Barak Barfi, spokesman for the family of murdered American journalist Steven Sotloff.
A spokesman for the family of Steven Sotloff says that the murdered journalist was sold to the ISIS terrorist group by Syria’s “so-called moderate rebels,” according to his sources “on the ground.”
Barak Barfi, a foreign policy research fellow at the New American Foundation and spokesman for the Sotloff family, said in an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper that American journalist
“We believe that these so-called moderate rebels that people want our administration to support, one of them sold him probably for something between $25,000 and $50,000 to ISIS and that was the reason he was captured,” Barfi said
“They’ve said that the families have been consistently and regularly informed. That is not true,” he claimed. “I speak now only from the Sotloff family. I can’t speak for the other families. They said that these hostages were moved frequently. We know that for most of the beginning of part of this year they were stationary. We know that the intelligence community and the White House are enmeshed in a larger game of bureaucratic infighting and Jim [Foley] and Steve are pawns in that game and that’s not fair.”
PPD recently reported on the tension between the Obama administration and the intelligence community, who claims they gave the president all of the intel he needed. The community is growing tired of being thrown under the bus everytime a foreign policy failure becomes public.
“The relationship between the administration and the Sotloff family was very strained,” Barfi explained. “We do not believe that they gave us the cooperation that they need. Once Steve appeared in that video, the Sotloff family made one simple request of the administration and they were rebuffed on that.”
“I can’t say that because I have to think of protecting the other hostages inside,” Barfi said when asked to explain the request.
Barfi said the Obama administration treated Sotloff’s family in a manner unbecoming of U.S. leadership, and said they could have done far more than they ultimately did.
“When your view into the largest and most powerful government in the world is two FBI agents, that’s simply not enough,” he said. “The administration could have done more, they could have helped us, they could have seen them through. These are people of modest means. They’re not cosmopolitan, they don’t have college educations, they don’t understand the larger ramifications in foreign policy. And we just do not believe that they were afforded the opportunities and the respect that they should have by this administration.”
But perhaps the most interesting moment in the interview came when Barfi threatened to spill damaging information about the Obama administration, leading many to speculate just how long the president waited before mounting a failed, day-late and a dollar-short rescue mission.
Barfi said the administration would find themselves answering difficult questions if they didn’t stop leaking details of Sotloff’s captivity to the press.
“If there continues to be leaks, the Sotloff family will have to speak out to set the record straight,” he said.
http://youtu.be/vXFQsif2AaA
