The Buzz  Failing Upward: Elizabeth O'Bagy's New Gig with McCain
Printer-friendly version  After scandals, disgraces, and public
embarrassments, Washington is generous with second chances, but
usually only after a decent interval.  Not so with Elizabeth
O’Bagy, the disgraced analyst who was fired by the
neoconservative Institute for the Study of War (ISW) for
masquerading as a Georgetown PhD student, who has reportedly
been hired by Senator John McCain as a legislative assistant.
O’Bagy claimed to have defended her dissertation to friends and
colleagues, but there was one problem: no one at Georgetown had
heard of a doctoral student by that name. She was never in the
program.  O’Bagy rose to prominence as an employee of ISW where
she conducted research on the Syrian civil war. Due to her
contacts with Syrian rebel organizations (she also worked for a
rebel advocacy organization in Washington) and purported field
research on the ground, her work became widely cited by high-
profile figures, including Senator J