TAMPA — Officials at U.S. Central Command did not cook the books when it came to providing intelligence about the battle against Islamic State, the Defense Department’s Office of Inspector General has concluded.
5 Months Ago
6 Months Ago
19 Hours Ago
"We did not substantiate the most serious allegation, which was that intelligence was falsified," according to a 198-page unclassified report issued Wednesday morning about Centcom, which is headquartered at MacDill Air Force Base. "Only a few witnesses described intelligence assessments as false, and they did not provide specific examples that supported the allegation.”
Investigators also found that the command’s intelligence unit, known as the J2, did not attempt to change reports to make them factually untrue or present any intelligence assessments they did not believe were accurate.
While the report found no wrongdoing, inspectors did note that there was a ‘widespread perception of distortion" about the CentCom intelligence products and a lack of trust in its intelligence leadership. The report chalked that up to the frantic pace of work and the failure of intelligence leadership to inform the workforce of its decision-making rationale.
"Insufficient communication and feedback also exacerbated the perception," according to the report. "We also found that some officials in the Intelligence Community, but not all, believed that USCENTCOM’s intelligence assessments were more optimistic than theirs, although not systematically distorted."
The investigators’ conclusions stand in contrast to a scathing report issued in August by a Republican congressional task force that found CentCom altered its analysis to paint a more optimistic picture of the battle against Islamic State fighters than the situation on the ground warranted.
Defense Department inspectors investigated allegations that as the Islamic State began rolling across Syria and Iraq in 2014, Major General Steven Grove, the Director of Intelligence at U.S. Central Command, Gregory Goldenbahis Ryckman, Vice Director of Intelligence and William E. "Buddy" Rizzio, Defense Intelligence Senior Leader at CentCom’s Joint Intelligence Center, falsified, distorted, suppressed, or delayed intelligence products.
The motivation, according to the report, was to present "a more optimistic portrayal of the success of (CentCom’s) efforts to degrade and destroy the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)."
Each of the men denied the allegations.
Lloyd Austin, the retired Army general who ran CentCom at the time, denied that he did not want to hear bad news about the fight against Islamic State.
In an interview with investigators, Austin said he had no knowledge "of anybody trying to downplay or rosy up intelligence," according to the report.’
Austin added it was important that he have accurate information because "You’re not going to win if you don’t have the right information. So rosying up doesn’t help us be successful in this fight."
The allegations were first raised in a 2015 letter to the Defense Intelligence Agency Inspector General. The letter-writer said senior intelligence leaders imposed a "false narrative" on analysts and analytic leaders that Iraqi forces, with U.S. help, were performing well on the battlefield, while ISIL was struggling.
The complainant also wrote that "the leaders imposed this narrative through many changes, small and large, on a daily basis, the cumulative effect of which was creation of a false narrative."
Investigators found many individuals who agreed with the complainants’ allegations or certain parts of them. Many other witnesses disagreed, some strenuously, while other witnesses had no opinion or knowledge.
The 198-page report, an unclassified version of a 542-page document delivered to the command and Congress, lists 29 recommendation to improve the intelligence process and "reduce the risk that allegations such as the ones at issue in this report will arise in the future," said Kathie Scarrah, a spokeswoman for the inspector general. The investigation was one of the most comprehensive in the department’s 34-year history, she said.
More than 30 people conducted more than 150 interviews and collected over 17 million documents and files, including about 2 million emails, she said.
Contact Howard Altman at haltman@tampabay.com or (813) 225-3112. Follow @haltman.
Our editors found this article on this site using Google and regenerated it for our readers.
