Alternet
Published on Alternet (https://www.alternet.org)
Home > Exposing a Shoddy Sarin Attack Narrative and Responding to
NATO-Backed Critics
Exposing a Shoddy Sarin Attack Narrative and Responding to NATO-Backed
Critics
By Gareth Porter [1] / AlterNet [2]
October 3, 2017, 7:51 AM GMT
Eliot Higgins is a "non-resident senior fellow" with the Atlantic Council
whose functions appear to include seeking to discredit any reporting or
analysis and documentation that conflicts with the DC-based think tank's
interventionist agenda. Higgins' agenda dovetails closely with his
employer's funders [3] in NATO as well as Atlantic Council backers like
Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey -- the states that have also bankrolled
Syrian Salafi insurgents.
Higgins flew into an online rage as soon as I published my article at
AlterNet [4] on the allegations of a sarin attack in Khan Sheikhoun.
Although the article shows that a conventional airstrike in Khan Sheikhoun
did cause large numbers of dead and injured, I also exposed evidence of a
deception mounted by al Qaeda's local Syrian affiliate to convince the world
that the regime had carried out a sarin attack from the air in Khan
Sheikhoun. These revelations were anathema to Higgins, who supports the
official U.S.-NATO version of events against any critical examination, and
to an almost religious degree.
Higgins launched [5] an all-out attack on the article consisting of dozens
of tweets, none of which has actually challenged the evidence presented in
the article. In his initial volley, he sought to portray my use of the term
"building" for a two-story structure connected to the others but clearly
distinct from them as a serious prevarication.
On the other hand, Higgins betrayed no pang of conscience over defending a
position that is clearly at odds with the facts. When I asked Higgins in a
tweet how he explained the complete absence of the pieces of a weapon that
should have been found near the crater, he responded [6] as though he had no
need for any explanation: "I prefer not to speculate."
The brunt of Higgins's attack was aimed at my detailed case that the
Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) based its
overall conclusion of a government sarin attack on test results of
biomedical and environmental samples that either could have been manipulated
-- or that OPCW simply failed to consider an alternative explanation that
was consistent with the actual results.
Higgins did not contest any of the points that I documented, including the
fact that two scientists with ties to OPCW acknowledged in e-mails that the
OPCW test for IMPA -- the main break-down product of sarin in the body --
could produce a false positive. All that al Qaeda's local operatives would
need to do fool the OPCW test would be to administer the subject giving a
biomedical sample a dose of IMPA, a harmless compound sold by major chemical
companies.
At the same time, Higgins claimed to be scandalized that I would dare to
assert that al Qaeda's Syrian franchise authorities could have planted sarin
in the environmental samples and fooled the OPCW's test for IMPA in
biomedical samples.
Higgins demanded to know from whom al Qaeda obtained the sarin. He did not
make the same demand in regard to the IMPA, the availability of which can be
easily documented.
The real issue is not whether we know from whom, where and when Nusra Front
officials obtained sarin, but whether the OPCW test results represent
incontrovertible evidence, as Higgins insists. OPCW itself has in the past
taken the formal position that they do not and cannot rely on samples that
could have been tampered with. As I documented in my report, the OPCW itself
adopted a rule in 2013 that neither biomedical or environmental samples
could be used as evidence for any conclusion about the use of chemical
weapons unless the organization had a complete, reliable chain of custody
for the samples -- meaning that that the OPCW staff would have to be
directly involved in the collection of the samples.
But in the case of Khan Sheikhoun, the OPCW collected no environmental or
biomedical samples in Khan Sheikhoun, because it never set foot in the city.
Instead it accepted environmental samples collected by the White Helmets [7]
-- a civilian and de facto media arm of the Al Qaeda-tied rulers of Idlib
[8] -- along with biomedical samples collected by the Idlib Health
Directorate and a private pro-rebel Syrian-American organization that
operates field hospitals in Idlib. The OPCW then reported on the positive
results for sarin as evidence in support of its conclusion that a sarin
attack had caused the deaths and injuries. In doing so, the OPCW massively
and shamefully violated its most fundamental protocols, and nullified the
validity of its conclusion.
Higgins's Twitter rant asserted also that the sarin in question could
definitely be linked to the Syrian government. In two paired tweets [9], he
wrote, "The Sarin was found with hexamine and other byproducts... This
matches with other samples which would link it to the Syrian government's
Sarin."
But his argument is false and misleading. It is, in fact, based on a French
"National Evaluation" [10] published on April 27 that was clearly aimed at
making a political splash at the expense of the truth. The French government
determined that the sarin in the environmental samples it obtained from Khan
Sheikhoun had the same elements as those that it obtained from the site of
an apparent chemical attack in Saraqeb in northern Idlib province in April
2013. According to that same French document, the French government had
concluded from the sarin found in an unexploded grenade that the Syrian
government had manufactured sarin by a process that utilized hexamine. On
the basis of that conclusion, the French government insisted that the Syrian
government must have carried out sarin attacks in both Saraqeb and Khan
Sheikhoun.
In fact, however, the evidence of a government sarin attack in Saraqeb was
highly questionable. Videos and photographs taken at the site of the attack
in Saraqeb showed a tiny white polymer canister with a fly-off handle and
four holes distributed evenly around its surface, each of which had marks
around them. A chemical weapons specialists who examined the photos and
videos noted [11] that it did not appear to have delivered sarin, which
would not have left such marks around the holes. Higgins should remember
that testimony, because it was Higgins who interviewed the specialists [11]
for his "Brown Moses" blog.
A little more than three weeks before the attack, photographer Jeff
Ruigendijk had photographed [12] an al-Nusra Front cadre with that same
white canister hanging from his jacket. After the attack, Die Welt
correspondent Alfred Hackensberger interviewed [13] Nusra Front fighters in
the Aleppo area who showed him similar canisters in their equipment and
described them as smoke grenades that had been captured from government
depots.
Those canisters were the only ones filmed or photographed in the immediate
aftermath of both the alleged sarin attacks in Saraqeb and Sheikh Maqsoud.
Only four years later did the French government publicize details of the
unexploded grenade said to have been found in Sarqeb that contained sarin
announced its analysis of its constituent elements. Yet even through the
governments of France and United Kingdom brought the incident to the
attention of the U.N. mission, the mission's report notes it was "not able
to collect any primary information on munitions" -- meaning that it was not
given access to the grenade holding sarin.
And the grenade is not shown in the photographs and videos of the spot where
the French paper said it was found. These facts suggest that the grenade was
introduced by local officials in Idlib only later. Contrary to Higgins and
the French government, therefore, it does not constitute proof that a
sarin-filled bomb was dropped on Saraqeb by Syrian government. The sarin in
the environmental samples from Khan Sheikhoun may indeed be from the same
source as the sarin found in the grenade obtained by the French government,
but it doesn't prove that it was deployed from Syrian government weapons.
Higgins has argued that the presence of hexamine in the sarin incriminates
the government, because the government turned over supplies of hexamine
under the 2013 agreement that prompted it to give up its entire stock of
chemical weapons. But Ake Sellstrom, the head of the U.N Mission that
investigated the Saraqeb and other cases from 2013, doesn't agree. Sellstrom
wrote to MIT Professor Theodore Postol [14] on June 18, 2014 that hexamine
is "a product simple to get hold of and in no way conclusively points to the
government."
Higgins's aggressive tweetstorm betrayed a weak hand. Desperate to defend
the narrative he is employed to enforce, he let loose a heavy barrage of
smoke but proved that he doesn't have the facts to support his attack.
Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specializing in
U.S. national security policy. His latest book is Manufactured Crisis: The
Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare [15] (Just World Books, 2014).
Share on Facebook Share
Share on Twitter Tweet
Report typos and corrections to 'corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx'. [16]
[17]
Sign Up!
Get AlterNet's Daily Newsletter in Your Inbox
EMAIL:
+ sign up for additional lists
Source URL:
https://www.alternet.org/grayzone-project/media-hyped-baseless-sarin-story
Links:
[1] https://www.alternet.org/authors/gareth-porter
[2] http://alternet.org
[3] https://twitter.com/MarkAmesExiled/status/880383299985735681
[4]
https://www.alternet.org/grayzone-project/what-really-happened-khan-sheikhou
n
[5] https://twitter.com/EliotHiggins/status/908315367277256704
[6] https://twitter.com/EliotHiggins/status/908762481849454593
[7]
https://www.alternet.org/grayzone-project/how-white-helmets-became-internati
onal-heroes-while-pushing-us-military
[8]
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/13/world/middleeast/idlib-syria-displaced-mi
litants.html
[9] https://twitter.com/EliotHiggins/status/908279117967237120
[10]
http://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/IMG/pdf/170425_-_evaluation_nationale_-_anglai
s_-_final_cle0dbf47-1.pdf
[11]
http://brown-moses.blogspot.com/2013/05/three-chemical-weapon-specialist-ans
wer.html
[12] http://www.ruigphotography.com/NusraChemicalWeaponsSyria
[13]
https://www.welt.de/politik/ausland/article117881245/Die-Beweise-fuer-den-Ei
nsatz-von-Giftgas-sind-duenn.html
[14]
http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2017/04/correction-to-the
-french-intelligence-report-of-april-26-2017-contradicts-the-allegations-in-
the-whi.html
[15]
https://www.amazon.com/Manufactured-Crisis-Untold-Story-Nuclear/dp/193598233
8/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1480354621&sr=1-1
[16] mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=Typo on Exposing a Shoddy
Sarin Attack Narrative and Responding to NATO-Backed Critics
[17] https://www.a
