Later that summer, while I was still running the CIA, the US government began reconsidering support for Syrian rebels who were fighting Assad - an action I recommended to the president. The truth was that ever since Russia and Iran intervened in the conflict to save Assad, the rebels Washington was backing had steadily lost their effectiveness as a fighting force. These programs, with enormous price tags, had become black holes of taxpayer dollars.

And American weapons were ending up in the hands of al-Qaeda and other jihadist groups. Of course, like any group of liberals, the previous administration had pushed multiple programs along for years without seeing any meaningful results. I ended it. We had to accept that these efforts didn't work.