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 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.”
Read more at AllenBWest.com.
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