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Article
SOURCE
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/04/07/syri-a07.html
New exposé by Seymour Hersh: Turkey staged gas attack to provoke US war on Syria
By Patrick Martin
7 April 2014
In a lengthy article published Sunday by the London Review of Books, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reports that the sarin gas attack on a Damascus suburb on August 21, 2013 was actually carried out by Syrian “rebel” forces acting at the behest of Turkey, for the purpose of providing a pretext for a US attack on Syria.
The gas attack killed many hundreds of people in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta, and the Obama administration and the corporate-controlled US media immediately blamed the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad for the atrocity. The New York Times, in particular, published a lengthy analysis by its military “expert,” C. J. Chivers, which purported to show, based on rocket trajectories, prevailing winds and other technical factors, that the gas shells could only have been fired from Syrian army artillery positions.
For several weeks, the Ghouta attack became the pretext for a warmongering campaign by the White House and the US and European media. Obama threatened immediate air strikes, claiming that the Syrian government had crossed a “red line” against the use of chemical weapons, which he had laid down in 2012.
The US president then abruptly reversed himself and announced he would seek congressional approval first, only to call off any overt military action in favor of a deal brokered by Russian President Vladimir Putin in which Assad agreed to the supervised dismantling of his chemical weapons stockpiles.
By Hersh’s account, “Obama’s change of mind had its origins at Porton Down, the defence laboratory in Wiltshire. British intelligence had obtained a sample of the sarin used in the 21 August attack and analysis demonstrated that the gas used didn’t match the batches known to exist in the Syrian army’s chemical weapons arsenal. The message that the case against Syria wouldn’t hold up was quickly relayed to the US joint chiefs of staff… As a consequence the American officers delivered a last-minute caution to the president, which, in their view, eventually led to his cancelling the attack.”
The US military leadership also knew that White House claims that there could be no other source for the sarin gas than the Syrian army were false. “The American and British intelligence communities had been aware since the spring of 2013 that some rebel units in Syria were developing chemical weapons,” Hersh reports. “On 20 June analysts for the US Defense Intelligence Agency issued a highly classified five-page ‘talking points’ briefing for the DIA’s deputy director, David Shedd, which stated that al-Nusra maintained a sarin production cell…”
Hersh quotes extensively from this US government document, which the office of the US director of national intelligence now denies ever existed:
“Al-Nusrah Front’s relative freedom of operation within Syria leads us to assess the group’s CW [chemical weapons] aspirations will be difficult to disrupt in the future… Turkey and Saudi-based chemical facilitators… were attempting to obtain sarin precursors in bulk, tens of kilograms, likely for the anticipated large scale production effort in Syria.”
Hersh notes that members of al-Nusra were arrested in Turkey last May in possession of two kilograms of sarin. They were charged in a 130-page indictment with “attempting to purchase fuses, piping for the construction of mortars, and chemical precursors for sarin.” All have since been released pending trial, or had charges dropped altogether.
Those arrests followed chemical weapons attacks in Syria in March and April 2013, where a UN investigation found evidence implicating the Syrian “rebels.” One source told Hersh, “Investigators interviewed the people who were there, including the doctors who treated the victims. It was clear that the rebels used the gas. It did not come out in public because no one wanted to know.”
The “no one,” of course, was the US government, its European allies, and its UN stooges—as well as their political apologists in the media and the pseudo-left groups such as the International Socialist Organization that were either openly campaigning for military intervention in Syria or justifying it by portraying the US-financed “rebels” as the bearers of a democratic revolution.
When the August 21 attack took place, Obama ordered the Pentagon to draw up plans for bombing Syria, and, as a former intelligence official told Hersh, “the White House rejected 35 target sets provided by the joint chiefs of staff as being insufficiently ‘painful’ to the Assad regime.”
The US bombing plan ultimately envisioned “a monster strike” involving two wings of B-52 bombers equipped with 2,000-pound bombs, as well as Tomahawk cruise missiles fired from submarines and surface warships.
Hersh continues: “The new target list was meant to ‘completely eradicate any military capabilities Assad had,’ the former intelligence official said. The core targets included electric power grids, oil and gas depots, all known logistic and weapons depots, all known command and control facilities, and all known military and intelligence buildings.”
The bombing attack drawn up at the direction of the Obama White House would have itself constituted a war crime, causing thousands if not tens of thousands of casualties and crippling Syria as a functioning society.
Hersh then passes on to his most important revelation: that US officials believed the Turkish government, or its intelligence agencies, had instigated the gas attack in Ghouta.
He cites concerns among US military and intelligence leaders that “there were some in the Turkish government” who supported “dabbling with a sarin attack inside Syria—and forcing Obama to make good on his red line threat.”
This was reinforced by the British military intelligence finding on the type of gas used in Ghouta. This included a message to the Americans: “We’re being set up here.” This was followed by a further message about the Ghouta attack that “a senior official in the CIA sent in late August: ‘It was not the result of the current regime [i.e., Assad]’. UK & US know this.”
Hersh suggests that the bitter controversy over the attack on a US consulate and CIA mission in Benghazi, Libya in 2012, which killed four Americans including the ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, is directly linked to the infighting over Syria.
It has been widely reported that the CIA organized the shipment of Libyan weapons stockpiles from Benghazi to the Syrian rebels. Hersh cites a “highly classified annex” to the report of the Senate committee that investigated the Benghazi attack.
This document “described a secret agreement reached in early 2012 between the Obama and [Turkish] Erdogan administrations… By the terms of the agreement, funding came from Turkey, as well as Saudi Arabia and Qatar; the CIA, with the support of MI6, was responsible for getting arms from Gaddafi’s arsenals into Syria. A number of front companies were set up in Libya, some under the cover of Australian entities. Retired American soldiers, who didn’t always know who was really employing them, were hired to manage procurement and shipping. The operation was run by David Petraeus, the CIA director who would soon resign when it became known he was having an affair with his biographer.”
According to Hersh, after the Benghazi fiasco, the CIA was pulled out, but the Libya to Turkey to Syria pipeline continued, possibly including “manpads”—portable surface-to-air missile launchers, which the Obama administration had opposed supplying the rebels out of concern that they would be used to attack civilian airliners.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan tasked Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (MIT) with engineering a provocation that would give a pretext for direct US military intervention. Hersh quotes his source: “‘The MIT was running the political liaison with the rebels, and the Gendarmerie handled military logistics, on-the-scene advice and training—including training in chemical warfare,’ the former intelligence official said. ‘Stepping up Turkey’s role in spring 2013 was seen as the key to its problems there… Erdogan’s hope was to instigate an event that would force the US to cross the red line. But Obama didn’t respond in March and April.’”
Two sources described to Hersh a working dinner during Erdogan’s visit to Washington in May 2013 in which Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry and National Security Adviser Thomas Donilon met Erdogan, foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu and MIT chief Hakan Fidan. Erdogan appealed for Obama to attack Syria, telling him “your red line has been crossed.” Obama then pointed at Fidan and said, “We know what you’re doing with the radicals in Syria.”
Hersh cites a “US intelligence consultant” who describes a classified briefing for Martin Dempsey, chairman of the joint chiefs, and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, prepared before the August 21 gas attack. The briefing noted “the acute anxiety” in the Erdogan regime over the military setbacks for the Syrian rebels and warned that the Turkish leadership felt “the need to do something that would precipitate a US military response.”
In the period following the gas attack, Hersh’s former intelligence official source explained, communications intercepts and other data supported the suspicion that Turkey had organized the Ghouta attack. “We now know it was a covert action planned by Erdogan’s people to push Obama over the red line,’ the former intelligence official said. ‘They had to escalate to a gas attack in or near Damascus when the UN inspectors’—who arrived in Damascus on 18 August to investigate the earlier use of gas—‘were there. The deal was to do something spectacular. Our senior military officers have been told by the DIA and other intelligence assets that the sarin was supplied through Turkey—that it could only have gotten there with Turkish support. The Turks also provided the training in producing the sarin and handling it.’”
Only a week ago, evidence surfaced that supports the credibility of Hersh’s report. A video was posted on YouTube of a meeting of Turkish officials, including Fikan, in which the intelligence chief suggests that Turkish agents should mount an attack on a Muslim shrine inside Syria to provide a pretext for a Turkish invasion of the country.
Hersh’s account is his second long exposé in four months of the “false flag” gas attack in Damascus. Both articles were published in the British journal because no major US newspaper or magazine will any longer publish material from the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist.
Beginning with his reporting of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam for the New York Times, Hersh has specialized in developing sources in the US military and intelligence apparatus, frequently those with policy differences with the current administration in Washington. Hersh left the Times for Newsday, and then wrote for the New Yorker for many years.
Both the New Yorker and the Washington Post refused to publish his first report on the Ghouta gas attack, which charged that the sarin attack had been carried out by Syrian rebels in the al-Nusra Front, forcing Hersh to find a British publisher for his account. The US press was largely silent on that report, and it has so far blacked out the latest exposure.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/04/07/syri-a07.html
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COMMENT
Wow, this is good stuff.
Hersh sounds like a hero ... but he's also a conduit for factions within the US government (via inside sources), so I don't know that this is a fully-fledged hero, or if it is just another establishment voice. *Discovered he's 'blacklisted' by major US media, as they refuse to publish him. So Hersh's probably cool.
What Turkey is capable of is mind-blowing.
I don't mind the PKK giving it to them, now.
US media refusing to publish Hersh, and Hersh having to publish outside the country shows us just how controlled the media is in the land of the 'free'.
CIA strikes again. That David Petraeus guy played a part, as well.
I'm not sure if that UK analyist has anything to do with David Kelly, who was killed, probably by UK intelligence (I'm guessing).
Daily Mail UK
22 April 2012
Suicide riddle of weapons expert who worked with David Kelly: Scientist tells wife he is going for a walk, then takes his life in a field... just like his friend
A weapons expert who worked with Dr David Kelly at the Government’s secret chemical warfare laboratory has been found dead in an apparent suicide.
In circumstances strongly reminiscent of Dr Kelly’s own mysterious death nine years ago, the body of Dr Richard Holmes was discovered in a field four miles from the Porton Down defence establishment in Wiltshire. It is not yet known how he died.
Mr Holmes, 48, had gone missing two days earlier after telling his wife he was going out for a walk – just as Dr Kelly did before he was found dead at an Oxfordshire beauty spot in July 2003.
Police said there were no suspicious circumstances in the latest case but revealed that Dr Holmes had ‘recently been under a great deal of stress’.
He resigned from Porton Down last month, although the centre yesterday refused to explain why.
Inevitably, the parallels between the two cases will arouse the suspicions of conspiracy theorists.
Despite Lord Hutton’s ruling eight years ago that Dr Kelly committed suicide, many people – among them a group of doctors – believe his inquiry was insufficient and have demanded a full inquest.
Some believe Dr Kelly, who kept an office at Porton Down right up until his death, was murdered. He was outed as being the source of a BBC report that Downing Street ‘sexed up’ evidence of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction to justify going to war.
Although it is not clear if the two scientists were close, one source told The Mail on Sunday that they were friendly when they worked at Porton Down in the Nineties.
At the time, Dr Holmes ran a project organising the installation of chemical protection equipment in RAF Sentinel spy planes, while Dr Kelly was head of microbiology and frequently toured the former Soviet Union as a weapons inspector.
After the first Gulf War, Dr Holmes is also thought to have worked on the production of chemical protection suits for troops. In 1991 he was the joint author of a scientific paper about an RAF chemical and biological protection system.
Yesterday, a Porton Down spokesman confirmed Dr Holmes had quit his job but declined to comment further. ‘It is not our policy to speak openly about any individual who works for us,’ she said.
Before finding his body, Wiltshire Police made a public appeal for information but warned people not to approach Dr Holmes for their own safety because they believed he had been ‘looking at information on the internet regarding self-harm and the use of toxic substances’. [Wiltshire Police spin-doctoring to shape public perceptions? Hard to say what's going on here. British scientists and intelligence officers seem to die frequently and suspiciously (think of the one found dead in the zipped up bag in a bath). Whatever this is, it's occurred before the sarin attack in Ghouta.]
Friends of Dr Holmes say this disclosure irritated his family, who questioned why a scientist engaged in chemical warfare research would ‘need to Google toxic substances’.
Dr Holmes’s widow, Susan, is a chemist who also works at Porton Down as head of business administration.
One of the Government’s most sensitive and secretive military facilities, the site has long been the focus of controversy.
Three years ago hundreds of ex-servicemen who were used as chemical warfare guinea pigs there between 1939 and 1989 were given compensation and an apology from the Ministry of Defence.
They were tested with the nerve agent sarin, but some of those involved claimed they had been told they were taking part in cold-remedy trials.
Many suffered serious illnesses after exposure to the gas, which was developed by the Nazis during the Second World War.
An inquest into Dr Holmes’s death was opened and adjourned by Wiltshire Coroner David Ridley last week. Coroner’s officer Paul Tranter said Dr Holmes’s family had grown concerned for his wellbeing after he failed to return from a walk on April 11.
A search party involving police and members of the other emergency services began combing waste ground close to his home in the Bishopsdown area of Salisbury.
Police discovered his body half a mile away in a field used regularly by dog-walkers and joggers in the village of Laverstock.
Mr Tranter said the results of tests carried out to establish the cause of death would not be known for several weeks.
He added: ‘Police do not consider this death to be suspicious in any way, nor do they believe there was any third-party involvement.’
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2133201/Dr-Richard-Holmes-Suicide-riddle-weapons-expert-worked-David-Kelly.html
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Recapping
Sarin gas attack, Ghouta
(suburb Damascus, Syria) - 21 Aug 2013
carried out by al-Nusra Front
al-Qaeda linked 'rebel' Western proxy opposition
as pretext for US attack on Syria
killed hundreds
compliant corporate US media points at Assad
New York Times is big-time US foreign policy shill
publishes report of CJ Chivers
purporting to show gas shells could only have been fired by Syrian Army (Assad's)
Porton Down
Defence lab in Wiltshire, UK
analysis sample sarin
{obtained by British Intel}
demonstrated gas used in Ghouta attack
did not match existing Syrian batches
case against Assad/Syria could not hold
Obama cancels well-planned attack
aiming to totally wipe out Syria govt military
[reported by Patrick Martin, WSWS, 7 April 2014]
Days later TWO YEARS EARLIER
22 April 2012 - Daily Mail UK
Dr Richard Holmes
head of microbiology
{who worked with murdered (2003) Dr David Kelly}
Porton Down
Defence lab in Wiltshire, UK
... just happens to 'commit suicide'
... just like Dr David Kelly happened to *bullshit*
Dr David Kelly
revealed UK intelligence
report re illegal attack on Iraq 'sexed up'
Dr David Kelly Died: 2003
Dr Richard Holmes
head of microbiology
Dr Richard Holmes Died: 2012
Porton Down lab
no match Ghouta attack
with Syria / Assad govt
NOTE
21 Aug 2013 = Sarin attack, Ghouta, Syria
Dr Richard Homes died year prior
presumably no link to Sarin
More on Dr David Kelly:
Ten Years Ago: The Death of Dr. David Kelly. Murdered on the Orders of Her Majesty’s Government?
By Dr. David Halpin and James Corbett
Global Research, July 19, 2013
GRTV 13 October 2011
http://www.globalresearch.ca/ten-years-ago-the-death-of-dr-david-kelly-murdered-on-the-orders-of-her-majestys-government/5343229
White House lied that sarin source was Syrian army / Assad
& US military leadership knew it
Both American & British intel knew
'rebels' (ie proxies) in Syria
were developing chemical weapons
Evidence Seymour Hersh (journalist) relies on
US Defence Intel - 5-page briefing proves this
DIA Dep. Dir, David Shed
states al-Nusra maintained sarin production cell
Turkey & Saudi-based chemical facilitators
--> US government denied existence of document
Not brought to public attention
Kept hushed by:
- US govt
- European allies
- UN stooges
- political apologists
- media
- pseudo-left groups
Obama had Pentagon draw attack plans re Syria
35 such plans rejected - not sufficiently destructive
monster strike planned - 2,000 pounds bombs
intended to completely destroy Assad military
US attack on Syria would have:
- constituted another US war crime (like Iraq)
- killed thousands
- crippled Syria as functioning society
- produced another Libya (civil war 4 years)
Hersh reports:
Turkish government or its Intelligence
(comment: which is partner & co-conspirator of Turkish govt
as evidenced by leaked audio - Syria false flag plot)
INSTIGATED SARIN GAS ATTACK IN GHOUTA
This assertion is reinforced by British Porton Down lab finding
that Ghouta sample is NO match for Syria government
& UK & US know this
Infighting re Syria
linked to Benghazi, Libya
- US Consulate & CIA Mission Attack
- 4 dead Americans
- incl. Ambassador to Libya
CIA was arranging shipments
of Libya weapons stockpiles
from Benghazi to Syria proxies
2012 secret agreement b/w Obama & Turkey
funding for weapons from:
TURKEY, SAUDI ARABIA, QATAR
CIA + MI6 running arms
from Gadaffi arsenals Libya
to Syria al-Qaeda linked 'rebel' proxies attacking Syria govt
front companies set up
for cover, incl. Australian entities
retired US military
hired to manage procurement & shipping
op run by Gen David Petraeus, CIA Director
CIA reportedly pulled out post Benghazi
LIBYA to TURKEY to SYRIA weapons rat run continues
manpads / portable SAM launchers supplied to al-Qaeda linked 'rebel' proxies
capable of air attacks
MIT tasked by Erdogan
to stage provocation, as pretext for US intervention
MIT runs liaison w/ al-Qaeda linked 'rebel' proxies
gendarmerie (military that is policing civilian sector)
handled logistics, training etc on site
gendarmerie (ie Turk military) training incl. chemical warfare
leaked Turkish authorities + intel audio
supports suspicion Turkey arranged Ghouta attack
Sarin supplied via Turkey
w/ Turkish support + handling training
No major US newspaper or US magazine
will publish any material from Seymour Hersh any longer -- ie he must be blacklisted
New Yorker & Washington Post
refused to publish Seymour Hersh Ghouta gas attack first report
that indicated al-Nusra Front
(al-Qaeda linked, Turkish & Western backed 'rebel' proxy)
linked to Ghouta chemical attack
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EU-NATO IMPERIALISM ❌ 
