- Aug 25, 2015 · A fighter jet aboard the United States aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt in the Arabian Gulf this month. Carrier-based aircraft are conducting a bombing ...
Inquiry Weighs Whether ISIS Analysis Was Distorted
A
fighter jet aboard the United States aircraft carrier Theodore
Roosevelt in the Arabian Gulf this month. Carrier-based aircraft are
conducting a bombing campaign against the Islamic State.
Adam Ferguson for The New York Times
By MARK MAZZETTI and MATT APUZZO
August 25, 2015
WASHINGTON
— The Pentagon’s inspector general is investigating allegations that
military officials have skewed intelligence assessments about the United
States-led campaign in Iraq
against the Islamic State to provide a more optimistic account of
progress, according to several officials familiar with the inquiry.
The investigation began after at least one civilian Defense Intelligence Agency
analyst told the authorities that he had evidence that officials at
United States Central Command — the military headquarters overseeing the
American bombing campaign and other efforts against the Islamic State —
were improperly reworking the conclusions of intelligence assessments
prepared for policy makers, including President Obama, the government
officials said.
Fuller details of the claims
were not available, including when the assessments were said to have
been altered and who at Central Command, or Centcom, the analyst said
was responsible. The officials, speaking only on the condition of
anonymity about classified matters, said that the recently opened
investigation focused on whether military officials had changed the
conclusions of draft intelligence assessments during a review process
and then passed them on.
The prospect of skewed
intelligence raises new questions about the direction of the
government’s war with the Islamic State, and could help explain why
pronouncements about the progress of the campaign have varied widely.
Legitimate
differences of opinion are common and encouraged among national
security officials, so the inspector general’s investigation is an
unusual move and suggests that the allegations go beyond typical
intelligence disputes. Government rules
state that intelligence assessments “must not be distorted” by agency
agendas or policy views. Analysts are required to cite the sources that
back up their conclusions and to acknowledge differing viewpoints.
Under
federal law, intelligence officials can bring claims of wrongdoing to
the intelligence community’s inspector general, a position created in
2011. If officials find the claims credible, they are required to advise
the House and Senate Intelligence Committees. That occurred in the past
several weeks, the officials said, and the Pentagon’s inspector general
decided to open an investigation into the matter.
Spokeswomen for both inspectors general declined to comment for this article. The Defense Intelligence Agency and the White House also declined to comment.
Col.
Patrick Ryder, a Centcom spokesman, said he could not comment on a
continuing inspector general investigation but said “the I.G. has a
responsibility to investigate all allegations made, and we welcome and
support their independent oversight.”
Numerous agencies produce intelligence assessments related to the Iraq war, including the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency
and others. Colonel Ryder said it was customary for them to make
suggestions on one another’s drafts. But he said each agency had the
final say on whether to incorporate those suggestions. “Further, the
multisource nature of our assessment process purposely guards against
any single report or opinion unduly influencing leaders and decision
makers,” he said.
It is not clear how that
review process changes when Defense Intelligence Agency analysts are
assigned to work at Centcom — which has headquarters both in Tampa,
Fla., and Qatar — as was the case of at least one of the analysts who
have spoken to the inspector general. In the years since the Sept. 11,
2001, attacks, the Pentagon has relocated more Defense Intelligence
Agency analysts from the agency’s Washington headquarters to military
commands around the globe, so they can work more closely with the
generals and admirals in charge of the military campaigns.
Mr.
Obama last summer authorized a bombing campaign against the Islamic
State, and approximately 3,400 American troops are currently in Iraq
advising and training Iraqi forces. The White House has been reluctant,
though, to recommit large numbers of ground troops to Iraq after
announcing an “end” to the Iraq war in 2009.
The
bombing campaign over the past year has had some success in allowing
Iraqi forces to reclaim parts of the country formerly under the group’s
control, but important cities like Mosul and Ramadi remain under Islamic
State’s control. There has been very little progress in wresting the
group’s hold over large parts of Syria, where the United States has done
limited bombing.
Some senior American
officials in recent weeks have provided largely positive public
assessments about the progress of the military campaign against the
Islamic State, a Sunni terrorist organization that began as an offshoot
of Al Qaeda but has since severed ties and claimed governance of a huge
stretch of land across Iraq and Syria. The group is also called ISIS or ISIL.
In
late July, retired Gen. John Allen — who is Mr. Obama’s top envoy
working with other nations to fight the Islamic State — told the Aspen
Security Forum that the terror group’s momentum had been “checked
strategically, operationally, and by and large, tactically.”
“ISIS
is losing,” he said, even as he acknowledged that the campaign faced
numerous challenges — from blunting the Islamic State’s message to
improving the quality of Iraqi forces.
During
a news briefing last week, Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter was more
measured. He called the war “difficult” and said “it’s going to take
some time.” But, he added, “I’m confident that we will succeed in
defeating ISIL and that we have the right strategy.”
But
recent intelligence assessments, including some by Defense Intelligence
Agency, paint a sober picture about how little the Islamic State has
been weakened over the past year, according to officials with access to
the classified assessments. They said the documents conclude that the
yearlong campaign has done little to diminish the ranks of the Islamic
State’s committed fighters, and that the group over the last year has
expanded its reach into North Africa and Central Asia.
Critics
of the Obama administration’s strategy have argued that a bombing
campaign alone — without a significant infusion of American ground
troops — is unlikely to ever significantly weaken the terror group. But
it is not clear whether Defense Intelligence Agency analysts concluded
that more American troops would make an appreciable difference.
In
testimony on Capitol Hill this year, Lt. Gen. Vincent R. Stewart, the
agency’s director, said sending ground troops back into Iraq risked
transforming the conflict into one between the West and ISIS, which
would be “the best propaganda victory that we could give.”
“It’s
both expected and helpful if there are dissenting viewpoints about
conflicts in foreign countries,” said Micah Zenko, a fellow at the
Council on Foreign Relations and author of a forthcoming book, “Red
Team,” that includes an examination of alternative analysis within
American intelligence agencies. What is problematic, he said, “is when a
dissenting opinion is not given to policy makers.”
The
Defense Intelligence Agency was created in 1961, in part to avoid what
Robert McNamara, the Secretary of Defense at the time, called “service
bias.” During the 1950s, the United States grossly overestimated the
size of the Soviet missile arsenal, a miscalculation that was fueled in
part by the Air Force, which wanted more money for its own missile
systems.
During the Vietnam War, the Defense
Intelligence Agency repeatedly warned that even a sustained military
campaign was unlikely to defeat the North Vietnamese forces. But
according to an internal history of the agency,
its conclusions were repeatedly overruled by commanders who were
certain that the United States was winning, and that victory was just a
matter of applying more force.
“There’s a built-in
tension for the people who work at D.I.A., between dispassionate
analysis and what command wants,” said Paul R. Pillar, a retired senior
Central Intelligence Agency analyst who years ago accused the Bush
administration of distorting intelligence assessments about Iraq’s
weapons programs before the beginning of the Iraq war in 2003.
“You’re part of a large structure that does have a vested interest in portraying the overall mission as going well,” he said.
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