http://www.thedailybeast.com/
Spies: Obama’s Brass Pressured Us to Downplay ISIS Threat
Senior
military and intelligence officials have inappropriately pressured U.S. terrorism analysts to alter their
assessments about the strength of the self-proclaimed Islamic State, three sources
familiar with the matter told The Daily Beast. Analysts
have been pushed to portray the group as weaker than the
analysts believe it actually is, according to these
sources, and to paint an overly rosy picture about how
well the U.S.-led effort to defeat the group is going.
Reports
that have been deemed too pessimistic about the efficacy
of the American-led campaign, or that have questioned
whether a U.S.-trained Iraqi military can ultimately
defeat ISIS, have been sent back down through the chain
of command or haven’t been shared with senior
policymakers, several analysts alleged.
In
other instances, authors of such reports said they
understood that their conclusions should fall within a
certain spectrum. As a result, they self-censored their
own views, they said, because they felt pressure to not
reach conclusions far outside what those above them
apparently believed.
“The
phrase I use is the politicization of the intelligence
community,” retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, the former
director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told The
Daily Beast when describing what he sees as a concerted
push in government over the past several months to find
information that tells a preferred story about efforts
to defeat ISIS and other extremist groups, including al
Qaeda. “That’s here. And it’s dangerous,” Flynn said.
At
U.S. Central Command, which is in charge of airstrikes against ISIS in Iraq and
Syria, analysts have been frustrated for months that as
their reports make their way up the chain, senior
officers change them to adhere more closely to the
administration’s line. Three U.S. officials and analysts
spoke to The Daily Beast on the condition of anonymity
to discuss sensitive internal matters.
The
analysts said it was unclear who was leading the
pressure to adjust their assessments, which more than
one referred to as “spinning.” Some called it a result
of a climate of the culture their commanders create. How
such reports travel from CENTCOM headquarters to the
senior reaches of the government and the military, and
who reads them along the way, varies. Some reports go
directly to the White House. More often, they go through
several internal organizations and checks to determine
what information is most useful to top officials.
“The phrase I use is the politicization of the intelligence community. That’s here. And it’s dangerous.”
Two
defense officials said that some felt the commander for
intelligence at CENTCOM failed to keep political
pressures from Washington from bearing on lower-level
analysts at command headquarters in Tampa, Florida. That
pressure, while described as subtle and not overt, is
nevertheless clear, the analysts said: Assessments on
ISIS should comport with “the leadership consensus,”
that is, top policymakers’ view, that the U.S.-led
campaign against the group is paying dividends.
A
process has developed, these individuals said, by which
officials from the Defense Intelligence Agency, as well
as the Office of the Director of National Intelligence,
are trying to achieve something close to consensus among
the several intelligence agencies that weigh in on the
threat of ISIS and the U.S. efforts against it.
The
CENTCOM analysts say they’ve concluded that the campaign
isn’t going well, but that the senior officials want all
reports on ISIS to see “eye to eye” and to avoid
analyses that reach widely different conclusions.
“I
think it comes from the seniors that interact with the
policy folks [meaning senior administration officials]
and it filters its way down,” one of the analysts said.
In
the past, the CENTCOM intelligence commander buffered
the analysts from outside pressure but in the last two
years that protection has been less reliable, the
official said.
“You
get this pressure. It’s a very subtle approach but it is
effective,” he said.
CENTCOM
declined to comment about the specific charge of
pressure put on analysts. Similar concerns have
reportedly been raised within the Defense Intelligence
Agency, which provides analysis both for military
commanders and civilian leaders.
The
Defense Department’s inspector general is investigating
allegations that military officials “have skewed
intelligence assessments” about the anti-ISIS campaign, The New York Times reported on Tuesday. A
complaint was lodged with the inspector general by at
least one civilian analyst at the agency, who claimed
that CENTCOM officials were “reworking the conclusions
of intelligence assessments” prepared for senior
leaders, including President Obama, the Timesreported.
“I’m
not surprised by this investigation,” Flynn said. He
noted that senior military and Obama administration
officials have been too optimistic in their public
assessments about how the war against ISIS is faring.
While
Flynn noted that he had no particular information about
the current inspector general investigation—which
multiple sources confirmed is active—he said that only
very senior officials would have the power to change
intelligence assessments or lead them to be altered from
their original form.
DIA
analysis on extremist groups in the Middle East and
North Africa has “typically been more hard hitting” and
has not tried to paint a preferred picture about how the
fight is going against ISIS and al Qaeda, Flynn said.
“It’s
not trying to sugar-coat and give you a lot of ‘maybes’
and ‘probably,’” Flynn said. “It’s, ‘Here’s what we
believe.’”
Current
analysts said that there’s a tendency in some reporting
to leave a sort of escape clause, that while the current
efforts to defeat ISIS are going well, they could be set
back at any moment. That kind of hedging appears
designed to protect senior officials from subsequent
accusations that they underestimated ISIS’s strength,
while at the same time allowing them to say that the
group is on the ropes.
Separate
from analysts’ complaints, there have been signs within
the military and the Pentagon that different groups of
analysts were reaching different conclusions. In public
statements and testimony, Army General Martin Dempsey,
the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has been
notably less optimistic about developments in the war
against ISIS than senior members of the Obama
administration have been.
The
process of coordinating intelligence assessments is
supposed to take into account the different views of the
more than a dozen individual agencies that might weigh
in on a particular topic. In the wake of a 2002 National
Intelligence Estimate that concluded Iraq had an active
weapons of mass destruction program—when it didn’t—and
that formed the basis for the U.S. invasion, the
intelligence agencies are supposed to emphasize
competing views, particularly when one or a few agencies
reach a conclusion that is at odds with the prevailing
view.
The
intelligence community “routinely produces a wide range
of subjective assessments related to the current
security environment,” CENTCOM spokesman Colonel Patrick
Ryder told The Daily Beast, in response to questions
about the inspector general report. “Prior to
publication, it is customary for the IC [intelligence
community] to coordinate these intelligence assessments.
More specifically, members of the IC are typically
provided an opportunity to comment on draft
assessments.”
But
it’s ultimately up to the “primary agency” that wrote
the initial report as to whether it will “incorporate
recommended changes or additions,” Ryder said. “Further,
the multi-source nature of our assessment process
purposely guards against any single report or opinion
unduly influencing leaders and decision-makers.”
How
precisely one report could influence a senior leader, of
course, is a highly subjective matter. Top leaders
consider different assessments during planning and
decision-making, along with insights “provided by
subordinate commanders and other key advisers,” Ryder
said.
This
isn’t the first time analysts have alleged that their
terrorism reporting was skewed for political purposes.
“Whether
al Qaeda was destroyed or no longer a factor—we were
told to cease and desist that kind of analysis”
following the U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden in
Pakistan in 2011, retired Army Colonel Derek Harvey, a
former senior intelligence official at DIA, told The
Daily Beast.
“Al
Qaeda core was declared all but dead by the Obama
administration,” Harvey said. But based on material
found in documents that U.S. forces retrieved from bin
Laden’s compound in Pakistan, “the organization in our
view was more diverse and stronger in many ways than it
had ever been before, despite al Qaeda core being hit
hard.”
In
the years following the raid, it became clearer that al
Qaeda maintained the ambition and the capacity to
threaten attacks inside the United States. Intelligence
officials now say that al Qaeda’s branch in Yemen and a
group of fighters dispatched to Syria last year have
sought to smuggle explosive devices that can’t be
detected by airline security systems onto commercial
passenger jets.
—with additional reporting by
Michael Weiss
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