US Intel Chiefs Hype ISIS in Funding Push

No Evidence, But Officials Predict ISIS Attack in 2016

No specific, credible intelligence is an ongoing theme with US officials when warning about ISIS possibly doing something, but the absence of evidence isn’t going to stop the top Intelligence officials, testifying to Congress, from hyping the threat.

DIA director Lt. Gen. Vincent Stewart testified that ISIS will “attempt direct attacks on the US homeland in 2016,” a prediction that as usual came with no evidence, and also comes amid the latest Pentagon push for an increased budget.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, still in power despite lying to Congress in previous testimony on the NSA, talked up the idea that ISIS is sneaking into the US is refugees, even though this allegation has repeatedly been shot down as totally unfounded.

He also emphasized the several dozen ISIS-linked people the US arrested last year, ignoring that the FBI arrests of these “terrorists” were more or less exclusively people the FBI met online, with FBI informants pretending to be ISIS, gave fake weapons to, and then arrested for possession of those fake weapons in connection with FBI-invented plots.

While ISIS has shown some ability to carry out attacks internationally, the group’s links to attacks inside the US is tenuous, at best, and officials seem only to speak with certitude about the group’s power during these funding pushes.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.