bar -- >> i would like to get out over that bar. >> just a sign of the time, my friend. thank you as always. thanks to you at home for joining me this hour. we begin tonight with breaking news. "the new york times" has just published a major new report about israeli intelligence failures in the lead-up to the october 7th hamas attack. according to the reporting not yet verified by nbc news officials obtained the detailed battle plan for hamas' attack more than a year before the attack took place. quoting from "the new york times" israeli officials obtained the battle plans for the october 7th terrorist attack more than a year before it happened, documents and e-mails and interviews show. but israeli military and intelligence officials dismissed the plan as aspirational, considering it too difficult for hamas to carry out. the approximately 40-page document which the israeli authorities code named jericho wall outlined point by point the devastation that led to the deaths of about 1,200 people. hamas followed the blueprint with shocking precision. the document called for a barrage of rockets at the outside of the attack. it called for drones to knock out the security camera and automated machine guns along the border and called for gunmen to pour in israel en masse on paragliders and on foot, all of which happened on october 7th. officials privately conceive had the military taken these warnings seriously, israel could have blunted the attacks or even possibly prevented them. what could have been an intelligence coup turned into one of the worst miscalculations in israel's 75-year history. joining us now is john brennen. he's now an msnbc and senior national security analyst. thank you for being here. and let me first get your reaction to this bombshell reporting from "the new york times." >> well, alex, i was utterly shocked when i read through "the new york times" report. the fact the israelis were able to collect in advance the actual battle plan hamas used but then failed to realize this was in fact what they were going to do, it shows they made faulty assumptions. and that's the real problems. here it was underestimating the capables of their adversary. and that usually happens when they're look at a paramilitary adversary. but this document, this jericho wall document they got, it should have been through the prism of which they looked at every hamas action over past year to see whether or not the hamas fighters were actually working on it and making progress against it. they deemed it was too aspirational for hamas to carry out. but they had more than a year to be able to judge and evaluate whether or not hamas was moving down that progression. and obviously this is something that's going to require very extensive review in terms of what the failure was. but it also raises serious questions about how intelligence might not be not used appropriately or -- the system is not working as it should if this document didn't make it through to be actually an opportunity for israel to stop and prevent those horrific attacks. >> yeah, when you say this document should have been the prism through which all hamas exercises, for example, were seen, there's a detail in the piece that says in july just three months before the attacks a veteran analyst with israel's signals intelligence agency warned hamas conducted an intense day-long training exercise that appeared similar to what was outlined in the blueprint. and the same analyst goes onto say it is a plan designed to start a war, she added, not just a raid on a village. the idea they effectively saw a dry run for this, how unusual is that? and in terms of annalist ringing an alarm bell so clearly, is that unusual? >> that analyst did exactly what she was supposed to do, which was to look at what hamas was doing, and see whether or not whether thursday any coordination with previous intelligence huisrael collected. but she seemed to be pushing it but somebody on the chain of command still determined hamas would be unable to carry out such a broad, extensive plan. this is where you need to continue to have those analysts push it up the chain of command. and this is what they're going to have look at during the commission review. how did the system break down so badly they weren't able to exploit this opportunity given to them exactly a year ago. >> to that end it seems there was one colonel who stood in the way of her warnings, potentially ascending up the food chain, if you will. a colonel in the gaza division brushed off the analyst's concerns according to encrypted e-mails reviewed by "the times." i utterly refute this scenario is imaginary the an lgs wrote in e-mail exchanges. the colonel applauded the analysis but said the exercise was a totally imagined scenario, in short let's wait patiently, the colonel wrote. director brennen, in short let's wait patiently, that is the stuff that lives on in infamy after october 7th. i know we're talking a different intelligence service over here in israel, but as far as that chain of command, as far as the ways analyst would have around a colonel like this who seems dead set not taking it anywhere, does that opportunity exist? how many people do you imagine saw this report? >> it should be a lot. no single person should be stopped it from from being reviewed and looked at. it seems this was a legitimate hamas document in the eyes of intelligence. they just didn't believe this could be carried out. something like this should be shared broadly across israeli intelligence and others. even to the extent, you know, the united states has such a close intelligence relationship with the israelis, this is something that i think they really would want to have fresh eyes look at and also see whether or not u.s. intelligence or other intelligence might have picked up some indications that, in fact, hamas was able to realize this plan. if one individual was able to stop this from being considered a real legitimate plan hamas would be able to carry out, there is a strong, strong need for there to be an immediate review of what's going on inside israeli intelligence and how this information gets to policy makers to make sure that it can be acted upon, operationalized and to mitigate any potential future threats. >> former cia director john brennen, thank you for your time and perspective on all this. appreciate it. i want to bring into the conversation ben rhodes who served as deputy national security advisor in the obama administration. ben, thanks for joining me tonight. i'm shocked by the reporting. i'm also shocked given the public statements we've gotten from the israeli government thus far. "the times" said israel benjamin netanyahu i believe this is october 28 rgt there's a tweet he pulls down that he says contrary to the false claims under no circumstances and at no stage was prime minister netanyahu warned of hamas' war intentions. perhaps this never made it to his desk, but that in and of itself if you listen to director brennen seems to be a massive security failure. >> yeah. i mean ultimately first of all he's the senior official, and his whole political identity has been tied to the fact that he's the person that assured israel security. so either you had a situation in which there were warnings that were ignored that may have reached him or people in his cabinet, or this system so dysfunctional that information wasn't being shared and that the focus from -- the other issue here, alex, is sometimes there's a demand from policy makers. you know, what do we have in terms of hamas' intentions? what we saw in the run off the october 7th is a number of things. number one, we saw mass political dysfunction in israel. you had mass protests in the streets, and you had public warnings -- public warnings from some of the security officials. that dysfunction was putting israel in danger. then you had the idf units who guarded that border up in the west bank in part because they were protecting israeli settlers from clashes with palestinians. you had a lot of dits function. and what we learn really in this astonishing reporting is at minimum the dysfunction with in the israeli intelligence community, and was preventing a document that was unprecedented in its like specificity about the nature of the attack and was there for a year. it was not something only a couple days before the attacks. it was sitting thin system for a year and nobody was acting upon it, and nobody was seemingly accountable for needing to act upon it. >> given the potential indictment here, i wonder if you were surprised we even know about this given how fraught it is for this prime minister at a time when the political landscape is complicated for him. >> well, alex, i think what happens -- i've been in government when there have been intelligence failures. i've worked for the vice chair of the 9/11 commission throughout that effort. inevitably what happens is when there are officials who knew that they were doing their jobs and then they stafrt to hear politicians say nobody had any idea this would have happened or we couldn't have done anything to stop it, that information tends to find its way out because there are people that are frustrate asked there are people who want there to be accountability and people who want the system to work better. people not with just motivations themselves but motivations to say, look, actually be need to fix some things here. and usually the impulse of politicians and certainly wouldn't be the tim pulse of netanyahu on october 7th to say when the war is over, then we'll take a look back. and i think part of the reason the information is coming out there are people in that system like, no, we need to understand what happened, how this happened, why this happened in part to have people held accountable but in part we have to fix this. this is an ongoing military operation against hamas. what are their military camabilities? what are their contacts with external actors? all of that information is absolutely indispensable to everything israel is doing on a day-to-day basis. unless these deficiencies are fixed i think obviously israel is not going to be as secure as it needs to be. >> you bring that up as this pause, whatever we're calling it, the semicease-fire is set to expire. and i wonder how you think this informs that given, you know, renewed military incursions are going to depend on intelligence, which as we're reading the pages of "the new york times," has failed israel profoundly. and it's a very complicated picture, right? because on the one hand they actually are collecting intelligence. they had the intelligence plan, the whole blueprint of this attack. what wasn't happening is it wasn't being shared appropriately. it wasn't being acted upon. it wasn't the focus of the political leadership of the country, wasn't perhaps the focus of the leadership security services when it should have been. and you're right, there's a pause, and during that pause one of the things we know the biden administration is counseling the israeli government is what you were doing before, this kind of full-scale destruction of the gaza strip that's killed over 15,000 people and opinion around the world could be contributing to the radicalization of the people in gaza, that approach is not going to be sustainable from a humanitarian perspective and from a political and diplomatic perspective. therefore any recalibration is going to depend on a more targeted approach, one that identifies what the prioritization is in terms of hamas' leadership and military capabilities. that is very much an intelligence-driven kind of effort here. and so i think it speaks to the need to take a minute here and try to figure out how to make sure that that's working as well as it should. i should also add, alex, in case people are saying israel can't go back it october 6th. they wouldn't be going back to october 6th with a longer cease-fire. they are on the border now. the idf is there. it is fortified. october 7th isn't possible in the current dynamic. i think it's totally possible for israel to say we're basically going to be making decisions about the recalculation of this military operation and we're also going to look hard at how we could have had a catastrophic system fail, and are there changes we can make in stride to fix it. netanyahu's standing was lower before this bob shell dropped. he'd never had lower approval ratings. i think the conventional wisdom is he'll be replaced at some point. probably he wanted to see the conclusion of this military operation. i think those questions going to kick up again. all of this i think is going to be whirling around israeli politics in the days to come, and there's a lot of important decisions that need to be made. >> and just to sound a human note, there are the families of those hostages who are still in fauza, who are still being held captive having to read this story thinking somewhere maybe it all could have been prevented. just devastating. ben rhodes, thank you for your time tonight. >> much more ahead this evening including exactly what made senator lindsey graham very, very angry at a senate judiciary committee hearing today. >> i think this is a bunch of garbage and crap to be honest with you. but first new text messages between congressman scott perry and trump justice official jeffrey clark sed shoe light on the republican effort ipcongress to overturn the 2020 election. that is next. to overturn the 2020 election. that is next goli, taste your goals. so the gag order is back in effect. today a new york appeals court reinstated the gag order on former president donald trump and his civil fraud trial. that gag order bars trump from making any statements about court staff after his repeated social media posts attacking the judge's clerk in this case after being prohibited from attacking the judge's staff today trump instead attacked the judge's wife. so necessity is the mother of invention, i goes. meanwhile, we could learn any day now whether another separate gag order on trump will be upheld in federal court. the d.c. appeals court is set to rule on trump's challenge to the gag order imposed on him by the judge in the january 6th case brought by special counsel jack smith. but while we are waiting for that ruling, we did get something unexpected from that particular appeals court, and it concerns this guy. this is republican congressman scott perry of pennsylvania, who you may know from his many, many cameos in congress' jan 6th investigation. in fact scott perry turned out to be so entangled in trump was efforts to stay in office after the 2020 election, january 6th committee took the unprecedented step of subpoenaing him, a former member of congress. last year the fbi seized scott perry's phone as part of the criminal investigation of january 6th. and since then special counsel jack smith and scott perry have been in a legal battle over exactly what communications federal prosecutors are allowed to access on mr. perry's phone. well, now, in what appears to have been a clerical error, the appeals court briefly posted online a document that describes and quotes from a whole bunch of those communications from perry's phone. and, oh, boy, they sure would seem to confirm that congressman scott perry was right in the middle of donald trump's efforts to overturn the election. to quote politico's headline "court file reveals representative scott perry's vast contacts in a bid to reverse the 2020 election." for example there are the texts perry exchanged would jeffrey clark, the obscure justice department official who perry introduced to trump as someone who could help the effort to overturn the election. trump found mr. clark so helpful, in fact, in late december 2020 trump made it known he was planning to install jeffrey clark as acting attorney general so trump could use the justice department to push his stolen election claims. in these newly revealed communications we learned that scott perry texted jeffrey clark late on december 30th to tell clark president trump seemed happy with them, suggesting the plan to elevate clark to the top of the doj was moving forward. clark replied, quote, i'm praying. this makes me quite nervous and wonder if i'm worthy or ready." to which perry responded "you are the man, i've confirmed it. god does what he does for a reason." in addition to telling clark that he'd been chosen by god to take over the justice department for donald trump, perry also told clark, trump would give clark unprecedented security clearance. and congressman perry was busy strategizing with lots of people to try to keep donald trump in power. he was texting with top officials as well as legislators in his home state of pennsylvania about various ways joe biden's victory might be overturned in that state in pennsylvania and beyond. this is all on top of what we heard in testimony from former trump white house aid cassidy hutchinson who said that congressman scott perry was central to conversations about trump potentially leading rally goers to the capitol on january 6th, and that after january 6th mr. perry asked trump for a preemptive presidential pardon, something congressman perry denies. but scott perry is far from the only member of congress who was deeply involved in all of this. remember that trump's own justice department leaders testified that trump told them, quote, just day the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the republican congressmen. those included people like ohio congressman jim jordan who was a key player in white house strategy sessions about keeping trump in power and the current house speaker, mike johnson, whose specious legal arguments for overturning the election gave cover to his 146 republican colleagues who voted against certifying joe biden's win. and now the guy who almost got to be trump's attorney general, jeffrey clark, is among those criminally charged in georgia, and he is named as one of the six unindicted coconspiratorteres in the federal criminal case against donald trump. though as it turns out trump had a lot of other coconspiratorteres in the united states congress. joining me now is devlen barrett, national security and law enforcement reporter for "the washington post." devlen, thanks so much for being here. scott perry very much the sort of where's waldo in the scene inside the capitol and outside the capitol unfolding in and around january 6th. can you talk about the role he played in choosing jeffrey clark and helping to elevate him to be a potential a.g.? >> right. so one in the ways in which the time period we're talking about was so strange, which it was, people were really confused. people in the justice department were really confused. how did jeff clark come to the president's attention? jeff clark was essentially an environmental lawyer, and it wasn't clear to people even running the department why jeff clark was suddenly a person of such interest to president trump. and now we understand much better from this perhaps accidently unsealed filing why that is because perry was apparently acting as a go between between the president and clark. so that sort of fills in a big blank and a big sort of question mark as to how all this came to be. and really what you see is you see perry helping sort of navigate this weird budding relationship between clark and president trump. >> i was surprised to see trepidation on the part of jeffrey clark, a man who was so very much going against the grain of basically what every other legal mind thought as far as trump's ability to overturn the results of the election. can you tell me anything more about the sort of coaching role that scott perry played in trying to reassure jeffrey clark that god was on his side and the doubts that existed in jeff clark's mind as he sought to run the justice