been different in each of them. In the Yom Kippur War, the problem was not

been different in each of them. In the Yom Kippur War, the problem was not just Eli Zeira’s failure to activate the sayeret’s listening devices in Eygpt, deeply damaging though that was. It was judgement. Inside Aman, a kind of groupthink had taken hold. It was rooted in a confident, costly misconception which went unchallenged: that Egypt would never risk another war without an air force capable of breaching our defences and striking towns and cities deep inside Israel. No one pressed the alternative scenario: that Sadat might strike with more limited territorial objectives and, under cover of his SAM batteries on the other side of the Suez Canal, advance into the Sinai. In the Lebanon war, the inquiry suggested, Yehoshua Saguy did try to warn the generals, and the government, about major risks. But individual ministers testified that they hadn’t heard, hadn’t been there, or hadn’t understood, leading the inquiry to stress the responsibility of a Rosh Aman to ensure not just that his message was conveyed, but that it was received as well. I set out to address both problems. Inside the department, I insisted on making all our preconceptions open to challenge. I set up a unit whose sole function was to play devil’s advocate when a consensus was reached. It began with the opposite conclusion and, through a competing analysis of the data, and logical argument, tried to prove it. I also wanted to be challenged on my preconceptions. I assigned a bright young major as my personal intelligence- and-analysis aide. He read everything that crossed my desk and could access any material in the department. “You have no responsibility to agree with any of the analysts, or with me,” I said. “Part of your job is to disagree.” In the Lebanon war, Saguy had faced an additional problem. He was excluded from some government meetings at which crucial decisions were made. That was out of his control. I didn’t want it to be out mine. I raised the issue with Begin in our first meeting. “If you want to get the maximum value from your head of intelligence,” I said, “you should make sure he’s there not just after, but when decisions are made.” Yet he was now only months from leaving office, exhausted by the war and its aftermath. He waved his hand weakly in response, as if to say none of it mattered. His successor, in October 1983, was Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir. Ideologically, he was cut from the same cloth: an advocate from the 1940s of securing a Jewish state in all of Palestine, by whatever force necessary. He’d broken with Begin’s pre-state Irgun militia to set up a group called Lehi, which went further and carried out political assassinations: the 1944 killing of Lord Moyne, Britain’s Minister for 212 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_028060