Truthdig
A Critique of 'False and Misleading' White House Claims About Syria's Use of
Lethal Gas
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/critique_white_house_fabrications_syrias
_alleged_use_of_lethal_gas_20170414/
Posted on Apr 14, 2017
By Theodore A. Postol
A worker in Khan Shaykhun, Syria, shown in an April 5 video frame next to
the crater where sarin supposedly was released. A White House Intelligence
Report (WHR) asserts that it reviewed commercial video evidence and
concluded that sarin came from the crater. Other video frames at the end of
the article below show unprotected workers in the crater displaying no signs
of sarin poisoning at the same time dead birds are being packaged. (SMART
News Agency / YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qeosawyrgyo) )
Theodore A. Postol is professor emeritus of science, technology and national
security policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a
specialist in weapons issue. At the Congressional Office of Technology
Assessment, he advised on missile basing, and he later was a scientific
consultant to the chief of naval operations at the Pentagon. He is a
recipient of the Leo Szilard Prize from the American Physical Society and
the Hilliard Roderick Prize from the American Association for the
Advancement of Science, and he was awarded the Norbert Wiener Award from
Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility for uncovering numerous and
important false claims about missile defenses.
This is my third report assessing the White House intelligence Report (WHR)
of April 11. My first report
(https://www.scribd.com/document/344995943/Report-by-White-House-Alleging-Pr
oof-of-Syria-as-the-Perpetrator-of-the-Nerve-Agent-Attack-in-Khan-Shaykhun-o
n-April-4-2017#from_embed) was titled "A Quick Turnaround Assessment of the
White House Intelligence Report Issued on April 11, 2017 About the Nerve
Agent Attack in Khan Shaykhun, Syria," and my second report
(http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2017/04/addendum-dr-theodore-postols-assessm
ent-white-house-report-syria-chemical-attack.html) was an addendum to the
first report.
This report provides unambiguous evidence that the White House Intelligence
Report
(https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/04/11/world/middleeast/document-Sy
ria-Chemical-Weapons-Report-White-House.html) contains false and misleading
claims that could not possibly have been accepted in any professional review
by impartial intelligence experts. The WHR was produced by the National
Security Council under the oversight of national security adviser Lt. Gen.
H.R. McMaster.
The evidence presented herein is from two selected videos that are part of a
larger cache of videos that are available on YouTube. These videos were
uploaded to YouTube by the SMART News Agency (https://smartnews-agency.com/)
between April 5 and April 7. Analysis of the videos shows that all the
scenes taken at the site the WHR claims was the location of a sarin release
indicate significant tampering with the site. Since these videos were
available roughly one week before the WHR was issued April 11, this
indicates that the office of the WHR made no attempt to utilize the
professional intelligence community to obtain accurate data in support of
the findings in the report.
The video evidence shows workers at the site roughly 30 hours after the
alleged attack who were wearing clothing with the logo "Idlib Health
Directorate." These individuals were photographed putting dead birds from a
birdcage into plastic bags. The implication of these actions was that the
birds had died after being placed in the alleged sarin crater. However, the
video also shows the same workers inside and around the same crater with no
protection of any kind against sarin poisoning.
These individuals were wearing honeycomb facemasks and medical exam gloves.
They were otherwise dressed in normal streetwear and had no protective
clothing of any kind.
The honeycomb facemasks would provide absolutely no protection against
either sarin vapors or sarin aerosols. The masks are only designed to filter
small particles from the air. If sarin vapor was present, it would be
inhaled without attenuation by these individuals. If sarin was present in an
aerosol form, the aerosol would have condensed into the pores in the masks
and evaporated into a highly lethal gas as the individuals inhaled through
the masks. It is difficult to believe that health workers, if they were
health workers, would be so ignorant of these basic facts.
In addition, other people dressed as health workers were standing around the
crater without any protection at all.
As noted in my earlier reports, the assumption in the WHR that the site of
the alleged sarin release had not been tampered with was totally
unjustified, and no competent intelligence analyst would have agreed that
this assumption was valid. The implication of this observation is clear-the
WHR was not reviewed and released by any competent intelligence experts
unless they were motivated by factors other than concerns about the accuracy
of the report.
The WHR also makes claims about "communications intercepts" that supposedly
provide high confidence that the Syrian government was the source of the
alleged attack. There is no reason to believe that the veracity of this
claim is any different from the now-verified-false claim that there was
unambiguous evidence of a sarin release at the cited crater.
The relevant quotes [emphasis added] from the WHR are collected below for
purposes of reference:
The United States is confident that the Syrian regime conducted a chemical
weapons attack, using the nerve agent sarin, against its own people in the
town of Khan Shaykhun in southern Idlib Province on April 4, 2017.
We have confidence in our assessment because we have signals intelligence
and geospatial intelligence, laboratory analysis of physiological samples
collected from multiple victims, as well as a significant body of credible
open source reporting.
We cannot publicly release all available intelligence on this attack due to
the need to protect sources and methods, but the following includes an
unclassified summary of the U.S. Intelligence Community's analysis of this
attack.
By 12:15 PM [April 4, 2017] local time, broadcasted local videos included
images of dead children of varying ages.
. at 1:10 PM [April 4, 2017] local . follow-on videos showing the bombing of
a nearby hospital. .
Commercial satellite imagery from April 6 showed impact craters around the
hospital that are consistent with open source reports of a conventional
attack on the hospital after the chemical attack.
Moscow has since claimed that the release of chemicals was caused by a
regime airstrike on a terrorist ammunition depot in the eastern suburbs of
Khan Shaykhun.
An open source video also shows where we believe the chemical munition
landed-not on a facility filled with weapons, but in the middle of a street
in the northern section of Khan Shaykhun. Commercial satellite imagery of
that site from April 6, after the allegation, shows a crater in the road
that corresponds to the open source video.
Observed munition remnants at the crater and staining around the impact
point are consistent with a munition that functioned, but structures nearest
to the impact crater did not sustain damage that would be expected from a
conventional high-explosive payload. Instead, the damage is more consistent
with a chemical munition.
Russia's allegations fit with a pattern of deflecting blame from the regime
and attempting to undermine the credibility of its opponents.
Summary and Conclusions
It is now clear from video evidence that the WHR report was fabricated
without input from the professional intelligence community.
The press reported April 4 that a nerve agent attack had occurred in Khan
Shaykhun, Syria, during the early morning hours locally on that day. On
April 7, the United States carried out a cruise missile attack on Syria
ordered by President Trump. It now appears that the president ordered this
cruise missile attack without any valid intelligence to support it.
In order to cover up the lack of intelligence to support the president's
action, the National Security Council produced a fraudulent intelligence
report on April 11, four days later. The individual responsible for this
report was Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, the national security adviser. The
McMaster report is completely undermined by a significant body of video
evidence taken after the alleged sarin attack and before the U.S. cruise
missile attack, which unambiguously shows the claims in the WHR could not
possibly be true. This cannot be explained as a simple error.
The National Security Council Intelligence Report clearly refers to evidence
that it claims was obtained from commercial and open sources shortly after
the alleged nerve agent attack (on April 5 and April 6). If such a
collection of commercial evidence was done, it would have surely uncovered
the videos contained herein.
This unambiguously indicates a dedicated attempt to manufacture a false
claim that intelligence actually supported the president's decision to
attack Syria, and of far more importance, to accuse Russia of being either
complicit or a participant in an alleged atrocity.
The attack on the Syrian government threatened to undermine the relationship
between Russia and the United States. Cooperation between Russia and the
United States is critical to the defeat of Islamic State. In addition, the
false accusation that Russia knowingly engaged in an atrocity raises the
most serious questions about a willful attempt to do damage to relations
with Russia for domestic political purposes.
We repeat here a quote from the WHR:
An open source video also shows where we believe the chemical munition
landed-not on a facility filled with weapons, but in the middle of a street
in the northern section of Khan Shaykhun [emphasis added]. Commercial
satellite imagery of that site from April 6, after the allegation, shows a
crater in the road that corresponds to the open source video.
The data provided in these videos make it clear that the WHR made no
good-faith attempt to collect data that could have supported its "confident
assessment" that the Syrian government executed a sarin attack as indicated
by the location and characteristics of the crater.
This very disturbing event is not a unique situation. President George W.
Bush argued that he was misinformed about unambiguous evidence that Iraq was
hiding a substantial store of weapons of mass destruction. This false
intelligence led to a U.S. attack on Iraq that started a process that
ultimately led to the political disintegration in the Middle East, which
through a series of unpredicted events then led to the rise of the Islamic
State.
On Aug. 30, 2013, the White House produced a similarly false report about
the nerve agent attack on Aug. 21, 2013, in Damascus. This report also
contained numerous intelligence claims that could not be true. An interview
with President Barack Obama published in The Atlantic in April 2016
indicates that Obama was initially told that there was solid intelligence
that the Syrian government was responsible for the nerve agent attack of
Aug. 21, 2013, in Ghouta, Syria. Obama reported that he was later told that
the intelligence was not solid by the then-director of national
intelligence, James Clapper.
Equally serious questions are raised about the abuse of intelligence
findings by the incident in 2013. Questions that have not been answered
about that incident is how the White House produced a false intelligence
report with false claims that could obviously be identified by experts
outside the White House and without access to classified information. There
also needs to be an explanation of why this 2013 false report was not
corrected. Secretary of State John Kerry emphatically testified before the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee repeating information in this so-called
unequivocating report.
On Aug. 30, 2013, Kerry made the following statement from the Treaty Room in
the State Department:
Our intelligence community has carefully reviewed and re-reviewed
information regarding this attack [emphasis added], and I will tell you it
has done so more than mindful of the Iraq experience. We will not repeat
that moment. Accordingly, we have taken unprecedented steps to declassify
and make facts available to people who can judge for themselves.
It is now obvious that this incident produced by the WHR, while just as
serious in terms of the dangers it created for U.S. security, was a clumsy
and outright fabrication of a report that was certainly not supported by the
intelligence community.
In this case, the president, supported by his staff, made a decision to
launch 59 cruise missiles at a Syrian airbase. This action was accompanied
by serious risks of creating a confrontation with Russia, and also
undermining cooperative efforts to win the war against the Islamic State.
I therefore conclude that there needs to be a comprehensive investigation of
these events that have either misled people in the White House, or worse
yet, been perpetrated by people to protect themselves from domestic
political criticisms for uninformed and ill-considered actions.
Here is the video evidence that reveals the White House Intelligence Report
issued on April 11 contains demonstrably false claims about a sarin
dispersal crater allegedly created in the April 4 attack in Khan Shaykhun,
Syria.
Video 1: Dead Birds
</p><p>
Video 2: Idlib Health Directorate Tampering with Alleged Sarin Dispersal
Site
Theodore A. Postol can be reached at postol@xxxxxxx.
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