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This broad­cast was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment.

Intro­duc­tion: In the wake of the alleged sarin attack by Bashar al-Assad’s gov­ern­ment and the cruise mis­sile strike on a Syr­i­an air base by the U.S., we exam­ine some of the rel­e­vant issues in the cri­sis, includ­ing and espe­cial­ly intel­li­gence eval­u­a­tions sharply diver­gent from the offi­cial ver­sion:

1. We begin with analy­sis of the area (Idlib) where the alleged Syr­i­an gov­ern­ment sarin attack took place. It is dom­i­nat­ed by the Al-Nus­ra Front, the name giv­en to Al-Qae­da in Iraq when it oper­ates in Syr­ia. Note that the top cler­ic in the Al-Qae­da held area is Abdul­lah Muhaysi­ni, a Sau­di cler­ic: ” . . . . who was a stu­dent [25] of Sulay­man Al-Alwan, the Wah­habi cler­ic who over­saw what his Mus­lim crit­ics have called a ‘ter­ror­ist fac­to­ry [26]’ in Sau­di Arabia’s Al-Qas­sim Province. Al-Alwan was also the instruc­tor of the 9/11 hijack­er Abdu­laz­iz Alo­mari. . . .”
2. Sad­dam and bin Laden worked out an arrange­ment in which Iraq—in order to pro­vide for a pay­back capa­bil­i­ty if the U.S. oust­ed him—gave infor­ma­tion about WMD’s to bin Laden’s peo­ple. Al Qae­da, in turn, was to act as a back-up unit for Saddam’s Iraq, strik­ing at the Unit­ed States if it knocked out Sad­dam. ” . . . . Accord­ing to Arab sources, in antic­i­pa­tion of a fore­see­able rever­sal of alliances in Kab­ul, bin Laden had been in dis­creet con­tact since Sep­tem­ber 2000 with asso­ciates of Oudai Hus­sein. . . . Bin Laden and the Iraqis are said to have exchanged infor­ma­tion about chem­i­cal and bio­log­i­cal weapons, despite the oppo­si­tion of some of the Bagh­dad lead­er­ship, includ­ing Tarik Aziz. . . .”
3. Robert Par­ry notes in Con­sor­tium News that ele­ments in the U.S. intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty do not agree with the Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s assess­ment of the sit­u­a­tion. ” . . . . Alarm with­in the U.S. intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty about Trump’s hasty deci­sion to attack Syr­ia rever­ber­at­ed from the Mid­dle East back to Wash­ing­ton, where for­mer CIA offi­cer Philip Giral­di report­ed hear­ing from his intel­li­gence con­tacts in the field that they were shocked at how the new poi­son-gas sto­ry was being dis­tort­ed by Trump and the main­stream U.S. news media. Giral­di told Scott Horton’s Web­cast: ‘I’m hear­ing from sources on the ground in the Mid­dle East, peo­ple who are inti­mate­ly famil­iar with the intel­li­gence that is avail­able who are say­ing that the essen­tial nar­ra­tive that we’re all hear­ing about the Syr­i­an gov­ern­ment or the Rus­sians using chem­i­cal weapons on inno­cent civil­ians is a sham.’ . . .”
4. Par­ry also notes that some ana­lysts are report­ing a strike by a drone launched from a joint Sau­di-Israeli base that sup­ports Syr­i­an rebels. ” . . . Despite some tech­ni­cal dif­fi­cul­ties in trac­ing its flight path, ana­lysts even­tu­al­ly came to believe that the flight was launched in Jor­dan from a Sau­di-Israeli spe­cial oper­a­tions base for sup­port­ing Syr­i­an rebels, the source said, adding that the sus­pect­ed rea­son for the poi­son gas was to cre­ate an inci­dent that would reverse the Trump administration’s announce­ment in late March that it was no longer seek­ing the removal of Pres­i­dent Bashar al-Assad. . . .”
5. Par­ry con­cludes one of his arti­cles with a scathing analy­sis of the Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s claims by a MIT researcher: ” . . . . In a sep­a­rate analy­sis of the four-page dossier, Theodore Pos­tol, a nation­al secu­ri­ty spe­cial­ist at the Mass­a­chu­setts Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy, con­clud­ed that the White House claims were clear­ly bogus, writ­ing: ‘I have reviewed the doc­u­ment care­ful­ly, and I believe it can be shown, with­out doubt, that the doc­u­ment does not pro­vide any evi­dence what­so­ev­er that the US gov­ern­ment has con­crete knowl­edge that the gov­ern­ment of Syr­ia was the source of the chem­i­cal attack in Khan Shaykhun, Syr­ia at rough­ly 6 to 7 a.m. on April 4, 2017. In fact, a main piece of evi­dence that is cit­ed in the doc­u­ment points to an attack that was exe­cut­ed by indi­vid­u­als on the ground, not from an air­craft, on the morn­ing of April 4. This con­clu­sion is based on an assump­tion made by the White House when it cit­ed the source of the sarin release and the pho­tographs of that source. My own assess­ment, is that the source was very like­ly tam­pered with or staged, so no seri­ous con­clu­sion could be made from the pho­tographs cit­ed by the White House.’ . . . ”
6. Detailed analy­sis of an August, 2013 sarin attack, orig­i­nal­ly thought to have been per­pe­trat­ed by Bashar Al-Assad, was pre­sent­ed by Sey­mour Hersh in the Lon­don Review of Books. The sarin turns out not to have come from Syr­i­an gov­ern­ment stock­piles. “. . . . Obama’s change of mind had its ori­gins at Por­ton Down, the defence lab­o­ra­to­ry in Wilt­shire. British intel­li­gence had obtained a sam­ple of the sarin used in the 21 August attack and analy­sis demon­strat­ed that the gas used didn’t match the batch­es known to exist in the Syr­i­an army’s chem­i­cal weapons arse­nal. The mes­sage that the case against Syr­ia wouldn’t hold up was quick­ly relayed to the US joint chiefs of staff. . . .”
7. Al-Nus­ra (Al-Qae­da), on the oth­er hand, was pro­duc­ing Sarin and look­ing to ramp up pro­duc­tion through a sup­ply pipeline run­ning through Turkey. ” . . . . The Amer­i­can and British intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ties had been aware since the spring of 2013 that some rebel units in Syr­ia were devel­op­ing chem­i­cal weapons. On 20 June ana­lysts for the US Defense Intel­li­gence Agency issued a high­ly clas­si­fied five-page ‘talk­ing points’ brief­ing for the DIA’s deputy direc­tor, David Shedd, which stat­ed that al-Nus­ra main­tained a sarin pro­duc­tion cell: its pro­gramme, the paper said, was ‘the most advanced sarin plot since al-Qaida’s pre‑9/11 effort’. . . .”
8. The 2013 con­clu­sions of gen­er­al Mar­tin Dempsey are worth exam­in­ing in the con­text of the cur­rent cri­sis: ” . . . . From the begin­ning of the cri­sis, the for­mer intel­li­gence offi­cial said, the joint chiefs had been skep­ti­cal of the administration’s argu­ment that it had the facts to back up its belief in Assad’s guilt. They pressed the DIA and oth­er agen­cies for more sub­stan­tial evi­dence. ‘There was no way they thought Syr­ia would use nerve gas at that stage, because Assad was win­ning the war,’ the for­mer intel­li­gence offi­cial said. . . .”

Pro­gram High­lights Include:

1. Review of the cor­po­ratist eco­nom­ic foun­da­tion of Mus­lim Broth­er­hood devel­op­men­tal the­o­ry. “. . . . The Mus­lim Broth­er­hood hails 14th cen­tu­ry philoso­pher Ibn Khal­dun as its eco­nom­ic guide. Antic­i­pat­ing sup­ply-side eco­nom­ics, Khal­dun argued that cut­ting tax­es rais­es pro­duc­tion and tax rev­enues . . . The World Bank has called Ibn Khal­dun the first advo­cate of pri­va­ti­za­tion. . . .”
2. Review of Gra­ham E. Fuller’s sup­port for the eco­nom­ic val­ues of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and his strange sup­port for Bernie Sanders, whose val­ues are the oppo­site of those espoused by Fuller.
3. The fact that war in the Mid­dle East rais­es oil prices–this to be seen against the back­ground of Rex Tiller­son being Sec­re­tary of State (pre­vi­ous­ly CEO of Exxon/Mobil). ” . . . . For investors like Mr. Abdul­lah, con­flict in the Mid­dle East means one thing: high­er oil prices. ‘It’s always good for us,’ he says. . . .”
4. Robert Par­ry’s view that the omis­sion of CIA direc­tor Mike Pom­peo and oth­er top U.S. intel­li­gence offi­cials from a pho­to of Trump’s top advi­sors is indica­tive of dis­sent with­in the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty from the offi­cial ver­sion of the attack.

1. The pro­gram begins with analy­sis of the area (Idlib) where the alleged Syr­i­an gov­ern­ment sarin attack took place. It is dom­i­nat­ed by the Al-Nus­ra Front, the name giv­en to Al-Qae­da in Iraq when it oper­ates in Syr­ia. Note that the top cler­ic in the Al-Qae­da held area is Abdul­lah Muhaysi­ni, a Sau­di cler­ic: ” . . . . who was a stu­dent [25] of Sulay­man Al-Alwan, the Wah­habi cler­ic who over­saw what his Mus­lim crit­ics have called a ‘ter­ror­ist fac­to­ry [26]’ in Sau­di Arabia’s Al-Qas­sim Province. Al-Alwan was also the instruc­tor of the 9/11 hijack­er Abdu­laz­iz Alo­mari. . . .”

“Is Trump Res­cu­ing ‘Al Qaeda’s Heart­land’ in Syr­ia?” by Max Blu­men­thal and Ben Nor­ton; Alter­net; 4/5/2017. 

“We have not yet any offi­cial or reli­able con­fir­ma­tion” of what took place or who was respon­si­ble, said [4] the UN spe­cial envoy for Syr­ia, Staffan de Mis­tu­ra, at a press con­fer­ence after the inci­dent.

“We also do not have evi­dence at the moment,” added [5] Fed­er­i­ca Mogheri­ni, high rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the EU for for­eign affairs and secu­ri­ty pol­i­cy.

The chem­i­cal attack occurred just as peace talks were begin­ning in Gene­va, and with the Syr­i­an army in a dom­i­nant posi­tion in the sixth year of a war fueled by out­side pow­ers.

The attacks threat­en to reverse the polit­i­cal gains made by the gov­ern­ment of Syr­i­an Pres­i­dent Bashar al-Assad, lead­ing to unre­lent­ing bipar­ti­san pres­sure for Don­ald Trump to autho­rize a bomb­ing cam­paign tar­get­ing the Syr­i­an gov­ern­ment and its mil­i­tary.

For the al-Qae­da-allied rebels who were oust­ed from their strong­hold in east­ern Alep­po in Decem­ber 2016, and whose gains in a recent series of offen­sives have been rapid­ly reversed, West­ern mil­i­tary inter­ven­tion is the only hope.

Giv­en its dom­i­nant posi­tion, why would the Syr­i­an gov­ern­ment autho­rize a chem­i­cal attack that was like­ly to trig­ger renewed calls for regime change? The answer remains elu­sive. . . .

. . . . But there has been one issue major media out­lets have refused to touch, and that is the nature of the rebels who would gain from any U.S. mil­i­tary offen­sive. Who holds pow­er in Idlib, why are they there and what do they want? This is per­haps the most incon­ve­nient set of ques­tions for pro­po­nents of “human­i­tar­i­an” mil­i­tary inter­ven­tion in Syr­ia.

The real­i­ty is that Idlib is sub­stan­tial­ly con­trolled by al-Qaeda’s Syr­i­an affil­i­ate, which has gone through a series of rebrand­ing schemes but remains the same jihadist group it always was: Jab­hat al-Nus­ra. In the province it rules, al-Nus­ra has imposed what a lead­ing schol­ar has described as a Tal­iban-like regime that has eth­ni­cal­ly cleansed reli­gious and eth­nic minori­ties, banned music and estab­lished a bru­tal theoc­ra­cy in which it pub­licly exe­cutes [13] women accused of adul­tery.

Even ana­lysts who have repeat­ed­ly called for U.S.-led regime change in Syr­ia have described [14] Idlib as the “heart­land of al-Nus­ra.” . . .

. . . . When Al Nus­ra and its ally, Ahrar Al Sham, took Idlib’s Abu al-Dhuhur Air Base in 2015, a cler­ic appeared [24] on the scene in cam­ou­flaged bat­tle dress uni­form. Stand­ing among a group of blind­fold­ed, exhaust­ed cap­tives, all Syr­i­an army reg­u­lars, the cler­ic blessed their mass exe­cu­tion, curs­ing them as tak­fir for fight­ing on the government’s side.

“I don’t like to call them Sun­ni. They were once Sun­ni but became apo­s­ta­tized once they enlist­ed in the Alaw­ites’ regime,” he said of the 56 cap­tives. Moments lat­er, they were lined up and rid­dled with bul­lets.

The cler­ic was Abdul­lah Muhaysi­ni, a 33-year-old zealot from Sau­di Ara­bia, who was a stu­dent [25] of Sulay­man Al-Alwan, the Wah­habi cler­ic who over­saw what his Mus­lim crit­ics have called a “ter­ror­ist fac­to­ry [26]” in Sau­di Arabia’s Al-Qas­sim Province. Al-Alwan was also the instruc­tor of the 9/11 hijack­er Abdu­laz­iz Alo­mari.

Today, Muhaysi­ni com­mands an almost mys­ti­cal sta­tus among the Islamist armed groups ram­pag­ing across north­ern Syr­ia. Accord­ing to Bilal Abdul Kareem [27], an Amer­i­can-born rebel pro­pa­gan­dist cur­rent­ly in Idlib, Muhaysi­ni is “prob­a­bly the most loved cler­ic in the Syr­i­an ter­ri­to­ries today.” . . . .

2a.  Before con­tin­u­ing with analy­sis of the Syr­i­an imbroglio, we pause to refresh listeners’/readers’ aware­ness of relat­ed issues. We not­ed in FTR #953, GOP and intel­li­gence offi­cials involved with Mus­lim Brotherhood/jihadi ele­ments have fig­ured in the ascent of Bernie Sanders & com­pa­ny. In addi­tion to Karl Rove and Grover Norquist pro­tege Faisal Gill

Gra­ham E. Fuller, the “ex” CIA offi­cer who is (arguably) the biggest advo­cate for the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in the U.S. intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty describes him­self as being “gal­va­nized” by Sanders. The val­ues espoused by Sanders are the oppo­site of those advo­cat­ed by Fuller. WHY is Fuller so sup­port­ive of Sanders?

• None oth­er than Gra­ham E. Fuller, who was CIA sta­tion chief in Kab­ul, helped start the first Afghan war, was some­thing of a God­fa­ther for al-Qae­da and fig­ures in the inves­ti­ga­tion into the Boston Marathon bomb­ing, is pulling for “Boinie,” as well as tout­ing Don­ald Trump as a desir­able can­di­date. “. . . . Like many oth­ers, I have been gal­va­nized at watch­ing the spec­ta­cle of Bernie Sanders pro­claim­ing issues in his cam­paign that had been vir­tu­al­ly off lim­its for polit­i­cal dis­cus­sion for decades: gap between rich and poor, rapa­cious inter­na­tion­al trade deals, a fair wage, free uni­ver­si­ty edu­ca­tion, the call for US bal­ance (gasp!) in han­dling the Arab-Israeli, issue, etc. The great thing about Bernie — even if he prob­a­bly won’t get nom­i­nat­ed — is that he has pushed hawk­ish, friend-of-Wall-Street Hillary to the left. She has as much acknowl­edged that. That will be Bernie’s great­est lega­cy. I would have hoped that the issues Sanders has raised can nev­er be shoved back into the polit­i­cal tooth­paste tube again. . . . .”

• Might ele­ments of the CIA be pulling for “Boinie?” Com­pare Gra­ham E. Fuller “feel­ing the Bern” with his advo­ca­cy for the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood: “. . . Fuller comes from that fac­tion of CIA Cold War­riors who believed (and still appar­ently believe) that fun­da­men­tal­ist Islam, even in its rad­i­cal jiha­di form, does not pose a threat to the West, for the sim­ple rea­son that fun­da­men­tal­ist Islam is con­ser­v­a­tive, against social jus­tice, against social­ism and redis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth, and in favor of hier­ar­chi­cal socio-eco­nom­ic struc­tures. Social­ism is the com­mon ene­my to both cap­i­tal­ist Amer­ica and to Wah­habi Islam, accord­ing to Fuller. . . ‘There is no main­stream Islam­ic organization...with rad­i­cal social views,’ he wrote. ‘Clas­si­cal Islam­ic the­ory envis­ages the role of the state as lim­ited to facil­i­tat­ing the well-being of mar­kets and mer­chants rather than con­trol­ling them. Islamists have always pow­er­fully object­ed to social­ism and communism....Islam has nev­er had prob­lems with the idea that wealth is uneven­ly dis­trib­uted.’ . . . .”

3. Some depth on the pres­ence of sarin and oth­er chem­i­cal weapons in the Syr­i­an con­flict derives from aware­ness of a con­tin­gency arrange­ment between Sad­dam Hus­sein’s gov­ern­ment and Al-Qae­da. (Again Nus­ra Front is Al-Qae­da in Iraq when oper­at­ing in Syr­ia.)

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, both the pro-war and anti-war sides got it wrong with regard to Saddam’s rela­tion­ship with Al Qae­da. Although there is no indi­ca­tion that Iraq or Sad­dam were involved with 9/11, the two enti­ties did have a “dooms­day back-up” arrange­ment. Sad­dam and bin Laden worked out an arrange­ment in which Iraq—in order to pro­vide for a pay­back capa­bil­i­ty if the U.S. oust­ed him—gave infor­ma­tion about WMD’s to bin Laden’s peo­ple. Al Qae­da, in turn, was to act as a back-up unit for Saddam’s Iraq, strik­ing at the Unit­ed States if it knocked out Sad­dam. Of course, pre­cise­ly that sce­nario has tran­spired. ” . . . . Accord­ing to Arab sources, in antic­i­pa­tion of a fore­see­able rever­sal of alliances in Kab­ul, bin Laden had been in dis­creet con­tact since Sep­tem­ber 2000 with asso­ciates of Oudai Hus­sein. . . . Bin Laden and the Iraqis are said to have exchanged infor­ma­tion about chem­i­cal and bio­log­i­cal weapons, despite the oppo­si­tion of some of the Bagh­dad lead­er­ship, includ­ing Tarik Aziz. . . .”

In the Name of Osama Bin Laden; by Roland Jacquard; Copy­right 2002 [SC]; Duke Uni­ver­si­ty Press; ISBN 0–8223-2991–3; pp. 112–113.

. . . It appears, how­ev­er, that this ver­sion is the pub­licly admis­si­ble one, the one that can pass polit­i­cal muster. Accord­ing to the same sources, there was anoth­er sce­nario more. In keep­ing with the cal­cu­lat­ing men­tal­i­ty of Sad­dam Hus­sein and his secret ser­vices. In 1998, after declin­ing all offers that had been made to them through offi­cial diplo­mat­ic chan­nels, those ser­vices are report­ed to have estab­lished a secret oper­a­tional ‘con­nec­tion’ with bin Laden in Mani­la and in Kash­mir. It was indeed dif­fi­cult for Iraq to ignore an Arab like Osama bin Laden who so effec­tive­ly humil­i­at­ed the Amer­i­cans.’ Colonel Khairal­lah al Takir­i­ti, the broth­er of the head of Mukkhabarat, the intel­li­gence ser­vices, is report­ed to have been named case offi­cer for the con­nec­tion. The arrest of two Mor­roc­can asso­ciates of bin Laden in Rabat on Novem­ber 11, 1998, made it pos­si­ble to estab­lish to estab­lish the link with cer­tain­ty. Accord­ing to West­ern sources, the Iraqi ser­vices have sought to secure the assis­tance of bin Laden’s net­works, in case Iraq were again to be attacked by the Unit­ed States, in order to car­ry out attacks against Amer­i­can tar­gets in Arab coun­tries.

Accord­ing to Arab sources, in antic­i­pa­tion of a fore­see­able rever­sal of alliances in Kab­ul, bin Laden had been in dis­creet con­tact since Sep­tem­ber 2000 with asso­ciates of Oudai Hus­sein, anoth­er of Saddam’s sons; the ground for agree­ment was the anti-Israeli and anti-Amer­i­can bat­tle. Bin Laden and the Iraqis are said to have exchanged infor­ma­tion about chem­i­cal and bio­log­i­cal weapons, despite the oppo­si­tion of some of the Bagh­dad lead­er­ship, includ­ing Tarik Aziz. . . .

4. A quote from an Arab investor con­cern­ing the effect of war on the price of oil is worth bear­ing in mind. War in the Mid­dle East leads to a rise in the price of oil, due to fears over the avail­abil­i­ty of stocks. Trump’s Sec­re­tary of State is Rex Tiller­son, the for­mer head of Exxon/Mobil the largest U.S. oil com­pa­ny. ” . . . For investors like Mr. Abdul­lah, con­flict in the Mid­dle East means one thing: high­er oil prices. ‘It’s always good for us,’ he says. . . .”

“Mideast Stocks Hold Up Well Amid Con­flict” by Karen Richard­son and Yas­mine El-Rashi­di; Wall Street Jour­nal; 7/24/2006; p. C1/

. . . . “Lebanon is far away,” says Waleed Abdul­lah, a sales man­ag­er in Shar­jah, one of the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates, who has been buy­ing stocks in neigh­bor­ing Dubai and Abu Dhabi. ‘Our invest­ments here aren’t affect­ed real­ly by what hap­pens there.’ For investors like Mr. Abdul­lah, con­flict in the Mid­dle East means one thing: high­er oil prices. “It’s always good for us,” he says. [Empha­sis added.]. . .”

5. Turn­ing to the lat­est sarin inci­dent, Robert Par­ry notes in Con­sor­tium News that ele­ments in the U.S. intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty do not agree with the Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s assess­ment of the sit­u­a­tion. ” . . . . Alarm with­in the U.S. intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty about Trump’s hasty deci­sion to attack Syr­ia rever­ber­at­ed from the Mid­dle East back to Wash­ing­ton, where for­mer CIA offi­cer Philip Giral­di report­ed hear­ing from his intel­li­gence con­tacts in the field that they were shocked at how the new poi­son-gas sto­ry was being dis­tort­ed by Trump and the main­stream U.S. news media. Giral­di told Scott Horton’s Web­cast: ‘I’m hear­ing from sources on the ground in the Mid­dle East, peo­ple who are inti­mate­ly famil­iar with the intel­li­gence that is avail­able who are say­ing that the essen­tial nar­ra­tive that we’re all hear­ing about the Syr­i­an gov­ern­ment or the Rus­sians using chem­i­cal weapons on inno­cent civil­ians is a sham.’ . . .”

“Trump’s  ‘Wag the Dog’ Moment” by Robert Par­ry; Con­sor­tium News; 4/7/2017.

. . . . There is also an inter­nal dis­pute over the intel­li­gence. On Thurs­day night, Sec­re­tary of State Rex Tiller­son said the U.S. intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty assessed with a “high degree of con­fi­dence” that the Syr­i­an gov­ern­ment had dropped a poi­son gas bomb on civil­ians in Idlib province.

But a num­ber of intel­li­gence sources have made con­tra­dic­to­ry assess­ments, say­ing the pre­pon­der­ance of evi­dence sug­gests that Al Qae­da-affil­i­at­ed rebels were at fault, either by orches­trat­ing an inten­tion­al release of a chem­i­cal agent as a provo­ca­tion or by pos­sess­ing con­tain­ers of poi­son gas that rup­tured dur­ing a con­ven­tion­al bomb­ing raid.

One intel­li­gence source told me that the most like­ly sce­nario was a staged event by the rebels intend­ed to force Trump to reverse a pol­i­cy, announced only days ear­li­er, that the U.S. gov­ern­ment would no longer seek “regime change” in Syr­ia and would focus on attack­ing the com­mon ene­my, Islam­ic ter­ror groups that rep­re­sent the core of the rebel forces. . . .

. . . . Alarm with­in the U.S. intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty about Trump’s hasty deci­sion to attack Syr­ia rever­ber­at­ed from the Mid­dle East back to Wash­ing­ton, where for­mer CIA offi­cer Philip Giral­di report­ed hear­ing from his intel­li­gence con­tacts in the field that they were shocked at how the new poi­son-gas sto­ry was being dis­tort­ed by Trump and the main­stream U.S. news media.

Giral­di told Scott Horton’s Web­cast: “I’m hear­ing from sources on the ground in the Mid­dle East, peo­ple who are inti­mate­ly famil­iar with the intel­li­gence that is avail­able who are say­ing that the essen­tial nar­ra­tive that we’re all hear­ing about the Syr­i­an gov­ern­ment or the Rus­sians using chem­i­cal weapons on inno­cent civil­ians is a sham.”

Giral­di said his sources were more in line with an analy­sis pos­tu­lat­ing an acci­den­tal release of the poi­son gas after an Al Qae­da arms depot was hit by a Russ­ian airstrike.

“The intel­li­gence con­firms pret­ty much the account that the Rus­sians have been giv­ing … which is that they hit a ware­house where the rebels – now these are rebels that are, of course, con­nect­ed with Al Qae­da – where the rebels were stor­ing chem­i­cals of their own and it basi­cal­ly caused an explo­sion that result­ed in the casu­al­ties. Appar­ent­ly the intel­li­gence on this is very clear.”

Giral­di said the anger with­in the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty over the dis­tor­tion of intel­li­gence to jus­ti­fy Trump’s mil­i­tary retal­i­a­tion was so great that some covert offi­cers were con­sid­er­ing going pub­lic.

“Peo­ple in both the agency [the CIA] and in the mil­i­tary who are aware of the intel­li­gence are freak­ing out about this because essen­tial­ly Trump com­plete­ly mis­rep­re­sent­ed what he already should have known – but maybe he didn’t – and they’re afraid that this is mov­ing toward a sit­u­a­tion that could eas­i­ly turn into an armed con­flict,” Giral­di said before Thurs­day night’s mis­sile strike. “They are aston­ished by how this is being played by the admin­is­tra­tion and by the U.S. media.” . . . .

6. Par­ry also sees the omis­sion of CIA direc­tor Mike Pom­peo and oth­er major intel­li­gence offi­cials from the offi­cial pho­to­graph of Trump con­fer­ring with his advi­sors as indica­tive of dis­sent with­in the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty from the offi­cial nar­ra­tive.

“Where Was the CIA’s Pom­peo on Syr­ia?” by Robert Par­ry; Con­sor­tium News; 4/8/2017.

There is a dark mys­tery behind the White House-released pho­to show­ing Pres­i­dent Trump and more than a dozen advis­ers meet­ing at his estate in Mar-a-Lago after his deci­sion to strike Syr­ia with Tom­a­hawk mis­siles: Where is CIA Direc­tor Mike Pom­peo and oth­er top intel­li­gence offi­cials?

Before the pho­to was released on Fri­day, a source told me that Pom­peo had per­son­al­ly briefed Trump on April 6 about the CIA’s belief that Syr­i­an Pres­i­dent Bashar al-Assad was like­ly not respon­si­ble for the lethal poi­son-gas inci­dent in north­ern Syr­ia two days ear­li­er — and thus Pom­peo was exclud­ed from the larg­er meet­ing as Trump reached a con­trary deci­sion.

At the time, I found the infor­ma­tion dubi­ous since Trump, Sec­re­tary of State Rex Tiller­son and oth­er senior U.S. offi­cials were declar­ing quite con­fi­dent­ly that Assad was at fault. Giv­en that appar­ent con­fi­dence, I assumed that Pom­peo and the CIA must have signed off on the con­clu­sion of Assad’s guilt even though I knew that some U.S. intel­li­gence ana­lysts had con­trary opin­ions, that they viewed the inci­dent as either an acci­den­tal release of chem­i­cals or an inten­tion­al ploy by Al Qae­da rebels to suck­er the U.S. into attack­ing Syr­ia.

As strange as the Trump admin­is­tra­tion has been in its ear­ly months, it was hard for me to believe that Trump would have lis­tened to the CIA’s views and then shooed the direc­tor away from the larg­er meet­ing before launch­ing a mil­i­tary strike against a coun­try not threat­en­ing Amer­i­ca. . . .

. . . . But in the pho­to of Trump and his advis­ers, no one from the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty is in the frame. You see Trump, Sec­re­tary of State Tiller­son, Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Advis­er H.R. McMas­ter, White House chief of staff Reince Priebus, strate­gic advis­er Steve Ban­non, son-in-law Jared Kush­n­er and a vari­ety of oth­er offi­cials, includ­ing some eco­nom­ic advis­ers who were at Mar-a-Lago in Flori­da for the meet­ing with Chi­nese Pres­i­dent Xi Jin­ping.

How­ev­er, you don’t see Pom­peo or Direc­tor of Nation­al Intel­li­gence Dan Coats or any oth­er intel­li­gence offi­cial. Even The New York Times not­ed the odd­i­ty in its Sat­ur­day edi­tions, writ­ing: “If there were C.I.A. and oth­er intel­li­gence briefers around, … they are not in the pic­ture.”

That made me won­der whether per­haps my orig­i­nal source did know some­thing. The claim was that CIA Direc­tor Pom­peo had briefed Trump per­son­al­ly on the ana­lysts’ assess­ment that Assad’s forces were not respon­si­ble, but – then with Pom­peo side­lined – Trump con­veyed his own ver­sion of the intel­li­gence to his senior staff.

In oth­er words, the oth­er offi­cials didn’t get the direct word from Pom­peo but rather received a sec­ond-hand account from the Pres­i­dent, the source said. Did Trump choose to rely on the smug cer­tain­ty from the TV shows and the main­stream news media that Assad was guilty, rather than the con­trary view of U.S. intel­li­gence ana­lysts?

After the attack, Sec­re­tary of State Tiller­son, who is not an insti­tu­tion­al intel­li­gence offi­cial and has lit­tle expe­ri­ence with the sub­tleties of intel­li­gence, was the one to claim that the U.S. intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty assessed with a “high degree of con­fi­dence” that the Syr­i­an gov­ern­ment had dropped a poi­son gas bomb on civil­ians in Idlib province.

While Tillerson’s com­ment meshed with Offi­cial Washington’s hasti­ly formed group­think of Assad’s guilt, it is hard to believe that CIA ana­lysts would have set­tled on such a firm con­clu­sion so quick­ly, espe­cial­ly giv­en the remote loca­tion of the inci­dent and the fact that the ini­tial infor­ma­tion was com­ing from pro-rebel (or Al Qae­da) sources. . . .

7. The U.S. is with­hold­ing key infor­ma­tion due to the “need to pro­tect sources and meth­ods.” Robert Par­ry notes that there is noth­ing secre­tive about the col­lec­tion of satel­lite and oth­er elec­tron­ic intel­li­gence. So what is so secret about the white paper? Par­ry also notes that some ana­lysts are report­ing a strike by a drone launched from a joint Sau­di-Israeli base that sup­ports Syr­i­an rebels. ” . . . Despite some tech­ni­cal dif­fi­cul­ties in trac­ing its flight path, ana­lysts even­tu­al­ly came to believe that the flight was launched in Jor­dan from a Sau­di-Israeli spe­cial oper­a­tions base for sup­port­ing Syr­i­an rebels, the source said, adding that the sus­pect­ed rea­son for the poi­son gas was to cre­ate an inci­dent that would reverse the Trump administration’s announce­ment in late March that it was no longer seek­ing the removal of Pres­i­dent Bashar al-Assad. . . .”

After not­ing that the pre­sen­ta­tion of var­i­ous pos­si­ble sce­nar­ios for the sarin release does not indi­cate a “cov­er-up” by Rus­sia, mere­ly the nor­mal weigh­ing of facts in the process of intel­li­gence analy­sis, Par­ry con­cludes his arti­cle with a scathing analy­sis of the Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s claims by a MIT researcher: ” . . . . In a sep­a­rate analy­sis of the four-page dossier, Theodore Pos­tol, a nation­al secu­ri­ty spe­cial­ist at the Mass­a­chu­setts Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy, con­clud­ed that the White House claims were clear­ly bogus, writ­ing: ‘I have reviewed the doc­u­ment care­ful­ly, and I believe it can be shown, with­out doubt, that the doc­u­ment does not pro­vide any evi­dence what­so­ev­er that the US gov­ern­ment has con­crete knowl­edge that the gov­ern­ment of Syr­ia was the source of the chem­i­cal attack in Khan Shaykhun, Syr­ia at rough­ly 6 to 7 a.m. on April 4, 2017. In fact, a main piece of evi­dence that is cit­ed in the doc­u­ment points to an attack that was exe­cut­ed by indi­vid­u­als on the ground, not from an air­craft, on the morn­ing of April 4. This con­clu­sion is based on an assump­tion made by the White House when it cit­ed the source of the sarin release and the pho­tographs of that source. My own assess­ment, is that the source was very like­ly tam­pered with or staged, so no seri­ous con­clu­sion could be made from the pho­tographs cit­ed by the White House.’ . . . ”

“Trump With­holds Syr­ia-Sarin Evi­dence” by Robert Par­ry; Con­sor­tium News; 4/12/2017.

. . . . A four-page white paper, pre­pared by Pres­i­dent Trump’s Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil staff and released by the White House on Tues­day, claimed that U.S. intel­li­gence has proof that the plane car­ry­ing the sarin gas left from the Syr­i­an mil­i­tary air­field that Trump ordered hit by Tom­a­hawk mis­siles on April 6.

The paper assert­ed that “we have sig­nals intel­li­gence and geospa­tial intel­li­gence,” but then added that “we can­not pub­licly release all avail­able intel­li­gence on this attack due to the need to pro­tect sources and meth­ods.”

I’m told that the key evi­dence was satel­lite sur­veil­lance of the area, a body of mate­r­i­al that U.S. intel­li­gence ana­lysts were review­ing late last week even after the Trump-ordered bom­bard­ment of 59 Tom­a­hawk mis­siles that, accord­ing to Syr­i­an media reports, killed sev­en or eight Syr­i­an sol­diers and nine civil­ians, includ­ing four chil­dren.

Yet, it is unclear why releas­ing these over­head videos would be so detri­men­tal to “sources and meth­ods” since every­one knows the U.S. has this capa­bil­i­ty and the issue at hand – if it gets fur­ther out of hand – could lead to a nuclear con­fronta­tion with Rus­sia. . . .

. . . . In the case of the April 4 chem­i­cal-weapons inci­dent in the town of Khan Sheikhoun, which report­ed­ly killed scores of peo­ple includ­ing young chil­dren, I was told that ini­tial­ly the U.S. ana­lysts couldn’t see any war­planes over the area in Idlib province at the sus­pect­ed time of the poi­son gas attack but lat­er they detect­ed a drone that they thought might have deliv­ered the bomb.

A Drone Mys­tery

Accord­ing to a source, the ana­lysts strug­gled to iden­ti­fy whose drone it was and where it orig­i­nat­ed. Despite some tech­ni­cal dif­fi­cul­ties in trac­ing its flight path, ana­lysts even­tu­al­ly came to believe that the flight was launched in Jor­dan from a Sau­di-Israeli spe­cial oper­a­tions base for sup­port­ing Syr­i­an rebels, the source said, adding that the sus­pect­ed rea­son for the poi­son gas was to cre­ate an inci­dent that would reverse the Trump administration’s announce­ment in late March that it was no longer seek­ing the removal of Pres­i­dent Bashar al-Assad.

If indeed that was the motive — and if the source’s infor­ma­tion is cor­rect — the oper­a­tion would have been suc­cess­ful, since the Trump admin­is­tra­tion has now reversed itself and is press­ing Rus­sia to join in oust­ing Assad who is get­ting blamed for the lat­est chem­i­cal-weapons inci­dent.

Pre­sum­ably, how­ev­er, the “geospa­tial intel­li­gence” cit­ed in the four-page dossier could dis­prove this and oth­er con­tentions if the Trump admin­is­tra­tion would only make its evi­dence pub­licly avail­able.

The dossier stat­ed, “Our infor­ma­tion indi­cates that the chem­i­cal agent was deliv­ered by regime Su-22 fixed-wing air­craft that took off from the regime-con­trolled Shayrat Air­field. These air­craft were in the vicin­i­ty of Khan Shaykhun approx­i­mate­ly 20 min­utes before reports of the chem­i­cal attack began and vacat­ed the area short­ly after the attack.” . . .

. . . . On April 6, before Trump’s mis­sile strike, I and oth­ers received word from U.S. mil­i­tary intel­li­gence offi­cials in the Mid­dle East that they, too, shared the belief that the poi­son gas may have result­ed from a con­ven­tion­al bomb­ing raid that rup­tured con­tain­ers stored by the rebels, who – in Idlib province – are dom­i­nat­ed by Al Qaeda’s affil­i­ate and its allies.

Those reports were cit­ed by for­mer U.S. intel­li­gence offi­cials, includ­ing more than two dozen who pro­duced a memo to Pres­i­dent Trump urg­ing him to under­take a care­ful inves­ti­ga­tion of the inci­dent before let­ting this cri­sis exac­er­bate U.S.-Russia rela­tions.

The memo said “our U.S. Army con­tacts in the area” were dis­put­ing the offi­cial sto­ry of a chem­i­cal weapons attack. “Instead, a Syr­i­an air­craft bombed an al-Qae­da-in-Syr­ia ammu­ni­tion depot that turned out to be full of nox­ious chem­i­cals and a strong wind blew the chem­i­cal-laden cloud over a near­by vil­lage where many con­se­quent­ly died,” the memo said.

In oth­er words, to sug­gest pos­si­ble alter­na­tive sce­nar­ios is not evi­dence of a “cov­er-up,” even if the the­o­ries are lat­er shown to be erro­neous. It is the nor­mal process of sort­ing through often con­flict­ing ini­tial reports. . . .

. . . . [In a sep­a­rate analy­sis of the four-page dossier, Theodore Pos­tol, a nation­al secu­ri­ty spe­cial­ist at the Mass­a­chu­setts Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy, con­clud­ed that the White House claims were clear­ly bogus, writ­ing:

“I have reviewed the doc­u­ment care­ful­ly, and I believe it can be shown, with­out doubt, that the doc­u­ment does not pro­vide any evi­dence what­so­ev­er that the US gov­ern­ment has con­crete knowl­edge that the gov­ern­ment of Syr­ia was the source of the chem­i­cal attack in Khan Shaykhun, Syr­ia at rough­ly 6 to 7 a.m. on April 4, 2017.

“In fact, a main piece of evi­dence that is cit­ed in the doc­u­ment points to an attack that was exe­cut­ed by indi­vid­u­als on the ground, not from an air­craft, on the morn­ing of April 4. This con­clu­sion is based on an assump­tion made by the White House when it cit­ed the source of the sarin release and the pho­tographs of that source. My own assess­ment, is that the source was very like­ly tam­pered with or staged, so no seri­ous con­clu­sion could be made from the pho­tographs cit­ed by the White House.”]

8. A detailed analy­sis of an August, 2013 sarin attack, orig­i­nal­ly thought to have been per­pe­trat­ed by Bashar Al-Assad, was pre­sent­ed by Sey­mour Hersh in the Lon­don Review of Books. The sarin turns out not to have come from Syr­i­an gov­ern­ment stock­piles.

The defin­i­tive deter­mi­na­tion that the sarin used in the August 2013 attack did not come from the Assad gov­ern­ment was made by ana­lysts at Por­ton Down, the top UK CBW facil­i­ty: “. . . . Obama’s change of mind had its ori­gins at Por­ton Down, the defence lab­o­ra­to­ry in Wilt­shire. British intel­li­gence had obtained a sam­ple of the sarin used in the 21 August attack and analy­sis demon­strat­ed that the gas used didn’t match the batch­es known to exist in the Syr­i­an army’s chem­i­cal weapons arse­nal. The mes­sage that the case against Syr­ia wouldn’t hold up was quick­ly relayed to the US joint chiefs of staff. . . .”

Al-Nus­ra, on the oth­er hand, was pro­duc­ing Sarin and look­ing to ramp up pro­duc­tion through a sup­ply pipeline run­ning through Turkey. ” . . . . The Amer­i­can and British intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ties had been aware since the spring of 2013 that some rebel units in Syr­ia were devel­op­ing chem­i­cal weapons. On 20 June ana­lysts for the US Defense Intel­li­gence Agency issued a high­ly clas­si­fied five-page ‘talk­ing points’ brief­ing for the DIA’s deputy direc­tor, David Shedd, which stat­ed that al-Nus­ra main­tained a sarin pro­duc­tion cell: its pro­gramme, the paper said, was ‘the most advanced sarin plot since al-Qaida’s pre‑9/11 effort’. . . .”

The 2013 con­clu­sions of gen­er­al Mar­tin Dempsey are worth exam­in­ing in the con­text of the cur­rent cri­sis: ” . . . . From the begin­ning of the cri­sis, the for­mer intel­li­gence offi­cial said, the joint chiefs had been scep­ti­cal of the administration’s argu­ment that it had the facts to back up its belief in Assad’s guilt. They pressed the DIA and oth­er agen­cies for more sub­stan­tial evi­dence. ‘There was no way they thought Syr­ia would use nerve gas at that stage, because Assad was win­ning the war,’ the for­mer intel­li­gence offi­cial said. . . .”

“The Red Line and the Rat Line” by Sey­mour Hersh; Lon­don Review of Books ; 4/17/2014.

. . . . Obama’s change of mind had its ori­gins at Por­ton Down, the defence lab­o­ra­to­ry in Wilt­shire. British intel­li­gence had obtained a sam­ple of the sarin used in the 21 August attack and analy­sis demon­strat­ed that the gas used didn’t match the batch­es known to exist in the Syr­i­an army’s chem­i­cal weapons arse­nal. The mes­sage that the case against Syr­ia wouldn’t hold up was quick­ly relayed to the US joint chiefs of staff. The British report height­ened doubts inside the Pen­ta­gon; the joint chiefs were already prepar­ing to warn Oba­ma that his plans for a far-reach­ing bomb and mis­sile attack on Syria’s infra­struc­ture could lead to a wider war in the Mid­dle East. As a con­se­quence the Amer­i­can offi­cers deliv­ered a last-minute cau­tion to the pres­i­dent, which, in their view, even­tu­al­ly led to his can­celling the attack.

For months there had been acute con­cern among senior mil­i­tary lead­ers and the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty about the role in the war of Syria’s neigh­bours, espe­cial­ly Turkey. Prime Min­is­ter Recep Erdoğan was known to be sup­port­ing the al-Nus­ra Front, a jihadist fac­tion among the rebel oppo­si­tion, as well as oth­er Islamist rebel groups. ‘We knew there were some in the Turk­ish gov­ern­ment,’ a for­mer senior US intel­li­gence offi­cial, who has access to cur­rent intel­li­gence, told me, ‘who believed they could get Assad’s nuts in a vice by dab­bling with a sarin attack inside Syr­ia – and forc­ing Oba­ma to make good on his red line threat.’

The joint chiefs also knew that the Oba­ma administration’s pub­lic claims that only the Syr­i­an army had access to sarin were wrong. The Amer­i­can and British intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ties had been aware since the spring of 2013 that some rebel units in Syr­ia were devel­op­ing chem­i­cal weapons. On 20 June ana­lysts for the US Defense Intel­li­gence Agency issued a high­ly clas­si­fied five-page ‘talk­ing points’ brief­ing for the DIA’s deputy direc­tor, David Shedd, which stat­ed that al-Nus­ra main­tained a sarin pro­duc­tion cell: its pro­gramme, the paper said, was ‘the most advanced sarin plot since al-Qaida’s pre‑9/11 effort’. (Accord­ing to a Defense Depart­ment con­sul­tant, US intel­li­gence has long known that al-Qai­da exper­i­ment­ed with chem­i­cal weapons, and has a video of one of its gas exper­i­ments with dogs.) The DIA paper went on: ‘Pre­vi­ous IC [intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty] focus had been almost entire­ly on Syr­i­an CW [chem­i­cal weapons] stock­piles; now we see ANF attempt­ing to make its own CW … Al-Nus­rah Front’s rel­a­tive free­dom of oper­a­tion with­in Syr­ia leads us to assess the group’s CW aspi­ra­tions will be dif­fi­cult to dis­rupt in the future.’ The paper drew on clas­si­fied intel­li­gence from numer­ous agen­cies: ‘Turkey and Sau­di-based chem­i­cal facil­i­ta­tors,’ it said, ‘were attempt­ing to obtain sarin pre­cur­sors in bulk, tens of kilo­grams, like­ly for the antic­i­pat­ed large scale pro­duc­tion effort in Syr­ia.’ (Asked about the DIA paper, a spokesper­son for the direc­tor of nation­al intel­li­gence said: ‘No such paper was ever request­ed or pro­duced by intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty ana­lysts.’)

Last May, more than ten mem­bers of the al-Nus­ra Front were arrest­ed in south­ern Turkey with what local police told the press were two kilo­grams of sarin. In a 130-page indict­ment the group was accused of attempt­ing to pur­chase fus­es, pip­ing for the con­struc­tion of mor­tars, and chem­i­cal pre­cur­sors for sarin. Five of those arrest­ed were freed after a brief deten­tion. The oth­ers, includ­ing the ring­leader, Haytham Qassab, for whom the pros­e­cu­tor request­ed a prison sen­tence of 25 years, were released pend­ing tri­al. In the mean­time the Turk­ish press has been rife with spec­u­la­tion that the Erdoğan admin­is­tra­tion has been cov­er­ing up the extent of its involve­ment with the rebels. In a news con­fer­ence last sum­mer, Aydin Sez­gin, Turkey’s ambas­sador to Moscow, dis­missed the arrests and claimed to reporters that the recov­ered ‘sarin’ was mere­ly ‘anti-freeze’.

The DIA paper took the arrests as evi­dence that al-Nus­ra was expand­ing its access to chem­i­cal weapons. It said Qassab had ‘self-iden­ti­fied’ as a mem­ber of al-Nus­ra, and that he was direct­ly con­nect­ed to Abd-al-Ghani, the ‘ANF emir for mil­i­tary man­u­fac­tur­ing’. Qassab and his asso­ciate Khalid Ous­ta worked with Halit Unalka­ya, an employ­ee of a Turk­ish firm called Zirve Export, who pro­vid­ed ‘price quotes for bulk quan­ti­ties of sarin pre­cur­sors’. Abd-al-Ghani’s plan was for two asso­ciates to ‘per­fect a process for mak­ing sarin, then go to Syr­ia to train oth­ers to begin large scale pro­duc­tion at an uniden­ti­fied lab in Syr­ia’. The DIA paper said that one of his oper­a­tives had pur­chased a pre­cur­sor on the ‘Bagh­dad chem­i­cal mar­ket’, which ‘has sup­port­ed at least sev­en CW efforts since 2004’.

A series of chem­i­cal weapon attacks in March and April 2013 was inves­ti­gat­ed over the next few months by a spe­cial UN mis­sion to Syr­ia. A per­son with close knowl­edge of the UN’s activ­i­ty in Syr­ia told me that there was evi­dence link­ing the Syr­i­an oppo­si­tion to the first gas attack, on 19 March in Khan Al-Assal, a vil­lage near Alep­po. In its final report in Decem­ber, the mis­sion said that at least 19 civil­ians and one Syr­i­an sol­dier were among the fatal­i­ties, along with scores of injured. It had no man­date to assign respon­si­bil­i­ty for the attack, but the per­son with knowl­edge of the UN’s activ­i­ties said: ‘Inves­ti­ga­tors inter­viewed the peo­ple who were there, includ­ing the doc­tors who treat­ed the vic­tims. It was clear that the rebels used the gas. It did not come out in pub­lic because no one want­ed to know.’

In the months before the attacks began, a for­mer senior Defense Depart­ment offi­cial told me, the DIA was cir­cu­lat­ing a dai­ly clas­si­fied report known as SYRUP on all intel­li­gence relat­ed to the Syr­i­an con­flict, includ­ing mate­r­i­al on chem­i­cal weapons. But in the spring, dis­tri­b­u­tion of the part of the report con­cern­ing chem­i­cal weapons was severe­ly cur­tailed on the orders of Denis McDo­nough, the White House chief of staff. ‘Some­thing was in there that trig­gered a shit fit by McDo­nough,’ the for­mer Defense Depart­ment offi­cial said. ‘One day it was a huge deal, and then, after the March and April sarin attacks’ – he snapped his fin­gers – ‘it’s no longer there.’ The deci­sion to restrict dis­tri­b­u­tion was made as the joint chiefs ordered inten­sive con­tin­gency plan­ning for a pos­si­ble ground inva­sion of Syr­ia whose pri­ma­ry objec­tive would be the elim­i­na­tion of chem­i­cal weapons. . . .

. . . . At this stage, Obama’s premise – that only the Syr­i­an army was capa­ble of deploy­ing sarin – was unrav­el­ling. With­in a few days of the 21 August attack, the for­mer intel­li­gence offi­cial told me, Russ­ian mil­i­tary intel­li­gence oper­a­tives had recov­ered sam­ples of the chem­i­cal agent from Ghou­ta. They analysed it and passed it on to British mil­i­tary intel­li­gence; this was the mate­r­i­al sent to Por­ton Down. (A spokesper­son for Por­ton Down said: ‘Many of the sam­ples analysed in the UK test­ed pos­i­tive for the nerve agent sarin.’ MI6 said that it doesn’t com­ment on intel­li­gence mat­ters.)

The for­mer intel­li­gence offi­cial said the Russ­ian who deliv­ered the sam­ple to the UK was ‘a good source – some­one with access, knowl­edge and a record of being trust­wor­thy’. After the first report­ed uses of chem­i­cal weapons in Syr­ia last year, Amer­i­can and allied intel­li­gence agen­cies ‘made an effort to find the answer as to what if any­thing, was used – and its source’, the for­mer intel­li­gence offi­cial said. ‘We use data exchanged as part of the Chem­i­cal Weapons Con­ven­tion. The DIA’s base­line con­sist­ed of know­ing the com­po­si­tion of each batch of Sovi­et-man­u­fac­tured chem­i­cal weapons. But we didn’t know which batch­es the Assad gov­ern­ment cur­rent­ly had in its arse­nal. With­in days of the Dam­as­cus inci­dent we asked a source in the Syr­i­an gov­ern­ment to give us a list of the batch­es the gov­ern­ment cur­rent­ly had. This is why we could con­firm the dif­fer­ence so quick­ly.’

The process hadn’t worked as smooth­ly in the spring, the for­mer intel­li­gence offi­cial said, because the stud­ies done by West­ern intel­li­gence ‘were incon­clu­sive as to the type of gas it was. The word “sarin” didn’t come up. There was a great deal of dis­cus­sion about this, but since no one could con­clude what gas it was, you could not say that Assad had crossed the president’s red line.’ By 21 August, the for­mer intel­li­gence offi­cial went on, ‘the Syr­i­an oppo­si­tion clear­ly had learned from this and announced that “sarin” from the Syr­i­an army had been used, before any analy­sis could be made, and the press and White House jumped at it. Since it now was sarin, “It had to be Assad.”’

The UK defence staff who relayed the Por­ton Down find­ings to the joint chiefs were send­ing the Amer­i­cans a mes­sage, the for­mer intel­li­gence offi­cial said: ‘We’re being set up here.’ (This account made sense of a terse mes­sage a senior offi­cial in the CIA sent in late August: ‘It was not the result of the cur­rent regime. UK & US know this.’) By then the attack was a few days away and Amer­i­can, British and French planes, ships and sub­marines were at the ready.

The offi­cer ulti­mate­ly respon­si­ble for the plan­ning and exe­cu­tion of the attack was Gen­er­al Mar­tin Dempsey, chair­man of the joint chiefs. From the begin­ning of the cri­sis, the for­mer intel­li­gence offi­cial said, the joint chiefs had been scep­ti­cal of the administration’s argu­ment that it had the facts to back up its belief in Assad’s guilt. They pressed the DIA and oth­er agen­cies for more sub­stan­tial evi­dence. ‘There was no way they thought Syr­ia would use nerve gas at that stage, because Assad was win­ning the war,’ the for­mer intel­li­gence offi­cial said. Dempsey had irri­tat­ed many in the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion by repeat­ed­ly warn­ing Con­gress over the sum­mer of the dan­ger of Amer­i­can mil­i­tary involve­ment in Syr­ia. . . .

. . . .A US intel­li­gence con­sul­tant told me that a few weeks before 21 August he saw a high­ly clas­si­fied brief­ing pre­pared for Dempsey and the defense sec­re­tary, Chuck Hagel, which described ‘the acute anx­i­ety’ of the Erdoğan admin­is­tra­tion about the rebels’ dwin­dling prospects. The analy­sis warned that the Turk­ish lead­er­ship had expressed ‘the need to do some­thing that would pre­cip­i­tate a US mil­i­tary response’. By late sum­mer, the Syr­i­an army still had the advan­tage over the rebels, the for­mer intel­li­gence offi­cial said, and only Amer­i­can air pow­er could turn the tide. In the autumn, the for­mer intel­li­gence offi­cial went on, the US intel­li­gence ana­lysts who kept work­ing on the events of 21 August ‘sensed that Syr­ia had not done the gas attack. But the 500 pound goril­la was, how did it hap­pen? The imme­di­ate sus­pect was the Turks, because they had all the pieces to make it hap­pen.’

As inter­cepts and oth­er data relat­ed to the 21 August attacks were gath­ered, the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty saw evi­dence to sup­port its sus­pi­cions. ‘We now know it was a covert action planned by Erdoğan’s peo­ple to push Oba­ma over the red line,’ the for­mer intel­li­gence offi­cial said. ‘They had to esca­late to a gas attack in or near Dam­as­cus when the UN inspec­tors’ – who arrived in Dam­as­cus on 18 August to inves­ti­gate the ear­li­er use of gas – ‘were there. The deal was to do some­thing spec­tac­u­lar. Our senior mil­i­tary offi­cers have been told by the DIA and oth­er intel­li­gence assets that the sarin was sup­plied through Turkey – that it could only have got­ten there with Turk­ish sup­port. The Turks also pro­vid­ed the train­ing in pro­duc­ing the sarin and han­dling it.’ Much of the sup­port for that assess­ment came from the Turks them­selves, via inter­cept­ed con­ver­sa­tions in the imme­di­ate after­math of the attack. ‘Prin­ci­pal evi­dence came from the Turk­ish post-attack joy and back-slap­ping in numer­ous inter­cepts. Oper­a­tions are always so super-secret in the plan­ning but that all flies out the win­dow when it comes to crow­ing after­wards. There is no greater vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty than in the per­pe­tra­tors claim­ing cred­it for suc­cess.’ Erdoğan’s prob­lems in Syr­ia would soon be over: ‘Off goes the gas and Oba­ma will say red line and Amer­i­ca is going to attack Syr­ia, or at least that was the idea. But it did not work out that way.’

The post-attack intel­li­gence on Turkey did not make its way to the White House. ‘Nobody wants to talk about all this,’ the for­mer intel­li­gence offi­cial told me. ‘There is great reluc­tance to con­tra­dict the pres­i­dent, although no all-source intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty analy­sis sup­port­ed his leap to con­vict. There has not been one sin­gle piece of addi­tion­al evi­dence of Syr­i­an involve­ment in the sarin attack pro­duced by the White House since the bomb­ing raid was called off. My gov­ern­ment can’t say any­thing because we have act­ed so irre­spon­si­bly. And since we blamed Assad, we can’t go back and blame Erdoğan.’. . . .