‘Was a Huge Controversy’: U.S. Now ‘Confident’ Hamas Used Main Gaza Hospital As Command Center, to Store Weapons and Hostages

NBC News foreign correspondent Josh Letterman joined MSNBC’s Katy Tur on Wednesday to discuss the latest U.S. intelligence out of Gaza.

The Washington Post reported earlier in the day that U.S. officials had told reporters, “We have information that continues to support our conclusion that Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad used the al-Shifa hospital complex and sites beneath it to house command infrastructure, exercise certain command and control activities, store some weapons, and hold at least a few hostages.”

“The U.S. intelligence community is confident in its judgment on this topic and has independently corroborated information,” said another official.

Tur asked Letterman to break down the details of the revelation.

“Yeah, this was such a huge controversy, Katy, because as you recall, a lot of independent assessments determined that Israel had not really released the kind of evidence needed to substantiate its claims that al-Shifa hospital was being used as a Hamas command center,” Letterman replied, adding:

But today, we are learning from the US government that they say they have a new information that corroborates that Hamas was using bunkers and tunnels underneath al-Shifa, not only for command and control, but also to store weapons and at least a few of the hostages. This US intelligence also suggests that Hamas, ahead of the IDF storming, al-Shifa actually cleared out and destroyed some of that evidence so that their use of the hospital couldn’t be found out by the international community. But we should point out, the US government as of now is not publicly releasing any evidence to back up this claim other than saying that they do have this new intelligence.

“Didn’t Israel detain and question the director of the hospital? What did Israel say he said?” Tur followed up.

“Yeah, that’s right. Back in November, Israel said that they had detained the leader of the hospital, the head of the hospital as he was traveling from north to south as part of that evacuation,” Letterman replied, adding:

They say that he was never indicted, but that they wanted to understand what he knew about his hospital being used so comprehensively over the years by Hamas. The IDF never really released the results of that interrogation or whatever happened to him, but they have continued to say that all of their evidence does point to Hamas having used that hospital and the fact that they believe that hospital director must have known about what was happening right under his nose.

“There’s also still fallout from what we reported yesterday, the assassination of a top Hamas military or a top Hamas leader, the second in command in Beirut. What did the US know about that, that attack?” Tur asked.

“Well, the US did not know in advance that Israel was planting planning to assassinate that leader. According to a multiple U.S. officials and a person briefed on the operation who spoke to NBC News,” Letterman responded, adding:

But we are told by those sources that Israel did inform the US in real time while that operation was going down. The US, meanwhile, is saying that they had no involvement, but they are not publicly confirming whether Israel was involved because Israel is trying to stay coy. They are trying not to inflame tensions, particularly with Hezbollah, another group in Lebanon that is already threatening retaliation against Israel for that assassination of that Hamas leader.

Watch the clip above via MSNBC.