Epstein Secrets

ou. We became pretty chummy with all these guys. Traveling with secretaries of state, we always went to Cairo first to consult with our good friend Hosni. Successive CIA station chiefs had very close personal relationships with the king of Jordan. There was little need to delve deeper, and it was a r

to help protect its interests. They were constant, if not always agreeable, companions. Egypt's Mubarak, Jordan's King Hussein, Tunisia's Ben Ali, Yemen's Ali Saleh, Morocco's King Hassan II, Saudi Arabia's kings Fand and Abdullah. The PLO's Yasir Arafat rounded out the group photo. America's arran

Unlike U.S. ties with Israel, the bond between the U.S. and Egypt rests less on shared values and more on shared interests. Under Anwar Sadat and Hosni EFTA_R1_00482810 EFTA01990242 Mubarak, America cut a deal with each of these acquiescent authoritarians. We'll stay out of your internal affair

ns. Protests against the rival authorities in Gaza and the West Bank haven't become the kind of full-scale revolts that hit Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Yemen and Syria. But there is a growing sense that the leaderships of both Fatah (in charge in the West Bank) and Hamas (which controls Gaza) have lost

. And so was the variety of U.S. responses. In Bahrain, where the United States had established the headquarters of the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet, and in Yemen, where counterterrorism is king, interests trumped values. You didn't hear Obama make any "Qaddafi must go"- style speeches directed against Bahrain'

aris, or London. This is not an American administration overly outraged by the viciousness of dictatorships. Even in Egypt, Obama only turned against Hosni Mubarak when he was left with no other choice - although doing so against an old ally while sparing Assad suggests that Obama is like the coward who