox in this story: It was precisely the devices that were designed to prevent Egypt from launching a surprise attack against Israel that ultimately facilitated Egypt's ability to launch a surprise attack. Not because the devices failed, but because the decision makers tended to believe that they were working and were therefore convinced that they couldn't possibly be surprised."
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