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This broadcast was recorded in one, 60-minute segment.
Introduction: Supplementing FTR #954, this broadcast continues analysis of the alleged Assad government chemical weapons attack.
Key points of discussion include:
- Further analysis by MIT expert Theodore Postol, who sees the photographic evidence alleged to support the Trump administration’s allegations as questionable. ” . . . ‘This addendum provides data that unambiguously shows that the assumption in the WHR that there was no tampering with the alleged site of the sarin release is not correct. This egregious error raises questions about every other claim in the WHR. … The implication of this observation is clear – the WHR was not reviewed and released by any competent intelligence expert unless they were motivated by factors other than concerns about the accuracy of the report. . . .”
- Particularly suspicious (laughable?) is a picture showing personnel examining the purported sarin attack site with woefully inadequate protective clothing. ” . . . . ‘If there were any sarin present at this location when this photograph was taken everybody in the photograph would have received a lethal or debilitating dose of sarin. The fact that these people were dressed so inadequately either suggests a complete ignorance of the basic measures needed to protect an individual from sarin poisoning, or that they knew that the site was not seriously contaminated. This is the crater that is the centerpiece evidence provided in the WHR for a sarin attack delivered by a Syrian aircraft.’ . . . . ”
- Questionable analysis in the alleged chlorine gas attacks also attributed to the al-Assad regime. ” . . . In one of the chlorine cases, however, Syrian eyewitnesses came forward to testify that the rebels had staged the alleged attack so it could be blamed on the government. In that incident, the U.N. team reached no conclusion as to what had really happened, but neither did the investigators – now alerted to the rebels’ tactic of staging chemical attacks – apply any additional skepticism to the other cases. In one case, the rebels and their supporters also claimed to know that an alleged ‘barrel bomb’ contained a canister of chlorine because of the sound that it made while descending. There was no explanation for how that sort of detection was even possible. . . .”
- A British doctor who was a focal point of PR coverage of the alleged sarin attack has a jihadist background. ” . . . . A British doctor who documented a suspected chemical weapons attack in Syria was considered a ‘committed jihadist’ by MI6 and was struck off the General Medical Council in 2016. Shajul Islam, 31, posted several videos on Twitter in the aftermath of the Tuesday’s (4 April) attack where he appeared to be treating patients in Khan Sheikhoun. He appeared on several television networks such as NBC to discuss what he saw, but it has now emerged Islam was previously charged on terror offences in the UK. . . .”
- The underlying strategic reason for some of the Trump/Russian interface, one that dovetails with the Syrian provocation/escalation: ” . . . . The United Arab Emirates arranged a secret meeting in January between Blackwater founder Erik Prince and a Russian close to President Vladimir Putin as part of an apparent effort to establish a back-channel line of communication between Moscow and President-elect Donald Trump, according to U.S., European and Arab officials. The meeting took place around Jan. 11 — nine days before Trump’s inauguration — in the Seychelles islands in the Indian Ocean, officials said. Though the full agenda remains unclear, the UAE agreed to broker the meeting in part to explore whether Russia could be persuaded to curtail its relationship with Iran, including in Syria, a Trump administration objective . . . .”
- George W. Bush administration officials are confident another terrorist attack is coming appear to be concerned that the Trump could use terror to grab and abuse executive powers. We present some of their thoughts against the background of our discussion in FTR #953 about Bernie Sanders’ paving the way for Muslim Brotherhood-linked elements: ” . . . . ‘We can assume there will be another terrorist attack in the U.S. If the executive order is in place, he will point to the attack as support for the executive order and the need to expand it to other countries with bad dudes (Muslims). If the executive order has been struck down, Trump will blame judges and Democrats for the attack. . . .‘We both wholly believe that Trump needs a bogeyman. But, more importantly, he needs distraction and a blame source. In terrorists, he has his bogeyman. In his control of the prevailing press narrative via tweet, he has distraction. And, in the judiciary, he has a source of blame for why his way was right from the beginning.’ . . . . ‘I am fully confident that an attack is exactly what he wants and needs.’ . . . .”
Whereas the Syrian alleged sarin incident appears to have been effected by some of the West’s al-Qaeda surrogates in the conflict, past provocations have involved more direct involvement by elements of the intelligence community. In May of 1963, with then South Vietnamese president Diem pushing for a reduction in U.S. forces in Vietnam (against American wishes), a bombing occurred at a Hue radio station that was the focal point of Buddhist protests of the government’s policy toward Buddhists. The authorship of that attack and a 1952 Saigon bombing, was not the Vietcong
Key points of analysis:
- The May, 1963 attack in Hue: “ . . . . As Dang Sy and his security officers were approaching the area in armored cars about fifty meters away, two powerful explosions blasted the people on the veranda of the station, killing seven on the spot and fatally wounding a child. At least fifteen others were injured. . . .”
- Forensic analysis of the wounds of the victims: “ . . . Dr. Le Khac Quyen, the hospital director at Hue, said after examining the victims’ bodies that he had never seen such injuries. The bodies had been decapitated. He found no metal in the corpses, only holes. There were no wounds below the chest. In his official finding, Dr. Quyen ruled that ‘the death of the people was caused by an explosion which took place in mid-air, blowing off their heads and mutilating their bodies.’ . . . ”
- Dr. Quyen’s conclusions about the source of the victims’ wounds in the 1963 attack: “ . . . . The absence of any metal in the bodies or on the radio station’s veranda pointed to powerful plastic bombs as the source of the explosions. . . .”
- Analysis of the 1952 bombing in Saigon: “ . . . . Who did possess such powerful plastic bombs? An answer is provided by Graham Greene’s prophetic novel The Quiet American, based on historical events that occurred in Saigon eleven years before the bombing in Hue. Greene was in Saigon on January 9, 1952, when two bombs exploded in the city’s center, killing ten and injuring many more. A picture of the scene, showing a man with his legs blown off, appeared in Life magazine as the ‘Picture of the Week.’ The Life caption said the Saigon bombs had been ‘planted by Viet Minh Communists’ and ‘signaled general intensification of the Viet Minh violence.’ In like manner, the New York Times headlined: ‘Reds’ Time Bombs Rip Saigon Center.’ . . .”
- In the 1952 bombing, the operational coordination between U.S. media outlets and the perpetrators of the attack is noteworthy for our purposes: “ . . . . General The’s bombing material, a U.S. plastic, had been supplied to him by his sponsor, the Central Intelligence Agency. Greene observed in his memoir, Ways of Escape, it was no coincidence that ‘the Life photographer at the moment of the explosion was so well placed that he was able to take an astonishing and horrifying photograph which showed the body of a trishaw driver still upright after his legs had been blown off.’ The CIA had set the scene, alerting the Life photographer and Times reporter so they could convey the terrorist bombing as the work of ‘Viet Minh Communists’ to a mass audience. . . .”
- South Vietnamese investigation of the May, 1963 attack, arrived at a conclusion similar to Graham Greene’s discovery in the 1952 attack: “ . . . . According to an investigation carried by the Catholic newspaper Hoa Binh. . . . a Captain Scott . . . . had come to Hue from Da Nang on May 7, 1963. He admitted he was the American agent responsible for the bombing at the radio station the next day. He said he used ‘an explosive that was still secret and known only to certain people in the Central Intelligence Agency, a charge no larger than a matchbox with a timing device.’. . . .”
1. The program begins with further analysis by MIT expert Theodore Postol, who sees the photographic evidence alleged to support the Trump administration’s allegations as questionable. ” . . . ‘This addendum provides data that unambiguously shows that the assumption in the WHR that there was no tampering with the alleged site of the sarin release is not correct. This egregious error raises questions about every other claim in the WHR. … The implication of this observation is clear – the WHR was not reviewed and released by any competent intelligence expert unless they were motivated by factors other than concerns about the accuracy of the report. . . .”
Particularly suspicious (laughable?) is a picture showing personnel examining the purported sarin attack site with woefully inadequate protective clothing. ” . . . . ‘If there were any sarin present at this location when this photograph was taken everybody in the photograph would have received a lethal or debilitating dose of sarin. The fact that these people were dressed so inadequately either suggests a complete ignorance of the basic measures needed to protect an individual from sarin poisoning, or that they knew that the site was not seriously contaminated. This is the crater that is the centerpiece evidence provided in the WHR for a sarin attack delivered by a Syrian aircraft.’ . . . . ”
“Did Al Qaeda Fool the White House Again” by Robert Parry; Consortium News; 4/14/2017.
. . . . With the U.S. intelligence community effectively silenced by the fact that the President has already acted, Theodore Postol, a technology and national security expert at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, undertook his own review of the supposed evidence cited by Trump’s White House to issue a four-page “intelligence assessment” on April 11 asserting with “high confidence” that Assad’s military delivered a bomb filled with sarin on the town of Khan Sheikdoun on the morning of April 4.
Postol, whose analytical work helped debunk Official Washington’s groupthink regarding the 2013 sarin attack outside Damascus, expressed new shock at the shoddiness of the latest White House report (or WHR). Postol produced “a quick turnaround assessment” of the April 11 report that night and went into greater detail in an addendum on April 13, writing:
“This addendum provides data that unambiguously shows that the assumption in the WHR that there was no tampering with the alleged site of the sarin release is not correct. This egregious error raises questions about every other claim in the WHR. … The implication of this observation is clear – the WHR was not reviewed and released by any competent intelligence expert unless they were motivated by factors other than concerns about the accuracy of the report.
“The WHR also makes claims about ‘communications intercepts’ which supposedly provide high confidence that the Syrian government was the source of the 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 evidence that unambiguously shows that the assumption that the sarin release crater was tampered with is contained in six photographs at the end of this document.”
Postol notes that one key photo “shows a man standing in the alleged sarin-release crater. He is wearing a honeycomb facemask that is designed to filter small particles from the air. Other apparel on him is an open necked cloth shirt and what appear to be medical exam gloves. Two other men are standing in front of him (on the left in the photograph) also wearing honeycomb facemask’s and medical exam gloves.
“If there were any sarin present at this location when this photograph was taken everybody in the photograph would have received a lethal or debilitating dose of sarin. The fact that these people were dressed so inadequately either suggests a complete ignorance of the basic measures needed to protect an individual from sarin poisoning, or that they knew that the site was not seriously contaminated.
“This is the crater that is the centerpiece evidence provided in the WHR for a sarin attack delivered by a Syrian aircraft.”
No ‘Competent’ Analyst
After reviewing other discrepancies in photos of the crater, Postol wrote: “It is hard for me to believe that anybody competent could have been involved in producing the WHR report and the implications of such an obviously predetermined result strongly suggests that this report was not motivated by a serious analysis of any kind.
“This finding is disturbing. It indicates that the WHR was probably a report purely aimed at justifying actions that were not supported by any legitimate intelligence. This is not a unique situation. President George W. Bush has argued that he was misinformed about unambiguous evidence that Iraq was hiding a substantial amount of weapons of mass destruction. This false intelligence led to a US attack on Iraq that started a process that ultimately led to a political disintegration in the Middle East, which through a series of unpredicted events then led to the rise of the Islamic State.”
Postol continued: “On August 30, 2013, the White House [under President Obama] produced a similarly false report about the nerve agent attack on August 21, 2013 in Damascus. This report also contained numerous intelligence claims that could not be true. An interview with President 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 August 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. …
“It is now obvious that a second incident similar to what happened in the Obama administration has now occurred in the Trump administration. In this case, the president, supported by his staff, made a decision to launch 59 cruise missiles at a Syrian air base. 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 seeking to force decisions that were not justified by the cited intelligence. This is a serious matter and should not be allowed to continue.”
2. Robert Parry has noted questionable analysis in the alleged chlorine gas attacks also attributed to the al-Assad regime. ” . . . In one of the chlorine cases, however, Syrian eyewitnesses came forward to testify that the rebels had staged the alleged attack so it could be blamed on the government. In that incident, the U.N. team reached no conclusion as to what had really happened, but neither did the investigators – now alerted to the rebels’ tactic of staging chemical attacks – apply any additional skepticism to the other cases. In one case, the rebels and their supporters also claimed to know that an alleged “barrel bomb” contained a canister of chlorine because of the sound that it made while descending. There was no explanation for how that sort of detection was even possible. . . .”
“NYT Retreats on 2013 Syria-Sarin Gas Claims” by Robert Parry; Consortiumnews; 4/6/2017.
. . . . The Chlorine Cases
The chlorine-gas cases have resulted in only a few fatalities, which also undercuts the claims that the Assad government was responsible for them. Why would Assad risk more outside military intervention against his government by using a chemical weapon that has almost no military value, at least as allegedly deployed in Syria?
U.N. investigators – under intense pressure from the West to find something that could be pinned on Assad – agreed to blame him for a couple of the chlorine allegations coming from rebel forces and their civilian allies. But the U.N. team did not inspect the sites directly, relying instead of the testimony of Assad’s enemies.
In one of the chlorine cases, however, Syrian eyewitnesses came forward to testify that the rebels had staged the alleged attack so it could be blamed on the government. In that incident, the U.N. team reached no conclusion as to what had really happened, but neither did the investigators – now alerted to the rebels’ tactic of staging chemical attacks – apply any additional skepticism to the other cases.
In one case, the rebels and their supporters also claimed to know that an alleged “barrel bomb” contained a canister of chlorine because of the sound that it made while descending. There was no explanation for how that sort of detection was even possible.
Yet, despite the flaws in the rebels’ chlorine claims – and the collapse of the 2013 sarin case – the Times and other mainstream U.S. news outlets report the chlorine allegations as flat-fact, without reference to sourcing from the U.N. investigators whose careers largely depended on them coming up with conclusions that pleased the majority of the five-member Security Council – the U.S., Great Britain and France.
If this fuller history were understood, much greater skepticism would be warranted by the new allegations about Assad ordering a new sarin attack. While it’s conceivable that Assad’s military is guilty – although why Assad would take this risk at this moment is hard to fathom – it’s also conceivable that Al Qaeda’s jihadists – finding themselves facing impending defeat – chose to stage a sarin attack even if that meant killing some innocent civilians.
Al Qaeda’s goal would be to draw in the U.S. or Israeli military against the Syrian government, creating space for a jihadist counteroffensive. And, as we should all recall, it’s not as if Al Qaeda hasn’t killed many innocent civilians before.
3. A British doctor who was a focal point of PR coverage of the alleged sarin attack has a jihadist background. ” . . . . A British doctor who documented a suspected chemical weapons attack in Syria was considered a “committed jihadist” by MI6 and was struck off the General Medical Council in 2016. Shajul Islam, 31, posted several videos on Twitter in the aftermath of the Tuesday’s (4 April) attack where he appeared to be treating patients in Khan Sheikhoun. He appeared on several television networks such as NBC to discuss what he saw, but it has now emerged Islam was previously charged on terror offences in the UK. . . .”
A British doctor who documented a suspected chemical weapons attack in Syria was considered a “committed jihadist” by MI6 and was struck off the General Medical Council in 2016.
Shajul Islam, 31, posted several videos on Twitter in the aftermath of the Tuesday’s (4 April) attack where he appeared to be treating patients in Khan Sheikhoun.
He appeared on several television networks such as NBC to discuss what he saw, but it has now emerged Islam was previously charged on terror offences in the UK.
Islam, from Stratford in east London, first travelled to Syria in 2012 and worked in opposition-held areas of the country such as Al Bab, close to the Turkish border.
But shortly after arriving, he was wanted by MI6 – Britain’s foreign intelligence agency – for his alleged role in the kidnapping of British photojournalist John Cantlie and his Dutch colleague Jeroen Oerlemans.
Cantlie and Oerlemans were held captive for nine days after they strayed into a jihadist camp in northern Syria where Islam was working.
Islam maintains he was simply a medic who was not affiliated to any terror groups, but when he returned to the UK in 2013, he was arrested at Heathrow Airport and held in Sussex Police’s specialist counter-terrorism units.
Islam was charged alongside his younger brother Najul Islam, who had worked in the Department for Work and Pensions before travelling to Syria, and Jubayer Chowdhury.
All three were held in the high security Belmarsh Prison until they were charged with terrorism offences to appear in Kingston Crown Court.
4. A back channel appears to have been set up for the purpose of quietly exploring what the US would have to offer Russia in order to get Moscow to drop its support for Tehran. This points towards a situation different different from the “Trump as Kremlin dupe”–one that has Trump as a pawn of the neocons and Gulf monarchies who really want to see a war with Iran:
The United Arab Emirates arranged a secret meeting in January between Blackwater founder Erik Prince and a Russian close to President Vladimir Putin as part of an apparent effort to establish a back-channel line of communication between Moscow and President-elect Donald Trump, according to U.S., European and Arab officials.
The meeting took place around Jan. 11 — nine days before Trump’s inauguration — in the Seychelles islands in the Indian Ocean, officials said. Though the full agenda remains unclear, the UAE agreed to broker the meeting in part to explore whether Russia could be persuaded to curtail its relationship with Iran, including in Syria, a Trump administration objective that would be likely to require major concessions to Moscow on U.S. sanctions.
Though Prince had no formal role with the Trump campaign or transition team, he presented himself as an unofficial envoy for Trump to high-ranking Emiratis involved in setting up his meeting with the Putin confidant, according to the officials, who did not identify the Russian.
Prince was an avid supporter of Trump. After the Republican convention, he contributed $250,000 to Trump’s campaign, the national party and a pro-Trump super PAC led by GOP mega-donor Rebekah Mercer, records show. He has ties to people in Trump’s circle, including Stephen K. Bannon, now serving as the president’s chief strategist and senior counselor. Prince’s sister Betsy DeVos serves as education secretary in the Trump administration. And Prince was seen in the Trump transition offices in New York in December.
U.S. officials said the FBI has been scrutinizing the Seychelles meeting as part of a broader probe of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election and alleged contacts between associates of Putin and Trump. The FBI declined to comment.
The Seychelles encounter, which one official said spanned two days, adds to an expanding web of connections between Russia and Americans with ties to Trump — contacts that the White House has been reluctant to acknowledge or explain until they have been exposed by news organizations.
“We are not aware of any meetings, and Erik Prince had no role in the transition,” said Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary.
A Prince spokesman said in a statement: “Erik had no role on the transition team. This is a complete fabrication. The meeting had nothing to do with President Trump. Why is the so-called under-resourced intelligence community messing around with surveillance of American citizens when they should be hunting terrorists?”
Prince is best known as the founder of Blackwater, a security firm that became a symbol of U.S. abuses in Iraq after a series of incidents, including one in 2007 in which the company’s guards were accused — and later criminally convicted — of killing civilians in a crowded Iraqi square. Prince sold the firm, which was subsequently re-branded, but has continued building a private paramilitary empire with contracts across the Middle East and Asia. He now heads a Hong Kong-based company known as the Frontier Services Group.
Prince would probably have been seen as too controversial to serve in any official capacity in the Trump transition or administration. But his ties to Trump advisers, experience with clandestine work and relationship with the royal leaders of the Emirates — where he moved in 2010 amid mounting legal problems for his American business — would have positioned him as an ideal go-between.
The Seychelles meeting came after separate private discussions in New York involving high-ranking representatives of Trump with both Moscow and the Emirates.
The White House has acknowledged that Michael T. Flynn, Trump’s original national security adviser, and Trump adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner met with the Russian ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak, in late November or early December in New York.
Flynn and Kushner were joined by Bannon for a separate meeting with the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, who made an undisclosed visit to New York later in December, according to the U.S., European and Arab officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.
In an unusual breach of protocol, the UAE did not notify the Obama administration in advance of the visit, though officials found out because Zayed’s name appeared on a flight manifest.
Officials said Zayed and his brother, the UAE’s national security adviser, coordinated the Seychelles meeting with Russian government officials with the goal of establishing an unofficial back channel between Trump and Putin.
Officials said Zayed wanted to be helpful to both leaders, who had talked about working more closely together, a policy objective long advocated by the crown prince. The UAE, which sees Iran as one of its main enemies, also shared the Trump team’s interest in finding ways to drive a wedge between Moscow and Tehran.
Zayed met twice with Putin in 2016, according to Western officials, and urged the Russian leader to work more closely with the Emirates and Saudi Arabia — an effort to isolate Iran.
At the time of the Seychelles meeting and for weeks afterward, the UAE believed that Prince had the blessing of the new administration to act as its unofficial representative. The Russian participant was a person whom Zayed knew was close to Putin from his interactions with both men, the officials said.
Scrutiny over Russia
When the Seychelles meeting took place, official contacts between members of the incoming Trump administration and the Russian government were under intense scrutiny, both from federal investigators and the press.
Less than a week before the Seychelles meeting, U.S. intelligence agencies released a report accusing Russia of intervening clandestinely during the 2016 election to help Trump win the White House.
The FBI was already investigating communications between Flynn and Kislyak. The Washington Post’s David Ignatius first disclosed those communications on Jan. 12, around the time of the Seychelles meeting. Flynn was subsequently fired by Trump for misleading Vice President Pence and others about his discussions with Kislyak.
Yousef Al Otaiba, the UAE’s ambassador in Washington, declined to comment.
…
The level of discretion surrounding the Seychelles meeting seems extraordinary given the frequency with which senior Trump advisers, including Flynn and Kushner, had interacted with Russian officials in the United States, including at the high-profile Trump Tower in New York.
Steven Simon, a National Security Council senior director for the Middle East and North Africa in the Obama White House, said: “The idea of using business cutouts, or individuals perceived to be close to political leaders, as a tool of diplomacy is as old as the hills. These unofficial channels are desirable precisely because they are deniable; ideas can be tested without the risk of failure.”
Current and former U.S. officials said that while Prince refrained from playing a direct role in the Trump transition, his name surfaced so frequently in internal discussions that he seemed to function as an outside adviser whose opinions were valued on a range of issues, including plans for overhauling the U.S. intelligence community.
He appears to have particularly close ties to Bannon, appearing multiple times on the Breitbart satellite radio program and website that Bannon ran before joining the Trump campaign.
In a July interview with Bannon, Prince said those seeking forceful U.S. leadership should “wait till January and hope Mr. Trump is elected.” And he lashed out at President Barack Obama, saying that because of his policies “the terrorists, the fascists, are winning.”
Days before the November election, Prince appeared on the Breitbart radio program, saying that he had “well-placed sources” in the New York City Police Department telling him they were preparing to make arrests in the investigation of former congressman Anthony Weiner (D‑N.Y.) over allegations he exchanged sexually explicit texts with a minor. Flynn tweeted a link to the Breitbart report on the claim. No arrests occurred.
Prince went on to make unfounded assertions that damaging material recovered from Weiner’s computers would implicate Hillary Clinton and her close adviser, Huma Abedin, who was married to Weiner. He also called Abedin an “agent of influence very sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood.”
Prince and his family were major GOP donors in 2016. The Center for Responsive Politics reported that the family gave more than $10 million to GOP candidates and super PACs, including about $2.7 million from his sister, DeVos, and her husband.
Prince’s father, Edgar Prince, built his fortune through an auto-parts company. Betsy married Richard DeVos Jr., heir to the Amway fortune.
Erik Prince has had lucrative contracts with the UAE government, which at one point paid his firm a reported $529 million to help bring in foreign fighters to help assemble an internal paramilitary force capable of carrying out secret operations and protecting Emirati installations from terrorist attacks.
Focus on Iran
The Trump administration and the UAE appear to share a similar preoccupation with Iran. Current and former officials said that Trump advisers were focused throughout the transition period on exploring ways to get Moscow to break ranks with Tehran.
“Separating Russia from Iran was a common theme,” said a former intelligence official in the Obama administration who met with Trump transition officials. “It didn’t seem very well thought out. It seemed a little premature. They clearly had a very specific policy position, which I found odd given that they hadn’t even taken the reins and explored with experts in the U.S. government the pros and cons of that approach.”
Michael McFaul, former U.S. ambassador to Russia, said he also had discussions with people close to the Trump administration about the prospects of drawing Russia away from Iran. “When I would hear this, I would think, ‘Yeah that’s great for you guys, but why would Putin ever do that?’?” McFaul said. “There is no interest in Russia ever doing that. They have a long relationship with Iran. They’re allied with Iran in fighting in Syria. They sell weapons to Iran. Iran is an important strategic partner for Russia in the Middle East.”
Following the New York meeting between the Emiratis and Trump aides, Zayed was approached by Prince, who said he was authorized to act as an unofficial surrogate for the president-elect, according to the officials. He wanted Zayed to set up a meeting with a Putin associate. Zayed agreed and proposed the Seychelles as the meeting place because of the privacy it would afford both sides. “He wanted to be helpful,” one official said of Zayed.
…
Current and former U.S. officials who have worked closely with Zayed, who is often referred to as MBZ, say it would be out of character for him to arrange the Jan. 11 meeting without getting a green light in advance from top aides to Trump and Putin, if not the leaders themselves. “MBZ is very cautious,” said an American businessman who knows Zayed and spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject. “There had to be a nod.”
The Seychelles meeting was deemed productive by the UAE and Russia, but the idea of arranging additional meetings between Prince and Putin’s associates was dropped, officials said. Even unofficial contacts between Trump and Putin associates had become too politically risky, officials said. . . .
5. George W. Bush administration officials are confident another terrorist attack is coming appear to be concerned that the Trump could use terror to grab and abuse executive powers. ‘We can assume there will be another terrorist attack in the U.S. If the executive order is in place, he will point to the attack as support for the executive order and the need to expand it to other countries with bad dudes (Muslims). If the executive order has been struck down, Trump will blame judges and Democrats for the attack. . . .‘We both wholly believe that Trump needs a bogeyman. But, more importantly, he needs distraction and a blame source. In terrorists, he has his bogeyman. In his control of the prevailing press narrative via tweet, he has distraction. And, in the judiciary, he has a source of blame for why his way was right from the beginning.’ . . . . ‘I am fully confident that an attack is exactly what he wants and needs.’ . . . .”
. . . . I talked to several counterterrorism experts this week, and they all believe that there will be another attack.
“I do believe the world faces a serious and growing terrorist threat,” Evan McMullin, the former C.I.A. officer and Republican who ran for President as an independent candidate against Trump, said. “But Trump, either by ignorance or malice, is distorting the nature of that threat by targeting very well-vetted immigrants, including legal permanent residents and refugees. He simply does not have a strong national-security case to make against these people, which is why it is reasonable to wonder if he has some ulterior motive for taking such extreme steps against them.”
Yesterday, Trump’s campaign to highlight this threat took a bizarre turn when he accused the media of burying coverage of terror attacks. “It’s gotten to a point where it’s not even being reported,” he said in remarks to troops at MacDill Air Force Base, in Tampa. “In many cases, the very, very dishonest press doesn’t want to report it. They have their reasons.” The White House later released a list of attacks since 2014 that it insisted had not received enough attention.
This is the second time in a week that Trump has accused others of not understanding the threat posed by terrorism. Over the weekend, he used Twitter to attack the federal judge who put a halt to Trump’s immigration ban. He called James L. Robart, who was appointed by President George W. Bush and unanimously confirmed by the Senate, a “so-called judge,” and later added, “Just cannot believe a judge would put our country in such peril. If something happens blame him and court system. People pouring in. Bad!”
One of the questions raised by Trump’s claims that the media and the courts have endangered the country is what he would do in the event of a terrorist attack.
Jack Goldsmith, a former senior Justice Department official in the George W. Bush Administration, who helped design the post‑9/11 anti-terror legal architecture, recently suggested that Trump might actually want his travel ban to be overturned. That way, in the wake of an attack, he can use the judiciary as a bogeyman and justify any new efforts to push through more extreme measures.
I asked Goldsmith and others what the menu of options might be for a President Trump empowered by the justifiable fears Americans would have in the aftermath of a serious attack. “If it is a large and grim attack, he might ask for more surveillance powers inside the U.S. (including fewer restrictions on data mingling and storage and queries), more immigration control power at the border, an exception to Posse Comitatus (which prohibits the military from law enforcement in the homeland), and perhaps more immigration-related detention powers,” Goldsmith wrote in an e‑mail. “In the extreme scenario Trump could ask Congress to suspend the writ of habeas corpus, which would cut off the kind of access to courts you are seeing right now for everyone (or for every class of persons for which the writ is suspended).”
He pointed out that President Abraham Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus and ignored courts that insisted he didn’t have such power. “The point of the example is that the only question is not what powers Trump might ‘ask for,’ ” Goldsmith said, “but also what powers he might assert or assume or grab, and what he can get away with.”
John Yoo, who as a lawyer for the George W. Bush Administration was the fiercest defender of its most extreme post‑9/11 policies, including the use of torture, recently wrote an Op-Ed in which he said he was alarmed by Trump’s attempt to expand the powers of the executive branch. (This was as if Trump had written an essay arguing that he was concerned about developers adding their names to buildings in lettering that was too large.) Yoo told me, “If there is another terrorist attack, I could see Trump seeking all of the powers that the President can exercise during wartime. The domestic powers would have to be approved by Congress, such as limitations on habeas, domestic warrantless surveillance, and an internal security act. We really haven’t had a system like that since the Second World War or the Communist cases of the nineteen-fifties.”
Matt Olsen, the former head of the National Counterterrorism Center, told me that he didn’t agree with Goldsmith’s suggestion that Trump actually wants the executive order overturned, but he said that he thought Trump was laying the groundwork for arguments he might make after an attack. “This is a win-win for Trump,” Olsen said. “We can assume there will be another terrorist attack in the U.S. If the executive order is in place, he will point to the attack as support for the executive order and the need to expand it to other countries with bad dudes (Muslims). If the executive order has been struck down, Trump will blame judges and Democrats for the attack.”
Olsen was also concerned that Trump might undo many of the changes that Barack Obama put in place to rein in the excesses of the Bush era. “As for other options in a post-attack scenario, just look back to 9/11,” he said. “C.I.A. black sites, enhanced interrogations, Gitmo, and warrantless surveillance will all be on the table. In addition, regardless of nationality, there will be changes to immigration and refugee policies.” He added that he could also imagine an effort to loosen restrictions on surveillance inside the United States.
Todd Breasseale, the former assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Homeland Security, was also alarmed. “I had a very similar discussion with a former senior intel official on this very issue, before Jack’s column,” he told me. “We both wholly believe that Trump needs a bogeyman. But, more importantly, he needs distraction and a blame source. In terrorists, he has his bogeyman. In his control of the prevailing press narrative via tweet, he has distraction. And, in the judiciary, he has a source of blame for why his way was right from the beginning.” Breasseale added, “I am fully confident that an attack is exactly what he wants and needs.”
…
Trump’s efforts to hype the threat from terrorism during a period of domestic calm should be regarded with extreme skepticism. As McMullin noted, “Trump’s strange focus on the terrorist threat” was “out of step with reality at the moment” and was “a telltale sign of a leader contemplating policies that would otherwise be unacceptable.”
6. For historical perspective, we detail two provocations in Vietnam roughly a decade apart. Whereas the actions in Syria were apparently performed by the Islamist/al-Aqaeda proxy warriors employed by CIA and the other combatant elements in the Syrian conflict, elements of CIA engineered two bloody bombings using plastic explosives.
In 1954, a bombing in Saigon was arranged and blamed on the Viet Minh as grounds for increasing U.S. aid to the ultimately unsuccessful French counter-insurgency war in what was then French Indochina.
Ten years later, a similar bombing was arranged in Hue and blamed on the Diem government, at that time at loggerheads with the U.S. over his desire to reduce the U.S. military profile in Vietnam. At the same time, Diem was at odds with the Buddhist majority in his country over their desire for greater religious and civic freedom.
Of particular interest is the strategic placing of the media in the 1954 incident, priming them to process the event in the manner designated for successful propaganda effect.
JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters by James W. Douglass; Touchstone Books [SC]; Copyright 2008 by James W. Douglas; ISBN 978–1‑4391–9388‑4; pp. 129–131.
. . . . On the evening of May 8, encouraged by [dissident Buddhist monk Thich] Tri Quang and other Buddhist leaders, a crowd gathered outside the government radio station in Hue. At about 8:00 p.m., Tri Quang arrived carrying a tape recording of his morning speech. He and the people demanded that the tape be broadcast that night. When the station director refused, the crowd became insistent, pushing against the station’s doors and windows. Firefighters used water hoses to drive them back. The station director put in a call for help to the province security chief Major Dang Sy. As Dang Sy and his security officers were approaching the area in armored cars about fifty meters away, two powerful explosions blasted the people on the veranda of the station, killing seven on the spot and fatally wounding a child. At least fifteen others were injured.
Major Dang Sy claimed later that he thought the explosions were the beginning of a Viet Cong attack. He ordered his men to disperse the crowd with percussion grenades, crowd-control weapons that were described by a U.S. Army Field Manual as nonlethal. However, from the moment the armored cars drove up and the percussion grenades were thrown, Major Dang Sy and the South Vietnamese government were blamed for the night’s casualties by Thich Tri Quang and the Buddhist movement. The Buddhists’ interpretation of the event was adopted quickly by the U.S. media and government.
Dr. Le Khac Quyen, the hospital director at Hue, said after examining the victims’ bodies that he had never seen such injuries. The bodies had been decapitated. He found no metal in the corpses, only holes. There were no wounds below the chest. In his official finding, Dr. Quyen ruled that “the death of the people was caused by an explosion which took place in mid-air, blowing off their heads and mutilating their bodies.”
Neither the Buddhists nor the government liked his verdict. Although Dr. Quyen was a disciple of Thich Tri Quang and a government opposition leader, his finding frustrated his Buddhist friends because it tended to exonerate Diem’s security police. They were apparently incapable of inflicting the kinds of wounds he described. On the other hand, the government imprisoned Dr. Quyen for refusing to sign a medical certificate it had drawn up that claimed the victims’ wounds came from a type of bomb made by the Viet Cong—something Quyen didn’t know and wouldn’t certify.
The absence of any metal in the bodies or on the radio station’s veranda pointed to powerful plastic bombs as the source of the explosions. However, the Saigon government’s eagerness to identify plastic bombs with its enemy, the Viet Cong, was questionable. As Ellen Hammer pointed out in her investigation of the incident, “In later years, men who had served with the Viet Cong at that time denied they had any plastic could have produced such destruction.”
Who did possess such powerful plastic bombs?
An answer is provided by Graham Greene’s prophetic novel The Quiet American, based on historical events that occurred in Saigon eleven years before the bombing in Hue. Greene was in Saigon on January 9, 1952, when two bombs exploded in the city’s center, killing ten and injuring many more. A picture of the scene, showing a man with his legs blown off, appeared in Life magazine as the “Picture of the Week.” The Life caption said the Saigon bombs had been “planted by Viet Minh Communists” and “signaled general intensification of the Viet Minh violence.” In like manner, the New York Times headlined: “Reds’ Time Bombs Rip Saigon Center.”
In Saigon, Graham Greene knew the bombs had been planted and claimed proudly not by the Viet Minh but by a warlord, General The, whom Greene knew.
General The’s bombing material, a U.S. plastic, had been supplied to him by his sponsor, the Central Intelligence Agency. Greene observed in his memoir, Ways of Escape, it was no coincidence that “the Life photographer at the moment of the explosion was so well placed that he was able to take an astonishing and horrifying photograph which showed the body of a trishaw driver still upright after his legs had been blown off.” The CIA had set the scene, alerting the Life photographer and Times reporter so they could convey the terrorist bombing as the work of “Viet Minh Communists” to a mass audience.
Horrified and inspired by what he knew, Graham Greene wrote the truth in his novel, portraying a quiet American CIA agent as the primary source of the Saigon bombing. In The Quiet American, Greene used the CIA’s plastic as a mysterious motif, specifically mentioned in ten passages, whose deadly meaning was revealed finally in the Saigon explosions blamed falsely on the communists.
A decade later, plastic bombs were still a weapon valued in covert US. Plots designed to scapegoat an unsuspecting target. In March 1962, as we have seen, General Lyman Lemnitzer, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, proposed “exploding a few plastic bombs in carefully chosen spots” in the United States, then arresting and blaming Cuban agents for the terrorist acts.
In May 1963, Diem’s younger brother, Ngo Dinh Can, who ruled Hue, thought from the beginning that the Viet Cong had nothing to do with the explosions at the radio station. According to an investigation carried by the Catholic newspaper Hoa Binh, Ngo Dinh Can and his advisers were “convinced the explosions had to be the work of an American agent who wanted to make trouble for Diem.” In 1970 Hoa Binh located such a man, a Captain Scott, who in later years became a U.S. military adviser in the Mekong Delta. Scott had come to Hue from Da Nang on May 7, 1963. He admitted he was the American agent responsible for the bombing at the radio station the next day. He said he used “an explosive that was still secret and known only to certain people in the Central Intelligence Agency, a charge no larger than a matchbox with a timing device.” . . . .
Donald Trump just basically endorsed Marine Le Pen a day after a terror attack that comes right before the French head to the polls. He wasn’t supposed to given general presidential etiquette but he did anyway. Because of course. That’s how the global far-right operates. The only rule is the promotion of far-right domination (and also Trump doesn’t do etiquette well):
“The various ‘exit’ and populist camps were damaged by Trump and Brexit because people saw that this could actually happen—and this is what it looks like,” Wright said.
Yep, the biggest thing standing in the way of the current far-right ‘populist’ backlash against ‘the Establishment’ in the West is seeing what a disaster the people leading that backlash actually are when they’re handed the reigns of power and seeing how little they actually care about average people including their base supporters. And in Trump’s case the world is getting to find out that his campaign bafoonery wasn’t an act he could just turn ‘on’ and ‘off’. It’s who he is.
So who knows if Trump’s endorsement will end up helping or hurting Le Pen. But it’s a big reminder that, as opposed to the ‘Russia vs the liberal West’ framing of the major tensions in global affairs today, a far more accurate framing is ‘the global far-right vs everyone else’. Sure, the far-right sometimes squabbles with itself, but that unifying goal of preventing the kind of social progress that might allow us to reach that ‘Star Trek’ world where people in general aren’t held back back traditional irrational bigotries and myths that dominated their local cultures in the past is the glue that holds together the global far-right resurgence and it’s that resurgence that should be seen as the primary threat to world peace and progress today. If Russia suddenly became a progressive utopia tomorrow, that far-right global resurgence would still be happening.
It’s also important to keep in mind that the Trump/Bannon Western far-right, or Russian far-right, is far from the only far-right that is cheering for Le Pen’s electoral success. ISIS and al Qaeda and far-right Islamists in general would really like to see a “Christianity vs Islam” global conflagration that makes a diverse non-far-right society impossible:
“The leader of the far-right National Front, who is anti-immigrant, anti-European Union, pro-Russian, anti-American, and pro-Trump, has been the leader in the polls going into the first round of the presidential elections on Sunday among a field of 11 candidates. Conventional wisdom and most polls have raised the expectation that in the run-off two weeks later her extremism would be rejected by a massive majority of the voters. But that is far from certain in the wake of a highly publicized terrorist incident.”
Yep, the biggest incentive to carry out a terrorist attack is the predictable reactionary manner societies have following a terrorist attack. Hopefully humanity will figure that out one of these millennia. And hopefully much sooner. Otherwise, it looks like ISIS and their far-right “Crusader” counterparts are going to get their wish:
“In that context, from the jihadist point of view, a Le Pen victory is something devoutly to be wished. And the terrorist incident that could be the tipping point was all too easy to execute.”
Way too easy to execute. All they have to do is start a fight and people rally to their sides! The global far-right must be pinching themselves.
But let’s also not forget that the worldview promoted by Le Pen is a dream for its far-right reactionary Islamist counterparts for more than just their shared desire to divide up the world between different “us vs them” groups. They also love her for her ideas of “diversity”. Specifically, a vision for world where there’s a diversity of far-right dominated countries, each of which stamps out local diversity in the name of the traditional far-right uni-culture:
“Thus, Le Pen’s brand of universalism — a long French tradition — is “that of differences,” as she put it in her key foreign-policy speech earlier this year. Le Pen claims that she “defends a multicultural conception of the world,” but within that world nations have to be “uni-cultural.” In the foreign-policy arena, Le Pen’s determination to defend and protect France’s uniqueness implies a deep aversion to passing moral judgment on other countries. Le Pen wants to, so to speak, “enhance” the concept of human rights with “the rights of peoples” — by which she means nations. Le Pen holds that one of the most fundamental rights for a country is the right to decide how to deal with critical issues like religion, political systems, and border control. There can, in this view, be no universal approach to human rights. Human rights have to be defined — and will be limited — within national contexts, and those definitions cannot be questioned from the outside.”
Dominating far-right moral relativism. Everywhere. That’s the vision and the goal. Of Le Pen, al Qaeda, and the far-right basically everywhere. As long as a society is operating under that generic far-right hyper-macho, hyper-paternalistic hierarchical model that you find in far-right worldviews everywhere it’s ok and should be imposed on the local populace as the tradition ‘uni-culture’. If you want diversity, move around to a bunch of different far-right dominated uni-cultures.
And don’t forget that if you listen to the responses of, for instance, Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister in response to questions about why Saudi Arabia’s official state-enforced ideology is so close to ISIS’s, you basically get the same response: how can other society’s judge any other society’s mores. That is wrong, according to Saudi Arabia’s foreign minster:
“Al-Jubeir: Just like we respect your legal system, you should respect our legal system. You cannot impose your values on us, otherwise the world will become the law of the jungle. Every society decides what its laws are, and it’s the people who make decisions with regards to these laws. You cannot lecture another people about what you think is right or wrong based on your value system unless you’re willing to accept others imposing their value system on you.”
That sure sounds a lot like Le Pen. Because when you break down most far-right ideologies one of the underlying demands is the freedom to engage in the kinds of repressive social models you find in far-right movements without criticism. It’s an attitude that is pervasive in the American far-right victim culture (rallying against ‘political correctness’ as repression) and is a basic demand of oppressive regimes everywhere: stop persecuting our persecution by criticizing it.
At the same time, let’s also not forget that much of the appeal for groups like the National Front and Trump does come from the real and understandable frustrations with over economic paradigms that really have screwed over large swathes of society — primarily to the benefit of the super-rich who are the primary financiers, backers, and beneficiaries of far-right movements — and left people with a sense of desperation and despair. It’s all a reminder of what a massive historic disaster it’s been over the last generation to fuse of liberal values to emerge from the Enlightenment — openness, empathy, tolerance, equality, rights for women and minorities, and an overarching culture that respects diversity and is primarily only intolerant of intolerance and not abiding by the Golden Rule — to the far-right pro-rich economic theories (and wars) that have come to dominate both the US and European policy-making circles in recent decades (Reaganomics + the eurozone austerity-Ordoliberalism) that has helped pave the way for exactly the kind of situation we find ourselves in today.
But let’s also not forget that if there is a “WWIII” being fought, it’s a battle between the global far-right and everyone else to create a world that is safe for far-right domination everyone. You know, like how it was before the Enlightenment. It’s a “WWIII” that’s really always been waged and the global far-right has almost always been winning. And thanks the cooperation of the far-rightists like Trump, far-right Islamist fundamentalists like ISIS and the Saudi monarchy, and the European far-right like the National Front all working together to foment tensions and keep people division they just might score another massive victory in France. And if Russia magically became a liberal utopia tomorrow, ‘WWIII’ would still be on because it’s ‘WW-always. That’s how dominating reactionary repressive ideologies work. It’s why a uni-cultural of tolerant, nice, and understanding multi-culturalism is such an important goal and constantly under attack. Let’s not forget that.
Here’s something to keep in mind regarding the potential role Erik Prince might be playing in the Trump administration and its international negotiations, especially negotiations involving China (like the stand off with North Korea): Prince’s newest firm, Frontier Services Group (FSG), is already providing services for the government of China on its “One Belt, One Road” initiative to build a modern day land-based ‘Silk Road’ paired with a maritime ‘Silk Road’ to protect and promote Chinese trade. And deep ties between FSG and China’s state-owned conglomerate CITIC Group appear to be part of what’s facilitating FSG’s access to such lucrative contracts, with the FSG poised to get even more contracts as the “One Belt, One Road” program expands more into China’s neighboring countries. Especially in areas where the locals have a strong anti-Chinese sentiment and having a bunch of Erik Prince’s employees might be preferable, including Xinjiang province.
Yes, Erik Prince is positioning himself to be the Chinese government’s non-Chinese private security force of choice. Except, curiously, Prince claims that all FSG services will be unarmed and the company merely intends to “provide an operations facility where we can integrate ground and air logistics together with a training facility”. Who knows what exactly the services are that they’re offering (like a mercenary-run school for teaching mercenaries, perhaps?) but it looks like Erik Prince and the Chinese government are growing increasingly close. So if Prince was the kind of person the Trump team was willing to tap to negotiate on Trump’s behalf with the Russians during a secret meeting in the Seychelles you have to wonder what kind of secret negotiations Prince gets to engage in now that he’s known as both a viable Trump back channel and the Chinese government’s Western mercenary-of-choice:
“The fact that FSG is being allowed to set up a “base” in Yunnan suggests a strong degree of trust in the company from the highest levels of Chinese leadership. What’s more, the company is also planning on expanding into the highly militarized region of Xinjiang afterward to facilitate OBOR projects in Central Asia.”
That sounds like a controversial plan, although it’s unclear how controversial it is since it’s so unclear what the actual plan is. At least it’s unclear if we solely listen to what Prince and FSG representatives tell us the plan is. But if we listen to what insiders tell reporters in the articles below it become much clearer. And is still pretty controversial: the plan is apparently for FSG to train ex-PLA soldiers in how to be private contractors so they can operate all over the world in the countries that are part of the “One Belt, One Road” giant trade route to get around the prohibition so many countries have against the Chinese military operating in their country. So, yes, the plan really is to have FSG teach the Chinese how to set up their own Blackwaters:
“In an email to BuzzFeed News, a spokesperson for Frontier Services Group provided a statement and strongly disputed that the company was going to become a new Blackwater, insisting that all of its security services were unarmed and therefore not regulated. “FSG’s services do not involve armed personnel or training armed personnel.” The training at the Chinese bases would “help non-military personnel provide close protection security, without the use of arms.””
That’s the official line from FSG: everything they’re doing is unarmed, so therefore it’s not regulated. And somehow FSG is going to be teaching all thse non-military personnel how to provide close protection security without the use of arms. So, like, really, really bad ass kung fu? Psychic weapons? Let’s hope psychic weapons because that would be pretty cool. But, alas, it’s probably just regular weapons and FSG is simply lying:
“Asked about Frontier’s claim that Prince was planning “unarmed” security projects, both sources dismissed it, and emphasized that was not their understanding. It is “ridiculous,” said one.”
So at least based on those sources is sounds like FSG’s claim of “unarmed” training is a giant pile of BS. Which makes a lot more sense than the pretense that they were telling the truth because, really, what on earth would they be doing unarmed? At the same time, it’s not inconceivable that FSG’s personnel really are going to be dedicated primary to armed training of ex-PLA ‘private contractors-in-training’ and never actually engage in direct combat themselves. And by using this fiction FSG can operate legally in China (maybe) and act like a private contractor factory that the Chinese can use to for security along the “One Belt, One Ride” giant trade route. And presumably anywhere else where the Chinese government or companies might want a mercenary force. Or any other government of company potentially as long as this new Chinese mercenary force is will to take international clients. In other words, it looks like Americans ex-Mercenary king might be in the process setting up an ‘armed mercenaries’ industry in China. Potentially for export.
Worst. example. of. offshoring. jobs. ever. But it’s happening. And as a consequence, Prince is probably a pretty hot commodity in China these days. Just imagine all the uses they might have for a private mercenary industry. Or informal back channels....assuming the formal back channels aren’t available for some reason.
Brad Friedman just did an interview on The Brad Cast (available here) of MIT professor Theodore Postol on his analysis of the available evidence of the sarin attack. It’s an hour long interview and very worth a listen. And, *unnecessary spoiler alert*, Postol isn’t simply skeptical of the official account of what happened. He’s saying there is no way the attack occurred the way we are being told:
“Postol is a physicist and rocket trajectory expert who formerly served as a science advisor to the chief of Naval operations at the Pentagon, has been vindicated a number of times over the years concerning similarly skeptical analyses of claims concerning the U.S. military’s use of Patriot missile technology in the first Gulf War (see Charlie Pierce’s 2005 Boston Globe profile of Postol here), as well as the Obama White House claims about Assad’s alleged chemical weapons attack in 2013. He joins me today to explain his analyses and to speak to the remarkable lack of skeptical coverage by the U.S. mainstream media regarding the WHR on the April nerve agent incident.”
And despite that resume that makes Postol a go-to expert to consult during times like this, Postol’s opinion is apparently extremely unwanted these days. It’s one of the those “the silent-treatment is deafening” situations.
So is this how it’s going to be indefinitely? Just a default assumption that the sarin attack happened as we’re told as the US wades deeper in the Syrian conflict? Hopefully not but it’s unclear what’s going to change the situation. Although there is one option worth trying: As Postol remarks in the following interview, if he’s correct and the White House Report on the attack is a bunch of garbage that the White House knew was garbage, that’s an impeachable offense. Or at least should be:
““My best guess at the moment is that this was an extremely clumsy and ill-conceived attempt to cover up the fact that Trump attacked Syria without any intelligence evidence that Syria was in fact the perpetrator of the attack…. It may be,” he continued, “that the White House staff was worried that this could eventually come out—a reckless president acting without regard to the nation’s security, risking an inadvertent escalation and confrontation with Russia, and a breakdown in cooperation with Russia that would cripple our efforts to defeat the Islamic State.””
That’s how Postol sees it at this point: that bizarre White House report, that didn’t even come from one of Trump’s intelligence chiefs, was whipped up after the fact to cover up for the fact that the White House didn’t actually have any evidence of who did the attack. And as Postol suggests, if this is true, it’s one helluva impeachable offense. Or at least should be:
Also keep in mind that, if Postol is correct and this attack really was done by the rebels, there will probably be plenty of future opportunities to raise these kinds of issues with media. Mostly because it’s not like this is going to be the last attack of this nature given how wildly successful this last one was:
So who knows, if the potentially impeachable nature of this situation was more widely recognized maybe the media might finally give it the attention it deserves. That probably won’t happen, but it could. We’ll see. But in the mean time, check out the interview.
Seymour Hersh has a piece in Die Welt about the intelligence that went into the Trump administration’s decision to launch a cruise missile strike against a Syrian airbase following the alleged sarin gas attack on the city of Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib. So what did the intelligence community know about the attack? Well, the Russian and Syrian air force had in fact informed the US in advance of that airstrike that they had intelligence that top level leaders of Ahrar al-Sham and Jabhat al-Nusra were meeting in that building and they informed of the US of the attack plan in advance of the attack and that it was on a “high-value” target. And the attack involved the unusual use of a guided bomb and Syria’s top pilots. Following the attack, US intelligence concluded that there was no sarin gas attack, Assad wouldn’t have been that politically suicidal, and the symptoms of chemical poisoning following the bombing was likely due to a mixture of chlorine, fertilizers, and other chemicals stored in the building that was targeted by the Syrian airforce created by secondary explosions from the initial bombing.
All this was known by US intelligence and explained to Trump. But he wasn’t interested in that analysis because he already made up his mind about the nature of the attack after watching cable news:
“The national security advisers understood their dilemma: Trump wanted to respond to the affront to humanity committed by Syria and he did not want to be dissuaded. They were dealing with a man they considered to be not unkind and not stupid, but his limitations when it came to national security decisions were severe. “Everyone close to him knows his proclivity for acting precipitously when he does not know the facts,” the adviser said. “He doesn’t read anything and has no real historical knowledge. He wants verbal briefings and photographs. He’s a risk-taker. He can accept the consequences of a bad decision in the business world; he will just lose money. But in our world, lives will be lost and there will be long-term damage to our national security if he guesses wrong. He was told we did not have evidence of Syrian involvement and yet Trump says: ‘Do it.”’”
The Commander in Chief of the most powerful military in history has a “proclivity for acting precipitously when he does not know the facts,” coupled with an apparently lack of interest in actually learning the facts. And in this case, the facts pointed strongly towards secondary explosions of stored chemicals in the basement of the building where the jihadist meeting was taking place being the source of the chemical attack:
“A Bomb Damage Assessment (BDA) by the U.S. military later determined that the heat and force of the 500-pound Syrian bomb triggered a series of secondary explosions that could have generated a huge toxic cloud that began to spread over the town, formed by the release of the fertilizers, disinfectants and other goods stored in the basement, its effect magnified by the dense morning air, which trapped the fumes close to the ground”
That’s where the facts led it the US military’s analysis: secondary explosions of chemcials stored in that building was the likely source of the chemical cloud. Facts that obviously didn’t matter.
It’s hard to know what lesson to take from this although the jihadists no doubt learned the value of having “high-value target” meetings in buildings with large chemical stores in densely populated areas. It certainly worked out well for them:
And, of course, we also learned that Trump needs to be kept far away from cable news following a major event for however long it takes for his advisors to assess the situation and deliver a sober initial analysis. Far, far away.
That’s ominous: So you know that potential bombshell report by Sy Hersh in Die Welt about how Donald Trump’s intelligence and military advisors has concluded that Bashar Assad’s regime was not in fact responsible for a sarin gas attack but instead the cloud of chemicals was a consequence of secondary explosions of stored chlorine and fertilizer in building by the Syrian air force? You and you know that report has been almost entirely ignored by American news outlets? Well, it’s going to be a lot harder to ignore that report now that the White House just issued an ominous message indicating it has evidence that Assad’s forces were planning a chemical attack and if that happens the consequences will be severe and Russian and Iran will be held responsible:
““The United States has identified potential preparations for another chemical weapons attack by the Assad regime that would likely result in the mass murder of civilians, including innocent children,” Spicer said in the statement. “The activities are similar to preparations the regime made before its April 4, 2017 chemical weapons attack.”
That was the message from Sean Spicer, followed by this warning to Iran and Russia from UN Ambassador Nikki Haley:
So a day after Sy Hersh’s report about how Trump’s military and intelligence advisors were unable to convince Trump that the earlier attack wasn’t actually a chmical attack, the White House issues a statement about how it has once again detected signs of the Syrians preparing for a chemical attack. So it’s probably worth noting that one of the indications the earlier attack wasn’t a chemical attack, according to one of the Trump advisors cited in Hersh’s report, was how the Syrian and Russian forces didn’t look at all like they were preparing for a chemical attack:
““This was not a chemical weapons strike,” the adviser said. “That’s a fairy tale. If so, everyone involved in transferring, loading and arming the weapon – you’ve got to make it appear like a regular 500-pound conventional bomb – would be wearing Hazmat protective clothing in case of a leak. There would be very little chance of survival without such gear. Military grade sarin includes additives designed to increase toxicity and lethality. Every batch that comes out is maximized for death. That is why it is made. It is odorless and invisible and death can come within a minute. No cloud. Why produce a weapon that people can run away from?””
That was the depiction of the intelligence the US had on the preparations of the April 4th Syrian airstrike in Hersh’s report. A report that’s largely being ignored. And now we have the White House issuing ominous new threats about how the US has intelligence that the Syrian military is planning another chemical attack. With a secondary threat to Russia and Iran if that happens. All shortly after Hersh’s largely ignored report.
So, yeah, that’s ominous.
Now that Saudi Arabia appears to be gearing up for some sort of war with Lebanon and perhaps even Iran, in addition to its ongoing brutal war on the Shia population of Yemen, there are obvious questions about where war might break out next. But another question raised by this alarming development is the possibility that we’re going to see some of the same Sunni extremist militant groups operating in Syria and Yemen — which were armed and encouraged by the Saudi government — moving into other theaters of conflict. And are these groups going to get an array of covert Gulf State military support like the support they’ve received for the conflicts in Syria and Yemen? If so, that’s pretty ominous.
So with that in mind, it’s worth noting the the UN just issued a new report on the alleged chemical attack in Idlib, a territory under al Nusra’s control.
And while the report unsurprisingly blames the Assad government for carrying out the attack, it does include quite a few “discrepancies” to that conclusion in the Annex of the report which was a little surprising. Discrepancies like the fact that records show victims of the attack were showing up at multiple hospitals in the region before the attack. And not just a few victims. More than 100 victims at five different hospitals. The UN put the timing of the attack at some point because 0630 and 0700 hours based on the metadata of a video that was used as evidence of the attack. And yet five hospital reports were showing sarin victims showing up at hospitals before the attack, as early as the 0600 hour.
And don’t forget that these patients weren’t going to magically appear at these hospitals right after the attack. It takes time to get there which would put the timing of the poisoning of these early victims well before 0600. One of the hospital that reported victims before the alleged aerial bombing would have taken an hour to reach.
So how did the UN report address this discrepancy? By not investigating it and ignoring it. Seriously, that’s what the report says: “The [JIM] did not investigate these discrepancies and cannot determine whether they are linked to any possible staging scenario, or to poor record-keeping in chaotic conditions”:
““The [JIM] did not investigate these discrepancies and cannot determine whether they are linked to any possible staging scenario, or to poor record-keeping in chaotic conditions,” the report said. But the proffered excuse about poor record-keeping would have to apply to multiple hospitals over a wide area all falsely recording the arrival time of more than 100 patients.”
Did five hospitals in Idlib have the same record keeping problem involving more than 100 patients? That’s what we’re told to assume:
So we have 57 patients showing up before the attack. But then there’s 52 patients that showed up at hospitals shortly after attack. But they showed up at hospitals that were 30 and 125 km away from the attack site! Shortly after the attack!
“In 10 such cases, patients appear to have been admitted to a hospital 125 km away from Khan Shaykhun at 0700 hours while another 42 patients appear to have been admitted to a hospital 30 km away at 0700 hours.”
Again, how the UN address these discrepancies? But consciously ignoring it:
And don’t forget that this is just the latest piece evidence that al Nusra was behind that attack in an attempt to goad the US into a war to oust Assad (to the immense benefit of al Nusra).
Only al Nusra knows for sure if it was behind this. And if it was behind this they also know that they can got away with it. It’s something to keep in mind now that Saudi Arabia appears to be gearing up for more wars that will likely involve a lot more al Qaeda offshoots.
Following the news of a US raid in Idlib that allegedly killed ISIS’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, over the weekend there’s been no shortage of head scratching over the story. The fact that ISIS’s leader was hiding in Idlib, a region controlled by the rival jihadist groups ISIS has long fought, was certainly eyebrow raising. And then there was the fact that President Trump’s announcement of the successful raid included profuse thanking of the government of Russia for its help but the Russian government denied any knowledge of the operation. And then there’s the Pentagon leadership openly questioning how Trump arrived at some of the details of al-Baghdadi’s final moments — like his whimpering and crying” — that Trump was describing in unusual detail during the press conference announcement of the raid. Plus, there have been claims that al-Baghdadi was killed before that didn’t pan out when he seemed to have resurfaced in April. So there is some understandable skepticism about the details of what happened, although it does sound like he really was killed by US special forces. And the timing was certainly fortuitous given the reality that Turkey’s assault of the Kurds has made the release of thousands of ISIS prisoner and a reconstitution of the group a very real possibility.
But as the following blog post reminds us, there’s another important reason skepticism around the events playing out in Syria is going to be increasingly needed going forward as the Syrian civil war enters a new phase as Turkey’s ambitions in the region grow along with its long-standing supportive ties to both ISIS and the jihadist groups still operating in Idlib who are the likeliest beneficiaries of the release of those thousands of ISIS prisoners: there’s a new whistleblower regarding the allegations of a chemical weapons attack in Douma last year and the whistleblower’s claims add to the evidence that the alleged Syrian government chemical attack was actually staged by the jihadist rebels headquartered in that city.
This whistleblower has been given almost no news coverage, but it came up yesterday on the BBC’s “Weekend” radio program when former Senior Middle East Correspondent for the Guardian, Jonathan Steele, gave an interview to Paul Henley. The show starts off discussing the Baghdadi raid. But at about 10 minutes into the show, Steele shifts the topic a briefing he attended in Brussels last week by this whistleblower, who is described as one of the inspectors for Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) to investigate the Douma attack. As Steele describes, this whistleblowers claims that he was in charge of collecting chlorine samples in the affected area and in neutral areas to assess the rebel claims that it was a chemical attack that included chlorine gas
. There was no evidence of a chlorine attack, according this this whistleblower.
As Steele also notes, this is actually the second OPCW whistleblower to come forward about the Douma chemical attack. A few months ago there was a leaked report by the person who looked into whether these cylinders that allegedly contained the chemicals had actually been dropped by planes. This person concluded that it looked like they had not actually been dropped by planes and had instead been placed there by the rebels. Finally, Steele notes that both of these whistleblowers want to speak at the OPCW’s Conference of the Member States in November because their efforts to raise these concerns about the Douma attack internally have been suppressed. So given that the jihadist rebels in Syria may be on the verge of getting a big new boost from the fallout of Turkey’s unfolding operations, the story of how the jihadist may have successfully staged a chemical attack last year with the help of the OPCW playing dumb is now crucially important for understanding not just what happened last year but what we should expect to happen going forward:
“JS: Well, these two scientists, I think they’re non-political – they wouldn’t have been sent to Douma, if they’d had strong political views, by the OPCW. They want to speak to the Conference of the Member States in November, next month, and give their views, and be allowed to come forward publicly with their concerns. Because they’ve tried to raise them internally and been – they say they’ve been – suppressed, their views have been suppressed.”
Will these two OPCW scientists-turned-whistleblowers be allowed to speak at the OPCW’s Conference of the Member States next month? We’ll see, but if we don’t get to hear from these two we should probably expect to hear from the jihadist rebels in the form of more false flag attacks.
With all of the attention in the US on the impeachment of President Trump and whether or not John Bolton will be called a witness in the Senate trial, here’s a story about what should be a dramatic Trump foreign policy scandal that unfolded just a month after Bolton joined the Trump administration in March of 2018. That would be the ‘chemical weapons’ attack of April 2019 in Douma, Syria, an attack that had all the signs of being staged by the jihadist extremist rebels who controlled Douma at that time. As the following Gray Zone piece describes, on January 20, 2020, the Ian Henderson, initial lead investigator from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) fact-finding mission (FFM) to study that chemical attack, spoke at the UN. Henderson’s presentation focused on his concerns that the investigation was subverted and forced to conclude that a chemical weapons attack really did happen despite deep misgivings by Henderson and others on his team that the evidence they found really was staged by the rebels.
Recall how there were extensive signs pointing to this being a staged chemical attack soon after the attack took place. Well, it turns out the original FFM team noticed this too. In July of 2018, the FFM released an interim report saying it found no evidence chemical weapons were used. Following the release of this interim report, the OPCW leadership decided to create an entirely new new, the “FFM core team”, that resulted in the dismissal of all of the inspectors who had actually been deployed to Douma. This new FFM core team released a final report in March of 2019 that completely contradicted the findings of Henderson’s team and concluded that chemical weapons had indeed been used by the Syrian government.
In May of 2019, an internal OPCW engineering assessment authored by Henderson that described their assessment that it was likely that the cylinders allegedly dropped from Syrian government planes were actually manually placed at the two locations was leaked to the public. In November, another OPCW whistleblower came forward and accused the OPCW’s leadership of suppressing evidence under pressure by three US government officials.
Eventually, the first director-general of the OPCW, José Bustani, spoke out, “The convincing evidence of irregular behavior in the OPCW investigation of the alleged Douma chemical attack confirms doubts and suspicions I already had.” Recall how José Bustani was the head of the OPCW during the build-up to the Iraq War in 2003, and it was none other than John Bolton who ended up getting him fired.
Then, just last week, Henderson testified about all this at the UN. It’s the kind of story that should be a pretty huge international scandal. And since this apparent staged attack by jihadist took place just weeks after Bolton joined the Trump administration, you have to wonder if the rebels who staged this were motivated in part because they perceived Trump’s decision to make Bolton his National Security Advisor as a sign that the Trump administration would be interested in committing to the overthrow of Assad. At the same time, it’s important to recall that the Trump administration had already made clear to the jihadist Syrian rebels that it would play ball with highly suspicious ‘chemical attacks’ early on in the Trump administration with the alleged chemical attack in Idlib that led to a retaliatory missile strike by the Trump administration against a Syrian government airbase. So it’s possible that both the prior success in 2017 in getting the Trump administration to accept staged evidence of chemical combined with Bolton becoming Trump’s National Security Advisor in March of 2018 made this a highly tempting strategy on the part of the jihadists running Douma. Or maybe it was just desperate opportunism by a rebel group that was facing defeat. We don’t know. But what we do know at this point is multiple members of the original OPCW FFM team are publicly charging the US with forcing the OPCW to support a hoax perpetrated by al Qaeda-allied jihadists, which seems like a pretty massive scandal:
“The dissenter, Ian Henderson, worked for 12 years at the international watchdog organization, serving as an inspection team leader and engineering expert. Among his most consequential jobs was assisting the international body’s fact-finding mission (FFM) on the ground in Douma.”
12 years at the OPCW and the inspection team lead for Douma. That seems like a pretty well credentialed whistleblower. In July 0f 2018, Henderson’s team issues its interim report that found no evidence of a chemical attack, leading to the OPCW setting of an entirely new FFM “core team” that didn’t consist of any of the inspectors who actually traveled to Douma. And, surprise!, the new team comes up with findings issued in March of 2019 that completely contradict the original team findings:
Then, in May of 2019, an internal OPCW assessment authored by Henderson was leaked to the public and a second OPCW whistleblower comes forward in November charging the US government with pressuring the OPCW leadership on the matter. During Henderson’s testimony to the UN last week he expresses how his concerns were shared by “a number of other inspectors”. So this is a story about two whistleblowers who appear to represent the concerns of many more people:
Beyond that, the OPCW’s first director-general, José Bustani, came out in favor of Henderson and expresses his own suspicions about the Douma attack. And Bustani is someone who would be extremely familiar with the power the US has on these kinds of matters. It was John Bolton who told Bustani to resign from his OPCW position in 2002, with a threat that appears to include Bustani’s kids:
“You have 24 hours to leave the organization, and if you don’t comply with this decision by Washington, we have ways to retaliate against you… We know where your kids live.”
Quit or we go after your kids. That’s what Bolton apparently told Bustani back in 2002 during the lead up to a war that was predicated on the OPCW finding evidence of weapons of mass destruction. It’s part of the dark context of Bolton emerging as a potentially significant witness in the impeachment trial of Donald Trump: Bolton takes his crazy foreign policy ideas very seriously. He’s crazy, but he’s a somewhat different genre of crazy from the more pirate-like approach of the contemporary GOP. As opposed to the crass self-enriching opportunism of most of the modern GOP, Bolton appears to be driven by an actual ideology and worldview that has him convinced global warmongering is the right thing to do. Sure, he’s a loyal Republican. That’s his party. But he’s probably going to be more loyal to his warmongering agenda. Most modern Republicans appear to view war as an opportunity for plunder and profit. Bolton seems to actually care about the outcomes of wars and foreign policy.
That’s what makes Bolton such an intriguing potential impeachment trial witness. It’s just too bad Bolton won’t be a witness in an actual investigation into what happened with the Douma investigation, along with the other Trump officials involved with this which raises another interesting question: So what was Nikki Haley’s role in all this? She was Trump’s ambassador to the UN during this period and only announced her resignation in October of 2018. That would have placed her in a position to impose the kind of pressure on the OPCW Henderson claims took place following the June 2018 interim report. Was she part of that pressure campaign? Again, we don’t know, because there hasn’t really been an official investigation into this.
And all of this was playing out during the same 2018–2019 timeframe of the #UkraineGate scandal. Don’t forget that Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman had their now notorious private dinner with Trump back in April 2018, the same month of the Douma attack. And this US pressure to force the OPCW to essentially fake its conclusions would have taken place around the same time Rudy Giuliani is running around Ukraine trying to arrange the initial ‘quid pro quo’ arrangement with the Poroshenko government. So the Douma scandal was playing out basically in parallel with the #UkraineGate scandal. It’s something to keep in mind regardless of how the current Trump impeachment trial plays out.