Posted on 09/10/2015 7:07:22 PM PDT by robowombat
The Intelligence Community Goes to War with the Obama Administration Noah Rothman | @noahcrothman 09.10.2015 - 12:30 PM
By the middle of his second term in office, the intelligence community was said to be in full revolt against George W. Bush’s administration. “The policy was set. The war in Iraq was coming, and they were looking for intelligence to fit into the policy,” said Tyler Drumheller, a former CIA officer in Europe, in a 2006 interview with “60 Minutes.” He alleged that the White House “chose to ignore” information related to Iraq’s WMD program in the run-up to war that ran contrary to its preferred conclusions – a charge that was corroborated by a series of intelligence sources who spoke to reporters both on and off the record. In the articles of impeachment introduced against Bush in the House in January 2008, the president was accused of intentionally misleading the public about Saddam Hussein’s threat to American national interests and his regime’s links to al-Qaeda terrorists. The narrative was clear: The Bush administration’s penchant for deception had been fully exposed by noble whistleblowers within the intelligence community. That administration’s duplicity amounted to nothing less than an assault on American good governance. Today, a true war between a White House and the nation’s intelligence community has shown all this garment-rending torment to be mere partisan Democratic puffery.
On August 25, the Pentagon’s inspector general dropped a bombshell. The New York Times revealed that the Defense Department IG was investigating credible accusations that suggest United States Central Command was massaging intelligence reports reviewed by senior American military commanders, including the President of the United States, as to the relative strength of Islamic State forces. “Government rules state that intelligence assessments ‘must not be distorted’ by agency agendas or policy views,” the Times observed. The report made it clear that what the Pentagon IG was investigating was the systematic and intentional violation of the law.
This was not merely a flight of fancy for CENTCOM commanders or an act of bureaucratic self-preservation, according to dozens of intelligence sources that spoke with The Daily Beast’s team of national security reporters. The practice of distorting intelligence so as to present the administration with a rosier picture of their war in the Middle East than was warranted by the facts on the ground was the fulfillment of an unspoken directive.
“Some of those CENTCOM analysts described the sizeable cadre of protesting analysts as a ‘revolt’ by intelligence professionals who are paid to give their honest assessment, based on facts, and not to be influenced by national-level policy,” the report averred. “The analysts have accused senior-level leaders, including the director of intelligence and his deputy in CENTCOM, of changing their analyses to be more in line with the Obama administration’s public contention that the fight against ISIS and al Qaeda is making progress”
In other words, intelligence was being cherry-picked by ranking military officials in order to advance the White House’s political agenda. Democrats had long alleged but could never prove that the Bush administration was selective about the intelligence that it used to get America into a war. Now, a Democratic White House is facing the prospect of a neutral and apolitical investigation into the allegation that it is guilty of selectively reading intelligence in order to avoid a deepening one.
This isn’t the only “revolt” of the intelligence committee that has dominated the headlines in September. Hillary Clinton’s decision to use a “homebrew” server to conduct State Department business as Barack Obama’s highest-ranking Cabinet secretary and America’s chief diplomat put American informational security at risk. A spate of leaks out of the intelligence community in recent weeks not only confirms that impression but also increasingly indicts the State Department as well as Clinton’s team of handpicked aides and confidants for their roles in this reckless affair.
Hillary Clinton’s attempts at offering a coherent self-defense are dubious at best. Her conduct was allowed by State, she claims. She neither sent nor received classified communications that originated as such. And the State Department has a bad habit of over-classifying information don’t you know? Bottom line: none of this is her fault, and all investigations into her conduct are the product of a political witch-hunt. But the intelligence community is fighting back against this smear.
“Mrs. Clinton’s presidential campaign and the State Department disputed the inspector general’s finding last month and questioned whether the emails had been overclassified by an arbitrary process,” the New York Times reported on Monday. “But the special review – by the Central Intelligence Agency and National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency – concluded that the emails were ‘Top Secret,’ the highest classification of intelligence, when they were sent to Mrs. Clinton in 2009 and 2011.”
The law stipulates that the official who is allowed to review classified information is responsible for its secrecy, regardless of whether or not it has been labeled a sensitive document. Intelligence sources speaking to reporters have alleged that documents Clinton received on her unsecured server included details and imagery related to North Korea’s nuclear program. Hillary Clinton could not have encountered confidential information regarding a rogue state’s atomic weapons arsenal and capabilities and not have known that was, at the very least, sensitive intelligence.
The intelligence community’s leaks to the press did not merely target the former secretary, however. They were clear to implicate the State Department itself in covering for Clinton’s misdeeds. On Wednesday, an Associated Press report revealed why the intelligence community has grown so impatient with Clinton. “The State Department has delivered only seven of nearly 70 pages of documents that a federal judge identified as potentially responsive to an Associated Press request for documents relating to Hillary Rodham Clinton’s hiring of longtime aide Huma Abedin as a special government contract staffer,” the AP revealed. “The department’s response contained only five email documents, two of them partially censored.”
Long after Clinton’s team left the State Department, Foggy Bottom continues to cover for and slow-walk the investigation into her team’s special dispensations. “Cheryl Mills, Clinton’s chief of staff, and Huma Abedin, a close confidant who served as deputy chief of staff, both spent time working for the State Department, the Clinton Foundation or the Clintons personally,” the Washington Post reported on Thursday of last week. It was an aside in a report that revealed the State Department’s claim that it had funded the creation and maintenance of Clinton’s secret server was a lie. State Department staffer and Clinton political aide Bryan Pagliano was compensated for his information technology services by Clinton personally. He is expected to plead the Fifth when he testifies before a congressional committee on Thursday regarding his role in Clinton’s secret server scandal.
This is what a true inter-agency war looks like, and the intelligence community is unloading both barrels on this administration. Don’t expect the press or the left to fret for the future of the republic as they did when the intelligence community implied misconduct on the part of the Bush administration. There will be no breathless media inquiries about the “culture of corruption” in Barack Obama’s White House, or the “tone” the president set for the intelligence community to mirror. Nor should you hold your breath waiting for the House GOP to draft articles of impeachment. Nevertheless, the seriousness of the allegations of fraud and dishonesty on the part of those responsible for the maintenance of America’s national security, and all in service to preserving Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama’s preferred political narratives, is positively shocking.
“Welcome to da pahty, pal!” - John McClane
Active Duty ping.
I believe to this day some in the intelligence community withheld intelligence about the location of OBL from the Bush Administration.
Yawn....when I see officials in levenworth prison...
Wake me up...
It's positively shocking? To whom?
War of the Words part 2015
When I see the schedule for the public hangings, I’ll raise a glass and a cheer.
‘It’s positively shocking? To whom?’
To Captain Louis Renault
of course.
Well then, play it again Sam.
Last time the intelligence community went to war with a US president was in Dallas.
Right. Where are the indictments? Otherwise, stop wasting my time.
I believe it was the intel community that fed the press a grossly exaggerated account of WMD off the record in the run up to the war-- when that proved false, to cover their ass with the press, they blamed Bush.
Plus the embedded dem operatives masquerading as civil servants took advantage of the situation: look at Armitage and Plame.
Some of these intelligence agents, are risking taking a dirt nap, if they tell the truth.
As long as John Brennan controls the CIA there will be no “ intelligence community” revolt against obama
military analysts maybe but not the civilians
We know they never briefed bush or Cheney on the Chinese dogging our recon aircraft in the south China sea and look how that turned out
The list, Ping
Let me know if you would like to be on or off the ping list
How did this intelligence get from an secure server to Hillary;s server. You can not just forward it even if you tried. This means it was electronically copied to a physical medium probably a thumb drive and taken out that way. This is a big time crime by one of Hillary's assistants. I predict more taking of the fifth amendment.
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