Hello and welcome to Background Briefing, available 24-7 at Background Briefing.org, I'm me and Masters, and today I'll examine a number of stories and issues in the news.

We'll begin with the resumption of Israel's war on Gaza and get an intelligence assessment

of the devastating 40-page report called Jericho Wall that was analyzed and shared by

Israeli military and intelligence officials for a year before the October 7th attack by Hamas. The document outlined in detail

with uncanny accuracy and chilling precision, the Hamas plan of attack leading many to wonder

whether it reached Netanyahu and why it was ignored. Joining us is Paul Pillar, who served for 30 years as an analyst at the CIA,

in which his last position was National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia.

Previously, he served as chief of the analytics units at the CIA, covering portions of the Near East,

the Persian Gulf, and South Asia.

He also headed the assessments and information group of the Director of, the Persian Gulf, and South Asia. He also headed the

assessments and information group of the Director of Central Intelligence's Counterterrorist

Center and was deputy chief of that center. He is currently a professor of

security studies at Georgetown University and a member of the Center for Peace and

Security Studies and we will discuss his article

at Responsible Statecraft. Trucends, Israeli assault resumes on Gaza. Then, with plans underway

for a memorial service in New York City for Henry Kissinger, at which praise will be heaped upon

the elder statesman, we'll speak with Greg Grandin, a professor of history at Yale

University, the author of The End of the Myth from the Frontier to the Border Wall in the

Mind of America, which won the Pulitzer Prize, and Ford Landia, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize,

the National Book Award and the National Books Critics Award. His books also include The Last Colonial Massacre, Kissinger's Shadow,

The Empire of Necessity, and Empire's Workshop,

The United States, Latin America in the making of an Imperial Republic,

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