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.

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.

“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.”

Al-Awawdeh said he told the Times that he did not believe the alleged Hamas meetings were specifically about the October 7 plans and that he doubted Iran—or any other outside forces—were informed in advance of the plot. Nonetheless, the story was published with the headline: “Secret Documents Show Hamas Tried to Persuade Iran to Join Its Oct. 7 Attack.”