SoylentNews

takyon [soylentnews.org] writes:

Two Congressional reports have found that CENTCOM [wikipedia.org] manipulated intelligence reports related to the Islamic State [thedailybeast.com], including altering reports that questioned the effectiveness of airstrikes:

Senior officials at U.S. Central Command manipulated intelligence reports, press statements, and congressional testimony to present a more positive outlook on the war against the Islamic State, a House Republican task force concluded in a damning report [house.gov] released Thursday. The report, written by the members of the House Armed Services and Intelligence committees and the Defense Appropriations subcommittee, confirmed [thedailybeast.com] more than a year of reporting by The Daily Beast about problems with CENTCOM analysis [thedailybeast.com] of the war against ISIS. House Democrats, who conducted their own separate investigation, reached a similar conclusion as their Republican colleagues, finding that CENTCOM "insufficiently accommodated dissenting views," Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said in a statement [link] [house.gov].

The altering of intelligence reports, which included information that made its way into briefings to President Obama, was systematic, lawmakers found. "There was a consistent trend that across four specific campaigns against [ISIS] in Iraq throughout 2014 and 2015, assessments approved by the J2 [CENTCOM's Joint Intelligence Center] or leadership were consistently more positive than those presented by the [intelligence community]," the report found.

Also at The Washington Post [washingtonpost.com], Tampa Bay Times [tampabay.com], and NYT [nytimes.com].

Original Submission