Hello and welcome to Background Briefing, available 24-7 at Background Briefing.org. I'm me and

Masters, and today we'll examine a number of stories and issues in the news.

We'll begin with the intelligence failures and recrimination soon to emerge once the Israeli

military operation against Hamas is over, assuming the war does not widen.

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

the chief of analytics units at the CIA covering portions of the Near East, the Persian

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

of Central Intelligence's

Counterterrorism Center. Paul Pillar is currently a professor of security studies at Georgetown

University and a member of the Center for Peace and Security Studies, and he has a forthcoming

article at the national interest out tomorrow about the Hamas attack and its implication for

intelligence failures.

Then we will speak with Andy Kroll, a reporter for ProPublica covering voting elections and

other democracy issues. He was previously the Washington Bureau Chief for Rolling Stone,

and he's reporting there about a series of cyber attacks on congressional campaigns

helped lead to the indictment of a

California political operative. Before that, he was a senior reporter at Mother Jones, where his work

on self-dealing during the Trump presidency sparked multiple congressional investigations.

He's the author of a death on W Street, the murder of Seth Rich and the age of conspiracy, and we will discuss his report

at ProPublica.

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