Deep skepticism, ranging from ambivalence to outright opposition, was how senior intelligence community officials described the CIA's outlook regarding Washington's ISIS strategy to the Huffington Post.
The comments came after a top CIA official made the agency's disapproval quite obvious in a recent closed-door congressional briefing on the administration's new strategy.
After all, since the CIA has been covertly arming Syrian rebels for the past few years, the new White House ISIS plan could be interpreted as a slight turf infringement, and the CIA is likely hesitant to share responsibilities with the Pentagon, said the Huffington Post.
One congressman told the Huffington Post in an email that he has reason to believe the CIA sees additional arming of 'moderate' rebels as "expansion of a strategy that is already not working." The congressman also claimed the CIA believes their current assignment to arm rebels is "basically a fool's errand, and they are well aware of the fact that many of the arms that they provided ended up in the wrong hands."
Ryan Trapani, a CIA spokesman, disputed those claims, telling the Huffington Post, "CIA supports and is working with the Defense Department and all our U.S. Government partners in the fight against ISIL."
With the Senate passing Obama's proposal Friday allowing the Department of Defense to arm the Syrian rebels, the administration will now "be more public" about what exactly they are doing, Ben Rhodes, the White House deputy national security adviser, told the Huffington Post.
Bringing the Pentagon in also provides the ability to scale up the training and equipment efforts in a way that allows more military participation, said Rhodes.
"It allows for us to structure this with the regional partners in a more systematized way, so that essentially you have the training program, with Sunni Arab partners doing a lot of the training."
