Henry Kissinger's ideological "daughter": Kathleen Troia "K.T." McFarland by Wayne Madsen Report

Kissinger's ideological "daughter": Kathleen Troia "K.T." McFarland
Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who has held meetings with Donald Trump since his election, will have one of his ideological "daughters," Kathleen Troia "K.T." McFarland, deeply embedded in the Trump White House as deputy national security adviser.

McFarland worked for Kissinger's National Security Council in the Nixon White House and went on to work in the Reagan administration as Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger's speechwriter. Although Ronald Reagan did his best to keep Kissinger proteges far away from senior levels of his administration, owing to Reagan's distrust of Kissinger, "eastern elites," and the Trilateral Commission, McFarland was an exception. McFarland was a major force behind crafting Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative ("Star Wars") propaganda.

McFarland is, so far, the highest-ranking neo-conservative to be named to the Trump administration. In addition to her Kissinger ties, McFarland is also a board member of the Central Intelligence Agency-founded Jamestown Foundation, a creation of CIA director William Casey during the early years of the Reagan administration. Jamestown formulated disastrous anti-Soviet policies, including those that nurtured anti-Soviet Muslim guerrillas, an act that led to the ultimate creation of Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

McFarland is also close to the disgraced former CIA director General Petraeus. She has been quietly pushing Petraeus for Secretary of State even though, if chosen, Petraeus would become the fourth general named by Trump to senior posts in his administration, joining retired generals Michael Flynn, James Mattis, and John Kelly.

In 2006, McFarland launched a Senate campaign against New York's then-Senator Hillary Clinton. Her GOP primary campaign self-destructed after her 16-year old daughter Camilla McFarland was arrested after shoplifting $300 worth of string bikinis and a pair of jeans from two boutique shops in Southampton, Long Island. Questions are now being asked how McFarland can be trusted with the nation's highest secrets when she could not prevent her own daughter, then-attending the elite Taft boarding school in Connecticut, from turning into a politically-embarrassing five finger-discount teenager.



Neo-cons, former Henry "Scoop" Jackson Democrats who infiltrated the Reagan administration, handed the president the worst political scandal since Watergate, the Iran-contra affair. History shows that neo-cons are poisonous to any administration that permits them to nest. Neo-cons were responsible for the disastrous U.S. invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, a permanent stain on the administration of George W. Bush.

McFarland, Petraeus, former US ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton, Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton, neo-con policy wonk Frank Gaffney, Bolton's spokesman at the UN Richard Grenell, and others of their ilk only know how to commit mischief in the long-term neo-con goal of confronting China, Russia, Iran, Syria, Cuba, and other nations that refuse to toe the American line.

Hacked HRC e-mail shows that she was made aware of a Romney-Petraeus "October Surprise" the day after it was reported by Wayne Madsen Report

Hacked HRC e-mail shows that she was made aware of a Romney-Petraeus "October Surprise" the day after it was reported by WMR
An e-mail sent by unofficial adviser to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Sidney Blumenthal, which was revealed by the computer hacker known as "Guccifer," describes the belief by some higher-ups in the Obama administration that the resignation of Central Intelligence Agency director David Petreaus on November 8, 2012, the day after Barack Obama's re-election, was tied to a plot by Mitt Romney and Petraeus to engineer an "October Surprise" to engineer Obama's electoral defeat. As can be seen in the email, dated November 12, 2012, the idea of the Petreaus resignation being tied to an October Surprise gambit was reported by Blumenthal to Clinton the day after WMR reported: "Petraeus indiscretion may be linked to 'October Surprise' plot."

In his email to Clinton, Blumenthal concluded what WMR concluded the previous day: that the Petraeus scandal represented a failed October Surprise plot by Petraeus who was working in tandem with the Romney campaign. Blumenthal called the conspiracy against Obama a "trifecta" of classified information leaks, the Benghazi diplomatic mission attack, and the Petraeus scandal. Where Blumenthal differs from the WMR report is that he believes that Romney knew about Petraeus's extramarital affair and would have used it to show Obama's national security weakness. WMR reported that Petraeus was working hand-in-hand with the Romney campaign to create a U.S. embassy hostage situation similar to that in Tehran in 1980 which sank President Jimmy Carter's chances for re-election. This scenario was described in greater detail in the WMR's editor's book, "L'Affair Petraeus: The Benghazi Stand-Down and the Plot to 'Carterize' Obama," the first book published on the Petraeus scandal.

Although Blumenthal wrote Clinton that he was suspicious about an unnamed FBI agent, prior to the election, informing Representative Dave Reichert (R-WA) of the Petraeus scandal and Reichert then informing House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, the Clinton associate does not place any significance on the movie trailer that triggered the Benghazi incident, "Innocence of Muslims." In this editor's book, the connections are drawn between the film's Jewish backers and producers, Cantor's involvement, and the Romney campaign. Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Romney are close friends and have been since they both worked together for the Boston Consulting Group.

Petraeus recently pleaded guilty to one count of unlawfully removing and retaining classified information, which he shared with his paramour Paula Broadwell who was also his biographer. The classified information consisted of black books, or diaries, maintained by Petraeus while he was commander of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan. Petraeus is a partner of the New York investment firm Kohlberg, Kravis, Roberts (KKR). Cantor is now vice chairman and managing director of Moelis & Co., a Wall Street investment bank. Moelis, which is called a "boutique" investment bank, has worked with KKR on a number of corporate acquisitions.

WMR reported the following on September 12, 2013, the day after the attack on the Benghazi compound:

"[Innocence of Muslims filmmaker Sam] Bacile said he received financing for the movie from 100 Jewish donors. It is not known whether the donors included Las Vegas casino tycoon Sheldon Adelson. The gambling magnate has pumped tens of millions of dollars into the campaigns of Republican candidates, including the pro-Israel Newt Gingrich and Romney, Binyamin Netanyahu's friend and one-time colleague at the Boston Consulting Group. The release of the movie clip on YouTube comes amid the refusal of the White House to meet with Netanyahu during his visit to the United States at the end of the month. Netanyahu has attempted to box in the Obama administration by claiming Obama has pressured Israel not to launch a pre-election military attack on Iran . . .

Adelson funds a number of Israeli media outlets that are playing up Obama's perceived 'weakness' in dealing with the anti-American riots in Cairo and Benghazi. Chief among the outlets is the pro-Netanyahu paper Israel HaYom, which is distributed free throughout Israel. In its coverage of the anti-U.S. riots in Egypt and Cairo, Adelson's paper tried to link Bacile's movie to anti-Muslim Christians instead of Israel. A September 12 article in the newspaper stated: 'A group of women in black veils and robes that left only their eyes exposed chanted 'Worshippers of the Cross, leave the Prophet Muhammad alone.'"






The following is the WMR article published the day before Blumenthal's email to Clinton titled "Petraeus/October Surprise."

November 9-11, 2012 -- LATE EDITION. Petraeus indiscretion may be linked to "October Surprise" plot

CIA director General David Petraeus, lauded by neo-cons for his marshaling of troops in contrived military campaigns in Iraq, Afghanistan, and, in support of the "global war on terror," throughout the Arab and Muslim world as the chief of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), resigned suddenly on November 9. Petraeus claimed that he was resigning over an extra-marital affair. Petraeus graduated from West Point in 1974 and soon married Holly Knowlton, the daughter of General William Knowlton, the superintendent of West Point while Petraeus was a cadet. Petraeus has been married to his wife for 37 years,

The Washington spin machine is claiming that President Obama first heard about Petraeus's affair and his intent to resign on the evening of November 8. However, a few weeks ago, Petraeus attended a Canadian embassy screening of the movie "Argo," which depicts the CIA's rescue of Americans in Tehran during the U.S. embassy siege. Petraeus was said by several other attendees to be preoccupied with other matters and totally disinterested in the film that received kudos from current and former CIA rank-and-file. There is a belief by many in the intelligence community that Petraeus's affair was already known to the White House weeks ago but that it was decided that his resignation would be tendered after the November 6 election to avoid another scandal on top of the festering Benghazi consulate attack. Moreover, the Petraeus scandal and the siege of the U.S. compound in Benghazi may be linked.

Paula Broadwell, the co-author along with The Washington Post's Vernon Loeb, of Petraeus's biography titled All In: The Education of General David Petraeus, has been under investigation by the FBI for trying to access Petraeus's e-mail, possibly while Petraeus's CIA-issued secure personal digital assistant and/or laptop were left unattended during trysts. The FBI, according to some media reports, has indicated that neither Petraeus nor Broadwell, who also served as an Army officer and is a married West Point graduate with two sons, face criminal charges. WMR has reported in the past that Loeb is a frequent target of National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance as a result of his publication of leaks from intelligence sources.

Broadwell is a Lieutenant Colonel in the Army Reserves. She traveled several times to Afghanistan where she was "embedded" with Petraeus's units. Broadwell has also studied Arabic. She teaches at West Point, serves as a research staffer at Harvard’s Center for Public Leadership and is currently working on her PhD at King’s College in London.

Neo-cons, who had hoped Petraeus would have run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012 and challenged President Obama, expressed anger over Obama's acceptance of Petraeus's letter of resignation. Chief among Petraeus's defenders was the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA). Arizona Republican Senator John McCain, who has called Petraeus "my dear General Petraeus," also felt Petraeus should have stayed on at the CIA.

However, Petraeus had his enemies and many were from his own ranks. Petraeus's first combat command was not until after he was a general at the age of 50 when he was put in command of the 101st Airborne Division in Iraq in 2003. Prior to that time, Petraeus was called a "pencil sharpening" general, having mainly served on staffs and attending Princeton for his PhD and Georgetown University. In 2004, Petraeus became the first commander of the Multi-National Security Transition Command-Iraq (MNSTC-I) and was responsible for training Iraqi police, army, and security service personnel. Under his command, thousands of U.S. weapons were lost and many ended up in the hands of Iraqi insurgents. There were also questionable contracts awarded to U.S. and Iraqi businesses, such as Custer Battles and Blackwater, that had close links to top Republicans.

It has been reported that in Iraq, Petraeus was known as "King David," however, the appellation had little to do with his royal persona and more to do with his fealty to the neo-cons and Israel. One of Petraeus's chief backers was the late Democratic Representative Tom Lantos of California, an arch-Zionist supporter of Israel. Petraeus re-wrote Army counter-insurgency doctrine, which became known as the Petraeus Doctrine. Two words sum up the Petraeus Doctrine: surges and drones. 

Although it is too early to ascertain why the FBI was investigating Broadwell, there is some informed speculation from intelligence professionals that the Mitt Romney campaign had inside help in arranging for a Jimmy Carter-like "October Surprise" to deny Obama a second term. It was the Iran hostage situation in 1980 and a Reagan-Bush mole inside the National Security Council who tipped off the Republicans about last-minute negotiations between Carter's team and Iran to release the U.S. hostages that cost Carter re-election. The name of the mole was Robert Gates, on loan from the CIA to the White House. Gates was a loyalist of former CIA director Bush.

Petraeus, with his close connections to the GOP and the neo-cons, may have attracted the wrong type of girl friend whose access to classified CIA information may have played a role in the bungled CIA operation that resulted in the deaths of four Americans at a CIA safe house facility in Benghazi, officially identified as the U.S. Consulate. The dead included the U.S. ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens, an individual who was also connected to the CIA through "official cover" status.

When the FBI was ordered to plug leaks about the Benghazi situation, the bureau discovered some leaks were coming from high-level CIA sources, possibly including Petraeus's unattended laptop and PDA.

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The Blumenthal warning to Clinton about an "October Surprise" plot the day following WMR's report on a possible "October Surprise" and the corporate media's failure to examine the possibility is yet another example of the ineffectiveness of big business-owned and operated news organizations. Google's newly-announced trustworthiness "Knowledge Vault," which is designed to rank web sites based on the accuracy of their content, would relegate web sites detailing the true nature of the Benghazi attack and the Petraeus affair to the bottom of their rankings. 

Gen. Petraeus: Too Big to Jail By Ray McGovern

Gen. Petraeus: Too Big to JailBy Ray McGovern
March 06, 2015 "ICH" - "Consortium News" -  The leniency shown former CIA Director (and retired General) David Petraeus by the Justice Department in sparing him prison time for the serious crimes that he has committed puts him in the same preferential, immune-from-incarceration category as those running the financial institutions of Wall Street, where, incidentally, Petraeus now makes millions. By contrast, “lesser” folks – and particularly the brave men and women who disclose government crimes – get to serve time, even decades, in jail.

Petraeus is now a partner at KKR, a firm specializing in large leveraged buyouts, and his hand-slap guilty plea to a misdemeanor for mishandling government secrets should not interfere with his continued service at the firm. KKR’s founders originally worked at Bear Stearns, the institution that failed in early 2008 at the beginning of the meltdown of the investment banking industry later that year.
 
Gen. David Petraeus in a photo with his biographer/mistress Paula Broadwell. (U.S. government photo)

Despite manifestly corrupt practices like those of subprime mortgage lenders, none of those responsible went to jail after the 2008-09 financial collapse which cost millions of Americans their jobs and homes. The bailed-out banks were judged “too big to fail” and the bankers “too big to jail.”

Two years ago, in a highly revealing slip of the tongue, Attorney General Eric Holder explained to Congress that it can “become difficult” to prosecute major financial institutions because they are so large that a criminal charge could pose a threat to the economy – or perhaps what he meant was an even bigger threat to the economy.

Holder tried to walk back his unintended slip into honesty a year later, claiming, “There is no such thing as ‘too big to jail.’” And this bromide was dutifully echoed by Holder’s likely successor, Loretta Lynch, at her confirmation hearing in late January.
Words, though, are cheap. The proof is in the pudding. It remains true that not one of the crooked bankers or investment advisers who inflicted untold misery on ordinary people, gambling away much of their life savings, has been jailed. Not one.

And now Petraeus, who gave his biographer/mistress access to some of the nation’s most sensitive secrets and then lied about it to the FBI, has also been shown to be too big to jail. Perhaps Holder decided it would be a gentlemanly thing to do on his way out of office – to take this awkward issue off Lynch’s initial to-do list and spare her the embarrassment of demonstrating once again that equality under the law has become a mirage; that not only big banks, but also big shots like Petraeus – who was Official Washington’s most beloved general before becoming CIA director – are, in fact, too big to jail.

It strikes me, in a way, as fitting that even on his way out the door, Eric Holder would not miss the opportunity to demonstrate his propensity for giving hypocrisy a bad name.

A Slap on Wrist for Serious Crimes

The Justice Department let David Petraeus cop a plea after requiring him to admit that he had shared with his biographer/mistress eight black notebooks containing highly classified information and then lied about it to FBI investigators. Serious crimes? The following quotes are excerpted from “U.S. v. David Howell Petraeus: Factual Basis in support of the Plea Agreement” offered by the U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina, Charlotte Division:

“17. During his tenure as Commander of ISAF in Afghanistan, defendant DAVID HOWELL PETRAEUS maintained bound, five-by-eight-inch notebooks that contained his daily schedule and classified and unclassified notes he took during official meetings, conferences, and briefings. … A total of eight such books (hereinafter the “Black Books”) encompassed the period of defendant DAVID HOWELL PETRAEUS’S ISAF [Afghanistan] command and collectively contained classified information regarding the identities of covert officers, war strategy, intelligence capabilities and mechanisms, diplomatic discussions, quotes and deliberative discussions from high-level National Security Council meetings, and defendant DAVID HOWELL PETRAEUS’s discussions with the President of the United States of America. [emphasis added]

“18. The Black Books contained national defense information, including Top Secret//SCI and code word information.”
Despite the sensitivity of the notebooks and existing law and regulations, Petraeus did not surrender them to proper custody when he returned to the U.S. after being nominated to become the Director of the CIA. According to the Court’s “Factual Basis,” Petraeus’s biographer/mistress recorded a conversation of Aug. 4, 2011, in which she asks about the “Black Books.” The Court statement continues:

“ [Petraeus] ‘Umm, well, they’re really – I mean they are highly classified, some of them.  … I mean there’s code word stuff in there.’ … On or about August 27, 2011, defendant DAVID HOWELL PETRAEUS sent an email to his biographer in which he agreed to provide the Black Books to his biographer. … On or about August 28, 2011, defendant DAVID HOWEL PETRAEUS delivered the Black Books to a private residence in Washington, D.C. where his biographer was staying. … On or about September 1, 2011, defendant DAVID HOWELL PETRAEUS retrieved the Black Books from the D.C. private residence and returned them to his own Arlington, Virginia home.” [emphasis added]

I would think it a safe guess that Petraeus’s timing can be attributed to his awareness that his privacy and freedom of movement was about to be greatly diminished, once his CIA personal security detail started keeping close track of him from his first day on the job as CIA Director, Sept. 6, 2011.

“32. On or about October 26, 2012, defendant DAVID HOWELL PETRAEUS was interviewed by two FBI special agents. … [He] was advised that the special agents were conducting a criminal investigation. … PETRAEUS stated that (a) he had never provided any classified information to his biographer, and (b) he had never facilitated the provision of classified information to his biographer. These statements were false. Defendant DAVID HOWELL PETRAEUS then and there knew that he previously shared the Black Books with his biographer.” [emphasis added]
Lying to the FBI? No problem. As “Expose Facts” blogger Marcy Wheeler immediately commented: “For lying to the FBI – a crime that others go to prison for for months and years – Petraeus will just get a two point enhancement on his sentencing guidelines. The Department of Justice basically completely wiped out the crime of covering up his crime of leaking some of the country’s most sensitive secrets to his mistress.”[emphasis added]

Talk about “prosecutorial discretion” or, in this case, indiscretion – giving Petraeus a fine and probation but no felony conviction or prison time for what he did! Lesser lights are not so fortunate. Just ask Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning who is serving a 35-year prison sentence for disclosing information to the public about U.S. war crimes and other abuses. Or Edward Snowden, who is stuck in Russia facing a U.S. indictment on espionage charges for informing the people about pervasive and unconstitutional U.S. government surveillance of common citizens.

Or former CIA officer John Kiriakou who was sent to prison for inadvertently revealing the name of one Agency official cognizant of CIA torture. Here’s what Neil MacBride, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, said then: “The government has a vital interest in protecting the identities of those involved in covert operations. Leaks of highly sensitive, closely held and classified information compromise national security and can put individual lives in danger.”

When, on Oct. 23, 2012, Kiriakou acquiesced to a plea deal requiring two-and-a-half years in federal prison, then CIA Director Petraeus sent a sanctimonious Memorandum to Agency employees applauding Kiriakou’s conviction and noting, “It marks an important victory for our agency … there are indeed consequences for those who believe they are above the laws that protect our fellow officers and enable American intelligence agencies to operate with the requisite degree of secrecy.” [emphasis added]

Consequences for Kiriakou but not, as we now know, for Petraeus.
If you feel no discomfort at this selective application of the law, you might wish to scroll or page back to the “Factual Basis” for Petraeus’s Plea Agreement and be reminded that it was just three days after his lecture to CIA employees about the sanctity of protecting the identity of covert agents that Petraeus lied to FBI investigators – on Oct. 26, 2012 – about his sharing such details with his mistress.

Why Did Petraeus Do It?
Old soldiers like Petraeus (indeed, most aging but still ambitious men) have been known to end up doing self-destructive things by letting themselves be flattered by the attentions of younger women. This may offer a partial explanation – human weakness even in a self-styled larger-than-life super-Mensch. But I see the motivation as mostly vainglory. (The two are not mutually exclusive, of course.)

Looking back at Petraeus’s record of overweening ambition, it seems likely he was motivated first and foremost by a desire to ensure that his biographer would be able to extract from the notebooks some juicy morsels he may not have remembered to tell her about. This might enhance his profile as Warrior-Scholar-“King David,” the image that he has assiduously cultivated and promoted, with the help of an adulating neocon-dominated media.

Petraeus’s presidential ambitions have been an open secret. And with his copping a plea to a misdemeanor, his “rehabilitation” seems to have already begun. He has told friends that he would like to serve again in government and they immediately relayed that bright hope to the media.

Sen. John McCain was quick to call the whole matter “closed.” A strong supporter of Petraeus, McCain added this fulsome praise: “At a time of grave security challenges around the world, I hope that General Petraeus will continue to provide his outstanding service and leadership to our nation, as he has throughout his distinguished career.”

And Michael O’Hanlon, Brookings’ neocon military specialist who rarely gets anything right, spoke true to form to the New York Times: “The broader nation needs his advice, and I think it’s been evident that people still want to hear from him. … People are forgiving and I know he made a mistake. But he’s also a national hero and a national treasure.”

The “mainstream media” is trapped in its undeserved adulation for Petraeus’s “heroism.” It is virtually impossible, for example, for them to acknowledge that his ballyhooed, official-handout-based “success” in training and equipping tens of thousands of crack Iraqi troops was given the lie when those same troops ran away (the officers took helicopters) and left their weapons behind at the first sight of ISIL fighters a year ago.

Equally sham were media claims of the “success” for the “surges” of 30,000 troops sent into Iraq (2007) and 33,000 into Afghanistan (2009). Each “surge” squandered the lives of about 1,000 U.S. troops for nothing – yes, nothing – except in the case of Iraq buying time for President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney to get out of town without a clear-cut defeat hanging around their necks.

Many of the supposed successes of Petraeus’s Iraqi “surge” also predated the “surge,” including a high-tech program for killing top militants such as Al-Qaeda-in-Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and the formation of the so-called Sunni Awakening, both occurring in 2006 under the previous field commanders. And, Bush’s principal goal of the “surge” – to create political space for a fuller Sunni-Shiite reconciliation – was never accomplished. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “The Surge Myth’s Deadly Result.”]
And last, it is important to note that David Petraeus does not have a corner on the above-the-law attitudes and behavior of previous directors of the CIA. The kid-gloves treatment he has been accorded, however, will increase chances that future directors will feel they can misbehave seriously and suffer no serious personal consequence.

The virtual immunity enjoyed by the well connected – even when they lie to the FBI or tell whoppers in sworn testimony to Congress (as Director of National Intelligence James Clapper has done) – feeds the propensity to prioritize one’s own personal ambition and to delegate a back seat to legitimate national security concerns – even basic things like giving required protection to properly classified information, including the identity of covert officers.
One might call this all-too-common syndrome Self-Aggrandizing Dismissiveness (SAD). Sadly, Petraeus is merely the latest exemplar of the SAD syndrome. The unbridled ambitions of some of his predecessors at CIA – the arrogant John Deutch, for example – have been equally noxious and destructive. But we’ll leave that for the next chapter.

Full Disclosure: Petraeus has not yet answered McGovern’s letter of Feb. 3 regarding why McGovern was barred from a public speaking event by Petraeus in New York City on Oct. 30, 2014, and then was roughly arrested by police and jailed for the night. McGovern wonders if Petraeus failed to respond because he was pre-occupied working out his Plea Agreement.

Ray McGovern worked for a total of 27 years in all four of CIA’s main directorates. He served under seven Presidents and nine CIA Directors, and is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). He now works for Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington.

Seymour Hersh Unearths More Lies on Syria By Jonathan Cook

Seymour Hersh Unearths More Lies on Syria By Jonathan Cook April 07, 2014 "ICH" - Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh has a second fascinating essay that rewrites the official record of the sarin gas attack on Ghouta, near Damascus, in August last year. As usual, Hersh uses his sources in the US security establishment to throw light on what really took place. The bottom line: Turkey was almost certainly the party responsible for the attack, hoping it would force Obama to honour his threatened “red line” if Assad used chemical weapons. Was the Assad regime to be brought down by a US military campaign, Turkey assumed it would be able to turn Syria into a client state. Like the earlier article, this one will probably gain very little attention. It is published in the obscure UK literary publication the London Review of Books. Presumably like last time, Hersh could not find a mainstream publication willing to take it – and I’m guessing that, like last time, these stunningly important revelations will be shunned by the liberal media. Instead, it will be consigned to the memory hole, along with so much other evidence of western crimes against humanity. Pundits and analysts will continue to tell us confidently that Assad carried out the Ghouta attack, oblivious to Hersh’s findings. The reason the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Guardian have been studiously ignoring Hersh’s investigations on this, it seems to me, is that they show the Obama administration’s foreign policy is just as criminal as the previous Bush White House’s. Here is a summary of Hersh’s main findings: * Obama’s sudden climbdown on his threatened military strike against Assad was in part forced on him by a chemical analysis of samples of the sarin used in Ghouta, which showed that its signature did not match that of the stockpiles held by the Assad regime. * Despite US claims, the White House knew that the Syrian rebels had developed chemical weapons production facilities. UN investigators thought the Syrian opposition were the most likely culprits behind earlier chemical weapons attacks, in April and May 2013. The American and British intelligence communities had been aware since the spring of 2013 that some rebel units in Syria were developing chemical weapons. On 20 June analysts for the US Defense Intelligence Agency issued a highly classified five-page ‘talking points’ briefing for the DIA’s deputy director, David Shedd, which stated that al-Nusra maintained a sarin production cell. * The military strike being prepared by the White House after the Ghouta attack was, far from small-scale, as secretary of state John Kerry intimated, modelled on the shock and awe campaign against Saddam Hussein. Under White House pressure, the US attack plan evolved into ‘a monster strike’: two wings of B-52 bombers were shifted to airbases close to Syria, and navy submarines and ships equipped with Tomahawk missiles were deployed. ‘Every day the target list was getting longer,’ the former intelligence official told me. … The new target list was meant to ‘completely eradicate any military capabilities Assad had’, the former intelligence official said. The core targets included electric power grids, oil and gas depots, all known logistic and weapons depots, all known command and control facilities, and all known military and intelligence buildings. * The US developed a back channel of weapons-smuggling to the Syrian rebels, known as the rat line, in cooperation with Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, using the “liberated” arsenals from Libya following the west’s ousting of Gaddafi. The rat line, authorised in early 2012, was used to funnel weapons and ammunition from Libya via southern Turkey and across the Syrian border to the opposition. Many of those in Syria who ultimately received the weapons were jihadists, some of them affiliated with al-Qaida. … By the terms of the agreement, funding came from Turkey, as well as Saudi Arabia and Qatar; the CIA, with the support of MI6, was responsible for getting arms from Gaddafi’s arsenals into Syria. … The operation was run by David Petraeus, the CIA director who would soon resign when it became known he was having an affair with his biographer. * The job of the US consulate in Libya – the one where ambassador Christopher Stevens was killed – was to provide logistical assistance with the rat line. That was the reason the consulate was attacked. ‘The consulate’s only mission was to provide cover for the moving of arms,’ the former intelligence official, who has read the annex, said. ‘It had no real political role.’ … Washington abruptly ended the CIA’s role in the transfer of arms from Libya after the attack on the consulate, but the rat line kept going. ‘The United States was no longer in control of what the Turks were relaying to the jihadists,’ the former intelligence official said. Within weeks, as many as forty portable surface-to-air missile launchers, commonly known as manpads, were in the hands of Syrian rebels. On 28 November 2012, Joby Warrick of the Washington Post reported that the previous day rebels near Aleppo had used what was almost certainly a manpad to shoot down a Syrian transport helicopter. ‘The Obama administration,’ Warrick wrote, ‘has steadfastly opposed arming Syrian opposition forces with such missiles, warning that the weapons could fall into the hands of terrorists and be used to shoot down commercial aircraft.’ * By late 2012 the US had assessed that the rebels were losing the civil war, and started to downgrade their involvement in the rat line. That left Turkey’s Recep Erdogan the main loser. The American decision to end CIA support of the weapons shipments into Syria left Erdoğan exposed politically and militarily. ‘One of the issues at that May summit was the fact that Turkey is the only avenue to supply the rebels in Syria,’ the former intelligence official said. … Without US military support for the rebels, the former intelligence official said, ‘Erdoğan’s dream of having a client state in Syria is evaporating and he thinks we’re the reason why. When Syria wins the war, he knows the rebels are just as likely to turn on him – where else can they go? So now he will have thousands of radicals in his backyard.’ * Erdogan therefore became focused on exploiting the “red line” Obama had set on Assad’s use of chemical weapons to force the US to attack Syria. Erdoğan knew that if he stopped his support of the jihadists it would be all over. The Saudis could not support the war because of logistics – the distances involved and the difficulty of moving weapons and supplies. Erdoğan’s hope was to instigate an event that would force the US to cross the red line. But Obama didn’t respond [to the previous chemical weapons attacks] in March and April.’ … We now know it was a covert action planned by Erdoğan’s people to push Obama over the red line,’ the former intelligence official said. ‘They had to escalate to a gas attack in or near Damascus when the UN inspectors’ – who arrived in Damascus on 18 August to investigate the earlier use of gas – ‘were there. The deal was to do something spectacular. … Barring a major change in policy by Obama, Turkey’s meddling in the Syrian civil war is likely to go on. Jonathan Cook is an award-winning British journalist based in Nazareth, Israel, since 2001.http://www.jonathan-cook.net