Category: Secrecy

Rewarding ‘Group Think’ on Syria

Exclusive: “Group think” is alive and well in Official Washington, with virtually all the important pundits marching in lock-step with the Obama administration’s accusations against the Syrian government and everyone fuming over an Op-Ed by Russian President Vladimir Putin, observes…

Why Syrian Rebels May Block CW Plan

Exclusive: Ironically, the biggest threat to plans for destroying the Syrian government’s chemical weapons may come from Syrian rebels if they balk at a ceasefire and target UN inspectors removing poison gas canisters, a possibility that the rebels may hope would…

Obama Still Withholds Syria Evidence

Exclusive: President Obama has sidetracked the rush to war with Syria, agreeing to pursue a diplomatic plan involving Syria surrendering its chemical weapons. But the U.S. government still hides its supposedly conclusive evidence that the Assad regime was guilty of the…

Recycling a Bush Iraq Ploy on Syria

Exclusive: Syria’s tentative acceptance of a plan for putting its chemical weapons under international control opens a pathway to avoid a U.S. military strike, but the Obama administration may use the opening as a new route for winning congressional war…

Trusting Obama’s Syria War Case

While some intelligence experts are skeptical of President Obama’s case for bombing Syria, others trust the allegations and mock those who doubt the justification for war. Ex-CIA analyst Melvin A. Goodman is part of the latter group but agrees with the first that…

Contrasting Reactions to Egypt, Syria

Israel’s preferences for Egypt’s military regime and against Syria’s authoritarian one continue to shape U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. In Egypt, President Obama has accepted a coup that ousted an elected government, while in Syria, he threatens war,…

Time to Reveal US Intel on Syria

Exclusive: Countering growing opposition to plans for bombing Syria, the White House dispatched Chief of Staff Denis McDonough to the Sunday talk shows. But the choice underscored the Obama administration’s credibility problems and raised new doubts about the case for war,…

Obama’s Syrian Case Shows Cracks

New cracks have appeared in the Obama administration’s case for bombing Syria. Though the White House’s four-page white paper has been palmed off as a U.S. intelligence assessment, it now appears to have been a political document that cherry-picked evidence, reports…

Congress: Beware of Secret Briefings

The Obama administration has refused to release its supposed evidence implicating the Syrian government in the alleged chemical weapons attack of Aug. 21, and it now appears the “classified briefings” to Congress have been more a sales job than a dispassionate…

Tell Kristof to Stop Lying on Syria

Exclusive: Columnist Nicholas D. Kristof has cultivated a reputation as a caring humanitarian who abhors violence, but he has now joined the ranks of liberal war hawks eager to bomb Syria, a choice that also has led him to enlist…