Not all intelligence professionals complied with the reports declaring in Congressional testimony conditions that were dramatically worse than what Barack Obama was telling the American people. The consequence of the top CENTCOM staff altering and filtering factual summaries can never be fully measured however, immediately after General Mattis left CENTCOM, the process was changed and reporting began to go south. When General Austin replaced Mattis, collaboration and use of all intelligence tools were amended. Timing is important such that the fall of Ramadi and Fallujah happened but notably within days of Obama making the declaration that Islamic State was the JV team, Mosul fell.
The United States officially left Iraq in 2011, there were an estimated 700 terror fighters that remained, within several months the number grew to several thousand while the top count going into 2014 it was 31,000. Today, Islamic State has functional operating cells in 24 countries. Attention to al Qaeda, Boko Haram, the Taliban and other terror factions has been eliminated from the political lexicon.
The Congressional 17 page report is.
House probe: Central Command reports skewed intel on ISIS fight
FNC: Intelligence reports produced by U.S. Central Command that tracked the Islamic State’s 2014-15 rise in Iraq and Syria were skewed to present a rosier picture of the situation on the ground, according to a bombshell report released Thursday by a House Republican task force.
The task force investigated a Defense Department whistleblower’s allegations that higher-ups manipulated analysts’ findings to make the campaign against ISIS appear more successful to the American public.
The report concluded that intelligence reports from Central Command were, in fact, “inconsistent with the judgments of many senior, career analysts.”
Further, the report found, “these products also consistently described U.S. actions in a more positive light than other assessments from the [intelligence community] and were typically more optimistic than actual events warranted.”
Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Kan., who was involved in the House report, said Thursday the data was clearly “manipulated.”
“They wanted to tell a story that ISIS was the JV, that we had Al Qaeda on the run,” he told Fox News. “This is incredibly dangerous. We haven’t seen this kind of manipulation of intelligence … in an awfully long time.”
It is unclear how high up the reports in question went, though the task force found “many” Central Command press releases, statements and testimonies were “significantly more positive than actual events” as well.
The joint task force report blamed “structural and management changes” at the CENTCOM Intelligence Directorate starting in mid-2014 for the intelligence products. Surveys provided to the task force, according to the report, showed 40 percent of analysts later claimed they “had experienced an attempt to distort or suppress intelligence.”
The report also said senior leaders relied on details from coalition forces rather than “more objective and documented intelligence reporting,” using this as a rationale to change reports – sometimes “in a more optimistic direction.”
The Defense Department inspector general is now taking a close look at the findings – and looking for more possible whistle-blowers. The joint task force described its assessment released Thursday as an “initial report” and continues to investigate.
“The facts on the ground didn’t match what the intelligence was saying out of the United States Central Command,” Pompeo said.
The Pentagon did not comment in depth on the report, citing the ongoing IG investigation.
However, spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Patrick L. Evans said the intelligence community assessments are “based on multifaceted data related to the current security environment.”
“Experts sometimes disagree on the interpretation of complex data, and the Intelligence Community and Department of Defense welcome healthy dialogue on these vital national security topics,” he said in a statement.
When the allegations initially surfaced last year, the White House insisted no one in the administration pressured anyone, and suggested blame may rest with the military.
