Former White House National Security official on October 7 attack

WASHINGTON (CBS, KYMA) - Brett McGurk, a former White House National Security official, spoke with Margaret Brennan on Face the Nation Sunday about his new book about the October 7 attack.

In his book, "Brink: Inside the Race to Free the October 7th Hostages," McGurk wrote that the U.S. "had no clear warnings; nor did the Israelis, from what they told us," but Brennan said McGurk left open the idea that there were missed signals, leading her to ask if it was a total intelligence failure, and McGurk said:

"We have really looked, we did not have anything in our system that would have been a warning and indicator...No U.S. intelligence of a warning or indicator. I can't speak to whether the Israelis still have to this day not had a commission of inquiry. We had a 9/11 commission that I think made a number of reforms that have helped keep our country safe since 9/11. The Israelis still have not done that. I think they have to, they should do that. But from what I, in dealing with all these guys in Israel, security echelon, political echelon, I think they had an assumption that was deeply ingrained that Hamas was deterred, assuaged, and was not about to do something massive on any scale like this. I think that was a false assumption in their system, a failure of imagination, and it was tragic. I can't speak to whether or not there was a specific warning. We did not know of any."

Back in February of 2024, Brennan said McGurk met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to focus on how to get the hostages out, but McGurk said, "for more than thirty minutes he never mentioned the hostages…Netanyahu was animated in discussing the military campaign and far less so when discussing the hostages–when he chose to discuss them at all."

When asked why, McGurk said:

"First of all, I describe Netanyahu, I spent a lot of time with him, he's kind of...As a negotiator, there's a term of art in the book called a ZOPA, Zone of Possible Agreement. And if you just kind of line this up, where was the...you have Hamas saying, their core demand is they have to stay in power, go back to October 6th status quo, they stay in power, they will reconstitute, they'll be on Israel's border, they want all Palestinian prisoners released, and then we can release the hostages. Israel's core demand after October 7th is that Hamas can no longer be in power in Gaza, ever. Completely irreconcilable. And the hostages are such a central piece of this because you're never going to actually stop the war without- without the hostages. And there's a continuum in a hostage negotiation, and I've done them before, even outside this context, with Iran in particular, in which the hostage negotiator sets a price. And Maimonides, who was a 12th-century Jewish legal theorist, and he has a, kind of a commandment, and I have it in the book. There's no higher commandment for a state, for a government, than the redemption, he says, of hostages, of captives. But he also says there's a...the price cannot be so high to basically put the rest of society in jeopardy. And this is the tension, the demand to bring the hostages home, and ensuring that the price is one that doesn't encourage further hostage taking or set the conditions for the next war. Okay. So, and this is a debate that goes through Israeli society and went through the highest echelons of the Israeli government. It plays throughout this book. It went into this...Keith and Aviva Siegel, who were taken hostage on October 7th, in their home, they have a sticker–and they're very cooperative for this book–it says, "Gilad is alive." That was Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier, held by Hamas for five years, released after five years for 1,000 Palestinian prisoners, hardcore Hamas operatives, including Yahya Sinwar, and like many Israelis, they supported that deal. And on October 7th, on Yahya Sinwar's orders, the elite units of Hamas are approaching Kfar Aza, their kibbutz, and eventually entering their home, taking them hostage. So where do you draw this line? And Netanyahu was focused far more on the military campaign and ensuring Hamas can never retain power in Gaza, believing the military campaign and the pressure on Hamas would lead to a deal that released all the hostages, whereas we were trying to focus on a phased deal. At least let's get some of the hostages out first. And Netanyahu always believed that more military pressure will actually deliver a better deal, whereas Sinwar believed more time would put more pressure on the U.S. and others to deliver him a better deal. So it makes this almost an impossible situation to deal with."

During the interview, Brennan and McGurk talked about Republican candidates, including now-President Donald Trump, criticizing McGurk for not being strong enough to support Israel.

This prompted Brennan to ask how aware he was of the politics of the moment as he was making decisions as a national security official, to which he said:

"I'm very independent. I've worked with Republican presidents, Democratic presidents. I was a law clerk for two judges appointed by Republicans, one by a Democrat. And...but let me bring you into the Oval Office in kind of, in a scene in which I think encapsulates this very issue. April 4th, 2024. President Biden...he's on the campaign trail, obviously frustrated about the situation, unable to articulate because the hostage talks have now collapsed. They had recently collapsed for a number of reasons I go through in the book. He's frustrated by being unable to point to how are we actually going to try to bring this to a close. We had a horrific airstrike from the Israelis that killed nine aid workers with World Central Kitchen, Jose Andres...which was so horrific. And, so we have a call between Biden and Netanyahu, and Biden is just, like, completely fed up. And at the same time, however, Iran is planning to launch- we have intelligence that Iran is about to launch a massive ballistic missile drone attack directly against Israel, which is totally unprecedented, and- which if those missiles get through, you're talking about thousands of casualties. So this is how, kind of, everything converges. And I think at that moment, if not for that impending missile attack, which we then had to deploy military forces, we built an unprecedented coalition with Arab partners, European partners, and of course the U.S. military and General Kurilla, who was kind of putting this together. If not for that, I think on that moment, I think we would have taken some pretty draconian measures against Israel."

Later in the interview, Brennan and McGurk talked about the Leahy Law, which means countries who receive U.S. weapons have to avoid committing human rights violations or risk losing the weapons supply.

Former U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said, "It was reasonable to assess, in certain instances, Israel has not acted in a manner that's consistent with international humanitarian law," and said Israeli civilian harm mitigation efforts were "inconsistent, ineffective, and inadequate."

This led Brennan to ask if McGurk agreed with the State Department's memo, and McGurk said:

"Brink: Inside the Race to Free the October 7th Hostages" will be released in stores and online Tuesday. To watch Brennan's full interview with McGurk, click here.