Epstein Secrets

of approving drone strikes effectively required him and 10 other lawyers at the agency to "murder" people from the CIA's counterterrorism center in Langley, Virginia. Most of the lawyers are either down the hall from the CIA director's office on the seventh floor — the "power floor," as it's known with

terview with Ray Takeyh Article 3. RCR The Brotherhood's Walking Korans Hillel Fradkin and Lewis Libby Article 4. Foreign Affairs Alawites for Assad: Why the Syrian Sect Backs the Regime Leon Goldsmith Article 5. Project Syndicate The Paranoid Style in Chinese Politics Minxin Pei Article 6.

Lebanon, and so forth. And when Iranians look at the region, they seem to feel--and increasingly, others are joining them in that opinion--that the Bashar al-Assad regime may prove in fact more durable, that he may somehow survive this insurrection and this wave of protest, and if Assad survives and can someho

me Leon Goldsmith April 16, 2012 -- Since the start of the revolt in Syria, the country's Alawites have been instrumental in maintaining President Bashar al- Assad's hold on power. A sect of Shia Islam, the Alawites comprise roughly 13 percent of the population and form the bulk of Syria's key milita

one thing to have the prime minister of another country come to town and say time is short, but it's another thing to have the vice president go to Langley and pressure people," he said, referring to former Vice President Dick Cheney's repeated visits to C.I.A. headquarters before the Iraq war. But som

East" there is that age-old instinct for reading the wind and riding with the victor. It had taken some five months for President Obama to call on Bashar al- Assad to relinquish power, but once that call was made we were reduced to mere spectators of the Syrian calamity. We exaggerated the might of th

nic ambitions of Iranian theocracy, and an Iraq in the orbit of U.S. power would have been less likely to cast its fate with the embattled House of Assad in Syria. For a year now, the people of Syria have been in the midst of a heroic struggle against a tyrannical regime, but no American help has com

well, having first met when he was in charge of the CIA at the start of the Obama administration. In one of our early meetings at CIA headquarters in Langley, there had been a small bunch of grapes on his desk and I plucked a few in my mouth with obvious enjoyment. Now, at the Pentagon, he had a big bowlfu

ped, this allowed the Syrian President, Bashar al-Assad, both the space and a good reason to deny that it

tely made no public comment. We refused to say whether we’d had anything to do with an attack. As we he had hoped, this allowed the Syrian President, Bashar al-Assad, both the space and a good reason to deny that it had ever happened, deny that he’d been trying to make a nuclear weapon, and thus feel no compelling

well, having first met when he was in charge of the CIA at the start of the Obama administration. In one of our early meetings at CIA headquarters in Langley, there had been a small bunch of grapes on his desk and I plucked a few in my mouth with obvious enjoyment. Now, at the Pentagon, he had a big bowlfu

ped, this allowed the Syrian President, Bashar al-Assad, both the space and a good reason to deny that it

tely made no public comment. We refused to say whether we'd had anything to do with an attack. As we he had hoped, this allowed the Syrian President, Bashar al-Assad, both the space and a good reason to deny that it had ever happened, deny that he'd been trying to make a nuclear weapon, and thus feel no compelling

conjecture, speculation, or solid stuff. But, as it churned and festered in the president’s mind, Kushner and Bannon went out to CIA headquarters in Langley to meet with Mike Pompeo and his deputy director Gina Haspel to check it out. A few days later, the CIA opaquely reported back that the information w

et be a presidential game changer of the kind that everyone knew would surely come. Still, these were chemical weapons launched by a repeat offender, Bashar al-Assad. In any other presidency, such an atrocity would command a considered and, ideally, skillful response. Obama’s consideration had in fact been less th

ying international law, had used chemical weapons. There was video documenting the attack and substantial agreement among intelligence agencies about Assad’s responsibility. The politics were right: Barack Obama failed to act when confronted with a Syrian chemical attack, and now Trump could. The downsid

ity to compromise him and then converted him to becoming its mole inside the CIA. He worked for the SVR first in Asia then at the CIA headquarters at Langley, where he was given a management position. Among other secret documents, he provided the SVR with the identities of CIA officers sent to the CIA’s sp

bout an Israeli raid in Syria on August 1, 2008. It revealed that in it a group of Israeli commandos killed General Suleiman, a top aide to President Assad who had been working with North Korea to build a nuclear facility in Syria. Israel had destroyed that facility in Operation Orchard nearly a year ear