James Clapper's 'highly unusual' contact with military official raises concerns

Obama’s intelligence chief James Clapper is said to be in frequent and unusual contact with a military intelligence officer at the center of a growing scandal over rosy portrayals of the war against ISIS. National intelligence director Clapper is said to talk nearly every day with head of US Central Command’s intelligence wing, Army Major General Steven Grove – “which is highly, highly unusual”, says a former intelligence official.

Clapper, far senior to Grove, is said to tell Grove how the war looks from his vantage point, and question Grove about Central Command’s assessments. Such a situation could place inherent pressure on a subordinate.

In 2013 Clapper apologized to the US Senate for publicly misleading Congress on the scope of domestic surveillance.

“He can be manipulative,” a former senior defense official said. For Clapper as a senior US intelligence officer with access to assessments across the 16 US intelligence agencies to query Grove, the Central Command intelligence chief, the ex-official said, “something’s wrong”.

Clapper’s calls placed Grove in a difficult bureaucratic position: between the nominal leader of the entire US intelligence apparatus and his lower-level analysts, several of whom consider the war against Isis to be in dire straits.

Central Command analyst's dissatisfaction with Grove and his civilian deputy, Greg Ryckman, has now sparked an official inquiry by the Pentagon inspector general.

Over 50 intelligence analysts have registered complaints about manipulated or skewed data. Analysts object to internal portrayals, said to come ultimately from Grove and Ryckman, of a war proceeding better than Isis’s persistent hold over large swaths of Iraq and Syria suggests.

One source said Obama aides were not receptive to hearing “the narrative that Isis is winning”.

Allen B. West: Whoa: 50 military intel chiefs just REVOLTED against Obama Written by Allen West on September 11, 2015
Written by Allen West on September 11, 2015

When I was a young captain and artillery battery commander, I learned quickly that there were two folks you did not cross — the Mess Sergeant and the Supply Sergeant. One, well, is self-explanatory, because he prepares the chow, but the other maintains your property account. And trust me, I saw what happened to young captains who screwed over their supply sergeants — somehow stuff went missing, even if it had been inventoried and accounted for.
Now there’s another group of folks you do not want to cross — we lovingly refer to them as “spooks” — the brave and brilliant men and women of the intelligence community. They know the secrets and where the “bodies” are buried. And it seems they’re leading us to the gravesite.
As reported by the not so conservative Daily BeastDaily Beast,”It’s being called a ‘revolt’ by intelligence pros who are paid to give their honest assessment of the ISIS war—but are instead seeing their reports turned into happy talk.
More than 50 intelligence analysts working out of the U.S. military’s Central Command have formally complained that their reports on ISIS and al-Qaida’s branch in Syria were being inappropriately altered by senior officials, The Daily Beast has learned.
The complaints spurred the Pentagon’s inspector general to open an investigation into the alleged manipulation of intelligence. The fact that so many people complained suggests there are deep-rooted, systemic problems in how the U.S. military command charged with the war against the self-proclaimed Islamic State assesses intelligence. “The cancer was within the senior level of the intelligence command,” one defense official said.
Two senior analysts at CENTCOM signed a written complaint sent to the Defense Department inspector general in July alleging that the reports, some of which were briefed to President Obama, portrayed the terror groups as weaker than the analysts believe they are. The reports were changed by CENTCOM higher-ups to adhere to the administration’s public line that the U.S. is winning the battle against ISIS and al Nusra, al-Qaida’s branch in Syria, the analysts claim.”
We had reported on early claims that this was happening herehad reported on early claims that this was happening here. Our assessment is that bad news is not welcomed at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The only news accepted must coincide with the prevailing political talking points. The concern expressed in our previous post is the same here — are senior military officials so intimidated by President Obama that they are not allowing the truth to be told, instead telling the naked emperor he is well clothed?
It’s very disturbing to think we don’t have ground truth about the situation in Iraq and Syria. And let’s be very honest, if this were a Republican presidential administration, the liberal progressive media would be screaming — but hey, this is their guy. So I will give much credit to The Daily Beast for reporting this story.
I hope I’m not the only one who has been questioning what’s been reported coming out of the region. We know ISIS has taken the largest oil refinery in Syria. They’re marching against the last remaining Syrian Army base in East Syria.
Now we know who’s been getting the right intel reports — Vladimir Putin and Russia. Hence why Russian cargo planes had been landing in Damascus in order to send forces to prop up Bashar Assad. So we see something coming together which somewhat reminds me of mid 1930s — the Spanish Civil War. It was there that Germany and Italy came to the aid and assistance of General Franco and his ultra nationalists against the leftist radicals in Spain.
Consider what would happen if, just if, Russia and Iran came together to defeat Sunni islamists in the region. It sure seems like that’s happening, as we reported yesterdayas we reported yesterday. We could be looking at a very interesting axis — and we have not delved into China’s place in this mixture. I don’t believe the Gulf Cooperation Council would idly sit back and allow a Russian-Shiite alliance to solidify.
However, this is what happens from a strategic perspective when you falsify intelligence reports — you fail to have any strategic vision to assess the situation and find yourself in constant react mode. This is not by accident from the Obama administration, nor an untended consequence: this is intended. President Obama has little or no interest in containing ISIS or Iran. And to those of you who are saying he is correct and we should just stay out of it – there’s just one thing to remember: Obama created the mess. And his creation has now spread, by way of migration, into Europe and potentially to the United States. All this is a result of manipulated intelligence that sought to deceive the American people about truth on the ground in Iraq and Syria. Sadly, that which is done in darkness will eventually be brought into the light — especially if you shun the intel community.
If this were just one or two folks, it could be dismissed, trust me, they would be. However, when more than 50 intelligence analysts come together to file a complaint, yes, you do have a systemic issue. But, will this survive the 48-hour news cycle? Will we get some resolution on this matter? Or will it just be swept under the usual Oval Office rug?
Just keep this in mind: Can we trust the Obama administration to give us the right intel assessment on potential ISIS infiltration in the migrant crisis coming out of Iraq and Syria? Or will they whitewash these reports as well? And have y’all noticed, the predominant demographic of “folks” escaping Syria and Iraq are not elderly, women, and children…they are young menthey are young men?

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Exploiting Ignorance in the Post Subversion Phase..., An Unconstrained Analytics Report by Stephen Coughlin, 14 August 2015

Graeme Wood’s March 2015 Atlantic article “What ISIS Really Wants” brought back a few bad memories from my days at the Pentagon, where I was mobilized to the Joint Staff Intelligence after 9/11. One such memory was the frequent assertion, beginning around 2003, that “Sistani is a ‘quietist’.” Another was the March 2007 Foreign Affairs article “The Moderate Muslim Brotherhood.”
As both narratives supported strategic distractions, the fact that the two came together in the Atlantic article raised red flags. We have been here before—many times. These flags will be addressed in the following analysis in the context of their associated concerns.
It is argued that the Atlantic article supports narratives that continue to justify the outsourcing of the production of America’s information requirements in support of the counterterror effort to non-U.S. actors, in this case Middle Eastern, in much the way that the Muslim Brotherhood controls the domestic debate through the “countering violent extremism” (CVE) narrative.

[snip]

The shift to a Brotherhood-friendly policy set in motion a series of events beginning with the production of documents in 2008 at DHS and NCTC that placed the language of jihad off limits when analyzing (or even discussing) slamic-based terrorism. This was followed in 2010 by DHS bringing in Brotherhood leaders to help prop up the Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) protocols that resulted in DHS institutionalizing the CVE through the production of “CVE Training Guidance & Best Practices” and related policy documents. It is through the CVE process that the purging of work product and personnel continues to this day.

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Michael Savage Interviews 'Catastrophic Failure' Author Stephen Coughlin (7-7-15)

Coughlin identifies Islam's political foot soldiers, The Muslim Brotherhood, as the mothership of 'little known Islamic extremist groups like al qaeda - all of whom have been filtered through the shariah compliant lens to be presented to the Western public as misunderstood 'moderates' to varying degrees.
Since 2007, the Muslim Brotherhood has anchored their will into national security interests, subverting all intel to their interests.

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