“We provide context about the historical ties between al Qaeda and ISIL,” a U.S. intelligence official told The Daily Beast, using the government’s preferred acronym for ISIS. “Now there is a separation between the two groups, but we don’t get into the legal issue. Do they operate under the same command and control structure? The answer to that is ‘no.’” This official added, “The legal answer is not necessarily dispositive of the analytic answer and vice versa.”

Rep. Adam Schiff, a Democratic member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said the administration’s legal argument to members has described ISIS “as the true heirs to bin Laden and al Qaeda, that they have set out to harm us and they share the same goals and aims as al Qaeda.”

But Schiff said this “has the feeling of a lawyerly kind of argument, to put the best case on a pretty strained legal theory.” He added, “The facts are not in question, it’s more the application of those facts and the 2001 [resolution], where one plus one equals three.”