While the CIA continues to arm and train “moderate” Syrian rebels, a new, still-classified internal study obtained by the New York Times finds that the agency’s gun-running tactics in conflict areas have almost never succeeded, the Times reported on Wednesday.
Many of the agency’s past attempts to arm insurgents in foreign countries—like Angola, Nicaragua, and Cuba—had a “minimal impact” on the outcomes of conflicts, the Times writes. The study was commissioned by President Barack Obama between 2012 and 2013 while the government debated over inserting itself into the Syrian civil war.
In late 2012, Obama signed a much-redrawn plan by then-CIA director David Petraeus to arm and train rebels in that country after intelligence agencies found that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had used chemical weapons against opposition forces and civilians.
Later, despite the agency’s findings on the low success rate of arming foreign insurgents, Obama authorized the CIA to launch a rebel-arming operation at a base in Jordan and expand its mission in Saudi Arabia to train “vetted” rebels in the fight against the Islamic State (ISIS). ISIS are also an enemy of Assad. That program has the goal of training around 5,000 rebel troops per year, the Times writes.
According to unnamed officials, the study’s unfavorable conclusions did not dissuade, but in fact prompted Obama to move forward with the operation.
“One of the things that Obama wanted to know was: Did this ever work?” one of the officials told the Times.
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