Fox Reporter Asks Kirby Point Blank: Who's Responsible For ‘Massive Intelligence Failure’ In Israel?
On Wednesday, Fox News Correspondent Jacqui Heinrich grilled Admiral John Kirby about the conflict in Israel.
Transcript
00:00 Jackie, and then we'll go to you.
00:01 Thank you, Karine.
00:02 John, this was a massive intelligence failure.
00:05 Who bears responsibility for that?
00:07 You know something, Jackie?
00:08 There's going to come a time when it's appropriate for us to take a look back, retrospectively,
00:15 and see what the intel picture showed us or didn't show us, whether there's any gaps that
00:20 need to be closed.
00:21 There's going to be a time for that.
00:22 And I suspect that our Israeli counterparts will do the same thing.
00:25 Now is not that time.
00:26 It's just not that time.
00:27 Can you speak to the reports that Israel was warned by Egypt?
00:31 I can't.
00:32 McCaul from Foreign Affairs made that allegation this morning, saying that that was something
00:37 that members were told on the Foreign Affairs Committee.
00:42 So has that been discussed at all, or is that something you're looking into?
00:47 I can't speak to specific intelligence matters.
00:50 Again, there will be a time to look back at this, as we always do and we will.
00:54 Right now, we're sharpening the intelligence gathering and cooperation and sharing with
00:58 Israel, as we should, since they're involved in active operations, and we're making sure
01:02 that they get the tools they need.
01:04 Can you define what the direct link is when you guys talk about Iran not being involved,
01:09 no direct link?
01:10 What do you consider to be a direct link?
01:13 What I'm referring to there is any evidence that we have that they were knowledgeable
01:23 of and aware of these particular attacks.
01:28 Now, of course, as Jake said yesterday, they obviously have been broadly aware of Hamas's
01:37 hostility to Israel and to some of the broad planning that Hamas would do, but we haven't
01:46 seen anything that tells us they knew specifically date, time, method, that they were witting
01:53 to this.
01:55 We haven't seen anything that tells us they specifically cut checks to support this set
02:00 of attacks or that they were involved in the training.
02:03 And obviously, this required quite a bit of training by these terrorists, or that they
02:09 were involved in any directing of the operations.
02:12 So again, I'll get to your – I promise I don't want to – I'm not trying to
02:19 monopolize the time here, but we're – it's not a – we're not one and done here either.
02:23 We're going to continue to look at the intelligence stream and see if it leads us to a different
02:28 conclusion.
02:29 All I can do is be honest with you about the conclusions we're coming to today, and we
02:32 just haven't seen that.
02:33 So you kind of answered my follow-up, which is –
02:35 Oh, good.
02:36 Is it the position of the administration that at this stage Iran was not involved?
02:41 I guess my question is, how can we know that this was in the planning for over a year and
02:46 within a few short days say that Iran was not behind it?
02:51 Because that's what we think.
02:53 Because we've been looking at it –
02:55 So it is the position then?
02:56 No.
02:57 It is what we think.
02:58 Now, again, we have not seen any evidence, specific evidence, that Iran was directly
03:04 involved with these specific sets of attacks.
03:07 But it's not –
03:08 That doesn't mean that – yeah, I mean, look, we're going to keep looking at it.
03:11 The book's not closed on it.
03:13 We're going to keep looking at that.
03:14 But that's just where we are right now.
03:16 All right, we're going to move on.