Rick Sterling is a former aerospace engineer who currently works as an investigative journalist

traveling around the world and reporting from on the ground in Syria, Russia, and elsewhere.

He is featured frequently on consortium news, RT, and other outlets.

Thanks for joining us, Mr. Sterling.

Very nice to be here.

Now Trump has ended the secret CIA program for funding moderate rebels.

Although we know there are no moderate rebels, so they were essentially funding al-Qaeda

and Daesh.

Some are celebrating this decision.

Others are not so convinced.

They say this could be a head fake.

What can you tell us about this purported end to the program?

Well, it's positive news in one sense, but we'll need to see if it's followed through with and actually implemented and enforced.

For many years now, there's been a lot of deception in the U.S. involvement in the Syria

conflict. The CIA was involved right from the get-go in 2011 with shipping armaments stolen from

the Libyan arsenal after the fall of Qaddafi to supply quote unquote moderate rebels,

basically extremists of one sort or another, in Syria. And it was only in 2013 that they

did a public acknowledgement and it was public news that they were doing that.

But, of course, it had been going on for a couple of years.

So we'll have to wait and see whether this is actually enforced or not.

And do you see it plausible?

Some analysts stipulate that the rebel funding has ceased only for certain groups.

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