A former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee claims the U.S. intelligence community has become too “politicized” under the Obama administration.
“The intelligence community has not been providing us with very good intelligence over the last number of years, and too often it has been massaged to fit the political narrative that the political leaders want and not giving us just unadulterated facts,” former Republican Congressman Pete Hoekstra, Mich., told radio host John Catsimatidis during an interview on Sunday.
Hoekstra accused intelligence officials of disseminating poor information about the regimes of Moammar Gadhafi and Bashar Assad in Libya and Syria, respectively, which made worse the situations in both countries.
He also criticized National Intelligence Agency Director James Clapper, who in 2011 described the Muslim brotherhood as “largely secular” and “benign.”
“You don’t want [intelligence] massaged to fit the narrative of whoever’s in political office or what the popular narrative is,” Hoekstra said.
He added, “What I’ve seen or witnessed from outside of Congress now is an intelligence committee that is much more politicized.”
Hoekstra served as chair of the House Intelligence Committee until shortly before Obama took office in 2008.
