News / Military
By Howard Altman / Tampa Bay Times / August 11, 2016
PHOTO: Demonstrators chant slogans to support the Islamic State group in front of the provincial government headquarters in the Iraqi city of Mosul in June 2014. (Associated Press 2014)
U.S. Central Command’s intelligence operation altered its analysis to paint a more optimistic picture of the battle against the so-called Islamic State than the situation on the ground warranted, according to a scathing report issued Wednesday by a Republican congressional task force.
Some of the analysis may have found its way into presidential daily briefings, according to the report by the House Joint Task Force on U.S. Central Command Intelligence Analysis.
The report also found the senior leader at CentCom, headquartered at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, publicly testified that the fight against Islamic State was going better than it was.
U.S. Rep. Mike Pompeo, a Kansas Republican who headed up the report, said CentCom’s most senior intelligence leaders manipulated the command’s intelligence products regarding the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, from mid-2014 to mid-2015.
“The result: consumers of those intelligence products were provided a consistently ‘rosy’ view of U.S. operational success against ISIS,” Pompeo said. ” That may well have resulted in putting American troops at risk as policymakers relied on this intelligence when formulating policy and allocating resources for the fight.”
There are more than 5,000 U.S. troops, along with partner nations, and civilian contractors, deployed in the fight against the Islamic State. ISIS also is the target of a massive bombing campaign started two years ago.
The report from the Republican task force ( tbtim.es/1500) comes as the Pentagon’s Office of Inspector General also is investigating allegations of intelligence manipulation at CentCom. Results are expected by the end of the year.
CentCom has seen the report and is reviewing it, said Cmdr. Kyle Raines, a spokesman for the command, “and we appreciate the independent oversight provided.”
Pointing to the two investigations under way, Raines, said, “We will refrain from further comment at this time.”
Pentagon officials also declined comment about the task force report but noted the wide range of assessments and data provided by the intelligence community.
“Experts sometimes disagree on the interpretation of complex data,” said Lt. Cmdr. Patrick L. Evans, a Pentagon spokesman, “and the Intelligence Community and Department of Defense welcome healthy dialogue on these vital national security topics.”
Democrats on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence conducted their own investigation, finding an “overly insular” intelligence process at CentCom that “deviated from best practices,” but no political pressure to change analysis.
There was no evidence, said ranking member Rep. Adam Schiff, a California Democrat, that “the White House requested to, or in any manner attempted to, have the intelligence analysis conform to any preset or political narrative.”
Intelligence problems at CentCom started under the command of Army Gen. Lloyd Austin III, according to the task force report, prompted by changes in the way intelligence was analyzed and reported up the chain of command. There have been improvements since Army Gen. Joseph Votel took command of CentCom in March, according to the report.
The report does not say Austin ordered changes to paint a rosier picture of the ISIS threat but does say the leadership environment at CentCom and its intelligence directorate “deteriorated significantly” following the 2013 departure of Marine Gen. James Mattis and his senior intelligence leaders.
Austin assumed command from Mattis in March 2013. Mattis declined comment on the task force report. Efforts to reach Austin were unsuccessful.
The House investigation was launched following complaints in May 2015 from an unnamed intelligence analyst at CentCom to the Defense Intelligence Agency’s Office of Inspector General. The analyst leveled allegations about senior leaders at CentCom’s intelligence directorate and at the command’s Joint Intelligence Center, which collects, processes, generates and stores classified intelligence data.
These leaders “violated regulations, tradecraft standards and professional ethics by modifying intelligence assessments to present an unduly positive outlook” on CentCom’s efforts to train Iraqi security forces and combat Islamic State, according to the whistleblower’s allegations.
The House Joint Task Force, created in December, interviewed five of the CentCom’s analysts — including the one who leveled the allegations — as well as several others at the command. They conducted nearly 25 hours of classified interviews.
Other than the top leadership of CentCom, the report mentions no one by name.
The Islamic State, which arose in Syria in 2013, launched a series of attacks in 2014 that began with the capture of Raqqa in Syria. In May 2014, the jihadi group captured the Iraqi city of Ramadi. A month later, it captured Mosul and Tikrit.
A little more than a year after Gen. Mattis was “forced to depart abruptly” from his role as CentCom commander, Austin installed a new leadership team at the intelligence directorate beginning in May 2014 — just as ISIS was beginning to roll across Syria and Iraq, the report says.
In August 2014, as the bombing campaign against the Islamic State was launched, a new leader was in charge of CentCom’s Joint Intelligence Center.
The changes “likely contributed to confusion and uncertainty” about intelligence operations at the command, the report says.
In the months after Mosul’s fall, the intelligence directorate’s senior leadership “increased their personal involvement in the daily editing and production” of intelligence summaries, according to the report. They also took a greater role in other intelligence work, the report says.
The task force found disagreement about the results of these changes.
The whistleblower and some analysts described them as a power play by command leaders that compromised the findings of career intelligence analysts. Other analysts described the changes as a “legitimate response” to the faster pace of work brought on by the ISIS threat.
Whatever the reason, intelligence from CentCom and the Joint Intelligence Center often were “consistently more positive” than reports from the DIA, the Central Intelligence Agency and other segments of the intelligence community, according to the task force report .
The bottom line, according to the report, is that Austin, as the public face of CentCom and the commander who makes reports to the White House, Pentagon and Congress, was relying on “more positive” reports than those provided by other sources.
In addition, because CentCom intelligence officials had direct communications with senior leadership in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, CentCom leaders may have had “outsized influence on the material presented to the President outside of formal coordination channels,” according to the report.
The task force, which is continuing its investigation, recommends that CentCom reduce the confusion in the analytic review and coordination process, improve interagency coordination of intelligence and reduce the “overly burdensome” review process by senior leadership.
In addition, the task force calls for the DIA, which oversees all military intelligence and provides intelligence analysts, to take a greater oversight role.
Photo 2: Army Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III was commander of U.S. Central Command. Intelligence problems at CentCom started under his command, according to a House task force report, prompted by changes in the way intelligence was analyzed and reported up the chain of command. (Associated Press 2014)
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