Obama’s Intel Scandal

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The Weekly Standard:

STEPHEN F. HAYES

Sep 28, 2015, Vol. 21, No. 03

 

Earlier this summer, we learned the Pentagon’s inspector general is investigating allegations that the intelligence on ISIS was manipulated. Analysts at U.S. Central Command in Tampa, Florida, formally complained to the IG that analysis contradicting the Obama administration’s narrative on ISIS was routinely challenged, rewritten, or disregarded. The administration was eager to sell the story that the campaign against ISIS was going well; much of the intelligence made clear it wasn’t. That intelligence was buried, and the happy talk continued.

 

From 2011 through 2013, top Obama administration and intelligence officials downplayed and discarded intelligence on al Qaeda and its activities. As President Obama sought to convince the American public that al Qaeda was dying, analysts at CENTCOM were quietly providing assessments showing the opposite was true. In 2012, as administration officials made their public claims, the briefings they received from the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, included assessments that al Qaeda had doubled in strength over the preceding two years. A top DIA official was told directly to stop producing reports based on documents collected during the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound. And when a member of the House Intelligence Committee sought to investigate these allegations of manipulation, he was misled repeatedly.

 

So the intelligence manipulation now making headlines is not a new scandal, but a broadening of an earlier one—the systematic and willful effort to sell the American people a false narrative about the global jihadist movement and our efforts to defeat it.

 

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Nunes says he hasn’t seen the specific allegations presented to the IG, but adds, “This does look like similar behavior to what I saw in 2013,” he says. “We have an obligation to try to understand why important information about the war wasn’t coming forward. They’re the intel team responsible for providing intelligence to those fighting the war on terror. And someone prevented them from doing their job. It looks awfully familiar.”

 

It looks familiar for a reason. The emerging picture makes this much clear: The Obama administration has repeatedly and systematically manipulated intelligence to further the president’s ideological and political objective of ending our wars. And we are less safe as a result.

 

With the Pentagon investigation and the media attention it has garnered, Nunes is no longer alone in raising concerns about this growing scandal. It’s important that Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell and House speaker John Boehner, with the relevant committee chairmen, move quickly to convene hearings and otherwise use the oversight powers of Congress to get answers.

 

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The reason for not releasing the bin Laden documents is becoming clearer. Someone did not want to look bad.

 

 

 

 

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Foreign Policy: Islamic State intel: this time with more footnotes!

Paul McLeary with Adam Rawnsley

Sept. 21 2015

 

Islamic State intel: this time with more footnotes! Analysts at the U.S. Central Command were continually made to go back and dig up more evidence for reports critical of the effectiveness of the air campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, the latest Daily Beast scoop on the intel scandal reports. But analysis striking a more positive tone was pushed right up the chain of command.

 

The growing scandal over allegations by Centcom analysts that their supervisors cooked the books to make their work appear to more fully support the rosy pronouncements from the command’s leadership took another turn Sunday night, with allegations that “analysts also were urged to state that killing particular ISIS leaders and key officials would diminish the group and lead to its collapse. Many analysts, however, didn’t believe that simply taking out top ISIS leaders would have an enduring effect on overall operations.”

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Investigations Into Islamic State Intel Scandal Expand
Eli Lake & Josh Rogin

Sept 24, 2015

 

There are now multiple investigations inside the intelligence community and on Capitol Hill into whether senior intelligence officers at U.S. Central Command altered intelligence assessments of the U.S. war against the Islamic State. The main whistleblower will meet with senior senators on the matter as early as next week. In addition to the Pentagon inspector general’s investigation into allegations by dozens of intelligence analysts, other inspectors general inside the intelligence community and two oversight committees in Congress have begun their own probes, according to senior lawmakers and intelligence officials.

 

The Congressional investigations will expand the scope of the existing inquiry by examining allegations of intelligence tampering that predate the war against the Islamic State, some dating back years. Staffers from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the Senate Armed Services Committee have already met with the main whistleblower to discuss the allegations, Senate sources told us. The lawmakers in charge of those committees are working to schedule another meeting with him soon.

 

“We’re on it,” Armed Services Chairman John McCain told us. Asked if the allegations of intelligence tampering go beyond just reports on the year-long war against the Islamic State, he said: “That’s my understanding, but I have no hard evidence of that. That’s why we are going to have this meeting.” Devin Nunes, the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said he and other relevant House committees are starting to probe the most recent allegations of intelligence manipulation as well as past charges that intelligence was suppressed at U.S. Central Command, also known as CentCom."We are encouraging additional whistleblowers to come forward," Nunes told us. "We are initiating a process to gather information about this, and we are working closely with all the committees of jurisdiction to have a coordinated effort."

 

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Emails show DOD analysts told to 'cut it out' on ISIS warnings; IG probe expands
Catherine Herridge
November 23, 2015

Analysts at U.S. Central Command were pressured to ease off negative assessments about the Islamic State threat and were even told in an email to “cut it out,” Fox News has learned – as an investigation expands into whether intelligence reports were altered to present a more positive picture.

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.”

Separately, a former Pentagon official told Fox News there apparently was an attempt to destroy the communications. The Pentagon official said the email warnings were "not well received" by the analysts.

Those emails, among others, are now in the possession of the Pentagon inspector general. The IG’s probe is expanding into whether intelligence assessments were changed to give a more positive picture of the anti-ISIS campaign.

 

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYkwFHgrgTI

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Former Obama DIA chief: Intel probe should focus on White House
Ed Morrissey
Nov. 24 2015


Readers will recall that General Mike Flynn, then director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, warned Congress about the rise of ISIS in late 2013, warnings which prompted Barack Obama to compare ISIS to a “jayvee team” in an interview with the New Yorker. Flynn’s DIA had warned the White House about ISIS even earlier than that, in an August 2012 memo issued shortly after Flynn assumed command of DIA and chair of the Military Intelligence Board. Now Obama expresses surprise over the rapid rise of ISIS and wants an investigation into CENTCOM and the alleged cooking of the evidence, but Flynn tells Megyn Kelly that the probe should start at the top — and that Obama got plenty of warnings (via the Weekly Standard):

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Flynn’s correct on both points. First, the White House clearly got warned about both what was happening with al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI)/ISIS in 2012, and the consequences of it if left unchecked in the August 2012 memo. Flynn himself warned Congress in late 2013 of the same threat. To the extent that intelligence analysis got cooked later, one has to ask why it got cooked. Who told those analysts to “cut it out” will be important, but why did they make that demand? Who told those people ixnay-on-the-aliphate-cay in the first place? Or better put, cui bono? The only benefit that came from professions of ignorance accrued to Obama and his national-security team, who could pretend that the rebound of al-Qaeda in Iraq was something else entirely, and they could continue to claim that “al-Qaeda was on the run.” That benefit certainly didn’t accrue to the people within military intelligence, not unless those people got rewarded for cooked intel from above.

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Narratives Over Facts
Erick Erickson

Nov 27, 2015

 

Much of the media and Democratic Party obsess about narratives. It is not enough for reporters to report facts, data, and events. They must all be shaped into story-telling elements to tell a larger story or narrative. This approach has become common among both the press and politicians. The Obama Administration, in particular, has become obsessed with narratives at the expense of our national security.

 

Saadiq Long is one data point in the quest for narratives. In 2013, liberal journalists wove the facts of Saadiq Long into the greater narrative that the United States was still an oppressive regime under Barack Obama. The "no fly list" was but one example, and Saadiq Long was on the no fly list. The cause of Saadiq Long was championed by MSNBC, Glenn Greenwald, Mother Jones magazine, and more.

 

As Patrick Poole at PJ Media reported last week, back in 2013, Saadiq Long wanted to return to his native Oklahoma to visit his ailing mother. Long had moved to Qatar and could not get home because he was on the "no fly list." The media pressure eventually led the Obama Administration to remove Long from the "no fly list," but he was eventually added back. Last week, Long was arrested in Turkey as part of an ISIS cell.

 

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