CIA Poke at DoD Intelligence Was Not “Substantiated”
In a dispute that pitted member agencies of the U.S. intelligence community against each other, the Central Intelligence Agency claimed that “a questionable intelligence activity” had been carried out in 2014 by agents of the Department of Defense.
But an investigation of the matter by the DoD Inspector General that was partially declassified last week failed to corroborate the CIA claim.
At issue was whether or not an unnamed individual had “conducted unauthorized intelligence activities in Europe on behalf of DoD,” as CIA had alleged.
“We were unable to substantiate the CIA allegation and could not find any evidence that [deleted] traveled to Europe or paid any sources on behalf of the DoD,” the Inspector General concluded.
“We could not find evidence of DoD intelligence tasking,” the IG investigative summary said. “In addition, we verified that [deleted] did not travel to Europe in 2014.”
The IG summary report, which had been classified Secret/Noforn, was partially declassified and released under the Freedom of Information Act last Friday. See Investigative Results of a Questionable Intelligence Activity (redacted), DoD Inspector General report DODIG-2015-171, September 8, 2015.
Meanwhile, for his part, the alleged DoD culprit “asserts that the CIA fabricated the allegation that [deleted] had been conducting intelligence operations in Europe in order to ensure that [several words deleted] because [deleted] claimed [deleted] had previously identified and revealed analytical flaws within CIA analysis.”
However, that counter-accusation “was outside the scope of our investigation and has been referred to the Intelligence Community Inspector General for review.”
The exact nature of the alleged questionable intelligence activity and the identity of the individual(s) involved were not declassified.
Nor would CIA elaborate on the public record.
“You can say CIA declined to comment,” said CIA spokesperson Ryan Trapani. “We defer to DOD on the document.”
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