From Salon Magazine. Commentary to follow shortly.
Tuesday, Oct 11, 2016 02:30 PM -0400
Leaked Hillary Clinton emails show U.S. allies Saudi Arabia and Qatar supported ISIS
Emails released by WikiLeaks add to the growing body of evidence that Gulf regimes have backed the Islamic State
A recently leaked 2014 email from Hillary Clinton acknowledges, citing Western intelligence sources, that the U.S.-backed regimes in Saudi Arabia and Qatar have supported ISIS.
“We need to use our diplomatic and more traditional intelligence assets to bring pressure on the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL and other radical Sunni groups in the region,” the document states.
This adds to a growing body of evidence that theocratic Gulf monarchies have helped fuel the surge of extremist groups throughout the Middle East.
Another newly released email, from January 2016, includes an excerpt from a private October 2013 speech in which Clinton acknowledged that “the Saudis have exported more extreme ideology than any other place on earth over the course of the last 30 years.”
In that same speech, Clinton noted that she wanted to pursue “a more robust, covert action trying to vet, identify, train and arm cadres of rebels” in Syria, that would have fought both the government of President Bashar al-Assad and “the Al-Qaeda-related jihadist groups that have, unfortunately, been attracted to Syria.”
She added however, “That’s been complicated by the fact that the Saudis and others are shipping large amounts of weapons — and pretty indiscriminately — not at all targeted toward the people that we think would be the more moderate, least likely, to cause problems in the future.”
In a June 2013 speech to Goldman Sachs, an excerpt of which is also included in that January 2016 message, Clinton emphasized that “the Saudis in particular are not necessarily the stablest regimes that you can find on the planet.”
These emails are part of a trove released this week by transparency organization WikiLeaks. The group, which was founded by detained whistleblower Julian Assange, says it obtained thousands of emails to and from John Podesta, a close Clinton ally and the chair of her presidential campaign.
In August 2014, Clinton — who had stopped serving as secretary of state the year before — sent Podesta a list of notes on Syria, Iraq and U.S. policy in the Middle East, in an email titled “Here’s what I mentioned.”
Clinton indicated that the information in the message is based on Western intelligence sources, U.S. intelligence source and sources in the Middle East.
It is not known who wrote the notes. The language used in the document is, however, similar to that in other documents drafted by the U.S. State Department. The notes also use the same format and the same unconventional spelling of “Basher al Assad” to refer to the Syrian president, like previous intelligence memos (some of which were classified) sent to Clinton by her former aide Sidney Blumenthal.
Responding to the strategy outlined in the notes, Podesta said, “I think we are headed down this path in Iraq.” But “Syria elements are vexing,” he added.
“Agree but there may be opportunities as the Iraqi piece improves,” Clinton wrote back.
The message also reveals that the U.S. saw the rise of the genocidal Islamic State as an opportunity. “With all of its tragic aspects, the advance of ISIL through Iraq gives the U.S. Government an opportunity to change the way it deals with the chaotic security situation in North Africa and the Middle East,” the document says, adding, “The most important factor in this matter is to make use of intelligence resources and Special Operations troops in an aggressive manner.”
Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign has neither confirmed nor denied the authenticity of the emails released by WikiLeaks. When reporters asked Clinton herself about them this week, however, she did confirm that the January 2016 message, which includes excerpts of her paid speeches to Wall Street, is authentic.
Salon contacted the Clinton campaign with a request for confirmation of the emails. Spokesperson Glen Caplin wrote back, “We continue to not confirm the authenticity of any individual emails.” He also accused the Donald Trump campaign and WikiLeaks of having ties to Russia and being part of a larger campaign to undermine Clinton and “U.S. interests.”
This August 2014 email is by no means the first time Saudi Arabia and Qatar, close U.S. allies, have been accused of supporting ISIS and other extremist groups.
In fact, in October 2014, just a few weeks after Clinton sent the intelligence notes to Podesta, Vice President Joe Biden harshly criticized Saudi Arabia and Turkey in a talk at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. He noted, “They were so determined to take down” Assad that they “poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad – except that the people who were being supplied were al-Nusra, and al-Qaida, and the extremist elements of jihadis who were coming from other parts of the world.” He added, “We could not convince our colleagues to stop supplying them.”
Biden later apologized to Turkey, but what he said was absolutely true. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a right-wing Islamist, gave many thousands of Salafi (hard-line Sunni Islamist) militants free reign to cross his border. Experts and former ISIS militants say Turkey at least indirectly supported ISIS for years, in order to weaken both Kurdish rebels and the Syrian government.
U.S. officials and many analysts and news reports have long denied that the Saudi and Qatari monarchies have supported ISIS, instead claiming the support was coming from rich donors in those countries. U.S. officials told CBS in September 2014 that wealthy “angel investors” in Qatar and other Gulf states were sending money to ISIS.
The leaked August 2014 email, however, shows that Western intelligence sources knew the regimes themselves were providing support to the Islamic State.
