Situation Report: More intel questions; more soldiers to Sinai; 9/11 remembrances; details on bloody Philippine CT mission; CIA lost U.S. hostage; and lots more

By Paul McLeary with Adam Rawnsley

On the up and up. Officials in Washington are reacting to explosive allegations that intelligence assessments on the strength and health of the Islamic State are being watered down on their way up the chain of command. Up to 50 analysts have complained that their work has been altered to present a rosier portrait of the fight than they intended, and on Thursday, Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook assured reporters that Defense Secretary Ash Carter expects intelligence officials to provide “unvarnished, transparent” assessments. And while Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lt. Gen. Vincent Stewart wouldn’t go into detail on the accusations, he did tell lawmakers on Capitol Hill that agency officials “pride [themselves] on analytic rigor,” and that the process of arriving at analytic conclusions can produce a “pretty rough-and-tumble debate.”

DC calling. But a new twist comes from The Guardian’s Spencer Ackerman, who reports the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, has been in daily contact with Maj. Gen. Steven Grove, the intelligence chief for the U.S. Central Command. According to the report, Clapper “is said to tell Grove how the war looks from his vantage point, and question Grove about Central Command’s assessments.” Clapper obviously outranks Grove, calling into question the influence he can wield over what products may or may not come out of the Centcom intel shop.

Lost and found. The CIA may have had a U.S. hostage being held by al Qaeda in Pakistan in its sights up to a year before accidentally killing him and an Italian hostage in a drone strike, the Washington Post reports. Aid workers Warren Weinstein and Giovanni Lo Porto were killed in January in an al Qaeda compound when the CIA hit it, unaware that they were there. The original sighting is now featuring prominently in a CIA investigation of what went wrong. At the time a drone spotted the individual, roughly a year before the strike that killed Weinstein, analysts doubted that the figure was an American. Officials told the Post that they still can’t say for certain whether Weinstein is the person that appears in the footage.

Build up. In the wake of a roadside bomb attack that injured four U.S. soldiers and two Fijians serving with the Multinational Force and Observers’ peacekeeping mission in the Sinai Peninsula, Washington is beefing up its firepower in the area. The Pentagon is sending at least 75 additional troops, including a light-infantry platoon and a surgical team, as well as surveillance equipment and other assets designed to bolster up the peacekeepers’ self-defense assets, Pentagon officials say.

There are about 700 U.S. troops in the Sinai as part of a multinational force that monitors compliance with the 1979 peace treaty between Egypt and Israel. The buildup comes as too little, too late for the wounded Americans however, since the Pentagon had its eye on the trouble spot before the attack occurred. Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook said on Thursday that “some of these things were moving into place literally about the same time that this IED incident occurred,” but “we still don’t want to disclose all the security precautions that are being taken for understandable reasons. We had security concerns; we’re moving to respond to them.”

Morning new disease. In the latest installment of an ongoing scandal, the Pentagon on Thursday admitted that it has halted all research at nine military labs amid reports that some facilities may have inadvertently shipped, or improperly stored, samples of the bacteria that causes plague. Yes, the plague.

There is no word as to how many labs, in how many U.S. states or foreign countries, may have received shipments of the yersinia pestis bacteria, which causes plague. But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has some real concerned over the labs’ handling of other specimens, including Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus and Eastern equine encephalitis virus, which may be deadly if untreated, FP’s Paul McLeary reports.

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Who’s where when

9:30 a.m. Defense Secretary Ash Carter and the new Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Air Force Gen. Paul Selva host a remembrance ceremony at the Pentagon Memorial to honor the memory of those killed in the 2001 terrorist attack. The ceremony is for the families of those lost, and not open to the general public.

2:00 p.m. SecDef Carter and Gen. Selva provide remarks at the September 11th remembrance ceremony in the Pentagon Courtyard.

Counterterrorism

American advisers played a key role in a January raid in which Philippine National Police commandos located and killed a man known as Marwan, a shadowy bomb maker with a $5 million U.S. bounty on his head. But as the Los Angeles Times’ David Cloud and Sunshine de Leon report, the mission — which eliminated the U.S.-educated engineer linked to the 2002 bombing that slaughtered 202 people in Bali, Indonesia — came at a steep price.

After a day-long firefight, 44 police commandos and four civilians were killed, along with 17 militants. At the end of the day, a U.S. Black Hawk helicopter flown by contractors swooped in and spirited away the wounded, along with one of Marwan’s fingers, which was taken to the FBI lab at Quantico where it was used to identify the bombmaker. The raid also came just weeks before the U.S. Special Forces announced they would end their intensive 14-year mission in the Philippines under increasing tension between Washington and Manila.

Ukraine

Ukraine has joined NATO countries in blocking its airspace to Russian planes bound for Syria in a bid to complicate President Vladimir Putin’s efforts to more directly involve Russian troops in the fight to prop up the Assad regime. Bulgaria has agreed to deny Russia overflight rights and Turkey’s willingness to ground Syria-bound Russian planes has also taken it off Russian military flight paths. The U.S. has asked Greece to follow suit, but there’s no word yet on whether Athens will bow to American pressure or let Russian aircraft through its airspace.

Business of defense

During a stop at a Boeing facility while visiting St. Louis for a three-day event meant to build bridges between the commercial tech sector and the government, Defense Secretary Ash Carter reportedly received a sneak peek at Boeing’s secretive “Black Diamond” manufacturing concept. Whatever it is, Black Diamond has the defense industry buzzing over what it could mean for the company’s submission for the U.S. Air Force’s much-anticipated Long-Range Strike Bomber competition. An award for the bomber contract is expected later this month to one of two industry teams: one led by Boeing, or one by Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin.

While there was no Northrop facility nearby to tour, the company has kept its head in the game by completely buying out the Pentagon Metro Station’s advertising space (which is substantial) this week, plastering the station with flashy ads touting its manned and unmanned aircraft as next-generation technologies.

In other industry news, General Dynamics and Land Systems will modernize the Kingdom of Morocco’s M1A1 Abrams tanks for a contract worth $17.2 million, according to the Army. The tanks will be updated with surplus materiel from similar U.S. equipment under the Excess Defense Articles program.

Philippines

The Manila government is bumping up the country’s defense budget and looking to buy new weapons in light of ongoing tensions and territorial disputes with China in the South China Sea, Voice of America reports. Building a domestic defense industrial base is a tough challenge for any country, and the Philippines — which hasn’t traditionally been a big defense spender — is no exception. The country’s solution so far is to try and get foreign defense firms to come to the Philippines and produce arms locally, with a defense-oriented tax-free zone in the works to welcome foreign firms.

Top Tweet

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Think tanked

Lots of attention has been paid to China’s big, new 3,000 meter airstrip on Fiery Cross Reef in the South China Sea. But Beijing isn’t alone in building airstrips on tiny parcels of land far out to sea. The Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative takes a look at how this runway compares to Malaysia’s on Swallow Reef, the Philippines’ on Thitu Island, Taiwan’s on Itu Aba, and Vietnam’s on Spratly Island.