Intel politization

First casualties: Truth and intelligence

"Fifty U.S. Spies Say Govt. Altering Reports to Imply We’re Winning War Against ISIS" reads a recent headline. The growing scandal over whether phony intelligence reports are being used to paint rosy portrayals of the war against the Islamic State has even caused the Pentagon inspector general to open an investigation as to whether senior officials are unduly pressuring military subordinates.

But manipulating war intelligence is hardly anything new. Frankly, it goes with the territory, if you know the history of wars, connected as they usually are with "perception management" of public opinion, also referred to as "information warfare."

Serious politicization of intelligence, for example, played out during the Vietnam War, when Westmoreland and other generals, after acrimonious debate behind closed doors, just before the Tet Offensive, decided to arbitrarily cut in half their estimate of the real "enemy troop strength." They were trying to publicly project success and felt they couldn’t let the American news media know there were about twice as many Vietcong enemy.