Retired General: Obama's Briefer Told Military to Skew Intel on ISIS

As I wrote last week, CENTCOM (US Central Command) has been accused of manipulating military data in order to paint a brighter picture of America’s fight against ISIS.

This accusation comes from a 15-page House report, which also states that it has no proof that orders to skew data came from the White House.

Now, a former brigadier general claims that Obama’s briefer instructed a CENTCOM official to manipulate intelligence on ISIS. 

On Monday, former US Army Brigadier General Anthony Tata told Fox News that “there’s been chaos all over the Middle East” since Obama withdrew US troops from Iraq. 

President Obama campaigned on the notion that “bringing our troops home” was the right thing to do, and he didn’t want the public to hear news that would prove him wrong. 

According to Tata, an individual from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence ordered a CENTCOM official to stop producing “products of record” that did not match President Obama’s narrative of a defeated Al Qaeda and a rather tame ISIS. 

Tata’s source was instructed to call the briefer on a private line if he had any intel suggesting ISIS to be more dangerous than what President Obama had characterized to the American public. He claims this distortion convinced the US to ignore ISIS, which in turn gave the terrorist organization the time and space to grow into the “formidable force” it is today. 

Tata slams the senior official as “highly irresponsible” for downplaying the threat of ISIS. “Now we have a real, valid national security threat that was borne out of this directive to Central Command,” says Tata. “You have good American soldiers, sailors, Marines, and civilians that are being isolated and targeted by people that are in the J-2 [CENTCOM’s intelligence directorate].”