Officials from the US Central Command altered intelligence reports to portray a more optimistic picture of the war against the Islamic State (IS) group than events on the ground warranted, a US congressional panel said in a report issued on Thursday.
The interim report, from a task force established by the Republican chairmen of the US House of Representatives’ Armed Services Committee, Intelligence Committee and Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, found “widespread dissatisfaction” among Central Command intelligence analysts, who said superiors were doctoring their assessments of US efforts to defeat the Islamic State.
Central Command (CENTCOM) is the military headquarters in Tampa, Florida, that oversees US military operations across the Middle East and central Asia.
Photo: AP
“Intelligence products approved by senior CENTCOM leaders typically provided a more positive depiction of US anti-terrorism efforts than was warranted by facts on the ground and were consistently more positive than analysis produced by other elements of the intelligence community,” a news release about the report said.
“What happened at CENTCOM is unacceptable — our war fighters suffer when bad analysis is presented to senior policymakers,” US Representative Ken Calvert said. “The leadership failures at CENTCOM reach to the very top of the organization.”
The 10-page report detailed persistent problems in 2014 and last year in CENTCOM’s description and analysis of US efforts to train Iraqi forces.
Although it offers no definitive evidence that senior officials of US President Barack Obama’s administration ordered the reports to be doctored, it describes analysts as feeling as though they were under pressure from Command Center leaders to present a more optimistic view of the threat posed by the Islamic State, also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) or the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).
“Throughout the first half of 2015, many Central Command press releases, statements and congressional testimonies were significantly more positive than actual events,” the report said.
“After months of investigation, this much is very clear: From the middle of 2014 to the middle of 2015, the United States Central Command’s most senior intelligence leaders manipulated the command’s intelligence products to downplay the threat from ISIS in Iraq,” US Representative Mike Pompeo said in a statement.
Republicans created the task force after learning that analysts had raised concerns that intelligence about the Islamic State was being manipulated.
The report is to be followed up by more extensive findings as the investigation continues. There is an additional, ongoing investigation of CENTCOM intelligence by the US Department of Defense inspector general.
Democratic members of the House of Representatives’ Intelligence Committee released their own findings on Thursday that agreed with some of the conclusions of the Republican task force.
“Between 2014 and 2015, CENTCOM created an overly insular process for producing intelligence assessments on ISIL and Iraqi Security Forces,” US Representative Adam Schiff, the committee’s top Democrat, said in a statement.
This process, Schiff said, “stalled the release of intelligence products,” hurt morale among analysis and “insufficiently accommodated dissenting views.”
However, Schiff and the Democrats said they found no evidence that the White House tried to pressure CENTCOM analysts to fit their conclusions to a “preset or political narrative.”
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