Steve Hayes: Cooked Intel on Islamic State Could Be Biggest Scandal of Obama’s Presidency by Blake Seitz
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Steve Hayes: Cooked Intel on Islamic State Could Be Biggest Scandal of Obama’s Presidency by Blake Seitz
Dubai declares three days of mourning after Sheikh Rashid, son of the Gulf emirate's ruler, died suddenly.
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GREENVILLE, N.C. (AP) - Lt. Col. Roxane Engelbrecht was a junior Air Force officer on Sept. 11, 2001. Sgt. 1st Class Robert Meola was a newly enlisted soldier, just 13 days in. Maj. Tim Davis was in the JROTC building at J.H. Rose High School.
They all remember what they ...
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Instead, he found himself charged with treason and facing a possible 15 ...
SAN ANTONIO (AP) - The officer who led the investigation of Bowe Bergdahl's disappearance and capture in Afghanistan six years ago says he doesn't think the Army sergeant should go to prison.
Maj. Gen. Kenneth Dahl testified Friday at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio that Bergdahl said he walked ...
SAN ANTONIO (AP) - The U.S. Army held an Article 32 hearing in the case of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who was charged in March with desertion and misbehavior before the enemy for allegedly leaving his post in southeastern Afghanistan in June 2009. Bergdahl was a prisoner of the Taliban for ...
Weekly Standard senior writer Steve Hayes said Friday that the alleged manipulation of intelligence about the Islamic State (IS, also ISIS) by senior officials could be the biggest scandal of President Obama’s presidency.
“You had analysts who provided information, provided assessments that said that ISIS was actually a growing threat and a real danger, and those threats were systematically rewritten to downplay the threat from ISIS,” Hayes said on Fox’s Special Report with Bret Baier.
“I think this is potentially the biggest scandal of the Obama administration,” Hayes said later.
The scandal in question has simmered under the surface for some time before an article in The Daily Beast brought matters to a boil. The article revealed that 50 intelligence analysts had formally complained that their reports about IS and al Nusra, an al Qaeda-affiliated terrorist group, were being altered by senior officials to downplay the groups’ strength.
Hayes said that intelligence has been hidden and massaged by the Obama administration todownplay the strength of al Qaeda for years.
“My argument is that this isn’t a new scandal at all,” Hayes said. “There were games played with [the Osama bin Laden documents]. The administration was arguing at the time that al Qaeda was no longer a threat—that it was, in fact, retreating—when you had somebody like Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn, the former chairman of the [DIA] saying at the time that al Qaeda had doubled in strength
Transcript below:
BRET BAIER: Cooking the books on intel about ISIS. The chairman of the House Intelligence committee says knows it’s been going on since 2012, because he was told by an informant that it was going on back then. What about all of this? We start the Friday lightning round. We’re back with the panel. Steve.STEVE HAYES: Well, I think this is a big deal. There has been a lot of media focus over the past couple weeks, past couple months about intelligence manipulation as it relates to ISIS, where you had analysts who provided information, provided assessments that said that ISIS was actually a growing threat and a real danger, and those threats were systematically rewritten to downplay the threat from ISIS. But most of the media is treating this as a new scandal. My argument is that this isn’t a new scandal at all. In fact, it has happened before both with respect to the War on Terror but also involving [the Defense Intelligence Agency] and CENTCOM. That goes back to the translation, the exploitation of the documents that were captured in Osama bin Laden’s compound. The same thing happened. Those documents, there were games played with them. The administration was arguing at the time that al Qaeda was no longer a threat—that it was, in fact, retreating—when you had somebody like Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn, the former chairman of the [DIA] saying at the time that al Qaeda had doubled in strength. I think this is potentially the biggest scandal of the Obama administration.BAIER: Okay. Mark it down.
The post Steve Hayes: Cooked Intel on Islamic State Could Be Biggest Scandal of Obama’s Presidency appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.
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Relentless Strike is the history of Joint Special Operations Command—JSOC—the elite commando wing of the U.S. military. Its author, Sean Naylor, is a senior writer for the Army Times, and had packed his book full of details regarding why, how, and where JSOC operates.
Naylor’s account begins with JSOC’s creation following the 1980 Desert One incident, where a U.S. military attempt to rescue hostages from the U.S. Embassy in Tehran ended in disaster. JSOC sees early action with a rescue operation during the 1989 invasion of Panama and with anti-drug operations against brutal Colombian cartels. In the Gulf War, JSOC defines its worth to senior commanders—skeptical of JSOC’s unconventional style and structure—by successfully hunting Saddam Hussein’s Scud missile teams. Naylor explains, however, that the most important thing to happen during JSOC’s early history is the orientation of its three primary special mission units (the Army’s Delta Force, the Navy’s Seal Team Six and the Air Force’s Special Tactics Squadron-24) toward counter-terrorism (CT) operations. We learn of the excruciating detail that a successful counter-terrorism mission such as a hostage rescue requires. Unlike in the movies, real-life CT operations require a unique mix of intelligence, human skill, logistical support, and luck.
In the 1990s JSOC’s operations shifted toward counter-proliferation exercises: securing WMDs from the hands of terrorists and rogue states. Operators became experts at covertly breaking into WMD facilities. Amusingly, the operators sometimes defeated the security of these training exercises by finding unguarded entrances. In Bosnia, JSOC was able to forge highly successful working relationships with the CIA and hunt down Serbian war criminals. Naylor offers the story of one such operation:
[A] Team 6 element posing as Red Cross personnel arrived at the hospital clinic where Kovacevic worked, talked their way past the receptionist, entered his office, and subdued him. The operators placed Kovacevic in a wheelchair, took him out a back entrance and loaded him into the back of a waiting truck.
For JSOC, the War on Terror didn’t get off to a good start. Hamstrung by overly cautious intelligence assessments and political calculations, the command’s first operations in Afghanistan were designed for the cameras and for prestige rather than strategic effect. JSOC was also plagued by pressure from senior commanders to mitigate risk by overloading operations with hundreds of personnel and support elements.
These requirements agitated JSOC leaders who believed that smaller, more agile operations offer the best potential of low visibility and success. When these mid-level commanders start getting their way, JSOC’s ingenuity comes to fruition. Yet Naylor is always keen to remind us that JSOC’s world is necessarily defined by risk. Unlike many other authors, he takes time to outline why a JSOC raid isn’t simple. Every operation had to take into account timing, helicopter fuel supplies, weather conditions, emergency response plans, and a countless array of other variables.
Rumsfeld started to become convinced of JSOC’s ability to achieve tactical and strategic effect outside of the often lethargic conventional military bureaucracy. In Iraq, JSOC found itself deployed against Saddam’s officials and on the hunt for WMDs. As the war continued, JSOC became a world unto itself, adapting and developing its own intelligence networks against the insurgency. In a sign of tension with the CIA, Naylor explains how JSOC’s ability to operate without bureaucratic force protection concerns—like the need to travel in heavily protected convoys of U.S. military vehicles—allowed it to recruit Iraqi sources and more effectively penetrate terrorist groups.
In one operation, Delta operators infiltrated the farm of an al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) senior lieutenant. Disguised as Iraqi farmers, they drove tractors around the farm waiting for the lieutenant to arrive. Unsuspecting of the ruse, the lieutenant and his aides approach the Delta team and were promptly captured. Largely thanks to JSOC operations, between July and December 2005, suicide car bomb attacks in western Iraq declined by 80 percent. According to Naylor, this trend only came to be when JSOC ramped up its operations—but things in Iraq were still moving in the wrong direction overall.
Then General Stan McChrystal stepped into the breach. Significantly escalating JSOC intelligence gathering platforms and raids against AQI, McChrystal revolutionized the fight. His key contribution was a “vision for how to meld all the tools at his disposal together, while flattening his organization and breaking apart the stovepipes that kept information from being fully exploited.” Under McChrystal, JSOC infiltrated Internet cafes and hardened jihadist strongholds and, over a bitter few years, rips AQI’s guts out. We read here of how courageous JSOC intelligence officers—including women—and other agents were just as crucial to the command’s success as the “shooters” who conduct the ensuing raids. As McChrystal says on the speaker circuit today, success takes a network.
Naylor also sketches JSOC’s vast range of other actions from Somalia to Lebanon, the Arabian Sea to Ethiopia, and Syria to Iran. This is a serious book, and not for those with only a passing interest in the command. This is a book for students of military affairs and the War on Terror, a detailed account that leaves the reader in awe of what JSOC has achieved, and the sacrifices its members have made.
The post Special Operators appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.
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Russian Buildup in Syria Raises Questions on Roleby By MICHAEL R. GORDON and ERIC SCHMITT
The deployment of air defense systems and fighter aircraft has spurred concerns that Moscow’s goal includes establishing a military outpost in the Middle East.
I. Surveillance & Privacy
Andrew K. Woods, Guest Post: ECPA Reform: A Primer (Wednesday, September 16) Andrew Crocker, Guest Post: Lifting the Gag Order on One NSL is Good, But It’s Just a Start (Friday, September 18) John Reed, Chris Soghoian on Collaboration Between Lawyers, Technologists, and Policymakers (Friday, September 18)
II. Guantánamo & Military Commissions
Steve Vladeck, Watching the En Banc Clock in al Bahlul (Wednesday, September 16) Adam Jacobson, Guest Post: ODNI’s Latest Guantánamo Reengagement Numbers Are Encouraging (Wednesday, September 16)
III. International Criminal Law
Nathalie Weizmann, When Do Countries Have to Investigate War Crimes? (Monday, September 14) Alex Whiting, The ICC in Kenya: Institutional Promises and Limitations (Tuesday, September 15)
IV. UK Anti-Terror Laws
Shaheed Fatima, Self-Censorship in Action: The British Library Rejects Taliban Archive (Monday, September 14)
V. Women & Countering Violent Extremism
Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, Counter-Terrorism Committee: Addressing the Role of Women in Countering Terrorism and Violent Extremism (Thursday, September 17)
VI. International Human Rights Cases in US Courts
William Dodge, Guest Post: Will Filartiga Survive? (Tuesday, September 15)
VII. Congressional Hearings
Just Security, National Security-Related Congressional Hearings, September 14–18 (Monday, September 14)
VIII. Miscellaneous
Steve Vladeck, Just Security Welcomes Alex Whiting (Tuesday, September 15) Read on Just Security »
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ISIS recruiting online keeps Dallas FBI chief up at night
Dallas Morning News Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria are reaching out online through social media to urge disenchanted young people in North Texas to launch terror attacks, the Dallas FBI chief said Friday. Thomas Class, special agent in charge of the FBI office ... |
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