Intelligence analysts at U.S. Central Command were told in emails to hold back reports showing the true strength of the Islamic State (ISIS),
Fox News reports.
Fox quoted a source close to CENTCOM as saying the emails contained the lines "cut it out" and "toe the line."
President Barack Obama had been describing ISIS as a "JV squad" and was painting a picture that it was being defeated. Instead, the group continued to gain more territory for its hard-line caliphate in Iraq and Syria.
A Pentagon official told Fox News someone attempted to destroy the emails, which are now in the hands of the Pentagon inspector general. The IG probe was initiated following complaints that information had been changed to make it look like ISIS had been weakened more than it actually had been.
Obama said on Sunday he intends to "get to the bottom" of who ordered the reports altered.
General Michael Flynn, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency from 2012 to 2014, told Fox News Channel's
"The Kelly File" on Monday that accurate reporting was coming from all areas of the intelligence system into the White House.
"So to say that 'I'm surprised at the rise of this threat' is really – it's gross understatement as to what reality is," Flynn said.
"I think this issue of not meeting a narrative out of the White House, which meant, don't talk about radical Islam, don't talk about this as being a form of a radicalization of the Islamic religion, which, if fact, it is," Flynn said. "It is a cancer inside the Islamic religion, and the White House and the president, frankly, has not wanted to say that."
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