Syria: Leaked Chemical Weapons Watchdog Report Suggests Assad Not Responsible for 2018 Gas Attack
The Organization
for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has begun responding to
queries by the press about a leaked document that contradicts official
OPCW findings on an alleged chemical weapons attack last year in Douma,
Syria. The prepared statement they’ve been using in response to these
queries confirms the authenticity of the document.
To recap, a few days ago the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media (WGSPM) published a document signed by a man named Ian Henderson, whose name is seen listed in expert leadership positions on OPCW documents from as far back as 1998 and as recently as 2018. It’s unknown who leaked the document and what other media organizations may have received it.
The report picks apart the extremely shaky physics and narratives of the official OPCW analysis on
the gas cylinders allegedly dropped from Syrian government aircraft in
the Douma attack, and concludes that “The dimensions, characteristics
and appearance of the cylinders, and the surrounding scene of the
incidents, were inconsistent with what would have been expected in the
case of either cylinder being delivered from an aircraft,” saying
instead that manual placement of the cylinders in the locations
investigators found them in is “the only plausible explanation for
observations at the scene.”
Cylinders Did Not Arrive by Air
To
be clear, this means that according to the assessment signed by an
OPCW-trained expert, the cylinders alleged to have dispensed poison gas
which killed dozens of people in Douma did not arrive in the locations
that they were alleged to have arrived at via aircraft dropped by the
Syrian government, but via manual placement by people on the ground,
where photographs were then taken and circulated around the world as
evidence against the Syrian government which was used to justify air strikes by the U.S., U.K. and France.
There were swift military consequences meted out on what appears now to
be a lie. At the time, the people on the ground were the Al Qaeda-linked Jaysh
Al-Islam, who had at that point nothing to lose and everything to gain
by staging a false flag attack in a last-ditch attempt to get NATO
powers to function as their air force, since they’d already effectively
lost the battle against the Syrian government.
We now have confirmation that, for whatever the reason may be, this assessment was hidden from the public by the OPCW.
British journalists Peter Hitchens and Brian Whitaker have
both published matching statements from the OPCW on this report.
Hitchens has been an outspoken critic of the establishment Syria
narrative; Whittaker has been a virulent promulgator of it. The
statement begins as a very mundane and obvious assertion that it takes
information from numerous sources and then publishes its conclusions,
but concludes with an admission that it is “conducting an internal
investigation about the unauthorised release of the document in
question.” This constitutes an admission that the document is authentic.
Text of Statement
Here is the text of the statement in full; the portion I’m drawing attention to is in the second-to-last paragraph:
The
OPCW establishes facts surrounding allegations of the use of toxic
chemicals for hostile purposes in the Syrian Arab Republic through the
Fact-Finding Mission (FFM), which was set up in 2014.The
OPCW Technical Secretariat reaffirms that the FFM complies with
established methodologies and practices to ensure the integrity of its
findings. The FFM takes into account all available, relevant, and
reliable information and analysis within the scope of its mandate to
determine its findings.Per
standard practice, the FFM draws expertise from different divisions
across the Technical Secretariat as needed. All information was taken
into account, deliberated, and weighed when formulating the final report
regarding the incident in Douma, Syrian Arab Republic, on 7 April 2018.
On 1 March 2019, the OPCW issued its final report on this incident,
signed by the Director-General.Per
OPCW rules and regulations, and in order to ensure the privacy, safety,
and security of personnel, the OPCW does not provide information about
individual staff members of the Technical SecretariatPursuant
to its established policies and practices, the OPCW Technical
Secretariat is conducting an internal investigation about the
unauthorised release of the document in question.At
this time, there is no further public information on this matter and
the OPCW is unable to accommodate requests for interviews.
Should Be Major Global News
This
should be a major news headline all around the world, but of course it
is not. As of this writing the mass media have remained deadly silent
about the document despite its enormous relevance to an international
headline story last year which occupied many days of air time. It not
only debunks a major news story that had military consequences, it casts
doubt on a most esteemed international independent investigative body
and undermines the fundamental assumptions behind many years of Western
reporting in the area. People get lazy about letting the media tell them
what’s important and they assume if it’s not in the news, it’s not a
big deal. This is a big deal, this is a major story and it is going
unreported, which makes the media’s silence a part of the story as well.
Also conspicuously absent from discussion has been the war propaganda firm Bellingcat,
which is usually the first to put the most establishment-friendly spin
possible on any development in this area. If Eliot Higgins can’t even
work out how to polish this turd, you know it’s a steamer.