{"id":12179,"date":"2015-09-12T15:26:32","date_gmt":"2015-09-12T20:26:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=12179"},"modified":"2015-09-12T15:26:32","modified_gmt":"2015-09-12T20:26:32","slug":"spy-chiefs-unusual-contact-with-military-official-raises-concerns-about-intelligence-manipulation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=12179","title":{"rendered":"Spy Chief\u2019s \u2018Unusual\u2019 Contact With Military Official Raises Concerns About Intelligence Manipulation"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Spy Chief\u2019s \u2018Unusual\u2019 Contact With Military Official Raises Concerns About Intelligence Manipulation<\/a><\/h3>\n

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\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.\u00a0(Partnership for Public Service<\/a>\u00a0\/\u00a0CC BY 2.0<\/a>)<\/small><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

James Clapper\u2014Barack Obama\u2019s director of national intelligence\u2014is said to be in what a former intelligence official called frequent and \u201chighly, highly unusual\u201d contact with a ranking junior intelligence officer who sits at the center of a growing scandal over rosy portrayals of the Pentagon\u2019s war against Islamic State.<\/p>\n

Clapper\u2019s interlocutor\u2014Army Brig. Gen. Steven Grove, head of U.S. Central Command\u2019s intelligence wing\u2014is said to be implicated in a Pentagon inquiry into manipulated war intelligence.<\/p>\n

Spencer Ackerman reports at\u00a0The Guardian<\/b>:<\/p>\n

In communications, Clapper, who is far more senior than Grove, is said to tell Grove how the war looks from his vantage point, and question Grove about Central Command\u2019s assessments. Such a situation could place inherent pressure on a subordinate, sources said.<\/p>\n

Knowledgeable former officials are doubtful that Clapper directly intends to manipulate intelligence. And they do not say that the director of national intelligence \u2013 who apologized to his Senate overseers in 2013 for publicly misleading Congress on the scope of domestic surveillance \u2013 ordered Grove or anyone else to change the command\u2019s assessment of the war.<\/p>\n

But one former intelligence official said Clapper \u201chas to be careful of the Cheney effect, going over to the CIA and how does that affect people\u201d \u2013 a reference to pressure felt by CIA analysts before the 2003 Iraq invasion to portray Saddam Hussein as posing a more dire threat than he actually did, following then Vice President Dick Cheney\u2019s direct interaction with far more junior analysts and officials. \u2026<\/p>\n

More than 50 intelligence analysts, both those within Central Command and their seconded Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) colleagues, have registered complaints about manipulated or skewed data, the Daily Beast reported on Wednesday. Analysts object to internal portrayals, said to come ultimately from Grove and Ryckman, of a war proceeding better than Isis\u2019s persistent hold over large swaths of Iraq and Syria suggests. The existence of the Pentagon inquiry was first reported last month by the New York Times. \u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Spy Chief\u2019s \u2018Unusual\u2019 Contact With Military Official Raises Concerns About Intelligence Manipulation \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.\u00a0(Partnership for Public Service\u00a0\/\u00a0CC BY 2.0) James Clapper\u2014Barack Obama\u2019s director of national intelligence\u2014is said to be in what a former intelligence official called frequent and \u201chighly, highly unusual\u201d contact with a ranking junior intelligence officer who sits […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[3306,447,4885,577,620,746,8975,765,8738,5906],"class_list":["post-12179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-barack-obama","tag-islamic-state","tag-james-clapper","tag-nsa","tag-pentagon","tag-spying","tag-steven-grove","tag-surveillance","tag-truthdig","tag-us-intelligence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12179"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12179\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12180,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12179\/revisions\/12180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}