50 Spies Say ISIS Intelligence Was Cooked by Shane Harris and Nancy Youssef, The Daily Beast
More than 50 intelligence analysts working out of the U.S. military's Central Command have formally complained that their reports on ISIS and al Qaeda’s branch in Syria were being inappropriately altered by senior officials, The Daily Beast has learned.
The complaints spurred the Pentagon’s inspector general to open an investigation into the alleged manipulation of intelligence. The fact that so many people complained suggests there are deep-rooted, systemic problems in how the U.S. military command charged with the war against the self-proclaimed Islamic State assesses intelligence.
“The cancer was within the senior level of the intelligence command,” one defense official said.
Two senior analysts at CENTCOM signed a written complaint sent to the Defense Department inspector general in July alleging that the reports, some of which were briefed to President Obama, portrayed the terror groups as weaker than the analysts believe they are. The reports were changed by CENTCOM higher-ups to adhere to the administration’s public line that the U.S. is winning the battle against ISIS and al Nusra, al Qaeda’s branch in Syria, the analysts claim.
That complaint was supported by 50 other analysts, some of whom have complained about politicizing of intelligence reports for months…
Comments
With Bush, politicized intel rot re Iraq was mostly inside the Beltway.
With Obama it's infected the whole IC and has wrecked CENTCOM J2.
Let's not even get into the fact that the Russian annexation of Crimea was not even detected by the IC/EUCOM AND if it was then it was a major failure to brief that development to the National Command Authority before it happened--NOT after the fact.
AND let's not get into the fact that open source analysis by social media has in fact been the single most important source of what the heck is ongoing in the Ukraine and especially Syria.
Remember when social media indicated Russian troops and heavy equipment were in Syria--what was the government's response---we have no real indication of that--then when swamped by social media Russian military selfies from Syria--WHOA now Kerry get's serious.
How strange is that??
It is hard to keep a brilliant legacy when the reality on the ground says volumes that do not match the so called "legacy" being built.