But it was not just the middle-aged American politicians who readily set aside caution and believed wholeheartedly in the attractive 26-year old woman. She also took the American media for a ride that lasted for months. Ms. O’Bagy became the go-to person for the media on the Syrian conflict. Fox News, MSNBC, CNN and others routinely interviewed her. The supposedly credible Washington Postpublished an op-ed from her in which she argued that Syrian rebels were not hardline al Qaeda militants. The op-ed caused her downfall. Secretary Kerry and Senator McCain both quoted her op-ed to other legislators during Senate hearings that brought attention to her fake credentials rather than her good looks.
The rise and fall of Elizabeth O’Bagy is more about the sustained failure of the American establishment to learn from its past mistakes of waging wars under false pretences than about a young woman embellishing her resume to earn a spot inside the Washington Beltway. It was not very long ago that the US attacked Iraq based on false testimony from Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, an Iraqi defector. Despite warnings from the German and British intelligence, the US built the case to attack Iraq on false accounts of non-existing Iraqi biological weapons. The US is doing it once again with Syria. Only this time around, the lies couldn’t last long because, as the Urdu proverb goes, lies don’t have feet.
Elizabeth O’Bagy grew up in Salt Lake City in Utah. She studied Arabic at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, and later lived in Cairo for two years. She returned to Georgetown for a Masters in Arab Studies and graduated in May 2013 (she is posing with other graduates in in the following photograph). At that point she decided to exaggerate her Masters and started identifying herself as Dr. O’Bagy.
Just like Monica Lewinsky, who was an intern in the Clinton White House, Ms. O’Bagy also launched her Beltway career as an intern with a neo-con think-tank, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), which supports the US military intervention in Syria. Ms. O’Bagy quickly moved up from intern to an analyst. Again, just like Ms. Lewinsky, Ms. O’Bagy fell from favour and grace when she let her ambitions get the best of her.
The Washington Post op-ed proved to be too much for those who had, in the past, ignored her fake punditry on TV screens. They advised the Post of Ms. O’Bagy not disclosing her association with a pro-rebel group, the Syrian Emergency Task Force (SETF), whose Executive Director, Mouaz Moustafa, is one shady character. Ms. O’Bagy until this week served as the political director of SETF. While SETF did not pay her salary, it compensated her for contractual work.
In her Washington Post op-ed Ms. O’Bagy wrote: “Moderate opposition groups make up the majority of actual fighting forces, and they have recently been empowered by the influx of arms and money from Saudi Arabia and other allied countries, such as Jordan and France.” Several other agencies, including the European Parliament, have also asserted that Saudis are arming the Syrian rebels. However, one has to be a naïve of the highest order to assume for a second that the Saudis will support moderate groups. The past 35 years of Saudi investments in conflicts in the Middle East and South Asia explicitly demonstrate that Saudi government and charities exclusively fund hardline militants who continue to wage wars long after the American interests have migrated to other geographies.
And who is Mouaz Moustafa, you may ask. Mr. Moustafa is in fact a Palestinian refugee who reportedly migrated to the US at 12. Before he launched SETF, Mr. Moustafa was the Executive Director of the Libyan Council of North America that called for a regime change in Libya. The 28-year old Damascus born was instrumental in chauffeuring Senator McCain in Syria. He and the 26-year old Ms. O’Bagy readily provided their shoulders to the US military enterprise to launch the US attack on Syria.
Earlier this month, Ms. O’Bagy’s formal employer, ISW, fired her but not for her dubious work on Syria, but for exaggerating her academic credentials. Kim Kagan, who heads the pro-war Institute, stands by Ms. O’Bagy’s research. “Her work is solid,” Ms Kagan told the media. Contrary to the stated policy of ISW about conflict of interest, Ms. O’Bagy wrote for ISW while she also received a retainer from SETF. Some solid work indeed.
Ms. O’Bagy has learnt the hard way that some things are harder to fake than others. A Ph.D. is one of them. However, what is more unsettling is that the American establishment has no qualms relying on false or uncorroborated testimony and opinions of those who either have a vested interest in waging wars or those who simply lie through their teeth.