Were administration officials "cooking the books" regarding trhe ISIS threat?

[Jim in CT]

This, from the man who promised the most "open and honest" administration in history?

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015...l?intcmp=hpbt1

Spence??

[spence]

Originally Posted by Jim in CT

This, from the man who promised the most "open and honest" administration in history?

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015...l?intcmp=hpbt1

Spence??

I don't see anything linking the Administration here. They story does appear to allege that military officers at CENTCOM may have revised analyst findings to mask their failure to train effective Iraqi troops.

Sounds more like the Army trying to cover their own backside.

[Jim in CT]

Originally Posted by spence

I don't see anything linking the Administration here. They story does appear to allege that military officers at CENTCOM may have revised analyst findings to mask their failure to train effective Iraqi troops.

Sounds more like the Army trying to cover their own backside.

"Fox News is told by a source close to the CENTCOM analysts that the pressure on them included at least two emails saying they needed to “cut it out” and “toe the line.”

It doesn't say who sent the emails, does it? Or who ordered the emails. I hope we find that out.

[fishpoopoo]

Pretty one-sided if you ask me.

JV president sticking his head in the sand.

Just as well, the military and intelligence communities can't stand Obozo.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/26/wo...isis.html?_r=0

Inquiry Weighs Whether ISIS Analysis Was Distorted

By MARK MAZZETTI and MATT APUZZOAUG. 25, 2015

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon’s inspector general is investigating allegations that military officials have skewed intelligence assessments about the United States-led campaign in Iraq against the Islamic State to provide a more optimistic account of progress, according to several officials familiar with the inquiry.

The investigation began after at least one civilian Defense Intelligence Agency analyst told the authorities that he had evidence that officials at United States Central Command — the military headquarters overseeing the American bombing campaign and other efforts against the Islamic State — were improperly reworking the conclusions of intelligence assessments prepared for policy makers, including President Obama, the government officials said.

Fuller details of the claims were not available, including when the assessments were said to have been altered and who at Central Command, or Centcom, the analyst said was responsible. The officials, speaking only on the condition of anonymity about classified matters, said that the recently opened investigation focused on whether military officials had changed the conclusions of draft intelligence assessments during a review process and then passed them on.

The prospect of skewed intelligence raises new questions about the direction of the government’s war with the Islamic State, and could help explain why pronouncements about the progress of the campaign have varied widely.

Legitimate differences of opinion are common and encouraged among national security officials, so the inspector general’s investigation is an unusual move and suggests that the allegations go beyond typical intelligence disputes. Government rules state that intelligence assessments “must not be distorted” by agency agendas or policy views. Analysts are required to cite the sources that back up their conclusions and to acknowledge differing viewpoints.

Under federal law, intelligence officials can bring claims of wrongdoing to the intelligence community’s inspector general, a position created in 2011. If officials find the claims credible, they are required to advise the House and Senate Intelligence Committees. That occurred in the past several weeks, the officials said, and the Pentagon’s inspector general decided to open an investigation into the matter.

Spokeswomen for both inspectors general declined to comment for this article. The Defense Intelligence Agency and the White House also declined to comment.

Col. Patrick Ryder, a Centcom spokesman, said he could not comment on a continuing inspector general investigation but said “the I.G. has a responsibility to investigate all allegations made, and we welcome and support their independent oversight.”

Numerous agencies produce intelligence assessments related to the Iraq war, including the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency and others. Colonel Ryder said it was customary for them to make suggestions on one another’s drafts. But he said each agency had the final say on whether to incorporate those suggestions. “Further, the multisource nature of our assessment process purposely guards against any single report or opinion unduly influencing leaders and decision makers,” he said.

It is not clear how that review process changes when Defense Intelligence Agency analysts are assigned to work at Centcom — which has headquarters both in Tampa, Fla., and Qatar — as was the case of at least one of the analysts who have spoken to the inspector general. In the years since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the Pentagon has relocated more Defense Intelligence Agency analysts from the agency’s Washington headquarters to military commands around the globe, so they can work more closely with the generals and admirals in charge of the military campaigns.

Mr. Obama last summer authorized a bombing campaign against the Islamic State, and approximately 3,400 American troops are currently in Iraq advising and training Iraqi forces. The White House has been reluctant, though, to recommit large numbers of ground troops to Iraq after announcing an “end” to the Iraq war in 2009.

The bombing campaign over the past year has had some success in allowing Iraqi forces to reclaim parts of the country formerly under the group’s control, but important cities like Mosul and Ramadi remain under Islamic State’s control. There has been very little progress in wresting the group’s hold over large parts of Syria, where the United States has done limited bombing.

Some senior American officials in recent weeks have provided largely positive public assessments about the progress of the military campaign against the Islamic State, a Sunni terrorist organization that began as an offshoot of Al Qaeda but has since severed ties and claimed governance of a huge stretch of land across Iraq and Syria. The group is also called ISIS or ISIL.

In late July, retired Gen. John Allen — who is Mr. Obama’s top envoy working with other nations to fight the Islamic State — told the Aspen Security Forum that the terror group’s momentum had been “checked strategically, operationally, and by and large, tactically.”

“ISIS is losing,” he said, even as he acknowledged that the campaign faced numerous challenges — from blunting the Islamic State’s message to improving the quality of Iraqi forces.

During a news briefing last week, Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter was more measured. He called the war “difficult” and said “it’s going to take some time.” But, he added, “I’m confident that we will succeed in defeating ISIL and that we have the right strategy.”

But recent intelligence assessments, including some by Defense Intelligence Agency, paint a sober picture about how little the Islamic State has been weakened over the past year, according to officials with access to the classified assessments. They said the documents conclude that the yearlong campaign has done little to diminish the ranks of the Islamic State’s committed fighters, and that the group over the last year has expanded its reach into North Africa and Central Asia.

Critics of the Obama administration’s strategy have argued that a bombing campaign alone — without a significant infusion of American ground troops — is unlikely to ever significantly weaken the terror group. But it is not clear whether Defense Intelligence Agency analysts concluded that more American troops would make an appreciable difference.

In testimony on Capitol Hill this year, Lt. Gen. Vincent R. Stewart, the agency’s director, said sending ground troops back into Iraq risked transforming the conflict into one between the West and ISIS, which would be “the best propaganda victory that we could give.”

“It’s both expected and helpful if there are dissenting viewpoints about conflicts in foreign countries,” said Micah Zenko, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of a forthcoming book, “Red Team,” that includes an examination of alternative analysis within American intelligence agencies. What is problematic, he said, “is when a dissenting opinion is not given to policy makers.”

The Defense Intelligence Agency was created in 1961, in part to avoid what Robert McNamara, the Secretary of Defense at the time, called “service bias.” During the 1950s, the United States grossly overestimated the size of the Soviet missile arsenal, a miscalculation that was fueled in part by the Air Force, which wanted more money for its own missile systems.

During the Vietnam War, the Defense Intelligence Agency repeatedly warned that even a sustained military campaign was unlikely to defeat the North Vietnamese forces. But according to an internal history of the agency, its conclusions were repeatedly overruled by commanders who were certain that the United States was winning, and that victory was just a matter of applying more force.

“There’s a built-in tension for the people who work at D.I.A., between dispassionate analysis and what command wants,” said Paul R. Pillar, a retired senior Central Intelligence Agency analyst who years ago accused the Bush administration of distorting intelligence assessments about Iraq’s weapons programs before the beginning of the Iraq war in 2003.

“You’re part of a large structure that does have a vested interest in portraying the overall mission as going well,” he said.

[fishpoopoo]

This one seems to implicate lurch.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/report-a...e-assessments/

By REBECCA KAPLAN CBS NEWS September 10, 2015, 11:20 AM

Report: Analysts say leadership altered ISIS intelligence assessments

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Last Updated Sep 10, 2015 6:57 PM EDT

More than 50 intelligence analysts at the U.S. Central Command have alerted the Pentagon watchdog that they believe their work is being altered to portray the war on the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) as more successful than it actually is, according to the Daily Beast.

The Daily Beast story notes for the first time just how many analysts have complained to the Pentagon inspector general about their concerns. Two senior analysts filed a report with the inspector general in July, after months of internal complaints were ignored. Some who complained were pressed to retire, while others left. Fifty other analysts said they support the formal report and can back up the claims.

The inspector general has now opened an investigation to see whether there has been any manipulation of intelligence reports, some of which have gone all the way to the president. The principal complaint is that senior officials are editing the intelligence analysts' reports to bring them into line with the Obama administration's claim that the war on ISIS is successful. The analysts said that some key pieces of intelligence had been removed from their reports, altering their conclusions.

"The cancer was within the senior level of the intelligence command," one defense official told the publication.

Senior U.S. leaders including Secretary of State John Kerry and President Obama himself have said the U.S. can defeat the group. In May, Mr. Obama said in an interview, "I don't think we're losing."

CENTCOM spokesman Air Force Col. Patrick Ryder told the Daily Beast that he could not comment on the specific investigation, but said, "The Intelligence Community routinely provides a wide range of subjective assessments related to the current security environment. These products and the analysis that they present are absolutely vital to our efforts, particularly given the incredibly complex nature of the multi-front fights that are ongoing now in Iraq and Syria."

He added that the reports are taken into consideration by civilian and military leadership, along with information from other sources like commanders on the ground, key advisers, intelligence collection assets and previous experience.

CBS News Senior National Security Contributor Michael Morell, the former deputy director of the CIA, said that if the report is true, "somebody needs to lose their job over this."

"One of the central tenets, one of the key aspects of the policymaking process in the United States, is that analysts get to say what they think without any interference, without anybody changing it, so this is a very, very serious charge," he said on "CBS This Morning" Thursday. "I think it needs to be fully investigated."

Similarly, CBS News Senior National Security Analyst Juan Zarate said the reports are "hugely problematic, at a minimum for the perception that there is cherry-picking of intelligence and a shading of the analysis to give a much better picture as to what's happening on the ground."

"This reflects a lot of tension internally within the intelligence community about where things stand and what our policy's actually getting us," he said. "You've got a real problem and questions as to whether or not the intelligence community is being misused and manipulated for political purposes. That's a major problem and red line for the administration if true."

Offering his own assessment of the war against ISIS, Morell outlined three different fights: one taking place in Iraq and Syria; another involving other insurgent groups around the world aligned with ISIS; and the ideological fight against ISIS for the hearts and minds of young people in the U.S., Western Europe, Australia and Canada.

Morell said he believes the U.S. is at a stalemate inside Iraq and Syria but is losing the other two fights.

[fishpoopoo]

stuff like this is a reflection of poor leadership at the top.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/22/us...isis-rise.html

Pentagon Expands Inquiry Into Intelligence on ISIS Surge

By MATT APUZZO, MARK MAZZETTI and MICHAEL S. SCHMIDTNOV. 21, 2015

WASHINGTON — When Islamic State fighters overran a string of Iraqi cities last year, analysts at United States Central Command wrote classified assessments for military intelligence officials and policy makers that documented the humiliating retreat of the Iraqi Army. But before the assessments were final, former intelligence officials said, the analysts’ superiors made significant changes.

In the revised documents, the Iraqi Army had not retreated at all. The soldiers had simply “redeployed.”

Such changes are at the heart of an expanding internal Pentagon investigation of Centcom, as Central Command is known, where analysts say that supervisors revised conclusions to mask some of the American military’s failures in training Iraqi troops and beating back the Islamic State. The analysts say supervisors were particularly eager to paint a more optimistic picture of America’s role in the conflict than was warranted.

In recent weeks, the Pentagon inspector general seized a large trove of emails and documents from military servers as it examines the claims, and has added more investigators to the inquiry.

The attacks in Paris last week were a deadly demonstration that the Islamic State, once a group of militants focused on seizing territory in Iraq and Syria, has broadened its focus to attack the West. The electronic files seized in the Pentagon investigation tell the story of the group’s rise, as seen through the eyes of Centcom, which oversees military operations across the Middle East.

The exact content of those documents is unclear and may not become public because so much of the information is classified. But military officials have told Congress that some of those emails and documents may have been deleted before they had to be turned over to investigators, according to a senior congressional official, who requested anonymity to speak about the ongoing inquiry. Current and former officials have separately made similar claims, on condition of anonymity, to The New York Times. Although lawmakers are demanding answers about those claims, it is not clear that the inspector general has been able to verify them. A spokeswoman for the inspector general declined to comment.

Staff members at the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence are also poring over years of Centcom intelligence reports and comparing them to assessments from the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency and others. The committee is not just examining reports about Iraq, Syria and the Islamic State, but also about Afghanistan and other areas under Centcom’s purview. The insurrection inside Centcom is an important chapter in the story of how the United States responded to the growing threat from the Islamic State. This past summer, a group of Centcom analysts took concerns about their superiors to the inspector general, saying they had evidence that senior officials had changed intelligence assessments to overstate the progress of American airstrikes against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS.

The analysts said problems in Iraq were rooted in deep political and religious divides that could not easily be solved with a military campaign, current and former officials have said. Yet Centcom’s official posture remained generally upbeat.

It is not clear whether the Centcom assessments significantly changed the Obama administration’s views about ISIS. While Centcom was largely positive about American gains, other agencies have been more pessimistic. The White House has generally been measured in its assessments.

But President Obama and senior intelligence officials have acknowledged that the Islamic State’s rapid emergence caught them by surprise. At the least, the prospect that senior officials intentionally skewed intelligence conclusions has raised questions about how much Mr. Obama, Congress and the public can believe the military’s assessments.

Those questions have taken on a new urgency since the terror attacks in Paris, which signaled a new determination by ISIS to carry out terror attacks beyond the territory in Iraq and Syria it has declared its “caliphate.” Pressure has grown on the White House to articulate a more muscular strategy for dismantling the group, and a chorus of Republican lawmakers and presidential candidates are calling for an American ground campaign in Syria.

Senior lawmakers have begun their own inquiries into the military’s intelligence apparatus. Representative Mac Thornberry, the Republican from Texas who is chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said in an interview that his committee was examining intelligence assessments from Centcom and other military commands to see if there was a systemic problem of dissenting voices being muffled by senior military commanders.

“Any time there is an allegation that intelligence is being shaved in a certain way, or distorted in a certain way, that’s a cause for serious concern,” he said.

Mr. Thornberry said that Congress has to be careful not to impede the progress of the inspector general’s investigators, but that lawmakers “also have a job to do.”

On Thursday, Foreign Policy reported that a group of Republican lawmakers will be focusing on whether Centcom also skewed intelligence assessments about Afghanistan.

Representative Devin Nunes of California, the Republican chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, has been eager to expand his panel’s inquiry into the Centcom assessments. Mr. Nunes is planning to send a letter to the inspector general on Monday asking if emails and documents relevant to the investigation have indeed been deleted. He is also asking for copies of any deleted materials that investigators might be able to retrieve from Centcom servers.

For the moment, Mr. Nunes is making the request without the support of his Democratic counterpart, Representative Adam B. Schiff of California. Mr. Schiff said questions about skewed intelligence needed to be taken “very seriously,” but that the inspector general should be allowed to finish the inquiry before the House intelligence committee considered expanding its own investigation.

The committee has asked the Pentagon for permission to interview officials, including the two most senior intelligence officers at Centcom, Maj. Gen. Steven Grove and his civilian deputy, Gregory Ryckman. The request was denied by Pentagon officials, citing the ongoing internal investigation.

That investigation was prompted by complaints this past summer from Centcom’s longtime Iraq experts, led by Gregory Hooker, the senior Iraq analyst. In some ways, the team’s criticisms mirror those of a decade ago, when Mr. Hooker wrote a research paper saying the Bush administration, over many analysts’ objections, advocated a small force in Iraq and spent little time planning for what would follow the invasion.

Lawmakers originally said that the Centcom investigation would be completed in weeks. But Pentagon investigators have found the work painstaking and it could span months. In addition to determining whether changes were made to intelligence reports — and if so, who ordered them — the investigators, like the staff members of the House intelligence committee, are studying reports from other intelligence agencies produced at the time to determine what was actually occurring in Iraq and Syria when the reports were written.

Col. Patrick Ryder, a Centcom spokesman, said that the command welcomed the inspector general’s oversight and would respond to requests from Congress for information, and that Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III, the Centcom commander, would “take appropriate action once the investigation results have been received and reviewed.”

[fishpoopoo]

so obvious that a blind #^&#^&#^&#^&#^&#^&#^& who only reads the new york times can see it.

[Doover]

It is just the topsie turvy world Democraps live in.
Trump tells the TRUTH and Democraps lie saying he is lying.
Kissy and the KillterBeast ALWAYS lies and Democraps INSIST it is the truth,

[JohnR]

Interesting to see where the IG reports finish. Scuttlebutt has been pressure on the staffs at CENTCOM. Either way it is unacceptable.

I hope we don't have to wait 20 years for the next McMasters, some current lieutenant or Junior Captain, to research the failings and back story. As McMasters did with LBJ (he found the Johnson Administration AND the Joint Cheifs culpable).

[Raven]

don't you know!
that it's far more important to be
Dancing at the White house

and having a hell of a good time.....

[Fly Rod]

Raven..... U talking about what TRUMP wants to remodel the white house for a ballroom?....would B a far cry better legarcy then obamacare of which is starting to come apart at the seems....and it would not cost taxpayers for the renovation, read where he would donate all the cost to do it.....we can all go dancing to the sounds of Lawrence Welk, ooopsy he past away....

[fishpoopoo]

[spence]

Originally Posted by fishpoopoo

This one seems to implicate lurch.

What's a lurch?

Are you ever going to post an article that actually substantiates your claims?

[scottw]

Originally Posted by spence

What's a lurch?

I think that would be the second worst secretary of state in American history(but working hard for the title) after Hillary...Kerry