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Illustration: The six corporations that own over 98% of all media in the U.S. You can see the numbers. Pacifica is one exception that now owns an amazing 7 stations and it was under attack by corporations. Free Speech TV and Amy Goodman on Democracy are amazing exceptions, and if you are looking for the truth, that is the place to start.
Assad v. Isis
Just to summarize, Assad in Syria is secular. He does not interfere with freedom of religion or dress. The so-called "free Syrian Army" supplies weapons to the Wahabbi of purveyors of Isilanity. Assad has protected the Christians and other minorities.
Putin was invited in by Assad to Syria. Thus, Russia is the only country carrying out military activity legally. All other forces are there illegally according to international law and a slew of Geneva Convention regulations.
I don't see any reason to say any more. Below is a full discussion of all the issues:
A new report by the Pulitzer-winning veteran journalist Seymour Hersh says the Joint Chiefs of Staff has indirectly supported Bashar al-Assad in an effort to help him defeat jihadist groups. Hersh reports the Joint Chiefs sent intelligence via Russia, Germany and Israel on the understanding it would be transmitted to help Assad push back Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic State. Hersh also claims the military even undermined a U.S. effort to arm Syrian rebels in a bid to prove it was serious about helping Assad fight their common enemies. Hersh says the Joint Chiefs' maneuvering was rooted in several concerns, including the U.S. arming of unvetted Syrian rebels with jihadist ties, a belief the administration was overly focused on confronting Assad's ally in Moscow, and anger the White House was unwilling to challenge Turkey and Saudi Arabia over their support of extremist groups in Syria. Hersh joins us to detail his claims and respond to his critics.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: The United Nations Security Council's passage of a peace plan for Syria has been called perhaps the best chance yet to end the country's civil war. The measure, approved Friday, calls for a ceasefire, talks between the government and opposition, and a roughly two-year timeline to form a unity government and hold elections. Secretary of State John Kerry outlined the terms.
SECRETARY OF STATE JOHN KERRY: Under the resolution approved today, the purpose of those negotiations between the responsible opposition and the government is to facilitate a transition within Syria to a credible, inclusive, nonsectarian governance within six months. The process would lead to the drafting of a new constitution and arrangements for internationally supervised election within 18 months.
AMY GOODMAN: The resolution is silent on the fate of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The U.S. has insisted on excluding Assad from a political transition, pointing to the mass killings of his own people throughout the more than four-year war. But Russia and China have staunchly backed Assad. The world powers' impasse has fueled U.N. inaction amidst a death toll of more than 250,000 and the world's worst refugee crisis. Although the U.S. remains opposed to Assad, his omission from the Security Council resolution signals a softening stance and a potential diplomatic turning point. The Obama administration has quietly backed off its public insistence that Assad must go, claiming it's no longer seeking regime change in Syria.
Now an explosive new report says U.S. military leadership in the Joint Chiefs of Staff has held that view all along and has taken secret steps to move U.S. policy in that direction. According to award-winning veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, the Joint of Chiefs of Staff has tacitly aided the Assad regime to help it defeat radical jihadists. Hersh reports the Joint Chiefs sent intelligence via Russia, Germany and Israel, on the understanding it would be transmitted to help Assad push back Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic State. Hersh also claims the military even undermined a U.S. effort to arm Syrian rebels in a bid to prove to Assad it was serious about helping him fight their common enemies. At the Joint Chiefs' behest, aCIA weapons shipment to the Syrian opposition was allegedly downgraded to include obsolete weapons. Hersh says the Joint Chiefs' maneuvering was rooted in several concerns, including the U.S. arming of unvetted Syrian rebels with jihadist ties, a belief the administration was overly focused on confronting Assad's ally in Moscow, and anger the White House was unwilling to confront Turkey and Saudi Arabia over their support of extremist groups in Syria.
Hersh's report in the London Review of Books follows his controversial story in May challenging the Obama administration's account of the killing of Osama bin Laden. Like that story, his latest piece relies heavily on a single source, described as a "former senior adviser to the Joint Chiefs." And while critics have dismissed both stories as conspiracy theories, it turns out that key aspects of the bin Laden report have since been corroborated. After the bin Laden story came out, U.S. and Pakistani intelligence sources confirmed Hersh's reporting that the U.S. discovered bin Laden's location when a Pakistani officer told the CIA, and that the Pakistani government knew all along where bin Laden was hiding.
For more, we're joined by Seymour Hersh. He won the Pulitzer Prize for exposing the 1968 My Lai massacre in Vietnam, when U.S. forces killed hundreds of civilians. In 2004, Sy Hersh broke the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal. His latest piece in theLondon Review of Books is headlined "Military to Military: US Intelligence Sharing in the Syrian War." Hersh is working on a study of Dick Cheney's vice presidency.
We welcome you back to Democracy Now!, Sy Hersh. Why don't you lay out this very controversial report that you have just published in the London Review of Books. What did you find?
SEYMOUR HERSH: Well, it began, actually, as I wrote, with a very serious, extensive assessment of our policy, that was completed by June—let's say by middle of 2013, two-and-a-half years ago. It was a study done by the Joint Chiefs and the Defense Intelligence Agency that came to three sort of conclusions, that may seem obvious now but were pretty interesting then.
One is that they said Assad must stay, at least through—through the resolution of the war, because, as we saw in Libya, once you get rid of a leader, like Gaddafi—same, you can argue, in Iraq with the demise of Saddam Hussein—chaos ensues. The second—so that was an issue, that there—the point being, elections at some point, certainly, but for the short term, while we're still fighting, he has to stay. And that wasn't the American position then. And, I would argue with you, I still think the American position is very muddled, although they have seemed to soften it.
Secondly, the other point they made is that their investigation showed this notion of a moderate force just was a fiction, was just a fantasy, that most of the Free Syrian Army, by the summer, by mid-2013, were in some sort of an understanding with al-Nusra, or, as you put it, ISIL, the Islamic State. There was a lot of back-and-forth going—arms going into the Free Syrian Army and other moderates were being peddled, sold, or transferred to the more extremist groups.
And the third major finding was about Turkey. It said we simply have to deal with the problem. The Turkish government, led by Erdogan, was—had opened—basically, his borders were open, arms were flying. I had written about that earlier for the London Review, the rat line. There were arms flying since 2012, covertly, with the CIA's support and the support of the American government. Arms were coming from Tripoli and other places in Benghazi, in Libya, going into Turkey and then being moved across the line. And another interesting point is that a lot of Chinese dissidents, the Uyghurs, the Muslim Chinese that are being pretty much hounded by the Chinese, were also—another rat line existed. They were coming from China into Kazakhstan, into Turkey and into Syria. So, this was a serious finding.
It was not the first time some of these points had been raised. And there was simply no echo. Once you pass this stuff on to the White House or into the other agencies—the Defense Department does this routinely. These are very highly secret. This study was composed of overhead satellite intelligence, human intelligence, etc., very compartmentalized stuff. But it did go to the State Department and to a lot of offices in the White House and National Security Council. No response, no change in policy.
So, at this point, as I wrote, the Joint Chiefs, then headed by an Army general named Dempsey, Martin Dempsey, who has since retired, decided that they had—that there was a chance to do something about it without directly contravening the policy. And that was simply that we were aware that Germany, the German intelligence service, the German General Staff, had been involved pretty closely with Bashar in terms of funneling intelligence. Russia—and it's— a lot of people will find this surprising, but the United States military, the military has had a very solid relationship with the leadership of the Russian military since the fall of the Soviet Union in '91. And General Dempsey, in particular, had a one-on-one relationship with the general who now runs the military for the Soviet Union. And so, we knew the Russians and the Israelis were also involved in some back-channel conversation with Syria, with the idea being Israel, sort of very on the margin on this, understood that if Bashar went, what comes next would not be healthy for Israel. They share a border with Syria, and you don't want Islamic State or al-Nusra or any of those groups to be that close to the Israelis. It would be a national security threat for them.
So there was a lot of people, a lot of other services communicating, and so what the Joint Chiefs did is they began to pass along some of this very good strategic intelligence and technical intelligence we have—where the bad guys are, you can put it; what they might be thinking; what information we had. That was passed not directly to Assad, but it was passed to the Germans, to the Russians, through the Israelis, etc. The exact process is, of course, way beyond my ken, but there was no question that was a transmission point. The point being that there was no direct contact, but the information certainly got to him, and it certainly had an impact on Saddam's—the Syrian army's ability to improve its position by the end of the year, 2013.
AMY GOODMAN: And talk—
SEYMOUR HERSH: Period. That's the story. Go ahead.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about the source that you used for this story and the criticism of your single-source method.
SEYMOUR HERSH: Oh, my god. Well, you know, as you know, it's usually anonymous sources you get criticized for. That's always been traditionally, although any day inThe New York Times and Washington Post, they're full of anonymous sources. That's an easy way out. I wish I could tell you that I haven't been relying on this particular person for since 9/11, but I have been. And many of the stories I wrote for The New Yorker about what was going on inside Iran, what was going—there was no bombs inside Iraq, part of those early stories I was writing, all came from one particularly well-informed person, who, as—you know, who, for a lot of reasons, I can't make public. One is them is this government would prosecute him.
So the idea that there's one source, that's—I've done that—I worked for The New York Times, as you know, for eight or nine years, all during Watergate and the Vietnam War years, and won many, many prizes based on stories based on one source. I don't know what the public think goes on, but, you know, if you get a very good source who over many years has been totally reliable, I'm not troubled by it at all. And neither—you know, the London Review, as many in America know, is a very, very seriously edited magazine, who did the same amount of very intense fact checking as happened when I worked at The New Yorker, which is famous for its fact checking, and the editing was certainly as competent and as good as you get in The New Yorker. I'm very happy working for them. And so, it's not as if I'm not put to the same question that you're putting, that critics may put, by the editors of the magazine. And they get—they have direct contact. They know who the person is. They have discussions with him, and with me not present. All of these standards are met.
AMY GOODMAN: Well—
SEYMOUR HERSH: Yes, go ahead.
AMY GOODMAN: Let me share with you some of the criticism of your piece—
SEYMOUR HERSH: Oh, oh, spare me.
AMY GOODMAN: —like Max Fisher's writing in Vox—but let me share it with our audience, as well—who, you know, talks about your relying entirely on one unnamed source for your principal allegation that U.S. defense officials bypassed the Obama administration and shared intelligence with allies, who subsequently shared it with the Assad regime. Fisher goes on to conclude, quote, "We are required to believe that the senior-most leaders of our military one day in 2013 decided to completely transform how they behave and transgress every norm they have in a mass act of treason, despite never having done so before, and then promptly went back to normal this September when Dempsey retired." Can you respond to that?
SEYMOUR HERSH: Well, there's—it's so many instances where the military disagree with a president. We've seen this in World War II, MacArthur. I mean, the idea that the Joint Chiefs of Staff—let me just say, in general, when you're at that level, at the Joint Chiefs of Staff, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, you make an oath of office not to the president of the United States, but to the Constitution. And there's been many times the military objects. There were times just in the last couple of years, in congressional testimony, that General Dempsey has made it clear he disagrees with the policy.
Specifically about some of the matters that were raised in that article—and I did look at it, of course—is that, for example, Dempsey agreed in testimony that we should arm the moderates—the opposition, rather. And, in fact, what he agreed to—this is with the head of the CIA, Leon Panetta, at the time—when this discussion came up of arming dissident groups, opposition groups inside Syria, Panetta and the chairman both made a point of saying "vetted groups." They said only those groups we really know are reliable, and not wackos and not jihadist groups that want to exclude anybody except those who share their particular beliefs in the future state, if they were to take it over. So there's a lot of—there's a lot of contradictory evidence about it. And there are—there certainly can be more sophisticated arguments to make than this has never happened before. This is certainly unusual that, in a time like this, the military would give information to allies, our allies, at their request, that differ from the official policy. Sure, that's a very complicated thing, and it was a tough thing to do, but it happened.
AMY GOODMAN: Was there direct communication between the United States and Syria?
SEYMOUR HERSH: I'm going to stand by what I wrote in the article.
AMY GOODMAN: Which was?
SEYMOUR HERSH: I wrote in the article that there was no direct contact, that the whole purpose was to use the cutouts, that there was no attempt to directly engage with Bashar al-Assad or his regime.
AMY GOODMAN: And what—
SEYMOUR HERSH: But there—yes?
AMY GOODMAN: What did the U.S. get in return?
SEYMOUR HERSH: Well, there was an understanding, obviously, conveyed by our allies. And the understanding was that we were going to give this stuff, and if Bashar would, among other things, agree to an election, a monitored election, once the war was over, and presumably he had re-established—you know, Bashar—there's a lot of talk about the success of the Islamic groups, but Bashar right now, although he doesn't control 100 percent—much less, 60—I'm not sure of the number, but it was more than 50 percent, less than—the opposition groups controlled large swaths, 30 percent, 40 percent. But he does control as much as—I've seen estimates of 86 percent of the population. And the notion that everybody in Syria despises him, etc., all these things you hear, that's not true. He has a lot of native support, and even from Muslims, because every Muslim in Syria is not a Wahhabi or a Salafist, an extremist. Many are very moderate people who believe they would be in trouble if the Islamic force, the Islamic groups, came into power, because they would go and seek out those fellow Muslims that don't agree with their extreme views. So he does have an awful lot of support, more than most people think. This is not to say he's a good guy or bad guy. We're just talking about reality.
And don't forget, we are a country that, in World War II, a year after the Russians had done—were in a pact with Hitler, we joined with the Russians against Hitler. So, you know, you sometimes overlook—one of the points also made by—in this article is this incredible hostility towards Russia and these allegations, time and time again, that Russia is not really serious about going after the Islamic State. And there—even just in the debate over at the U.N., a statistic suggesting that 80 percent of the Russian attacks have nothing to do with ISIS, but they're attacking the ISISopposition, the moderates. And you just have to say to yourself, "Well, why then didISIS bomb, as we all believe and the Russians believe, destroy a Russian airliner? Why was ISIS upset with Russia, if Russia was basically bombing their enemy, the moderates?" It doesn't—it just—the logic in some of the American thinking and the thinking around the world on this, it doesn't make much sense to me.
AMY GOODMAN: We're going to break and then come back to this discussion. Sy Hersh is our guest, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist. His latest piece is in theLondon Review of Books; it's headlined "Military to Military: US Intelligence Sharing in the Syrian War." This is Democracy Now! Back in a minute.
At Saturday's Democratic presidential debate, front-runner Hillary Clinton rejected what she called a "false choice" between defeating the Islamic State and overthrowing Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. "We will not get the support on the ground in Syria to dislodge ISIS if the fighters there who are not associated withISIS, but whose principal goal is getting rid of Assad, don't believe there is a political, diplomatic channel that is ongoing," Clinton said. Rivals Bernie Sanders and Martin O'Malley disagreed, saying it is not for the U.S. to decide Assad's fate. "I think there should be learning curves for people with that kind of power," Hersh says of Clinton. "I think what happened in Libya should have instructed anybody in the government, including the president, that when you depose a dictator, you have to be aware of what's going to come next, and you have to think long and hard about what you're doing. I think, by any standard, getting rid of Gaddafi has proven to be a horrible event. It was a terrible decision, and we seem not to have learned enough from it."
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman. Our guest is Seymour Hersh, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist. Well, during Saturday's Democratic debate, ABC host David Muir asked former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton about Senator Bernie Sanders' plan for Syria.
DAVID MUIR: We heard from the senator just this week that we must put aside the issue of how quickly we get rid of Assad, and come together with countries, including Russia and Iran, to destroyISIS first. Is he wrong?
HILLARY CLINTON: I think we're missing the point here. We are doing both at the same time.
DAVID MUIR: But that's what he's saying: We should put that aside for now and go after ISIS.
HILLARY CLINTON: Well, I don't agree with that, because we will not get the support on the ground in Syria to dislodge ISIS if the fighters there who are not associated with ISIS, but whose principal goal is getting rid of Assad, don't believe there is a political, diplomatic channel that is ongoing. We now have that.
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: Secretary Clinton is right. This is a complicated issue. I don't think anyone has a magical solution. But this is what I do believe. Yes, of course, Assad is a terrible dictator. But I think we have got to get our foreign policies and our priorities right. The immediate—it is not Assad who is attacking the United States. It is ISIS. And ISIS is attacking France and attacking Russian airliners. The major priority right now, in terms of our foreign and military policy, should be the destruction of ISIS.
DAVID MUIR: Governor O'Malley?
MARTIN O'MALLEY: We shouldn't be the ones declaring that Assad must go. Where did it ever say in the Constitution, where is it written that it's the job of the United States of America or its secretary of state to determine when dictators have to go? We have a role to play in this world, but it is not the world—the role of traveling the world looking for new monsters to destroy.
AMY GOODMAN: That's former Governor Martin O'Malley, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, all vying for the presidency. Seymour Hersh, your response, and how these different views ally with either President Obama or the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as you've laid out in your piece, "Military to Military"?
SEYMOUR HERSH: Look, clearly what Mr. O'Malley and Bernie Sanders said would be—would ring very solidly with the Joint Chiefs. They would be in great distress about what Hillary Clinton said, because I think—you know, the fact is that if you really want to look at it, Bashar is still the president of Syria. The Russians are bombing in Syria at his invitation. We are bombing in Syria without his invitation. And so it's hard sometimes for Americans to think that we're not always on the side of the angels on legal issues, but we're certainly, by any normal standard of—you know, if there was a normal standard of international conduct, we would be the bad guys in that, just in terms of legalities. We're not invited in. We're doing it.
Obviously, there's a lot of agreement, and there's a lot of coordination going on with all the bombing, much more than we know. The Syrians are certainly coordinating with the Russians, and we're certainly coordinating with everybody. No pilot—no pilot from any country is going to fly into a combat zone without knowing exactly who's there and whether it's safe or not. So, there's much more cooperation going on, even now, than you can see. But the idea—you know, and in your opening, you mentioned that we seem to have moderated our view. And I think those are words that are being said, but the reality is, we still always say, "Well, we don't—we're not saying—we're not talking about regime change now." You'd think that maybe—
AMY GOODMAN: Well, didn't Kerry meet with Putin and then completely reverse the position?
SEYMOUR HERSH: No, not quite, because the position was—if you read the transcripts, there was a—he had a news conference or briefing after the meeting with Lavrov, the foreign minister of Russia, in which Kerry said—it's always this. The caveat is always: "But we don't think he can be in power while these negotiations can go on. He won't be able to preside over the negotiations." In other words, he's such a dissident force in this that we can't have a legitimate negotiation with various groups, some of which we believe are moderate, against all—most of the intelligence that's available. We still—the United States, the president still believes there are moderates there to work with. And there's just not much—you know, the Joint Chiefs certainly don't think there's any intelligence for it, nor does the DIA.
In fact, one of the things I did in this article is I ended up talking to Michael Flynn, who had been director of the DIA from 2012 to 2014, at the time the assessment I wrote about came out. And Flynn was careful not to talk about a highly classified paper. But he did say, "I can just tell you that if the American public saw all the papers that were going into the government, in from us, the DIA, the intelligence into the Pentagon, into the White House, they would be very upset." And he also said, in an interview with Der Spiegel a week or so ago, maybe about two or three weeks ago now—it was published last week—he also just didn't understand why we were fighting the Russians. Why not let the Russians come in? What was the concern? The Russians' concern is not about establishing a new world order; their concern is terrorism, primarily. They have a big terrorism problem. There's no question the leadership—many of the leadership modes or groups inside the ISIL, or the Islamic State, originated from the Chechnyan war. They had two wars with Chechnya—one of them went 10 years—brutal wars, in which Russia did horrible things, the same sort of stuff that Bashar al-Assad did, and one could argue that—same things we did to Japan at the end of World War II, when you see your country is at stake. People do very rough things in all-out war.
And so, all of these issues seem to me to be not fully understood by Mrs. Clinton. But, you know, it's early in—I think it's—my guess is she's obviously going to be the candidate. And obviously, she's a very—you know, she's as smart as they come, and I would think she maybe will be—I hope she'll get to change her views as time goes on.
AMY GOODMAN: What is your assessment of her as secretary of state in dealing with Syria? I mean, she's laid out what her views are. She wants Assad out.
SEYMOUR HERSH: Well, I think—my only thing is I think there should be learning curves for people with that kind of power. And I think what happened in Libya should have instructed anybody in the government, including the president, that when you depose a dictator, you have to be aware of what's going to come next, and you have to think long and hard about what you're doing. And I think, by any standard, the getting rid of Gaddafi has proven to be a horrible event. It's increased the spread of the Islamic State in Africa, North Africa, increased their access to weapons and to money, etc. And it's been a terrible—it was a terrible decision.
And we don't—we seem not to have learned enough from it, because—you know, if I'm Putin, and I'm worried sick about—and forget about what happened in Ukraine. It's terrible. I'm not defending Putin. I'm just saying, from his point of view about international terrorism, he's seen the United States attack one secular leader, Gaddafi, destroy another secular leader, Saddam Hussein—no question that he was—he was not interested in the spread of international terrorism. Bashar, the same way, was always a secular state. There was a tremendous amount of freedom for all sorts of minorities and sects, and people don't appreciate—all the minorities can only look to him for safety. They certainly can't look to the international Islamic State for any sort of solace, in case they win out and take over the country. And so, if I'm Russia, I'm watching the destruction of three Syrian—or attempted destruction in Syria of three secular states and wondering what the hell is America up to.
They join with us in the worry about international terrorism. And I can't tell you how many people I know inside the military and the intelligence community, as loyal to America as you want to be, think our first move after 9/11 probably should have been to Moscow and to say, "What can you tell us about terrorism? We've got it right here, and you've had it for a long time. Let's talk about it." You have to separate some issues. But we don't seem to be very good. We seem to live in a world of propaganda and likes and dislikes above our own national interests.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to go back to your—the key point that you make in this piece. It's a kind of coup policy, the Joint Chiefs of Staff conducting a very different policy than President Obama was espousing. What has the White House—how have they responded to your piece, if they have?
SEYMOUR HERSH: I don't think they want to hear about it. He's in Hawaii. The mainstream press is sort of like, you know, "What? This can't be. It's an anonymous source." And you know the drill. We've been—you and I have been talking since 9/11. Every time I do a story, one of the things we talk about is—one of the reason I'm delighted to go on your show is, at least here I can have more than three or four sentences.
AMY GOODMAN: And General Dempsey, him leaving, what this means for their policy? Or has, overall, the policy shifted to what the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Dempsey wanted, to begin with?
SEYMOUR HERSH: There's a new leadership in the Pentagon. And both General—the new chairman, Dunford, has testified a couple of times—I write about this at the end of my piece—and following the party line totally, which is that Russia doesn't—is not bombing any Islamic States, and that there are moderates, and we can pull it out with the moderates. The new secretary of defense is on the same point. Ash Carter has said a few times, in testimony, and he gave a speech at Harvard the other week, in which he basically said—followed the party line—or followed the president's line dutifully. And I guess that's—you know, if you want to be in that job, you have to do so. And it's sort of interesting to me that at some point some other military leaders decided that they couldn't follow the policy, because it was nonsensical, and did something about it. I don't think there was any attempt here to undermine the government. I think the attempt of everything that was done by the Joint Chiefs and other members in the military, in terms of trying to do something to—it was really an attempt to change—make a midcourse correction in a policy they saw that was deadly wrong.
AMY GOODMAN: Last question about Turkey: The role it has played?
SEYMOUR HERSH: This is a national disgrace that we're not able—and this president—I think it—I just don't know why he—he just, in the last—after the climate summit, he literally has had a private meeting with Erdogan—
AMY GOODMAN: Erdogan.
SEYMOUR HERSH: —the head of Turkey, Erdogan, yes, in France, and came out and said, "I'm with him all the way," etc., etc., etc., when in fact all of the intelligence for a long time has been that he has, particularly in Hatay province, which is a contested province Syria controls, those—the border has been open for the Islamic groups, and he has not only been funneling—he's been funneling arms and money to the most extreme groups for years. We know about it. There's been a lot of intelligence reporting on it. His planes, once he began to join—allegedly join—with us in flying out combat missions, one of the first targets was, of course, the opposition Kurds, who are the best fighters inside Syria against the Islamic State, but he also bombed some of the Syrian army's own specific units—exactly the contrary, opposite of what was what he said to do and what was being reported in the press. He wasn't helping us.
AMY GOODMAN: And Saudi Arabia's role, a U.S. other ally here in the region?
SEYMOUR HERSH: Well, this is part of, you know, the great farce of our all time, you know, that this U.N. meeting is going to take the views of Saudi Arabia and Qatar very seriously, when both of those countries have been the leading exporters of money—and, in the case of Qatar, people—into the war in Syria on the behalf of the Islamic groups. There's just no question that they're both Wahhabi states and Salafist states, and so are the Islamic State, which is very extreme radicals. If there's going to be a new Syria under these states, there will be no Christians allowed, no Alawites, no Muslims that disagree with their point of view. It's going to be quite a state that we're supporting.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you for being with us, Seymour Hersh, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, joining us from Washington, D.C. We'll link to your latestpiece in the London Review of Books, headlined "Military to Military: US Intelligence Sharing in the Syrian War." Sy Hersh is currently working on a book on Dick Cheney's vice presidency.
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