“But someone would have blown the whistle! Someone would have realized that the whistle might be blown!”
I regret to tell you that most of the time intelligence officers just do what they’re told.
Yes, if you have an illegal spying program running for ten years with thousands of employees moving in and out, that will run a low-grade YoY chance of being publicized. Management will know about that low-grade chance and act accordingly. But most of the time you as a civilian just never hear about what it is that intel agencies are doing, at least not for the first fifty or so years.
I also regret to inform you that it is much easier for state departments to cover up a managerial decision not to act on information, and later pretend it was a “mistake” or an “interbranch communication issue”, than to get away with active measures. Only conspiracy theorists decided that Bush not acting on the “Bin Laden determined to strike in U.S.” presidential brief, that one that mentioned that Bin Laden was preparing to hijack planes a month before 9/11, was particularly suspicious. In that case, an unsuspicious reaction was probably reasonable, but applying that standard of evidence universally means there is practically no amount of information about the state of Mossad that would “prove” to mainstream media or Wikipedia editors that they either elected to ignore Hamas’s incoming attack entirely or muttered “heads I win, tails I win”.
As for whether or a country would be “willing” to do this particular thing, sacrifice a few thousand civilians to provide a casus belli for an annexation or to shore up support from abroad… Well, it’s not par for the course, at least in developed democracies, but, Many Such Cases, as the saying goes. My moral self is appalled by the lack of respect for deontological guardrails, but I will admit that this highlights the violent hatred of Israel’s enemies in a way that I think dismantling the plot would be unable to. How else are they supposed to justify annexing the Gaza strip and incidentally expelling much of the native population without it being a reaction to clear crimes against humanity? Where else is Netanyahu supposed to get his poll bump from?
It’s worth keeping the actions of Mossad and those of Netanyahu are different. Pentagon leaks suggest that senior Mossad leadership was supporting protests against Netanyahu’s policies. Former Mossad leaders also spoke out.
That they are action to give Netanyahu a poll bump and can do that without internal leaks that undermine the project seems to me unlikely.
Imagine, that the CIA would have warned Trump of a terror attack and Trump didn’t act. Do you think that would be kept secret in the same way that Bush administration inaction would be kept secret?
I regret to tell you that most of the time intelligence officers just do what they’re told.
Yes, if you have an illegal spying program running for ten years with thousands of employees moving in and out, that will run a low-grade YoY chance of being publicized. Management will know about that low-grade chance and act accordingly. But most of the time you as a civilian just never hear about what it is that intel agencies are doing, at least not for the first fifty or so years.
I also regret to inform you that it is much easier for state departments to cover up a managerial decision not to act on information, and later pretend it was a “mistake” or an “interbranch communication issue”, than to get away with active measures. Only conspiracy theorists decided that Bush not acting on the “Bin Laden determined to strike in U.S.” presidential brief, that one that mentioned that Bin Laden was preparing to hijack planes a month before 9/11, was particularly suspicious. In that case, an unsuspicious reaction was probably reasonable, but applying that standard of evidence universally means there is practically no amount of information about the state of Mossad that would “prove” to mainstream media or Wikipedia editors that they either elected to ignore Hamas’s incoming attack entirely or muttered “heads I win, tails I win”.
As for whether or a country would be “willing” to do this particular thing, sacrifice a few thousand civilians to provide a casus belli for an annexation or to shore up support from abroad… Well, it’s not par for the course, at least in developed democracies, but, Many Such Cases, as the saying goes. My moral self is appalled by the lack of respect for deontological guardrails, but I will admit that this highlights the violent hatred of Israel’s enemies in a way that I think dismantling the plot would be unable to. How else are they supposed to justify annexing the Gaza strip and incidentally expelling much of the native population without it being a reaction to clear crimes against humanity? Where else is Netanyahu supposed to get his poll bump from?
It’s worth keeping the actions of Mossad and those of Netanyahu are different. Pentagon leaks suggest that senior Mossad leadership was supporting protests against Netanyahu’s policies. Former Mossad leaders also spoke out.
That they are action to give Netanyahu a poll bump and can do that without internal leaks that undermine the project seems to me unlikely.
Imagine, that the CIA would have warned Trump of a terror attack and Trump didn’t act. Do you think that would be kept secret in the same way that Bush administration inaction would be kept secret?