50 Spies Say ISIS Intelligence Was Cooked by Shane Harris and Nancy A. Youssef.
From the post:
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 Qaeda’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.
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Two other examples of “cooked” intelligence come to mind:
Some of the results from that “cooked” intelligence include a costly war with Iraq and further destabilization of the Middle East.
The Pentagon Papers (Vietnam).
The “cooked” intelligence in Vietnam resulted in human and environmental costs that have never been adequately tallied.
Anyone, inside or outside the intelligence community who acts “shocked” that intelligence is “cooked” for political ends is either demented or extraterrestrial.
Cooked intelligence is used the intelligence community to justify its existence and in government departments to further their own budgets and agendas. Why would anyone be surprised that politicians cook intelligence for their own ends?
The cult of secrecy around intelligence is what enables the cooking of intelligence. If the information collected by the NSA, CIA and others was dumped onto GitHub on a regular basis, the ability of anyone to “cook” intelligence would be greatly diminished.
Or perhaps better, if intelligence data were available to everyone, then there would be a variety of dishes of “cooked” intelligence to chose from.
For all the frothing cries of “Danger!, Danger!,” that follow every leak of classified data, have you ever seen reports of anyone being called to account based on those leaks?
Of course not! The danger to others from TS/SCI classified data serves to enhance the status of those with clearance and avoids principled disagreement because “they know something you don’t.”
And that’s true, they do know something you don’t. What is often omitted is that what they know is often of no interest to anyone.