President Obama is confident in the intelligence he receives from military analysts, despite a Pentagon inspector general probe into allegations made by some 50 analysts that their superiors altered their reports to make the Islamic State and its allies appear weaker, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said on Friday.
“[A]s a general matter, the president does have confidence in the members of the intelligence community that take very seriously the responsibility that they have to make sure that the president and his team have access to the most and best information available so that they can make the best possible decisions about the national security of the United States,” Earnest said.
“[T]he intelligence community is very well aware of the high standards that this president has set and his desire to understand exactly what’s happening, even if that means that the intelligence community may have to share with the president some bad news,” he continued.
On Thursday, The Daily Beast reported that more than 50 intelligence analysts based at the Pentagon’s Central Command lodged a formal complaint that higher-ups were changing their reports and findings. They say the final reports were more optimistic than their original analyses and that their bosses were changing their assessments for political reasons.
“The cancer was within the senior level of the intelligence command,” The Daily Beast quoted one Defense official as saying.
“The president relies on intelligence … for making very difficult policy decisions that have significant consequences for our national security,” Earnest said. “He has great admiration for those in our intelligence community, and in some cases there are individuals who are taking great risks to obtain information that can be useful to the president of the United States and his team.”
Earnest said he could not comment directly on the investigation, as it is ongoing.
“Rather than worry about what the outcome of that investigation might be, we’ll allow that independent investigation to run its course,” he said.
