"WASHINGTON - The Central Intelligence Agency has run guns to insurgencies across the world during its 67-year history - from Angola to Nicaragua to Cuba. The continuing C.I.A. effort to train Syrian rebels is just the latest example of an American president becoming enticed by the prospect of using the spy agency to covertly arm and train rebel groups.

An internal C.I.A. study has found that it rarely works.

The still-classified review, one of several C.I.A. studies commissioned in 2012 and 2013 in the midst of the Obama administration's protracted debate about whether to wade into the Syrian civil war, concluded that many past attempts by the agency to arm foreign forces covertly had a minimal impact on the long-term outcome of a conflict. They were even less effective, the report found, when the militias fought without any direct American support on the ground.

A rebel leader, Sheikh Tawfiq Shahabuddin, right, on Monday in Reyhanli, Turkey. "The international position has to be to fight all kinds of terrorism," he said.U.S. Goal Is to Make Syrian Rebels ViableSEPT. 18, 2014
Free Syrian Army fighters inside a house in Aleppo last week. The United States has been helping Arab governments and Turkey send arms to the rebels.Arms Airlift to Syrian Rebels Expands, With C.I.A. AidMARCH 24, 2013
C.I.A. Said to Aid in Steering Arms to Syrian RebelsJUNE 21, 2012
The findings of the study, described in recent weeks by current and former American government officials, were presented in the White House Situation Room and led to deep skepticism among some senior Obama administration officials about the wisdom of arming and training members of a fractured Syrian opposition."

...

"One of the things that Obama wanted to know was: Did this ever work?" said one former senior administration official who participated in the debate and spoke anonymously because he was discussing a classified report. The C.I.A. report, he said, "was pretty dour in its conclusions."

...

"You need some really good, loyal people on the ground ready to fight."

NYT




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"The truth is incontrovertible.
malice may attack it,
ignorance may deride it,
but in the end,
there it is." -Sir Winston Churchill