Pompeo and Netanyahu paved a path to war with Iran, and they’re pushing Trump again
By Gareth Porter | The Grayzone | March 20, 2020
Though it narrowly averted war with Iran this January, the Trump administration is still pushing for all-out military conflict. The architects of the drive to war, Mike Pompeo and Benjamin Netanyahu, have relied on a series of cynical provocations to force Trump’s hand.
The US may escape the most recent conflict with Iran without war, however, a dangerous escalation is just over the horizon. And as before, the key factors driving the belligerence are not outraged Iraqi militia leaders or their allies in Iran, but Trump’s secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has long sought to draw the US into a military confrontation with Iran.
Throughout the fall of 2019, Netanyahu ordered a series of Israeli strikes against Iranian allies in Iraq and against Lebanese Hezbollah units. He and Pompeo hoped the attacks would provoke a reaction from their targets that could provide a tripwire to outright war with Iran. As could have been expected, corporate US media missed the story, perhaps because it failed to reinforce the universally accepted narrative of a hyper-aggressive Iran emboldened by Trump’s failure to “deter” it following Iran’s shoot-down of a U.S. drone in June, and an alleged Iranian attack on Saudi oil facility in September.
Pompeo and John Bolton set the stage for the tripwire strategy in May 2019 with a statement by national security adviser John Bolton citing “troubling and escalatory indications and warnings,” implying an Iranian threat without providing concrete details. That vague language echoed a previous vow by Bolton that “any attack” by Iran or “proxy” forces “on United States interests or on those of our allies will be met with unrelenting force.”
Then came a campaign of leaks to major news outlet suggesting that Iran was planning attacks on U.S. military personnel. The day after Bolton’s statement, the Wall Street Journal reported that unnamed U.S. officials cited “U.S. intelligence” showing that Iran “drew up plans to target U.S. forces in Iraq and possibly Syria, to orchestrate attacks in the Bab el-Mandeb strait near Yemen through proxies and in the Persian Gulf with its own armed drones…”
The immediate aim of this campaign was to gain Trump’s approval for contingency plans for a possible war with Iran that included the option of sending as many as 120,000 U.S. troops into region. Trump balked at such war-planning, however, complaining privately that Bolton and Pompeo were pushing him into a war with Iran. Following Iran’s shoot-down of the U.S. drone over the Strait of Hormuz on June 20, Pompeo and Bolton suggested the option of killing Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani in retaliation. But Trump refused to sign off on the assassination of Iran’s top general unless Iran killed an American first, according to current and former officials.
From that point on, the provocation strategy was focused on trying to trigger an Iranian reaction that would involve a U.S. casualty. That’s when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu interjected himself and his military as a central player in the drama. From July 19 through August 20, the Israeli army carried out five strikes against Iraqi militias allied with Iran, blowing up four weapons depots and killing as many Shiite militiamen and Iranian offcers, according to press accounts.
The Israeli bombing escalated on August 25, when two strikes on the brigade headquarters of a pro-Iranian militia and on a militia convoy killed the brigade commander and six other militiamen, and a drone strike on Hezbollah’s headquarters in south Beirut blew the windows out of one of Hezbollah’s media offices.
Netanyahu and Pompeo sabotage Trump and Macron’s attempt at diplomacy
Behind those strikes was Netanyahu’s sense of alarm over Trump toying with the idea of seeking negotiations with Iran. Netanyahu had likely learned about Trump’s moves toward detente from Pompeo, who had long been his primary contact in the administration. On August 26, French President Emanuel Macron revealed that he was working to broker a Trump-Rouhani meeting. Netanyahu grumbled about the prospect of U.S.-Iranian talks “several times” with his security cabinet the day before launching the strikes.
Two retired senior Israeli generals, Gen. Amos Yadlin and Gen. Assaf Oron, criticized those strikes for increasing the likelihood of harsh retaliation by Iran or one of its regional partners. The generals complained that Netanyahu’s attacks were “designed to prod [Iran] into a hasty response” and thus end Trump’s flirtation with talking to Iran. That much was obviously true, but Pompeo and Netanyahu also knew that provoking an attack by Iran or one of its allies might cause one or more of the American casualties they sought. And once American blood was spilled, Trump would have no means to resist authorizing a major escalation.
Kataib Hezbollah and other pro-Iran Iraqi militias blamed the United States for the wave of lethal Israeli attacks on their fighters. These militias responded in September by launching a series of rocket attacks on Iraqi government bases where U.S. troops were present. They also struck targets in the vicinity of the U.S. Embassy.
The problem for Netanyahu and Pompeo, however, was that none of those strikes killed an American. What’s more, U.S. intelligence officials knew from NSA monitoring of communications between the IRGC and the militias that Iran had explicitly forbidden direct attacks on US personnel.
Netanyahu was growing impatient. For several days in late October and early November, he met with his national security cabinet to discuss a new Israeli attack to precipitate a possible war with Iran, according to reports by former Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren. Oren hinted at how a war with Iran might start. ‘[P]erhaps Israel miscalculates,” he suggested, “hitting a particularly sensitive target,” which, in his view, could spark “a big war between Israel and Iran.”
But on December 27, before Netanyahu could put such a strategy into action, the situation changed dramatically. A barrage of rockets slammed into an Iraqi base near Kirkuk where U.S. military personnel were stationed, killing a U.S military contractor. Suddenly, Pompeo had the opening he needed. At a meeting the following day, Pompeo led Trump to believe that Iranian “proxies” had attacked the base, and pressed him to “reestablish deterrence” with Iran by carrying out a military response.
In fact, U.S. and Iraqi officials on the spot had reached no such conclusion, and the investigation led by the head of intelligence for the Iraqi federal police at the base was just beginning that same day. But Pompeo and his allies, Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Chairman of Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark A Milley, were not interested in waiting for its conclusion.
A deception brings the US and Iran to the brink of war
The results of a subsequent Iraqi investigation revealed that the rocket barrage had been launched from a Sunni area of Kirkuk with a strong Islamic State presence, and that IS fighters had carried out three attacks not far from the base on Iraqi forces stationed there in the previous ten days. US signals intercepts found no evidence that Iraqi militias had shifted from their policy of avoiding American casualties at all cost.
Kept in the dark by Pompeo about these crucial facts, Trump agreed to launch five airstrikes against Kataib Hezbollah and another pro-Iran militia at five locations in Iraq and Syria that killed 25 militiamen and wounded 51. He may have also agreed in principle to the killing of Soleimani when the opportunity presented itself.
Iran responded to the attacks on its Iraqi militia allies by approving a violent protest at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad January 31. The demonstrators did not penetrate the embassy building itself and were abruptly halted the same day. But Pompeo managed to persuade Trump to authorize the assassination of Qassem Soleimani, Iran’s second most powerful figure, presumably by hammering on the theme of “reestablishing deterrence” with Iran.
Soleimani was not only the second most powerful man in Iran and the main figure in its foreign policy; he was idolized by millions of the most strongly nationalist citizens of the country. Killing him in a drone strike was an open invitation to the military confrontation Netanyahu and Pompeo so desperately sought.
During the crucial week from December 28 through January 4, while Pompeo was pressing Trump to retaliate against Iran not just once but twice, it was clear that he was coordinating closely with Netanyahu. During that single week, he spoke by phone with Netanyahu on three separate occasions.
What Pompeo and Netanyahu could not have anticipated was that Iran’s missile attack on the U.S. sector of Iraq’s sprawling al-Asad airbase in retaliation would be so precise that it scored direct hits on six U.S. targets without killing a single American. (The US service members were saved in part because the rockets were fired after the Iraqi government had passed on a warning from Iran to prepare for it). Because no American was killed in the strike, Trump again decided against further retaliation.
Towards another provocation
Although Pompeo and Netanyahu failed to ignite a military conflict with Iran, there is good reason to believe that they will try again before both are forced to leave their positions or power.
In an article for the Atlantic last November, former Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren, channeled Netanyahu when he declared it would be “better for conflict [with Iran] to occur during the current [Trump] administration, which can be counted on to provide Israel with the three sources of American assistance it traditionally receives in wartime,” than to “wait until later.”
Oren was not the only Israeli official to suggest that Israeli is likely to go even further in strikes against Iranian and Iranian allies targets in 2020. After listening to Israeli army Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi speak in late December, Haaretz military correspondent Amos Harel reported that the Israeli army chief conveyed the clear impression that a “more serious confrontation with Iran in the coming year as an almost unquestionable necessity.” His interviews with Israeli military and political figures further indicated that Israel would “intensity its efforts to hit Iran in the northern area.”
Shockingly, Pompeo has exploited the Coronavirus pandemic to impose even harsher sanctions on Iran while intimidating foreign businesses to prevent urgently needed medical supplies from entering the country. The approaching presidential election gives both Pompeo and Netanyahu a powerful reason to plot another strike, or a series of strikes aimed at drawing the US into a potential Israeli confrontation with Iran.
Activists and members of Congress concerned about keeping the US out of war with Iran must be acutely aware of the danger and ready to respond decisively when the provocation occurs.
US urged to explain military lab shutdown
By Leng Shumei – Global Times – 2020/3/15
Netizens and experts are calling for the US government to release information on the suspension of an infectious disease research lab under the US Army, as a petition on the White House website listed coincident events between the closure and the outbreak of COVID-19, urging the US government to clarify whether the lab was related to the deadly virus.
While the origin of the novel coronavirus is still unknown and conspiracy theories have caused widespread panic, experts said that timely information disclosure to the public would benefit global unity and cooperation against the pandemic, which had infected more than 150,000 people and killed 5,400 around the world as of Saturday.
The Fort Detrick laboratory that handles high-level disease-causing material, such as Ebola, in Fredrick, Maryland was shut after the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a cease and desist order to the organization in July, 2019 according to local media.
The suspension was due to multiple causes, including failure to follow local procedures and a lack of periodic recertification training for workers in the biocontainment laboratories. The wastewater decontamination system of the lab also failed to meet standards set by the Federal Select Agent Program, media reported.
The lab, which was closed more than half a year ago, recently caught public attention as a petition submitted to the White House website on March 10 listed some coincidences in time between the closure and the COVID-19 outbreak.
For example, “a large-scale ‘influenza’ killed more than 10,000 people” in the US in August 2019 following the closure; and the COVID-19 epidemic broke out globally in February 2020 after the US organized Event 201 – A Global Pandemic Exercise – in October 2019.
The petition also noted that many English-language news reports about the closure of Fort Detrick were deleted amid the worsening COVID-19 pandemic, raising suspicions over the lab’s relationship with the novel coronavirus.
Petitioners urged the US government to publish the real reason for the lab’s closure and to clarify whether the lab was related to the novel coronavirus and whether there was a virus leak.
The petition had received just more than 400 signatures as of Sunday.
Chinese netizens urged the US government to respond to the public’s appeals as soon as possible.
“It’s not a small issue, the truth should be published,” an internet user commented.
“The world deserves to know the truth,” said another.
Ni Feng, a deputy director of the Institute of American Studies of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, called on the US government to increase transparency in the COVID-19 pandemic related issues in response to wide-spread doubts.
The origin of the virus should be decided according to scientific research, but the urgent issue at the current stage is to cooperate in the global battle against the pandemic, Ni noted.
Wang Yiwei, a professor with the School of International Relations at Renmin University of China, agreed with Ni, noting that the US had behaved badly to China when the latter was struggling with the epidemic – accusing China of low transparency and blaming a Chinese lab for leaking the virus.
Now China has won the conviction of the world with practical efforts and improvements. The US should cooperate sincerely with China and the world against the virus, according to Wang.
The indictment of Concord was meant to prove Russia interfered in the US presidential election. But it was just a political sham
By Scott Ritter | RT | March 17, 2020
Now that the Department of Justice has rightly dismissed the case, it just shows that the allegations were aimed at shaping public opinion – and that it’s all about the politicization of the US Justice System
It was the indictment that shook America. Or at least, it was supposed to. For months, prosecutors working for Robert Mueller – the special prosecutor charged with investigating allegations of collusion between the campaign of then-candidate Donald Trump and various Russian actors to tip the scales of the 2016 US presidential election in Trump’s favor – had been slaving away behind a wall of secrecy. Set up in May 2017, the Mueller team had little to show for its efforts save for a handful of guilty pleas by Trump associates for lying to federal agents. No evidence had been provided to an increasingly skeptical public to sustain the notion that the Russians had actively interfered in the election.
That changed in February 2018, when the Mueller team unveiled an indictment of thirteen Russian citizens and three Russian companies, including Concord Management, spelling out in detail an assortment of acts that, on the surface, looked damning. “From in or around 2014 to the present,” the indictment read, “defendants knowingly and intentionally conspired with each other (and with persons known and unknown to the Grand Jury) to defraud the United States by impairing, obstructing and defeating the lawful functions of the Government through fraud and deceit for the purpose of interfering with the US political and electoral processes, including the presidential election of 2016.”
From that point on, “thirteen individuals and three companies” became the mantra of the pro-“Russia did it” brigade, repeated over and over again on TV news, Twitter, Facebook and other platforms where they and their ilk gathered to promote the theory that President Trump had colluded with the Russians to secure his electoral victory in 2016. Whenever anyone questioned the validity of the investigation, like clockwork the supporters of Mueller and his work would religiously cite the existence of this indictment, as if, in and of itself, it proved Mueller’s case.
It was a pure numbers game, inflated further when Mueller and his team indicted twelve serving Russian Military Intelligence officers for allegedly hacking the Democratic National Committee server, among other alleged crimes, in the spring of 2016. What had Mueller accomplished with these indictments? The reality was that they were little more than a publicity stunt, a public relations game that allowed Mueller supporters to respond that “he indicted 25 Russians and three Russian companies” any time the accomplishments of the investigation were brought into question.
While these statistics sounded impressive, creating as they did the impression of irrepressible, righteous momentum, they represented little more than grand theater designed to create an impression of guilt that wasn’t backed up by fact. The Mueller indictment targeting Concord Management grew out of a grand jury investigation where the government had total control of the evidence presented. There’s an old saying about the US grand jury system, that “a prosecutor can indict a ham sandwich” – the implication being you can make anyone look guilty for anything at any time. The ham sandwich isn’t given the chance to present its case.
Normally, an indictment would compel a defendant, presented with overwhelming evidence of his or her guilt, to seek a plea arrangement. Or, seeing that the evidence was insufficient, they would take the case to trial where, through discovery, the prosecutor would be compelled to hand over any and all evidence so that the defense could mount a counterargument. In this light, a prosecutor would normally craft the grand jury case in a way that maximized its impact at trial. But the Concord Management case, like the case against the Russian intelligence officers, was never meant to go to trial. No one expected the Russians to mount a defense, because to do so would require their presence in the court, on American soil, where they would be subject to arrest and confinement.
Concord Management, however, took everyone by surprise, hiring a US-based legal team to defend it against the plethora of fantastic allegations that underpinned the indictment. In doing so, Concord Management put the Mueller team in a position where they would have to disclose how they obtained all the extraordinary details about the alleged Russian activities, including internal emails, travel itineraries, and specific details about the thirteen Russian men and women.
Confronted with the reality that Concord was ultimately prepared to take the case to trial, the Department of Justice pulled the plug on the indictment, hiding behind the claim that sensitive law enforcement techniques would be revealed if it was required to present its case. Oh, really?
This revelation only underscores how ill-prepared the Mueller team was to take the Concord case to trial – normally, questions about what evidence can and cannot be presented at trial are worked out before the indictment is published. But when an indictment is more about manipulating public perception by putting forth unsustained allegations, rather than proving actual fact-based guilt, issues about evidentiary classification don’t matter. But in this case, however, they do matter – and the US government, its bluff called, was compelled to dismiss the charges.
Under normal circumstances, the announcement that the indictment used to underpin the credibility of an investigation into whether the now-President of the United States colluded with Russia to win an election had been dismissed would not only be headline news, but would also generate public outrage and demands that those who brought the indictment forward be investigated for politicizing the American justice system.
But there is nothing normal about the present circumstance. The combined impact of the Mueller investigation (which stalled far short of its goal of indicting the president) and the related impeachment trial process (which likewise failed) left the American public sharply divided on the issue of Trump-Russian collusion, facts be damned. The dismissal of the Concord indictment should be further evidence that the allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election have been vastly overblown. The other indictments are similarly unsustainable at trial.
It’s just disappointing that the coronavirus news cycle will probably drown out this story, leaving the ramifications of the abuse of the US legal system by politically motivated prosecutors unexplored, and the American public worse off for it.
Scott Ritter is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer. He served in the Soviet Union as an inspector implementing the INF Treaty, in General Schwarzkopf’s staff during the Gulf War, and from 1991-1998 as a UN weapons inspector. Follow him on Twitter @RealScottRitter
WHY IS CROWDSTRIKE CONFUSED ON ELEVEN KEY DETAILS ABOUT THE DNC HACK?
By Larry C Johnson | Sic Semper Tyrannis | March 17, 2020
Here is the bottom-line—despite being hired in late April (or early May) of 2016 to stop an unauthorized intrusion into the DNC, CrowdStrike, the cyber firm hired by the DNC’s law firm to solve the problem, failed abysmally. More than 30,000 emails were taken from the DNC server between 22 and 25 May 2016 and given to Wikileaks. Crowdstrike blamed Russia for the intrusion but claimed that only two files were taken. And CrowdStrike inexplicably waited until 10 June 2016 to reboot the DNC network.
CrowdStrike, a cyber-security company hired by a Perkins Coie lawyer retained by the DNC, provided the narrative to the American public of the alledged hack of the DNC, But the Crowdstrike explanation is inconsistent, contradictory and implausible. Despite glaring oddities in the CrowdStrike account of that event, CrowdStrike subsequently traded on its fame in the investigation of the so-called Russian hack of the DNC and became a publicly traded company. Was CrowdStrike’s fame for “discovering” the alleged Russian hack of the DNC a critical factor in its subsequent launch as a publicly traded company?
The Crowdstrike account of the hack is very flawed. There are 11 contradictions, inconsistencies or oddities in the public narrative about CrowdStrike’s role in uncovering and allegedly mitigating a Russian intrusion (note–the underlying facts for these conclusions are found in Ellen Nakashima’s Washington Post story, Vicki Ward’s Esquire story, the Mueller Report and the blog of Crowdstrike founder Dmitri Alperovitch):
- Two different dates—30 April or 6 May—are reported by Nakashima and Ward respectively as the date CrowdStrike was hired to investigate an intrusion into the DNC computer network.
- There are on the record contradictions about who hired Crowdstrike. Nakashima reports that the DNC called Michael Sussman of the law firm, Perkins Coie, who in turn contacted Crowdtrike’s CEO Shawn Henry. Crowdstrike founder Dmitri Alperovitch tells Nakashima a different story, stating our “Incident Response group, was called by the Democratic National Committee (DNC).
- CrowdStrike claims it discovered within 24 hours the “Russians” were responsible for the “intrusion” into the DNC network.
- CrowdStrike’s installation of Falcon (its proprietary software to stop breaches) on the DNC on the 1st of May or the 6th of May would have alerted to intruders that they had been detected.
- CrowdStrike officials told the Washington Post’s Ellen Nakashima that they were, “not sure how the hackers got in” and didn’t “have hard evidence.”
- In a blog posting by CrowdStrike’s founder, Dmitri Alperovitch, on the same day that Nakashima’s article was published in the Washington Post, wrote that the intrusion into the DNC was done by two separate Russian intelligence organizations using malware identified as Fancy Bear (APT28) and Cozy Bear (APT29).
- But, Alperovitch admits his team found no evidence the two Russian organizations were coordinating their “attack” or even knew of each other’s presence on the DNC network.
- There is great confusion over what the “hackers” obtained. DNC sources claim the hackers gained access to the entire database of opposition research on GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump. DNC sources and CrowdStrike claimed the intruders, “read all email and chat traffic.” Yet, DNC officials insisted, “that no financial, donor or personal information appears to have been accessed or taken.” However, CrowdStrike states, “The hackers stole two files.”
- Crowdstrike’s Alperovitch, in his blog posting, does not specify whether it was Cozy Bear or Fancy Bear that took the files.
- Wikileaks published DNC emails in July 2016 that show the last message taken from the DNC was dated 25 May 2016. This was much more than “two files.”
- CrowdStrike, in complete disregard to basic security practice when confronted with an intrusion, waited five weeks to disconnect the DNC computers from the network and sanitize them.
Let us start with the very contradictory public accounts attributed to Crowdstrke’s founder, Dmitri Alperovitch. The 14 June 2016 story by Ellen Nakashima of the Washington Post and the October 2016 piece by Vicki Ward in Esquire magazine offer two different dates for the start of the investigation:
When did the DNC learn of the “intrusion”?
Ellen Nakashima claims it was the end of April:
DNC leaders were tipped to the hack in late April. Chief executive Amy Dacey got a call from her operations chief saying that their information technology team had noticed some unusual network activity. . . . That evening, she spoke with Michael Sussmann, a DNC lawyer who is a partner with Perkins Coie in Washington. Soon after, Sussmann, a former federal prosecutor who handled computer crime cases, called Henry, whom he has known for many years. Within 24 hours, CrowdStrike had installed software on the DNC’s computers so that it could analyze data that could indicate who had gained access, when and how.
Ward’s timeline, citing Alperovitch, reports the alert came later, on 6 May 2016:
At six o’clock on the morning of May 6, Dmitri Alperovitch woke up in a Los Angeles hotel to an alarming email. . . . late the previous night, his company had been asked by the Democratic National Committee to investigate a possible breach of its network. A CrowdStrike security expert had sent the DNC a proprietary software package, called Falcon, that monitors the networks of its clients in real time. Falcon “lit up,” the email said, within ten seconds of being installed at the DNC: Russia was in the network.
This is a significant and troubling discrepancy because it marks the point in time when CrowdStrike installed its Falcon software on the DNC server. It is one thing to confuse the 30th of April with the 1st of May. But Alperovitch gave two different reporters two different dates.
What did the “hackers” take from the DNC?
Ellen Nakashima’s reporting is contradictory and wrong. Initially, she is told that the hackers got access to the entire Donald Trump database and that all emails and chats could be read. But then she is assured that only two files were taken. This was based on Crowdstrike’s CEO’s assurance, which was proven subsequently to be spectacularly wrong when Wikileaks published 35,813 DNC emails. How did Crowdstrike miss that critical detail? Here is Nakashima’s reporting:
Russian government hackers penetrated the computer network of the Democratic National Committee and gained access to the entire database of opposition research on GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump, according to committee officials and security experts who responded to the breach.
The intruders so thoroughly compromised the DNC’s system that they also were able to read all email and chat traffic, said DNC officials and the security experts. . . .
The DNC said that no financial, donor or personal information appears to have been accessed or taken, suggesting that the breach was traditional espionage, not the work of criminal hackers.
One group, which CrowdStrike had dubbed Cozy Bear, had gained access last summer (2015) and was monitoring the DNC’s email and chat communications, Alperovitch said.
The other, which the firm had named Fancy Bear, broke into the network in late April and targeted the opposition research files. It was this breach that set off the alarm. The hackers stole two files, Henry said. And they had access to the computers of the entire research staff — an average of about several dozen on any given day. . . .
CrowdStrike is continuing the forensic investigation, said Sussmann, the DNC lawyer. “But at this time, it appears that no financial information or sensitive employee, donor or voter information was accessed by the Russian attackers,” he said.
The DNC emails that are posted on the Wikileaks website and the metadata shows that these emails were removed from the DNC server starting the late on the 22nd of May and continuing thru the 23rd of May. The last tranche occurred late in the morning (Washington, DC time) of the 25th of May 2016. Crowdstrike’s CEO, Shawn Henry, insisted on the 14th of June 2016 that “ONLY TWO FILES” had been taken. This is demonstrably not true. Besides the failure of Crowdstrike to detect the removal of more than 35,000 emails, there is another important and unanswered question—why did Crowdstrike wait until the 10th of June 2016 to start disconnecting the DNC server when they allegedly knew on the 6th of May that the Russians had entered the DNC network?
Crowdstrike accused Russia of the DNC breach but lacked concrete proof.
Ellen Nakashima’s report reveals that Crowdstrike relied exclusively on circumstantial evidence for its claim that the Russian Government hacked the DNC server. According to Nakashima:
CrowdStrike is not sure how the hackers got in. The firm suspects they may have targeted DNC employees with “spearphishing” emails. These are communications that appear legitimate — often made to look like they came from a colleague or someone trusted — but that contain links or attachments that when clicked on deploy malicious software that enables a hacker to gain access to a computer. “But we don’t have hard evidence,” Alperovitch said.
There is a word in English for the phrases, “Not sure” and “No hard evidence”–that word is, “assumption.” Assuming that the Russians did it is not the same as proving, based on evidence, that the Russians were culpable. But that is exactly what CrowdStrike did.
The so-called “proof” of the Russian intrusions is the presence of Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear?
At first glance, Dmitri Alperovitch’s blog posting describing the Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear “intrusions” appears quite substantive. But cyber security professionals quickly identified a variety of shortcomings with the Alperovitch account. For example, this malware is not unique nor proprietary to Russia. Other countries and hackers have access to APT28 and have used it.
Skip Folden offers one of the best comprehensive analyses of the problems with the Alperovitch explanation:
No basis whatsoever:
APT28, aka Fancy Bear, Sofacy, Strontium, Pawn Storm, Sednit, etc., and APT29, aka Cozy Bear, Cozy Duke, Monkeys, CozyCar,The Dukes, etc., are used as ‘proof’ of Russia ‘hacking’ by Russian Intelligence agencies GRU and FSB respectively.
There is no basis whatsoever to attribute the use of known intrusion elements to Russia, not even if they were once reverse routed to Russia, which claim has never been made by NSA or any other of our IC.
On June 15, 2016 Dmitri Alperovitch himself, in an Atlantic Council article, gave only “medium-level of confidence that Fancy Bear is GRU” and “low-level of confidence that Cozy Bear is FSB.” These assessments, from the main source himself, that either APT is Russian intelligence, averages 37%-38% [(50 + 25) / 2].
Exclusivity:
None of the technical indicators, e.g., intrusion tools (such as X-Agent, X-Tunnel), facilities, tactics, techniques, or procedures, etc., of the 28 and 29 APTs can be uniquely attributed to Russia, even if one or more had ever been trace routed to Russia. Once an element of a set of intrusion tools is used in the public domain it can be reverse-engineered and used by other groups which precludes the assumption of exclusivity in future use. The proof that any of these tools have never been reverse engineered and used by others is left to the student – or prosecutor.
Using targets:
Also, targets have been used as basis for attributing intrusions to Russia, and that is pure nonsense. Both many state and non-state players have deep interests in the same targets and have the technical expertise to launch intrusions. In Grizzly Steppe, page 2, second paragraph, beginning with, “Both groups have historically targeted …,” is there anything in that paragraph which can be claimed as unique to Russia or which excludes all other major state players in the world or any of the non-state organizations? No.
Key Logger Consideration:
On the subject of naming specific GRU officers initiating specific actions on GRU Russian facilities on certain dates / times, other than via implanted ID chips under the finger tips of these named GRU officers, the logical assumption would be by installed key logger capabilities, physical or malware, on one or more GRU Russian computers.
The GRU is a highly advanced Russian intelligence unit. It would be very surprising were the GRU open to any method used to install key logger capabilities. It would be even more surprising, if not beyond comprehension that the GRU did not scan all systems upon start-up and in real time, including key logger protection and anomalies of performance degradation and data transmissions.
Foreign intelligence source:
Other option would be via a foreign intelligence unit source with local GRU access. Any such would be quite anti-Russian and be another nail in the coffin of any chain of evidence / custody validity at Russian site.
Stated simply, Dmitri Alperovitch’s conclusion that “the Russians did it” are not supported by the forensic evidence. Instead, he relies on the assumption that the presence of APT28 and APT29 prove Moscow’s covert hand. What is even more striking is that the FBI accepted this explanation without demanding forensic evidence.
Former FBI Director James Comey and former NSA Director Mike Rogers testified under oath before Congress that neither agency ever received access to the DNC server. All information the FBI used in its investigation was supplied by CrowdStrike. The Hill reported:
The FBI requested direct access to the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) hacked computer servers but was denied, Director James Comey told lawmakers on Tuesday.
The bureau made “multiple requests at different levels,” according to Comey, but ultimately struck an agreement with the DNC that a “highly respected private company” would get access and share what it found with investigators.
The foregoing facts raise major questions about the validity of the Crowdstrike methodology and conclusions with respect to what happened on the DNC network. This is not a conspiracy theory. It is a set of facts that, as of today, have no satisfactory explanation. The American public deserve answers.
Kremlin slams ‘unfounded’ EU report on Russian pandemic disinformation
RT | March 18, 2020
An EU report which accuses Russia of waging a disinformation campaign around Covid-19 isn’t backed by a single fact and has nothing to do with common sense. That’s according to Vladimir Putin’s spokesman.
Earlier, the Financial Times claimed that it obtained findings by the European External Action Service (EEAS), which insist that the “Russian pro-Kremlin media” is running a “significant disinformation campaign” to stoke “confusion, panic and fear” in the EU and the US to “aggravate the coronavirus pandemic crisis.”
“I can’t comment on this from the point of view of common sense,” Dmitry Peskov said when asked by journalists about the controversial paper. “One might expect that this Russophobic obsession would decline in the current situation, but as we see it’s not happening.”
The EEAS’ report didn’t even include a single example or a reference to a specific media outlet, so all the accusations are “unfounded,” Peskov concluded.
‘Russian troll firm’ says it has a $50bn grudge to settle with US after indictment dropped by DoJ
RT | March 17, 2020
A Russian firm that the DoJ failed to prosecute for “sowing discord” during the 2016 election aims to take its pound of flesh – or at least a hefty compensation for its tarnished reputation.
The February 2018 indictment of Concord Management & Consulting LLC, one of several issued by the team of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, was praised by the Russiagate crowds as a crucial step in uncovering the holy grail of Trump-Russia collusion. The case was dropped just weeks before going to trial, with prosecutors claiming that the firm’s defense strategy – demanding evidence that the company had waged ‘information warfare’ against America – posed a threat to US national security.
Concord had been “eager and aggressive in using the judicial system to gather information about how the United States detects and prevents foreign election interference,” the motion to dismiss said.
Protecting “sources and methods” is the cookie cutter explanation that the US intelligence community uses to justify evidence-free accusations. But it may not work this time; Concord CEO Yevgeny Prigozhin – dubbed ‘Putin’s chef’ by the Western media, says he didn’t consider the case closed with the charges dropped.
The DoJ’s decision proves that statements like “Prigozhin interfered in the US presidential election” were “lies and fiction,” he said in a statement. Concord will seek $50 billion in damages from the US government for “illegal persecution and sanctions,” he warned.
“I have found only two things positive in the biased US justice systems. One is attorney Eric Dubelier, who had the guts to fight against the American government and has secured a victory. The other is Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who had the courage to resign after realizing the kind of lawlessness he had been dragged into,” Prigozhin added.
Mueller resigned in May 2019 after his much-hyped probe ended with an anticlimactic report and criminal charges against 34 individuals and three entities, including Concord. The team that decided to call off the indictment against the company included two prosecutors who were part of Mueller’s investigation.
DOJ drops charges against ‘Russian trolls’ after they dared demand evidence in US court
RT | March 17, 2020
The US is dropping the much-hyped indictment for ‘election meddling’ against a company supposedly behind the so-called Russian troll farm, closing the opening chapter of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russiagate investigation.
Further pursuing the case against Concord Management & Consulting LLC, “promotes neither the interests of justice nor the nation’s security,” the Department of Justice wrote to the federal judge overseeing the case on Monday, in a motion to drop the charges.
DOJ lawyers cited “recent events and a change in the balance of the government’s proof due to a classification determination,” saying only that they submitted further details in a classified addendum.
Concord was one of the three companies – the Internet Research Agency is another – and 13 individuals charged in February 2018 with waging “information warfare against the United States of America” using social media.
The DOJ rationalizes the motion to dismiss by arguing that Concord is “a Russian company with no presence in the United States and no exposure to meaningful punishment in the event of a conviction.” That has always been the case, however. What really changed since the indictment was filed is the complete implosion of Mueller’s case, helped in part by Concord fighting the case in court.
The motion inadvertently reveals that Mueller’s prosecutors never intended the case against Concord, two other entities and 13 individuals to actually go to trial, otherwise they would have anticipated what ended up happening: Concord’s lawyers demanding discovery documents from the DOJ, which the US authorities say risks “exposure of law enforcement’s tools and techniques.”
Mueller’s team tried to fight the discovery proceedings by arguing in January 2019 that Concord was leaking them to “discredit” the investigation. Within two months, however, the investigation discredited itself, by having to admit there was no “collusion” between US President Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential election.
They still insisted that Russia had “meddled” in the election, but there too the case proved a problem. Concord successfully petitioned Judge Dabney L. Friedrich in May last year to rebuke the prosecutors for presenting their allegations as facts.
This is not to say that the DOJ is ready to disavow ‘Russiagate’ as a debunked conspiracy theory, however. Though the Concord case was dropped, the charges against the Internet Research Agency and the 13 Russian individuals were not. Given that none of them have a presence in the US, and have not dignified the indictment with a response, it is unclear how – if at all – the DOJ intends to proceed with the case.
Keeping it on the books may keep the flames of ‘Russiagate’ alive, though, which is very convenient for the media and others heavily invested in the narrative of Moscow somehow menacing US elections, despite not a shred of actual evidence being presented to back it up.
Wash Your Hands—but Beware the Electric Hand Dryer
“Electric towels” were supposed to prevent the spread of contagious disease. What if they’ve been doing the opposite?
By Tom Bartlett | Wired | 03.06.2020
The spread of Covid-19 has turned us into a nation of hand-washing obsessives, citizens who vigorously interlace our fingers and circle-scrub our thumbs with an exacting, anxiety-fueled intensity. But it’s not over when you flip off the faucet: Drying your hands matters too, because damp skin provides a hospitable environment for microorganisms and, as a result, might increase the likelihood that you’ll pass on pathogens.
So now, as we confront what could be a society-altering disease outbreak, it seems worth taking a hard look at the widely reviled yet seemingly ubiquitous electric hand dryer. Are they as hygienic as paper towels, as their manufacturers claim?
The earliest pitches for hand dryers played up their supposed ability when it comes to “preventing the spread of contagious disease,” as a 1924 newspaper ad for the Airdry Electric Towel put it. More recently, Dyson, whose Airblade hand dryer promises to “scrape water from hands like a windshield wiper,” has bragged that its HEPA air filter captures particles as tiny as .3 microns in diameter, much like the N95 face masks that are now selling for AirPod Pro–equivalent prices on Amazon.
But the quality of the intake filter doesn’t address whether blowing air at high speeds is a smart idea given that it may be sending droplets and particles from your just-washed hands flying rapidly every which way. When you dig into the science on hand dryers, you’ll come across reason to be concerned. A study published in 1989 found that gentler, old-style hand dryers blew bacteria over a three-foot radius and onto the user’s clothes, which considering the era was probably an acid-washed jean jacket.
A 2018 study produced even more troubling results, finding that “potential pathogens and spores” could be “dispersed throughout buildings and deposited on hands by hand dryers.” It tested conventional hot-air models with and without filters and determined that the filters “most likely reduce the number of potentially pathogenic bacteria with the potential to colonize hands but do not eliminate the risk entirely.” A 2015 study found that super-aggro hand-dryers like the ones made by Dyson, which use higher-speed jets of air at room temperature, “produced significantly greater aerosolization of virus on the hands” than the traditional kind. Paper towels, meanwhile, were found to cause about the same amount of viral spread as hot-air models.
A 2012 analysis of 12 studies over four decades published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings concluded that “[f]rom a hygiene viewpoint, paper towels are superior to electric air dryers” and that they should be used in “locations in which hygiene is paramount, such as hospitals and clinics.” Though it could be argued that hygiene should be paramount in the restroom of, say, your neighborhood Panera Bread, too. The analysis did find that dryers like Dyson’s “led to much less bacterial transfer than hot air dryers.”
So does that tell us anything about whether hand dryers could spread a virus like the one that causes Covid-19? I called Peter Setlow, a biochemist at the University of Connecticut and one of the authors of that 2018 study. Setlow is a “spore guy” not an infectious disease expert, but he nonetheless came away from that research with a deep and abiding distrust of hand dryers regardless of the model. “Sorry, hand-dryer industry,” he told me. “My personal opinion is that they shouldn’t be used.”
There’s been understandable blowback from the hand-dryer industry, which questions the methodology of some of this research and notes that certain studies pegging hand dryers as disease vectors—including the one cited above, from 2015—were carried out by researchers who had worked as consultants for paper-towel manufacturers. This is true in some, though not all, cases. Dyson got in on the game by funding a study, published last April, that found—surprise!—hands dried with the company’s own Airblade harbored fewer bacteria than those dried with paper towels.
There’s reason to be skeptical of last year’s paper. In the study, subjects “slowly” moved their hands in and out of the machine for a full minute, something no normal human is ever going to do. Besides, Dyson says elsewhere that the model dries hands satisfactorily in a mere 12 seconds, so which is it? More importantly, that study only looked at the bacteria left behind on hands post-drying, not whether particles might have been blown onto your clothes.
It’s not just a matter of public health: There are fortunes at stake in the science war between the paper-towel and hand-dryer industries. Multifold paper towels, the kind commonly used in bathrooms, are a several-billion-dollar-a-year behemoth, and one recent estimate of the global market for hand dryers puts the number at a shade under $800 million, and growing. This is big money and obviously no company wants their products to be viewed as more likely to make people sick. Dyson has made the case that, while other brands of hand dryers might spread disease, its products are perfectly safe even in hospitals. Karen Holeyman, lead research scientist and microbiologist at Dyson, also notes via email that “Dyson Airblade™ hand dryers are proven hygienic,” and referred to its HEPA air filter.
Yet it’s hard to read the scientific papers without concluding that, well, paper is the way to go. If the science seems to lean in that direction, though, why have electric dryers continued to claim more and more tiled territory? For starters, they do have undeniable upsides. Unlike paper towels, hand dryers don’t create waste and they’re drastically cheaper over time. The annual cost for paper towels in a public restroom can easily top a thousand dollars, while the electricity required to run a hand dryer costs about a fifth of that, according to one estimate.
But focusing on paper towel prices seems a little ridiculous when epidemiologists are calculating death rates. We’re at a moment when hand-washing must be taken very seriously. The same is true for hand-drying. Electric hand dryers appear to be a modern, more responsible solution to an everyday problem—but one that may not live up to its billing.
OPCW Scandal Reaches New Height of Farce With Latest Whistleblower Allegations Over Smeared Douma Officers
By Martin Jay | Strategic Culture Foundation | March 15, 2020
How much longer can the troubled OPCW organisation continue to operate with any credibility after the doctoring of its investigations to suit a western narrative in Syria continues to be exposed and shows it is far from an independent chemical weapons watchdog?
Readers may remember that previously, towards the end of 2019, leaked emails from two key OPCW investigators who were dispatched to Douma in Syria in 2018, revealed that their original remarks – which indicated that the Assad regime could not have orchestrated the chemical attack – were removed from the final edited report. This act alone was the starter’s pistol on a rebellion which is threatening to severely damage the organisation’s credibility in the field and confirms to many that the role of it is purely as an apparatus for the West’s agenda in the field of conflict around the world, against those who stand up to the giants of NATO.
A fourth whistleblower has now emerged from the farcical debacle which will surely reach a tipping point soon either threatening to remove OPCW’s Spanish chief – the main culprit who tarnished the two officers who kicked off the scandal in the first place – or for the organisation itself to have a world-wide identity problem which will manifest itself in many countries simply refusing to allow it entry into hotspots. It’s hard to see how Syria’s Assad would continue to allow OPCW inspectors into Syria following another chemical attack after the organisation has been “hijacked” by western interests who appear to go to extraordinary levels to falsify evidence to serve a narrative.
The latest OPCW official to step forward and support the findings of the two initial inspectors, whose scandal was revealed in a series of leaked emails in May 2019, has spoken of the culture of intimidation within the organisation and how the two inspectors have been dealt a grave injustice in their work and in their determination to salvage credibility for their employer.
“The mistreatment of two highly regarded and accomplished professionals can only be described as abhorrent,” the OPCW official wrote in an email to The Grayzone website. “I fully support their endeavours, in that it is for the greater good and not for personal gain or in the name of any political agenda. They are in fact trying to protect the integrity of the organisation which has been hijacked and brought into shameful disrepute.”
Central to the dispute surrounding the two officers who have had their conclusions dismissed by OPCW’s chief, is the discovery by one of the investigators that the gas canisters on the ground appeared not to have been dropped from an aircraft but rather placed there. This finding is important as it destroys the West’s assertion that the attack at Douma was made by the Assad regime which it alleges dropped the chemicals from a plane or a helicopter.
This incendiary finding was removed from the final redacted report which leans more on the Assad theory and keeps a safe distance from the distinct possibility that the entire attack was staged by western-backed extremist groups in the area.
One of the two whistleblowers and former inspectors is believed to be Ian Henderson, a 12-year veteran of the organization and weapons expert. According to the Grayzone, “Henderson led on-the-ground inspections in Douma and conducted a detailed engineering study of gas cylinders found at the scene” and concluded that the cylinders were likely “manually placed” rather than being dropped by air. The second officer is not named but is believed to be of higher rank who wrote one version of a final report, which was ultimately rejected for a redacted version which failed to acknowledge the findings of the two investigators – ultimately that it could not have been an attack by Assad’s forces.
Their work continues to draw wrath from the OPCW’s boss General Fernando Arias who remarkably seems to be conducting a smear campaign against them slamming their work as “erroneous, uninformed, and wrong,” believed to be what has sparked a new whistleblower – believed to be British – to come forward with startling new allegations which cast a shadow over the integrity of the organisation.
“It is quite unbelievable that valid scientific concerns are being brazenly ignored in favour of a predetermined narrative,” the email reads. “The lack of transparency in an investigative process with such enormous ramifications is frightful.”
Yet the culture of arbitrary vengeance against those who question the biased narrative or working practices of its chief, is deeply worrying, as the latest whistleblower reveals in the email.
“I am one of many who were stunned and frightened into silence by the reality how the organisation operates,” the official wrote. “The threat of personal harm is not an illusion, or else many others would have spoken out by now.”
It’s unclear what “personal harm” means. But even if it is punitive measures which mean blocked promotion or even constructive dismissal, it raises a number of questions as to the integrity of the OPCW itself which will reverberate around the world’s so-called democratic centres of debate and will spark a new debate among those corridors. Does the OPCW have any credibility left?
US CDC Director Robert Redfield Admitted that Coronavirus Deaths Have Been Miscategorized as Flu
By Larry Romanoff | Global Research | March 13, 2020
The US has been lying all along.
Robert Redfield, CDC director, testifying to Congress, today admitted that virus deaths have been miscategorised as the flu.
He also stated that the standard practice has been to first test people for the flu and, if the test is positive, they stop there. They don’t test for the coronavirus.
So Japan and Taiwan were correct. Many of the US deaths attributed to the flu were actually from the coronavirus.
One Senator asked Redfield if post-mortems were performed to learn the cause of death, and he stated that such were done, and they revealed mis-diagnoses.
The infections and deaths have been knowingly mis-categorised for months, and the CDC ‘strongly’ recommended that hospitals not test for the virus except as a last resort. It is not an accident that the US has no reliable tests. They don’t want to test. Blame everything on the flu.
And now all meetings and discussions on the virus are classified, and all public information must be first cleared through the White House.
Larry Romanoff is a retired management consultant and businessman. He has held senior executive positions in international consulting firms, and owned an international import-export business. He has been a visiting professor at Shanghai’s Fudan University, presenting case studies in international affairs to senior EMBA classes. Mr. Romanoff lives in Shanghai and is currently writing a series of ten books generally related to China and the West. He can be contacted at: 2186604556@qq.com.
US Intel Agencies Played Unsettling Role in Classified and “9/11-like” Coronavirus Response Plan
By Whitney Webb | MintPress News | March 13, 2020
As the COVID-19 coronavirus crisis comes to dominate headlines, little media attention has been given to the federal government’s decision to classify top-level meetings on domestic coronavirus response and lean heavily “behind the scenes” on U.S. intelligence and the Pentagon in planning for an allegedly imminent explosion of cases.
The classification of coronavirus planning meetings was first covered by Reuters, which noted that the decision to classify was “an unusual step that has restricted information and hampered the U.S. government’s response to the contagion.” Reuters further noted that the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Alex Azar, and his chief of staff had “resisted” the classification order, which was made in mid-January by the National Security Council (NSC), led by Robert O’Brien — a longtime friend and colleague of his predecessor John Bolton.
Following this order, HHS officials with the appropriate security clearances held meetings on coronavirus response at the department’s Sensitive Compartmentalized Information Facility (SCIF), which are facilities “usually reserved for intelligence and military operations” and — in HHS’ case — for responses to “biowarfare or chemical attacks.” Several officials who spoke to Reuters noted that the classification decision prevented key experts from participating in meetings and slowed down the ability of HHS and the agencies it oversees, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), to respond to the crisis by limiting participation and information sharing.
It has since been speculated that the decision was made to prevent potential leaks of information by stifling participation and that aspects of the planned response would cause controversy if made public, especially given that the decision to classify government meetings on coronavirus response negatively impacted HHS’ ability to respond to the crisis.
After the classification decision was made public, a subsequent report in Politico revealed that not only is the National Security Council managing the federal government’s overall response but that they are doing so in close coordination with the U.S. intelligence community and the U.S. military. It states specifically that “NSC officials have been coordinating behind the scenes with the intelligence and defense communities to gauge the threat and prepare for the possibility that the U.S. government will have to respond to much bigger numbers—and soon.”
Little attention was given to the fact that the response to this apparently imminent jump in cases was being coordinated largely between elements of the national security state (i.e. the NSC, Pentagon, and intelligence), as opposed to civilian agencies or those focused on public health issues, and in a classified manner.
The Politico article also noted that the intelligence community is set to play a “key role” in a pandemic situation, but did not specify what the role would specifically entail. However, it did note that intelligence agencies would “almost certainly see an opportunity to exploit the crisis” given that international “epicenters of coronavirus [are] in high-priority counterintelligence targets like China and Iran.” It further added, citing former intelligence officials, that efforts would be made to recruit new human sources in those countries.
Politico cited the official explanation for intelligence’s interest in “exploiting the crisis” as merely being aimed at determining accurate statistics of coronavirus cases in “closed societies,” i.e. nations that do not readily cooperate or share intelligence with the U.S. government. Yet, Politico fails to note that Iran has long been targeted for CIA-driven U.S. regime change, specifically under the Trump administration, and that China had been fingered as the top threat to U.S. global hegemony by military officials well before the coronavirus outbreak.
A potential “9/11-like” response
The decision to classify government coronavirus preparations in mid-January, followed by the decision to coordinate the domestic response with the military and with intelligence deserves considerable scrutiny, particularly given that at least one federal agency, Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), will be given broad, sweeping powers and will work closely with unspecified intelligence “partners” as part of its response to a pandemics like COVID-19.
The CBP’s pandemic response document, obtained by The Nation, reveals that the CBP’s pandemic directive “allows the agency to actively surveil and detain individuals suspected of carrying the illness indefinitely.” The Nation further notes that the plan was drafted during the George W. Bush administration, but is the agency’s most recent pandemic response plan and remains in effect.
Though only CBP’s pandemic response plan has now been made public, those of other agencies are likely to be similar, particularly on their emphasis on surveillance, given past precedent following the September 11 attacks and other times of national panic. Notably, several recent media reports have likened coronavirus to 9/11 and broached the possibility of a “9/11-like” response to coronavirus, suggestions that should concern critics of the post-9/11 “Patriot Act” and other controversial laws, executive orders and policies that followed.
While the plans of the federal government remain classified, recent reports have revealed that the military and intelligence communities — now working with the NSC to develop the government’s coronavirus response — have anticipated a massive explosion in cases for weeks. U.S. military intelligence came to the conclusion over a month ago that coronavirus cases would reach “pandemic proportions” domestically by the end of March. That military intelligence agency, known as the National Center for Medical Intelligence (NCMI), coordinates closely with the National Security Agency (NSA) to conduct “medical SIGINT [signals intelligence].”
The coming government response, the agencies largely responsible for crafting it and its classified nature deserve public scrutiny now, particularly given the federal government’s tendency to not let “a serious crisis to go to waste,” as former President Obama’s then-chief of staff Rahm Emanuel infamously said during the 2008 financial crisis. Indeed, during a time of panic — over a pandemic and over a simultaneous major economic downturn — concern over government overreach is warranted, particularly now given the involvement of intelligence agencies and the classification of planning for an explosion of domestic cases that the government believes is only weeks away.
Update on the OPCW’s investigation of the Douma incident
Paul McKeigue, David Miller, Piers Robinson
Members of Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media
- 1 Summary
- 2 Irregularities in the published reports of the Fact-Finding Mechanism
- 2.1 No comparison with epidemiology or toxicology of chlorine release incidents
- 2.2 Withholding of quantitative results of chemical analyses
- 2.3 Delay in initiating engineering / ballistics studies, inadequate reporting
- 2.4 Ignoring evidence of staging in images uploaded by opposition-linked media
- 2.5 Blending of witness interviews and exclusion of testimony that the hospital scene had been staged
- 2.6 Conduct of the investigation
- 3 What we now know about misconduct in the Douma investigation
- 3.1 Attempt to substitute a modified report for the original interim report
- 3.2 Suppression of quantitative lab results
- 3.3 Suppression of inconsistencies in the eyewitness testimony
- 3.4 Suppression of the consultation with medical experts in June 2018
- 3.5 Concealing the date and rationale for the decision not to proceed with exhumations
- 3.6 Attempt by US officials to influence the inspectors
- 3.7 Unreviewed report prepared by unknown authors presented as “the Report of the Fact-Finding Mechanism”
- 3.8 Suppression of the engineering assessment
- 3.9 The three external engineering/ballistics consultancies supposedly obtained by the FFM
- 4 The OPCW’s investigation into “Possible Breaches of Confidentiality”
- 5 The Investigation and Identification Team (IIT)
1 Summary
- As we noted in April 2019, there were defects in the published interim and final Reports of the Fact-Finding Mechanism on the Douma incident that indicated that evidence had been withheld or distorted.
- From comparing the original Interim Report drafted in June 2018, the modified report that was intended to be substituted for it, and the published Final Report, it is clear that this was not simply a divergence of opinions between experts. The misrepresentation of evidence in the published Final Report can reasonably be described as fraudulent. Specifically, the following points can be identified:
- Quantitative results on the levels of chlorinated organic compounds were suppressed. A false assertion about “high levels” of these compounds had been added to the modified report.
- An assessment based on the epidemiology of chlorine release incidents was omitted from the modified report and the Final Report.
- On-site assessments that the observations were incompatible with aerial delivery of the cylinders were omitted from the modified report and the Final Report.
- The testimony of opposition-linked witnesses interviewed in Turkey was rewritten in the Final Report so as to obscure inconsistencies about the distribution of bodies at Location 2 that would have cast doubt on the reliability of their testimony.
- The result of the consultation with medical experts in June 2018, indicating that the victims had not been killed by chlorine, was suppressed and omitted from the timeline of the investigation published in the Final Report.
- The internal engineering assessment was excluded from the published Final Report.
- In violation of Article VIII of the Chemical Weapons Convention, the Chief of Cabinet allowed US officials to attempt to influence the inspectors in July 2018.
- The evidence of fraud in the published report of the Douma investigation means that all other published reports from FFM Team Alpha, including the FFM reports on the alleged chlorine attacks in 2015 and the alleged sarin attack in Khan Sheikhoun in 2017, must also be disregarded as unreliable and possibly fraudulent.
- The OPCW’s report on 6 February 2020 of what was purported to be an investigation into the leak of the engineering assessment to the Working Group was used instead to smear two of the organization’s most experienced and highly-rated inspectors with false and misleading statements.
- It is now clear that the Director-General’s statements on 28 May and 6 June 2019 that the FFM had “examined, weighed and deliberated”, “considered” and “analysed” the engineering assessment were unequivocally false: the Team Leader and Head of the FFM had refused to accept the document in February 2019.
- The Douma investigation has been passed to the Identification and Inspection Team (IIT). A brief examination of the careers of the investigators and analysts appointed to the IIT shows that all four of them have serious conflicts of interest. This calls into question their ability to resist pressure to come up with the answers that the influential delegations of the US, UK and France want.
2 Irregularities in the published reports of the Fact-Finding Mechanism
In a briefing note posted on 11 April 2019, we drew attention to defects in the published FFM reports that indicated, to anyone who examined these reports closely, that evidence had been withheld or distorted. We review this material briefly before examining what new information has been provided by documents and briefings released from May 2019 onwards.
2.1 No comparison with epidemiology or toxicology of chlorine release incidents
The reports did not assess whether the alleged chemical attack was consistent with the epidemiology of chlorine release incidents, which typically have low case fatality rate.
The analysis of the images of victims stated that “this type of rapid collapse is indicative of an agent capable of quickly killing or immobilising” but did not explain how this opinion was compatible with release of chlorine from an intact gas cylinder on the balcony, or with the presence of foamy pulmonary edema that would take time to develop.
2.2 Withholding of quantitative results of chemical analyses
Quantitative results of lab analyses were withheld. The lack of concordance between labs suggested that chlorinated organic compounds were present only at trace levels, close to the lower limit of detection.
The reports did not make clear that trace levels of these compounds are ubiquitous in environments where industrial or household products are present.
The Final Report emphasized correctly that testing for exposure to chlorine depends on comparison with control samples, but inexplicably did not report results for the control samples that were taken.
Although molecular chlorine is not naturally present in the environment, chloride ions and many chlorinated organic derivatives exist in the natural background. For that reason it was important to gather control samples, wherever feasible, at locations not expected to have been exposed to chlorine gas.
In Table A9.3 two specimens are described as control samples:
- Control sample: debris 20 meters west of the building entry (level 0): 2018.04.21_1909_04
- Concrete dust scraping at pillar 51: 2018.05.01_1779_05
From the Evidence Reference Numbers listed in Table A5.1 we can deduce that these two control samples relate to Location 2 (numbers prefixed 2018.04.21_1909) and the hospital (numbers prefixed 2018.05.01 1779).
Results for these samples are not given.
This should have raised questions about the conduct of the investigation. If rigorous procedures had been followed, with control samples included in the same batches as putatively exposed samples and laboratory staff blinded to exposure status, the omission of control samples from analysis or reporting could only have been deliberate.
We emphasize that the issue here is not whether chlorine was released, but that the withholding of quantitative results and failure to report results on control samples is strong evidence of scientific misconduct.
2.3 Delay in initiating engineering / ballistics studies, inadequate reporting
Three engineering/ballistics consultations are mentioned in the final report: but the figures show screenshots from what appears to be only a single study using a software package for finite-element analysis, These are barely legible screenshots, not of the professional standard one would expect from experts preparing a report for an international agency. Figures 10 and A7.6 show a simulation of the impact at Location 4 with a cylinder without harness or valve, though the cylinder found on the bed had a harness and an intact valve. The barely legible graphs based on the simulation assume improbably low drop heights for a helicopter flying over defended territory. Figure 12 shows the cylinder at Location 4 bouncing off the floor at 2 m/s, which would not have allowed it to reach the bed more than 3 metres away.
There was no explanation for why, if the FFM had considered it necessary to obtain expert opinions on the possible trajectories of the cylinders found at Locations 2 and 4, they did not request on-site examinations while the FFM was deployed in Damascus in April/May, rather than six months later when inspection of the sites and cylinders was no longer possible.
2.4 Ignoring evidence of staging in images uploaded by opposition-linked media
An analysis of images uploaded on the night of 7 April showed that bodies had been rearranged between photo sessions: infants first shown separated from adults were subsequently placed on the bodies of adult women. The opposition cameramen attempted for the first few days to represent the cylinder at Location 4 as the cause of the deaths at Location 2.
2.5 Blending of witness interviews and exclusion of testimony that the hospital scene had been staged
Information obtained from interviews was summarized in the Final Report without any distinction between information obtained from witnesses in Damascus and those interviewed in Turkey (who would have been opposition supporters who had relocated to Idlib under the evacuation agreement), and without any effort to establish whether the presence of each witness at the scene was corroborated by other evidence. The report was written to make it appear as if the witnesses who reported that the hospital dousing scene had been staged were never formally interviewed by the FFM, downgrading their testimony to “other open-source video material”.
2.6 Conduct of the investigation
The Team Leader had left Damascus for unexplained “information gathering activities” in Turkey three days after arriving, before on-site inspections had begun. All evidence other than the lab results was withheld from the Interim Report released in July 2018, even though most of the evidence – witness interviews, one-site assessment of the cylinder and craters, analysis of uploaded images of victims – had already been collected. There was an unexplained delay in the investigation between June and September 2018. Both the interim and final reports were unsigned, though previous FFM reports had been signed by the Team Leader.
In summary, it was possible by April 2019 for anyone with a scientific grounding who read the published reports closely to infer, as we did, that something was wrong with the published reports of the FFM on the Douma incident. We listed most of the points above in our briefing note posted in April 2018, but missed one of the most interesting clues: that results on control samples were not reported even though these samples had been collected. From [reports] that a Russian proposal for all members of the FFM team to give a briefing on the Final Report had been voted down by the OPCW Executive Council on 14 March 2019, it was evident that there was dissent among members of the FFM team.
3 What we now know about misconduct in the Douma investigation
During 2019 more information about the Douma investigation reached the public domain. This began with the release of the engineering assessment in May 2019, continued with the briefing of a panel convened by the Courage Foundation in October 2019 and the release of more internal documents including the original draft of the interim report in December 2019, and finally the release of a written statement provided to the UN Security Council.
3.1 Attempt to substitute a modified report for the original interim report
We now know that the published Interim Report, which reported only lab results, was the result of a stand-off between the Team Leader Sami Barrek and the other inspectors. In June 2019 a secretly-prepared modified report had been substituted for the original interim report.
This original interim report had stated that “Although the cylinders might have been the sources of the suspected chemical release, there is insufficient evidence to affirm this”. The modified report asserted instead that there was “sufficient evidence at this time to determine that chlorine, or another reactive chlorine-containing chemical, was likely released from cylinders.” The section on the epidemiology of chlorine release incidents in the original interim report, which had noted that in such incidents most of those exposed manage to escape, was omitted from the modified report.
The original interim report had noted that preliminary observations on the cylinders and the impact sites raised doubts about the story that the cylinders had been dropped from the air:
The FFM team is unable to provide satisfactory explanations for the relatively moderate damage to the cylinders allegedly dropped from an unknown height, compared to the destruction caused to the rebar-reinforced concrete roofs. In the case of Location 4, how the cylinder ended up on the bed, given the point at which it allegedly penetrated the room, remains unclear. The team considers that further studies by specialists in metallurgy and structural engineering or mechanics are required to provide an authoritative assessment of the team’s observations.
In the modified report this passage was removed, and the question of “how the cylinder ended up on the bed” at Location 4 was replaced by assessing “the trajectory of the cylinder”, implicitly excluding the possibility of manual placement.
The team considers that further analysis would need to be conducted by suitable experts, possibly in metallurgy and structural or mechanical engineering, to provide an assessment of the trajectory of the cylinder, in addition to the damage caused to the bed, the roof and the cylinder itself.
3.2 Suppression of quantitative lab results
The modified report asserted that “high levels of various chlorinated organic derivatives” were present in organic samples. These chlorinated organic compounds were present mostly at levels of only a few parts per billion, not above the background levels that would be expected in an environment where industrial products were present. The quantitative results were withheld from the inspectors who had deployed to Damascus. The inspectors protested about the withholding of quantitative results, and were assured that they would be included in the interim report, only to find that they were withheld from the published version.
3.3 Suppression of inconsistencies in the eyewitness testimony
The original interim report clearly separated the eyewitness accounts obtained in Damascus from those obtained in Turkey (referred to as “Country X”). It also noted inconsistencies between the statements of witnesses that raised questions about their credibility:
There were variations (see table and footnotes below) in the numbers of bodies and their distribution throughout Location 2 as observed in video footage and photos, compared to the numbers provided by various witnesses who were interviewed. According to statements from witnesses, “many people they presumed dead, were lying on the floor of the basement”. The FFM did not obtain any video footage or photos of dead casualties lying in the basement of Location 2 or being removed from there.
The table showed that of seven witnesses who reported the distribution of bodies at Location 2, two reported bodies in basement only, one reported bodies at ground level and above only, and four reported bodies both in basement and above ground level. The videos had not shown any bodies in the basement.
3.4 Suppression of the consultation with medical experts in June 2018
It is now clear that the vague and contradictory account of expert opinions about the cause of death of the victims in the Final Report is explained by suppression of the consultation with medical experts that took place on 6 June 2018 at the Bundeswehr Research Institute for Protective Technologies and NBC Protection (WIS) in Munster. The “chief expert” can be identified as Colonel Dr Franz Worek, the leading medical expert on chemical defence in the Bundeswehr.
His argument, reconstructed from the original interim report written in June 2018 and the minutes written two months later, was as follows:
- Pulmonary edema is a delayed effect of “choking agents” such as chlorine which cause acute inhalation injury. If the victims of exposure to such an agent had had lived long enough for their airways to be filled with foamy edema fluid, they would have been able to escape and would not have collapsed “gathered in piles” on the spot.
- Massive exposure to chlorine can cause laryngospasm leading to immediate asphyxiation, but in this situation there would not be time for foamy pulmonary edema to develop
- Cholinesterase inhibitors (nerve agents) [or opiates, we would add] could have caused instant collapse and also rapid onset of pulmonary edema, but known agents were ruled out by the negative lab tests.
The OPCW participants agreed that the conclusions were clear: whatever killed the victims, it was not chlorine. This consultation does not appear in the timeline of the final Report of the Fact-Finding Mission: the first toxicology consultations are dated to September 2018.
3.5 Concealing the date and rationale for the decision not to proceed with exhumations
The original interim report recorded that plans for exhumations were halted when the first lab results were received on 22 May 2018:
When the analytical results of the first round of environmental and biological samples were received and no nerve agents or their degradation products were identified in either environmental or biological samples, the plans for exhumations were halted as the risk of not finding substantive evidence of the alleged attack was now considered high and proceeding with the exhumations presented a risk to benefit ratio that was no longer acceptable.
The Interim Report released on 6 July 2018 stated that the intention to exhume bodies from mass graves was “communicated to the Syrian Arab Republic in Note Verbale NV/ODG/214827/18” without indicating that plans for exhumation had been halted two months earlier. The Final Report omits the date and the rationale for the decision not to proceed with exhumations, and insinuates that the Syrian Arab Republic was responsible for delaying exhumations until they would no longer be informative:
The Syrian Arab Republic replied in Note Verbale No. 45 on 4 May 2018 and enumerated the conditions to be met in order to conduct the exhumation. With due consideration of the time elapsed since the alleged incident, the possibility was eventually not explored any further.
3.6 Attempt by US officials to influence the inspectors
In the first week of July 2018 all FFM team members were summoned by the Chief of Cabinet, Robert Fairweather, to a meeting with three US officials who asserted that their findings proved that there had been a chlorine attack. This attempt to influence the inspectors violated Article VIII Part D of the Chemical Weapons Convention, which stipulates that:
In the performance of their duties, the Director-General, the inspectors and the other members of the staff shall not seek or receive instructions from any Government or from any other source external to the Organization. They shall refrain from any action that might reflect on their positions as international officers responsible only to the Conference and the Executive Council.
Each State Party shall respect the exclusively international character of the responsibilities of the Director-General, the inspectors and the other members of the staff and not seek to influence them in the discharge of their responsibilities.
3.7 Unreviewed report prepared by unknown authors presented as “the Report of the Fact-Finding Mechanism”
FFM team members who had deployed to Douma were excluded from preparation of the final report, and were not even kept informed of its status or expected date of publication. No technical peer review of the final report was conducted. In particular the only organic chemist and the only chemical engineer on the team were excluded from drafting and reviewing the report. A briefing to States Parties was given on 5 March 2019 by Boban Cekovic, a former inspector who could not have contributed to the investigation before December 2018 when he rejoined the OPCW.
3.8 Suppression of the engineering assessment
It is now clear that the absence of an on-site engineering opinion in the Final Report is explained by deliberate suppression. Ian Henderson had been tasked with the Location and Munition (cylinder) study in the work plan issued by the Team Leader on 26 June 2018. He was excluded from external consultations held later that year. The Team Leader and the FFM Leader refused to accept Henderson’s engineering report on 26 February 2019. The Chief of Cabinet, Sebastien Braha, attempted to have all copies of the Engineering Assessment destroyed and also ordered that the log of the Document Registration Archive be altered to erase “all traces, if any, of [the document’s] delivery/storage/whatever in DRA”.
We have noted previously that the OPCW has come up with three contradictory explanations of why Ian Henderson’s Engineering Assessment was excluded from the Final Report of the FFM:
- 1E1: the document was “not part of any of the material produced by the FFM”.
- 2E2: the document was “analysed, it was part of the investigation” but rebutted by the reports of “three external experts commissioned by the FFM”.
- 3E3: the document “pointed at possible attribution which is outside of the mandate of the FFM” and Henderson was therefore advised to submit his assessment to the IIT.
Arias has on two occasions asserted that the Engineering Assessment was considered by the FFM. In a briefing on 28 May 2019 he stated that:
The document produced by this staff member pointed at possible attribution, which is outside of the mandate of the FFM with regard to the formulation of its findings. Therefore, I instructed that, beyond the copy that would exclusively be kept by the FFM, the staff member be advised to submit his assessment to the IIT, which he did, so that this document could later be used by the IIT. As is the case with all FFM investigations, the Secretariat encourages serious and professional debates within, so all views, analysis, information and opinions are considered. This is what the FFM did with the information included in the publicly disclosed document [the Engineering Assessment]; all available information was examined, weighed and deliberated.
In a panel discussion on 6 June 2019 Arias stated that
This information [the Engineering Assessment] was considered and it was analysed, it was part of the investigation and this information has already been given to the Investigation and Identification Team in charge of attributing responsibilities because this information you referred to is more focussing, is more targeted to to establish responsibility than to focus to the facts.
These statements by Arias are unequivocally false. Henderson’s statement to the UN Security Council makes clear that his Engineering Assessment was never considered by the FFM: the Team Leader and the head of the FFM had refused to accept it.
In Arias’s latest briefing, his widely ridiculed explanation 3E3 that the Engineering Assessment had been excluded from the FFM report because it “pointed at possible attribution” which was “outside the mandate of the FFM” was abandoned. Instead he reverted to explanation 1E1:
Inspector A’s assessment purports to be an official OPCW FFM report on the Douma incident. Instead it is a personal document created with incomplete information and without authorisation.
He conceded that “In the interest of transparency and completeness, Inspector A’s assessment has been transmitted to the IIT and will be examined by it in due course.”
3.9 The three external engineering/ballistics consultancies supposedly obtained by the FFM
The Final Report, without mentioning that an internal engineering assessment had been excluded, stated that engineering/ballistics assessments had been obtained from three external experts, and described the results of the assessments of the cylinder at Location 4 as follows:
The results of these assessments indicated that the shape of the aperture produced in the modulation matched the shape and damage observed by the team. The assessments further indicated that, after passing through the ceiling and impacting the floor at lower speed, the cylinder continued altered trajectory, until reaching the position in which it was found.
In the light of other irregularities in the Final Report, we may reasonably be suspicious of the Final Report’s assertion that reports from three independent experts supported the explanation that the cylinders at Locations 2 and 4 reached their positions as a result of being dropped from the air.
If these three assessments exist, and their conclusions were as described in the Final Report, it should have been straightforward to document this. We have been informed that one report was obtained from a European institute with expertise in impact engineering, and that this group assessed that it was “very unlikely” that the cylinder at Location 4 had reached its position as a result of being dropped from the sky.
At a press conference in The Hague on 12 July 2019, Alexander Shulgin, the Russian envoy to the OPCW, stated that:
We would like to review the reports of the three independent experts that made a conclusion that these canisters were dropped from high altitude. You are free not to name them. We already know the name of one of the experts and we highly doubt that they are indeed unbiased.
In an interview in November 2019, Shulgin expressed doubts about the existence of three reports: “The refusal of the Technical Secretariat to unveil the reports of these anonymous outside experts makes us question whether these reports ever existed.” He added that the expert whose name he knows “has a rather dubious reputation in terms of his impartiality, and he is anything but a specialist in ballistics”.
4 The OPCW’s investigation into “Possible Breaches of Confidentiality”
This investigation was originally set up to investigate the leak of the Engineering Assessment to the Working Group in May 2019. However the report of the investigation, the briefing from the Director-General, Fernando Arias, and the accompanying press release were used instead to smear two of the organization’s most experienced and highly-rated inspectors.
The smears include unequivocally false statements – for instance that Inspector A “was not a member of the FFM” – and misleading statements whose only purpose is to denigrate: for instance that Inspectors A and B were “rehired at a lower grade” without explaining that the P-5 grade had been merged with the P-4 grade.
One notably false assertion is that “The majority of the FFM’s work occurred after Inspector B’s separation, and during the last seven months of the FFM’s investigation (August 2018 through February 2019).”
The timeline in the published report shows that the additional information gathered during this period consisted only of interviews with an additional five witnesses in Turkey (October 2018), toxicology consultations (September-October 2018), engineering/ballistics reports purportedly obtained from three external experts (October-December 2018), and lab analyses of a second batch of samples (received February 2019).
Comparison of the original interim report with the Final Report shows that most of the text and figures in the Final Report had already been prepared by June 2018. The only substantive new material that appears in the Final Report consists of figures generated from one of these engineering consultations.
The delay from June 2018 to September 2018 in resuming the investigation is explicable by the necessity to wait until Inspector B had left the organization at the end of his contract.
The OPCW management’s denunciation of Inspectors A and B for “unauthorised disclosure of highly protected information to individuals who did not have a need to know such information.” is unintentionally revealing.
This makes clear that the preparation of the report of the FFM was organized like a covert operation, with information shared on the basis of “need to know”, rather than as a scientific investigation in which material is shared for internal review before submission for external peer review.
There was no basis for the engineering analysis of the Douma cylinders to be classified as “highly protected information”: it did not contain personal data, nor did it include confidential information provided by a State Party.
Syrian officials had told the inspectors who deployed to investigate the Douma incident that the information they gathered was not confidential as far as the Syrian Arab Republic was concerned.
The Verification Annex Part II of the Chemical Weapons Convention specifies in the section on reports that “Differing observations made by inspectors may be attached to the report” and that “The provisions of this Part shall apply to all inspections conducted pursuant to this Convention”. In accordance with this provision, the template for reporting “Other Chemical Production Facility” inspections includes a section for “Differing observations made by inspectors”, implying that the report is not complete unless this section is filled in.
This clause can thus be read as guaranteeing a right to attach “differing observations” that has been denied to inspectors in the Fact-Finding Mission.
5 The Investigation and Identification Team (IIT)
The remit “to identify the perpetrators of the use of chemical weapons in the Syrian Arab Republic”, adopted by the Conference of the States Parties on 27 June 2018 was assigned to an Investigation and Identification Team (IIT). On 28 June 2019 the IIT published a list of nine incidents, including the Douma incident, on which it would focus its investigative work:
- Three alleged chlorine attacks in 2014: Al-Tamanah 12 April, Kafr-Zita 18 April, Al-Tamanah 18 April examined in the Third Report of the FFM then led by Malik Ellahi.
- An alleged attack in Marea on 1 September 2015, examined in an FFM report that confirmed that victims had been exposed to sulfur mustard. This incident has been widely attributed to ISIS .
- Two alleged chemical attacks in Ltamenah on 24 and 25 March 2017, examined in the Report on Alleged incidents in Ltamenah, released 13 June 2018. This unsigned report concluded that sarin on 24 March and chlorine on 25 March were “very likely used”.
- An alleged chemical attack in Ltamenah on 30 March 2017, examined in a separate report
- An alleged chemcial attack in Saraqib on 4 February 2018. An unsigned report concluded chlorine was “likely used”, but was unable to explain the presence of sarin breakdown products in the environment and in wipes from the chlorine cylinder.
- The Douma incident of 7 April 2018.
In the light of the evidence of fraud in FFM Team Alpha’s report on the Douma incident, all earlier reports from this team, including their reports on the incidents above, should now be considered unreliable. In an earlier briefing note we noted irregularities in the Fact-Finding Mission’s investigations of these earlier incidents.
5.1 Alleged chlorine attacks in 2014
We noted that information for the FFM’s investigation of the alleged chlorine attacks in April to May 2014 was provided by the CBRN Task Force set up by Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, who revealed also that during 2013 he had been undertaking covert activities for an agency that can only have been MI6.
Videos of an alleged impact site in Talmenes, provided by de Bretton-Gordon to the FFM, were later examined for the Joint Investigative Mechanism by a forensic expert, who identified “inconsistencies” that were unmistakable evidence of staging. This calls into question all other evidence from the CBRN Task Force.
5.2 Alleged chemical attacks in Ltamenah in 2017 and Saraqib in 2018
We discussed the anomalous findings of the FFM report on the alleged incident in Ltamenah on 24 March 2017, from which there were no contemporaneous reports but samples purportedly recovered from the alleged impact site after a long delay were reported to contain intact sarin.
Another commentator has noted anomalies in the published report of the FFM on the alleged incident in Ltamenah on 30 March 2017: no explanation was given for the detection of sarin in samples of gravel provided by the White Helmets that were purportedly recovered from a “crater” containing no munition fragments some 200 metres south of the alleged impact point.
In the report on the alleged incident in Saraqib on 4 February 2018, where the alleged munition was a chlorine cylinder and the FFM determined that “chlorine, released from cylinders through mechanical impact, was likely used as a chemical weapon”, no explanation was given for the positive tests for sarin breakdown products in environmental samples from this cylinder.
5.3 Management and staffing of the IIT
As we have noted previously, the director, Santiago Oñate, is employed as a consultant and cannot be a line manager. This implies that the staff of the IIT report to the Chief of Cabinet.
For reports of investigations to be credible, a requirement in science and in legal proceedings is that the names of the investigators are disclosed so that possible conflicts of interest can be examined and so that these investigators have to put their reputations on the line as guarantors of the report that bears their names.
The names of the two investigators and two analysts hired for the IIT have not been publicly disclosed. A brief examination of their careers shows that all four of them have serious conflicts of interest.
Of the two investigators, one is an employee of the Canadian security service and foreign ministry, and the other is an employee of the Netherlands Ministry of Justice. Of the two analysts, one is a former NATO intelligence officer and the other is the spouse of a consultant to the Netherlands Ministry of the Interior.
In noting these conflicts of interest we are not casting doubt on the personal integrity of these individuals, but we are calling into question whether the IIT can produce an impartial report if – as is to be expected – its team is under pressure to come up with a result that will vindicate the governments of France, UK and the US.
It has been reported to us that other individuals, whose independence is even more doubtful, have been brought in to help prepare the report.
OPCW staff members who have information about misconduct or fraud in investigations of alleged chemical attacks are welcome to contact us. For those who are under pressure to collude with or cover up such misconduct, we can arrange expert legal advice. As always, we guarantee to protect the identities of our sources. Emails from a ProtonMail address to wgspm@protonmail.com are secure.
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A principal goal of Stark Realities is to “expose fundamental myths across the political spectrum” — and few myths are as universally embraced as the notion that US participation in World War II (1941-1945) lifted the American economy out of the Great Depression.
This myth is dangerous not only because it leads citizens and politicians to see a bright side of war that doesn’t really exist, but also because it helps foster a belief that government spending is essential to countering economic downturns. That belief, in turn, has helped propel us to a point where the national debt now exceeds $34.6 trillion, with interest payments alone on pace to reach $1 trillion a year in 2026, inviting financial catastrophe. … continue
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