FACTBOX-Notable intelligence failures in since WW2

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Thu Jul 30, 2009 8:53am EDT

July 30 (Reuters) - A truism of intelligence work is that successes are far more numerous than disasters but must remain secret, while failures inevitably result in painful publicity.

Here are some notable failures since World War Two.



* RUSSIA - 1941:

-- German dictator Adolf Hitler reneged on the 1939 Nazi-Soviet pact to carve up Poland and attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941. Despite warnings by his agents, one of whom predicted the precise date of the invasion, Russian leader Josef Stalin was convinced Hitler would not attack.

* YOM KIPPUR WAR - 1973:

-- A two-pronged offensive by Egypt and Syria on Oct. 6, 1973, shattered the Israeli army's myth of invincibility. Due to a mix of overconfidence, miscalculations and intelligence failures, Israel was caught off guard when the attacks came on Yom Kippur, holiest day of the Jewish calendar.

* IRANIAN REVOLUTION - 1979:

-- Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, a major U.S. ally, was forced into exile after mounting discontent with his authoritarian rule. While some in Washington blamed U.S. intelligence for inadequate reporting, others said the U.S. policy establishment was predisposed to see the Shah as its indispensable partner and tended to brush aside reporting it did not want to hear.

* FALKLANDS WAR - 1982:

-- Buenos Aires made it clear it wanted to gain sovereignty over the British-ruled Falklands, a South Atlantic archipelago, but British officials persistently ignored warnings about a pending Argentine invasion, which duly occurred.

* KUWAIT - 1990:

-- Iraq's lightning invasion of Kuwait in 1990 following months of disputes over oil and debt was among the most one-sided encounters in modern military history. The small Gulf state went to bed in apparent security and woke up occupied by an army that had overrun its unprepared defences overnight.

* ATTACKS ON U.S. CITIES - 2001

-- The Central Intelligence Agency faced the brunt of criticism for the failure to avert the Sept. 11 attacks which killed nearly 3,000 people. A commission that investigated the attacks found "deep institutional failings" and the need for greater coordination among the various intelligence agencies.

* IRAQ INVASION - 2003

-- Former U.S. President George W. Bush launched an invasion of Iraq citing a threat of mass destruction weapons from Saddam Hussein's government, but no such weapons were ever found.

In an exhaustive 2005 review, the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction found that reports of such a threat were flat wrong. "The intelligence community's Iraq assessments were, in short, riddled with errors," the commission concluded.

Sources: Reuters/Dictionary of Twentieth Century History/Oxford Companion to World War II





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