Several media, especially in the United States and France have strongly disputed Thierry Meyssan’s article on the relationship between John McCain and the Islamic State ("Daesh") [1]. They all claimed to have identified, and in some cases to know well, the person appearing in the photograph of the Senator’s meeting with the Free Syrian Army leadership in May 2013, so as to be in a position to refute that it is Caliph Ibrahim.

We will not discuss the articles published by our colleagues which are not verifiable. We will simply point out that each of them has identified the person in the company of John McCain differently, but with equal assurance.

In any case, this controversy is now obsolete, since its only point was to establish whether or not John McCain had met with the leaders of groups classified as "terrorist" by the United Nations as well as his own country, including Daesh leaders. It just so happens that he has already provided the answered himself.

To begin with, we reproduce a Fox News interview of John McCain, conducted by Greta Van Susteren, in which he states:

«Hillary Clinton has described already the meeting in the White House over 2 years ago, everyone in the National Security Team recommended arming ISIS, and the President, by himself turned it down, just like by himself, he decided not to strike Syria after he said that they’d crossed the red line.”

There follows an excerpt from an interview that John McCain gave on the Sean Hannity’s Show, also on Fox News, September 16, 2014, to slam President Obama’s plan against the Islamic State. The content closes the debate since the Senator himself admits to know the leaders of the Islamic State.

At the beginning of the interview, he criticized an article about the precariousness of a cease-fire between "moderate" and "extremist" groups. Then he claims to be familiar with the situation on the ground and, referring to his experience in Vietnam, he defends the idea of relying on all the "rebels" to overthrow the Syrian Arab Republic. To do this, he reveals having met the leaders of Daesh (unlike Rand Paul), and to be in permanent contact with them.

Both interviews were recorded after the attack on Iraq by the Islamic State, the ethnic cleansing and the massacres that accompanied it, but before the beheading of US citizens.

[1John McCain, Conductor of the "Arab Spring" and the Caliph ”, by Thierry Meyssan, Voltaire Network, 18 August 2014.