Schorr Charges Cia Bias Halted Yom Kippur War Prediction

Former CBS News correspondent Daniel Schorr charged here that the failure by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to predict the Yom Kippur War in 1973 was attributable to bias against Israel within that organization. Schorr made the charge in an address at the Leadership Event of the Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston last Sunday, according to Josh Hyatt, correspondent for the Jewish Advocate of Boston.

In a speech in which he excoriated the CIA for “over concern with secrecy and living beyond the Constitution” which “makes them a rotten intelligence agency.” Schorr claimed the CIA could have warned against the impending Arab attack on Israel. “Although the CIA had listening posts in southern Jordan which perceived a change in command communications and its satellites had corroborating photographs of fresh troop movements, the anti-Israel spirit within its Middle East desk deterred a prediction of an apparently imminent full-scale war,” Schorr said.

Hyatt reported that Schorr noted further that a high CIA official was forced to resign because he insisted on fair treatment for Israel on intelligence relating to the Mideast. This same official had been overruled by Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger when he recommended that the agency’s head visit the Old City of Jerusalem. Kissinger maintained this would “upset” the Arabs because the area which they disputed was in Israel’s hands. Schorr said.

Schorr was forced to resign from CBS last year after he released a leaked House committee’s intelligence report on unlawful CIA activities and refused to disclose his sources. Prior to joining CBS in 1955, Schorr had been a reporter for the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor and the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. In 1973 he received an Emmy Award for his coverage of the Watergate episode.