During a 2015 trip to Russia, Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, said he didn't know whether the 2013 sarin gas attack in Syria was conducted by the Syrian Army or by other forces in an attempt to draw the United States into the conflict.

Flynn not ruling out the possibility of a "false flag" attack raises questions about how the Trump administration will approach the Syrian conflict. The Obama administration have pointed to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime as being responsible for the attack.

As chief of the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2012, Flynn had warned that American support for Sunni jihadists in Syria had the unintended effect of supporting the new caliphate movement, that is, ISIS. Among all the heads and former heads of the 17 agencies that make up the US intelligence community, Flynn was the only one who had objected to the disastrous covert intervention in Syria and foreseen its baleful consequences. Obama fired him