Americas...:WSJ: Pentagon Official Sought to Arm Syria Milit...

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WSJ: Pentagon Official Sought to Arm Syria Militants, Finance From KSA

Local Editor

US National security reporter Dion Nissenbaum said a group led by a former Pentagon official devised a plan to supply Syrian militants, arranging a weapons shipment from Eastern Europe and financed by a member of the Saudi royal family.

During an interview with Wall Street Journal on Monday, Nissenbaum, a national security reporter based in Washington for The Wall Street Journal and who covers the war industry and the Pentagon, revealed that an effort by private US citizens, including some with ties to private security contractors, planned to arm Syria terrorists.
"The Obama administration approved this plan last summer to provide a small amount of weapons to the ‘moderate' Syrian ‘rebels', as they're called. But the program was slow to get off the ground. It was run by the CIA and only a trickle of weapons was really going in."

He added that there was a group of private Americans who thought they needed to help the Syrian militants since they had a large cache of weapons. They went directly to them and offered to help with some "70,000 AL-47's, 20 million rounds of ammunition," and the militants then accepted, as Nissenbaum said.

He also spoke about the involvement of the CIA and the Saudi royal family with the Syrian militants, saying that, "They were working things with some middle eastern nations. Apparently, this was financed by a member of the Saudi royal family and then, as they were sort of trying to put the pieces in place, they had the okay from the Syrian ‘rebels' there. There was kind of this surprise meeting, as they described in Jordan, where they said the group said that a representative of the CIA came in and said...this is our business; Essentially, get out of it."

Furthermore, Nissenbaum said, "The Syrian rebels were just in Washington last week making another deal for these shoulder launched missiles. They're called MANPADs...they're trying to change the balance," referring to the meeting between the leader of the so-called "National Syrian Coalition" [NSC] Ahmad al-Jarba and US President Barack Obama in Washington as part of a renewed appeal for weapons.

Recently, Nissenbaum wrote an article on The Wall Street Journal website entitled, "Private Group Sought to Arm Syrian Rebels," wherein he said the US was involved in a limited arms initiative, with Joseph E. Schmitz serving as a former Pentagon inspector general and wanted to help the Syrian militants.
Schmitz said in an interview earlier in the spring that, ‘These guys are going to get killed. They can't even defend themselves," adding that, "I'm just trying to be helpful to some people that our government supports."

Nissenbaum said that as Schmitz's team continued laying the groundwork to arm Syrian militants last summer [2013], a Saudi member of the team was approached by a CIA representative in Jordan, who told him to put the brakes on the plan, according to two people involved in the effort. The CIA declined to comment.

Source: WSJ, Edited by website team