Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS

by Joby Warrick

“We weren’t convinced that al-Nusra was coming for us next week, but we were worried about all these trained jihadis coming back to Europe and having a passport,” the senior adviser said. “This is when the mood music in the Situation Room started to change.” From the CIA to the Pentagon, the concerns were given voice in official reports. The State Department’s Syria team, which included Ford and other refugees from the now closed U.S. Embassy in Damascus, put together a document for Undersecretary of State William J. Burns that sought to put the latest events and trends in context. The classified report was never made public, but the point, as Ford recalled afterward, was that Syria had drifted into a kind of lawlessness that dangerous groups were beginning to exploit.