By Kevork Almassian - December 6, 2025

When Judge Andrew Napolitano asked me on his show how Syria ended up with Abu Mohammed al-Jolani as its “president,” I could almost hear the cognitive dissonance on the other side of the screen. How does a man who was once the emir of al-Qaeda in Syria, a co-founder of ISIS by any reasonable historical reading of his trajectory, become Washington’s chosen man in Damascus?

For me, the answer is not a mystery. It is the logical end of a dirty war that began not with Syrian protesters in 2011, but in an American-run prison camp in Iraq years earlier.

And if anyone still suspected this was “just a conspiracy theory,” a former CIA officer – John Kiriakou, who went to prison for exposing CIA torture – has now said publicly what many of us have long argued: Jolani is, in all likelihood, a CIA asset.

Let’s start with the timeline, because the timeline alone already screams “intelligence operation.”

Abu Mohammed al-Jolani was in a CIA-run prison in Iraq – Camp Bucca – alongside another familiar name: Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Both men were released in early 2011. “Coincidentally,” that is exactly when the regime-change war in Syria begins. Within weeks, Baghdadi goes on to lead what becomes ISIS, and Jolani crosses into Syria to found Jabhat al-Nusra – officially al-Qaeda’s franchise in my country.

Washington designates Nusra a terrorist organization. The UN follows suit. On paper, Jolani is the enemy. The State Department even slaps a $10 million bounty on his head.

But bounties are cheap. Cruise missiles are expensive. And for over a decade, while the US flattened cities in Iraq and Syria allegedly to fight “terrorism,” it somehow never found the time, or the coordinates, to seriously target Jolani or his core command structure, even though he controlled large swaths of Syrian territory from Aleppo countryside all the way to Idlib.

Why? Because Jolani and his men were fighting the one government Washington had already decided must go: the Syrian state under Bashar al-Assad.

This is where Operation Timber Sycamore comes in: a multi-billion-dollar CIA covert program that funneled weapons, money, and training to so-called “rebels” in Syria. They were sold to Western audiences as “moderate opposition.” On the ground, those moderates were a disappearing species. What existed in reality were hardline Salafi-jihadist factions, with Nusra at the top of the food chain.

The Free Syrian Army (FSA) was the mask, the logo on the paperwork, the brand name you could sell to Congress and CNN. The real muscle on the ground was Jolani’s men and other takfiri groups, who did the actual fighting, took the actual territory, and imposed their version of rule.

Weapons went “to the moderates.” The moderates magically handed them to al-Qaeda. Everyone in Washington pretended to be surprised. No one stopped the pipeline.

Over the years, the mask slipped. US officials themselves began to speak of Jolani as something more than just a former enemy.

James Jeffrey, Washington’s former envoy to Syria, openly called Jolani “an asset” for US strategy – not my word, his. Robert Ford, the former US ambassador to Syria, has publicly admitted that he personally worked with Jolani to “take him out of the world of terrorism” and polish him into a politician.

Think about what that means: the same US that claims to be fighting an endless war against al-Qaeda quietly devotes diplomatic energy to rehabilitating the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda into a partner, a useful strongman, a future head of state.

I said on the show, and I repeat it here: I believe Jolani was recruited in Camp Bucca. The timeline makes no sense otherwise. You don’t walk out of an American-run prison and, weeks later, magically have the networks, the money, the arms, and the logistical capacity to found al-Qaeda in Syria, right at the moment when Washington and its allies need a battering ram against Damascus.

Recently, former CIA director David Petraeus even sat with Jolani and told him, “Your success is our success.” What more do people need? A signed employment contract? But let’s assume, for a moment, that you still think this is a stretch.

Enter John Kiriakou.

Kiriakou is not a YouTuber chasing clicks. He is a former CIA officer who went to prison because he exposed the torture program and named the torturers. His loyalty is clearly not to the Agency’s PR department.

Recently, on Unfettered Speech, he described the Jolani situation bluntly. Here is the essence of what he said, which Judge Napolitano played on air:

- The “new president” of Syria is a former al-Qaeda member and a co-founder of ISIS.

- This same man is welcomed at the White House.

- Senior US officials, including the Assistant Secretary of State for the Near East, travel to meet him.

- President Trump suddenly lifts sanctions on Syria as Jolani consolidates power, prompting Syrians – desperate and exhausted – to dance in the streets.

The only thing that makes sense is that Jolani is a CIA asset, per Kiriakou.

When a former CIA officer who has already sacrificed his career and freedom to tell the truth looks at the pattern and says, “This is our guy,” it is not a conspiracy theory anymore.

Now, you may ask, why would the United States . . .

[SNIP]