The demand followed reports that the Pentagon’s inspector general had expanded the inquiry into allegations from US Central Command analysts that intelligence data was being consistently altered by their senior officials.
Ivan Eland, Senior Fellow and Director of the Center on Peace and Liberty at the Independent Institute told Radio Sputnik that there are several types of difficulties which lead to the distortion of intelligence reports.
“The Policymakers sometimes try to intimidate the intelligence channels,” he said. “The other problem that you have with intelligence is that sometimes the intelligence people want to please the policymakers. They come up with what they think they want.”
According to Eland, when analysts are stuck with rigid paradigms, they end up throwing out useful and important information just because it doesn’t comply with the desired narrative. However, even a deeper investigation doesn’t guarantee any dramatic change in the state of things.
“This investigation will be done by the inspector general of the Department of Defense. They are more objective than other parties, but of course they still answer to the Secretary of Defense,” he explained. “Lots of intelligence is in the Defense Department, and of course, they also execute the policy. That’s where you run into the conflict of interests in the Central Command as you have the intelligence and the policymakers under the same roof.”
Eland believes that this distortion of data mostly benefits the policy makers who “want to make it seem as if things are going better than they are” in Syria. The problem is, the people involved in altering intelligence data will hardly be punished anyway.
“In this type of situations nobody gets fired; they might get a recommend or something. But there are very few people who get fired from the bureaucracy when things don’t go well”, he said.
Eland stated that the only reason why Obama is urging officials to carry out a proper investigation is that he’s being pressured by public and, of course, the press, who initially discovered the issue. He believes everybody in America understands that the US has failed in Syria. He believes “people lose confidence in what’s going on”, and that’s the kind of pressure you cannot ignore.
“That’s the way the government works a lot of times” Eland said. “Politicians don’t do anything unless they are pressured to do so by external sources.”
At least it will now help Obama distinguish himself from George W. Bush, who intentionally distorted intelligence data to justify the Iraq War, he concluded.
