A key source named by The New York Times as an expert helping to verify the authenticity of internal Hamas documents in a major report in October told Drop Site News he had raised concerns about the veracity of the documents in his interviews with the Times. Israel provided the paper with alleged Hamas meeting minutes as part of its campaign to directly link Iran to the planning of the October 7 attacks.

Salah al-Din al-Awawdeh, whom the paper described as “a Hamas member and a former fighter in its military wing who is now an analyst based in Istanbul,” said a Times reporter only permitted him to review one page of the 30 pages of documents the Times asked him to verify. Al-Awawdeh, according to WhatsApp messages seen by Drop Site News, told a Times reporter that without seeing more of the document “it is hard to judge” its authenticity.

“I asked for the other pages and he said he couldn’t send them to me but he said he could read them to me at a later time and I told him that wouldn’t work, if I could see the pages, it would be preferable,” al-Awawdeh told Drop Site. The Times never provided al-Awawdeh with additional pages and subsequently cited him in an October 12 story as the only named source for its verification of what it described as “Minutes of Hamas’s secret meetings” that “provide a detailed record of the planning for the Oct. 7 terrorist attack.”