Epstein Secrets

ses or errors. The intelligence community also now requires that analysts be told much more about the sources of the information they receive from the United States' human and technological spies. Analysts were left in the dark on such basic issues in the past, which helps explain why bogus information from fabr

Institute and a former ambassador to the United Nations in the Bush administration. Memories of Iraq have clouded the debate on Iran ever since the United States intelligence community first concluded in 2007 that Iran had halted its weapons program four years earlier. In late 2007, Michael McConnell, then t

iro's already wildly careening political scene. • happy to admit that Iwas taken by surprise. What was the Brotherhood thinking? The nomination of Shater seems to have been a response to threats and opportunities a rapidly changing political arena, rather than the hatching of a long-term plan. But ma

The ultraconservative Al-Nour Party is yet to announce its candidate of choice. Researcher of Islamic movements Abdel-Reheem Ali told DNE that Al- Shater's nomination will only affect the Islamist vote as liberals, leftists, and the revolutionary youth will never vote for him. "Al-Shater's candidacy

s the President of Egypt? I've been studying Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood for many years, and have interviewed most of its senior leaders (including Shater) multiple times. And I'll admit that I was surprised. So were most other MB-watchers I follow. That's in large part because it contradicts what I h

ther and son), and Libya's Muammar al-Qaddafi. America sought to check and constrain their power, even removing one through invasion. But at times, the United States found common ground with them too. (See: cooperation with Saddam against the Iranian mullahs, and dancing with Assad on the peace process.) As pure

TA00660287 From Washington's vantage point, the Arab world wasn't so much divided into countries as it was broken down into personalities. Each of Americas' authoritarians had a role to play and a dramatic persona to accompany it. There was the good King Hussein, the wily but indispensable Arafat, the

"Egyptian renaissance," which they joyfully unfurled on cue. Meanwhile, senior officials at the head table drank from coffee mugs emblazoned with Shater's rather imposing headshot. Shater's last name means "clever" in Arabic -- a fitting moniker for the self-made millionaire -- and one handmade sign

ict of Shubra al-Kheima, a Brotherhood stronghold, to hear what their candidate would do upon capturing the Egyptian presidency. The rally, one of Shater's first since announcing his candidacy, managed to be both tightly organized and raucous -- Muslim Brotherhood cadres of all ages drowned out the n

ight launch a military attack this summer if no real progress is made in the talks. The Iranians don't seem ready, for now, for a broad outreach to the United States. Jalili rejected a private bilateral meeting with U.S. Undersecretary of State Wendy Sherman. The Iranians seem to be preparing their public for a

s would seem rather long if one is to judge by the views of the Brotherhood's recently-named candidate to be president of Egypt, Khairat al Shater. Shater was, until his nomination, the deputy head of the Brotherhood and as such its chief operating officer. Among his responsibilities was the direction

lamic state which had endured for a 1000 years. Brotherhood organization and discipline had followed this model. But what of the "variables" which Shater did admit existed? Were there new circumstances which might require new methods and policies in pursuit of "Brotherhood work'?" Indeed there were a

tment, but at some point the same forces of change that were transforming the rest of the world were bound to visit there as well. There was no way the United States would ever have pushed meaningful reform, let alone broken our ties with the authoritarians, unless the street did it for us. Great powers don't pi

s cannot be appealed) and implied its head is in the military's pocket. A second source of extreme uncertainty is the election itself. Assuming al- Shater's candidacy and the balloting move forward, Egypt simply has no experience in competitive presidential campaigns, making it very hard to predict ho

of just how much the political landscape has changed since the days when the U.S. pinned its hopes on a Mubarak regime that imprisoned the likes of Shater, the Times reports that the Brotherhood's candidate is in regular contact with U.S. Ambassador Anne Paterson, and that U.S. officials have praised

lowed by fuller agreements. Both Tehran and Washington are downplaying expectations for the May 23 Baghdad negotiations between Iran and the P5+1 (the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France, and Germany). Indeed, the prospects for eventual success are uncertain. If Iran is truly prepared to deal, and if

on commission disqualified many of the top candidates who had announced their intentions to run and the Brotherhood had been given the tip that el- Shater would be considered a definite reject. In a surprise shift, the more ideologically strict Salafists countered with the comparatively moderate Abdel