It’s Those Pesky Emails Again

The problem is those pesky emails again–only they are not Hillary’s. Catherine Herridge at Fox News is reporting today that at least two emails were sent to analysts at U.S. Central Command requesting that they ease off negative assessments about the Islamic State threat.

The article reports:

Those emails, among others, are now in the possession of the Pentagon inspector general. The IG’s probe is expanding into whether intelligence assessments were changed to give a more positive picture of the anti-ISIS campaign.

The former Pentagon official said there were “multiple assessments” from military intelligence and the CIA regarding the “rapid rise” of ISIS in Iraq and North Africa in the year leading up to the group’s territory grab in 2014.

Similar intelligence was included in the President’s Daily Brief, or PDB – the intelligence community’s most authoritative product — during the same time period. Yet the official, who was part of the White House discussions, said the administration kept “kicking the can down the road.” The official said there was no discussion of the military involvement needed to make a difference.

The IG probe started earlier this year amid complaints that information was changed to make ISIS look more degraded than it really was.

National security is not a game–nor is it a political issue–it is an issue that impacts all Americans. I would be somewhat sympathetic if I thought information was sanitized to prevent creating a panic, but I am not sympathetic at all to information being sanitized for political purposes. The investigation needs to proceed without being compromised by interference by the White House or those in the Obama Administration.