This paper uses newly available evidence to shed light on the circumstances and causes of the 6 October 1973 Yom Kippur surprise attack of Egyptian and Syrian forces onIsraeli positions at the Suez Canal and the Golan Heights. The evidence suggests that an important circumstance that accounts for the surprise effect these actions managed to produce, despite ample warning signs, is traceable to a high need for cognitive closure among major figures in the Israeli intelligence establishment. Such a need may have prompted leading intelligence analysts to "freeze" on the conventional wisdom that an attack was unlikely and to become impervious to information suggesting that it was imminent. The discussion considers the psychological forces affecting intelligence operations in predicting the initiation of hostile enemy activities, and it describes possible avenues of dealing with the psychological impediments to open-mindedness that may pervasively characterize such circumstances.KEY WORDS: Yom Kippur war, strategic surprise, need for cognitive closure Along with the German attack against the Soviet Union in June 1941 (operation "Barbarossa") and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the coordinated Egyptian-Syrian attack against Israel on Yom Kippur, 6 October 1973, is considered a classic example of a successful surprise attack and a costly intelligence failure. The similarity of the three cases is obvious: Despite ample evidence concerning the ability and the intention of the initiator to launch an attack, the intelligence agencies involved failed to provide a timely and accurate warning. Expert analyses of the three cases, however, tend to impute them to dif-

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Recent intelligence failures, including first and foremost the mistaken estimate of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) prior to the war, show that a prime source of such failures is the adherence by analysts to preconceptions (or mind-sets) which entail the rejection of new information that contradicts it. The source of this kind of problem lies in well known psychological mechanisms. Yet official investigations into intelligence blunders have typically ignored this problem or have not suggested an appropriate solution thus far. Our paper suggests an original approach based on the fact that certain types of personalities are more likely than others to fall victim to these biased judgments. Existing psychological tests can help determine individual susceptibility to such tendencies. Therefore we suggest that intelligence organizations should pay far more attention to these personality characteristics, especially an analyst's level of openness, in recruitment, training, and promotion. Such attention would help create more effective reforms in intelligence than organizational models which advocate ''devil's advocate'' kind of solutions.

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