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Deceit of an Ally" is a memoir of sorts by Bruce Brill, who worked at the NSA 50 years ago as an Arabic translator.
The main point of the book is that Brill, who was Jewish, was urged by his boss not to travel home for Yom Kippur in 1973 because he had absolutely positive information that a war was going to break out that day.
The rest of the book is mostly Brill's attempts to find out why NSA didn't tell the Israelis about this intelligence ahead of time. After he left the military and the NSA, Brill moved to Israel and over the decades interviewed many of the decision makers and wrote about his experience (once cleared to do so); he eventually realized that not only didn't the Americans warn the Israelis but they misled them, saying that Egypt was not going to attack that day. Newly release d archives support this contention. This is one reason the Israelis were caught flat-footed on that terrible Saturday morning.
However, Brill does not address the other evidence that the IDF ignored at the time. Assuming he is right, the American deceit was a factor, but not the only factor.
Brill fills out the book with some other anecdotes and unproven theories; after all he was a fairly junior member of the NSA and everyone there is only told what they have a need to know. He writes about the secret "Jew Room" at the NSA as reported in "The Secret War Against the Jews," by John Loftus and Mark Aarons, where they intercept and decode Israeli communications and don't allow Jews to enter. Brill believes he saw a glimpse of the "Jew Room" he was not allowed to enter without escort when he worked at the agency - the door was opened and he saw a map of Israel and settlements that wasn't behind its usual curtain. But he has no proof.
There is a lot of paranoia in this book. Brill talks about his fears that he will be assassinated for his work to expose this conspiracy. For example, he thinks a character named "Brill" in the Gene Hackman movie "Enemy of the State" was named after himself.
When he writes letters to everyone he can think of asking what they know about the US misleading the Israelis and the "Jew Room," most of them ignore him. He thinks that is evidence of a coverup, but it is more likely they think he is a flake.
In the end, the only thing he proves is the NSA knew about the Yom Kippur War ahead of time. He corroborated that with other translators who worked at the NSA at the time. Brill fills up the book with copies of original letters and documents; he submitted the book to the NSA to be vetted and he left the blacked-out parts as part of the book.
One of his paranoid-sounding theories does make one wonder, though.
When Brill's miliary time was up, he had an option to "convert" to become a civilian employee at the NSA. He decided to apply - not because he really wanted to stay there but because the process happened during working hours and he was bored. One of the steps was a polygraph test, and when they asked if he would ever pass information to a foreign country he said no - but the polygraph said he was lying. That uis usually enough to disqualify anyone from working there, but not only did they then invite him to negotiate a salary, they offered him a much higher pay grade than his job would normally receive. Since he wasn't interested, he declined anyway.
The NSA, of course, knew Brill was Jewish and was studying Hebrew. Why did they want him so badly? Brill wonders if they were trying to set him up - this is before Jonathan Pollard - as someone to whom they would leak critical secret information about Israel's enemies and then try to entrap him when they assumed Brill would tell it to Israeli agents.
Could it be that this was a plan, and this was done to Pollard? It seems far-fetched, but antisemitism at the NSA in those days seems certain, and Brill describes some that he had to endure.
Some parts of the book - like details about working at the Agency - are fun to read. I was surprised to find out that satellite imagery in the 1970s was already good enough that Brill could read the Hebrew on the knit kippah of an Israeli soldier embroidered with his name from space. If that was true in the 70s, it is mind boggling to think how today's intelligence agencies could do orders of magnitude more.
But it is not a very well written or edited book.
It is nearly impossible to read Deceit of an Ally and not think of analogies between Israel's intelligence failure in 1973 -whatever the true reasons were - and its equally devastating failure on October 7. In both cases, the data was there; the people whose job is to interpret the firehose of data and make correct decisions, or at the very least hedge their bets and make contingency plans in case their assumptions were wrong, were the ones who failed.
Bruce Brill sounds like a fun person to talk to, but once you know the gist of his book, there isn't much more to learn.
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Wednesday, November 13, 2024
Elder of Ziyon
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