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In fact, Crane was a veteran military-intelligence operative who previously held various positions inside the Pentagon, including at the Defense Intelligence Agency. Months before the Caesar file surfaced, he appeared on Capitol Hill to advocate for prosecuting Syrian government officials.
Crane stated in a 2014 interview that when his team began its investigation into the file, "We brought in what we named 'Caesar,' the individual who brought out these photographs, along with handler - his case officer - interviewing them separately."
His case officer? Crane's casual use of a term almost uniquely associated with CIA activity offered a strong suggestion that the Agency had played a role in grooming the mystery man known as "Caesar."
The UK-based academic Tim Hayward outlined the US government's role in supporting Crane's various Syria regime change projects.
Crane "also leads the Syrian Accountability Project (SAP), which he founded some time prior to Caesar's defection," Hayward wrote. "SAP is said to be student-run and its clients include the Syrian National Council and US State Department. It also 'works very closely with' the Syria Justice and Accountability Centre, which in turn is a conduit of US funding to CIJA."
Crane authored the initial Qatar-sponsored report on Caesar's trove, yet was merely described as "a war crimes prosecutor" in a Vanity Fair puff piece about the file.
"Caesar" goes to Capitol HillOn April 13, 2014, an anonymous man completely cloaked in a blue Patagonia hooded jacket from Hudson Trail Outfitters, purporting to be "Caesar" and claiming to bear photographic evidence of "genocide," appeared before the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Audio and video recording of the testimony was strictly forbidden, supposedly to protect Caesar's safety.
Caesar's handlers spun an elaborate tale to neoconservative Daily Beast writer Tim Mak about the "counter-surveillance techniques" they employed to protect their star witnesses identity in the days and hours before the hearing.
Somehow, no one covering the appearance of "Caesar" stopped to consider that the Syrian military might have already known the identity of one of the most high-profile defectors to emerge from its ranks. Were they protecting him from the Syrian Mukhabarat (which has no presence in the United States) or from public scrutiny?
As the anti-war activist and writer Rick Sterling pointed out, "how many military photographers took photos at Tishreen and Military 601 Hospitals during those years and then disappeared? According to the [Qatari] Carter Ruck report, Caesar's family left Syria around the same time. Considering this, why is 'Caesar' keeping his identity secret from the Western audience? Why does 'Caesar' refuse to meet even with highly sympathetic journalists or researchers?"
When "Caesar" appeared before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on August 4, 2014, he was seated beside the man who had brought him to Washington. The handler was Mouaz Moustafa, a Syrian-American regime-change lobbyist who served as the director of the State Department-funded Syria Emergency Task Force.
A key figure pushing for more arms to extremist militias inside Syria, Moustafa fervently opposed the State Department's listing of Jabhat al-Nusra, the Syrian Al Qaeda affiliate, as a terrorist group. "It was a mistake," he said to Foreign Policy of Nusra's blacklisting.
A year prior, Moustafa escorted Arizona Sen. John McCain on a trip inside Syria to meet with members of the CIA-backed Free Syrian Army including kidnappers of Shia pilgrims during a failed stunt to stimulate US military intervention.
Testifying alongside Caesar was David Crane, the author of the Qatar-sponsored Caesar report, who accused the Syrian government of "crimes the likes of which we have not seen since Auschwitz."
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