Barbara Leaf
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Barbara Leaf is an American diplomat serving as assistant secretary of state for the Near East, and a person John Kiriakou identifies as "an old friend of mine."

She appears in his account of Syria as the instrument of an unusually fast reversal. On his telling, al-Julani's first act after taking power was to invite Leaf and the assistant secretary of state for hostage affairs to Syria, "and this is like days after he took power", with recognition following in exchange for the lifting of the ten-million-dollar American bounty on him.

Describing the same trip later, Kiriakou put it more drily: Leaf "jets off to Damascus with the special envoy for hostage negotiations to make peace and bring gifts", after which the new Syrian president was invited to the White House "to be fêted by all the Washington swells."

See also

- Al-Julani
- U.S. foreign policy process
- Bashar al-Assad
