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Past intel failures

Presidential interactions with intel

About the Author:

Sharyl Attkisson is an Emmy Award-winning investigative journalist, author of The New York Times best-sellers The Smear and Stonewalled, and host of Sinclair's Sunday TV program, Full Measure. Follow her on Twitter@SharylAttkisson.

There was a great deal of news this past week aboutPerhaps there's good reason for alarm.But I think there's one shocking aspect - perhaps a larger story - that's gone virtually unreported. It appears thatIt might not qualify as all-out mutiny, but it's also not all that far from one.Right under our noses, while still under investigation for allegedly orchestrating leaks and undermining candidate Trump in 2016,There's evidence of the existence of such an operation from the inspector general, various congressional probes and investigative reporting. They've alleged, and in some cases concluded, that someIn the newest press salvo, unnamed intel officials fanned out to air anonymous grievances against their commander in chief.such as that Trump is "endangering American security" with his "stubborn disregard" and "willful ignorance."Also cause for concern iswhether witting or not. Many in the press dutifully parroted these grievances inas if it's inconceivable that these intel officials could be capable of flaws or conflicted by political motivations.In fact, history teaches us the opposite can be true.are perhaps the most dramatic modern example of failures within our intelligence community, and a reason to question intel assessments.Because of the attacks, widespread reforms were instituted. Yet after the reforms, there's been a legacy of intel abuses flagged by the inspector general, investigative reporters and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court overseeing sensitive requests for surveillance of U.S. citizens.Further, some intel officials sometimes have proven they simply are not to be believed. For example,- a reference to Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), authorizing intelligence-gathering from internet traffic and phone calls - despite detailed findings from the inspector general and the FISA Court saying just the opposite.now an anti-Trump activist, provided false information under oath to Congress in 2013 when he saidWhen his testimony was proven inaccurate, he apologized and said he'd misunderstood the question.also now an anti-Trump activist, falsely assured the Senate thatHe, too, later apologized after an inspector general confirmed the spying had happened.Are such officials to be uncritically, automatically believed when they bring complaints about their political enemies to the press? Besides alleged deception by some intel officials in the past, the judgment and assessments of the intelligence community have been called into question on occasion.For example,However, the FBI's assessment didn't find any particular risk.murdering three people and injuring several hundred. There are many other examples of foreign terrorist threats being on the intel community's radar but going unrecognized or undeterred.On the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks in 2012, the intelligence communityEven after protesters attacked the U.S. embassy in Egypt, U.S. officials failed to respond by repositioning resources in the area. Hours later, the terrorist attacks on the U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya, seemed to catch officials by surprise; four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador, were killed. A post-mortem revealed there had been a great deal of intelligence that warned of an impending attack.Presumably, presidential briefings and assessments prior to these events would have been flawed or incomplete.yet the officials typically didn't go public with their gripes.Some of the leaked information is designed simply to embarrass and discredit him, deriding his lack of knowledge. For example, one intel leaker said that, in a briefing, Trump didn't know Nepal was an independent nation.In 2014, for example,creating one of two implications: Either his intel briefings sorely failed to identify the threat of this emerging Islamic extremist terror group or, if they did correctly assess the ISIS threat and convey it to the president, he disagreed with them.According to intel sources, there were instances of Obama refusing intelligence on certain matters on which he'd made up his mind. In at least one case, he reportedly told a briefer not to bring him any more information on one terrorism topic; if the material were presented to him, he said, he wouldn't read it.Obama withdrew from Iraq against the recommendations of his military advisers, generals and secretary of State. He approved the disastrous takedown of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, and reportedly ordered aid to the wrong side in Syria, instead helping jihadist groups. All of these actions were either with the advice - or against the advice - of his intel officials.And there's one infamous case where it can be argued that we could have benefited from a president treating his intel with skepticism. Before President George W. Bush launched the war against Iraq in 2003, a huge intelligence lapse led to the erroneous reporting that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.In the end, Trump could be right or wrong. And the way he interacts with his intel officials deserves news coverage and scrutiny. But we should refrain from one-sided reporting based on anonymous, orchestrated leaks by people who clearly seek to use the media to sway public and political opinion.