Thread: The OPCW found no evidence of chemical weapon use in Douma

Google mulled blocking Russian propaganda.

Fucking good idea.

They should do that.

Deafening silence about Syria?

Leaked Report: Douma “Chemical Attack” Likely Staged
May 16, 2019

The leaked OPCW report appears to have been confirmed genuine.

The report, titled “Engineering Assessment of Two Cylinders Observed at Douma Incident”, came to public prominence a few days ago after The Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media released their analysis of the text.

Since then it has gotten a lot of play all across the alternate media (you can read our original report here, but there were many others too).

It has received virtually zero coverage in the mainstream media, of course. And that doesn’t appear likely to change any time soon.

The report spells out, in unambiguous language, that the two chlorine gas canisters were likely planted, rather than dropped from a helicopter.

In summary, observations at the scene of the two locations, together with subsequent analysis, suggest that there is a higher probability that both cylinders were manually placed at those two locations rather than being dropped.”

This finding adds to the pile of evidence which makes it appear very likely the whole event was staged.

The only question was whether or not the document could be confirmed genuine. And now it has been.

Peter Hitchens, for a long time the only mainstream voice to express any doubts about the “official narrative” on Douma, wrote to the OPCW to ask about the leaked report.

He wrote a column about it. We suggest you read it, but the most important passage, taken directly from an OPCW statement, is this:

Pursuant to its established policies and practices, the OPCW Technical Secretariat is conducting an internal investigation about the unauthorised release of the document in question.

Note the language. Nowhere is it disputing either the findings of the document, nor the veracity. Instead, they are “conducting an investigation” into its “unauthorised release”.

That is as close to an admission as makes no difference. For now, we can safely conclude the document is real, and the findings genuine.

That means, not only that the Douma “chemical attack” was likely staged, but that the OPCW knew this and chose to cover it up.

A very distressing series of events, and one that could easily have lead to an all-out war between Syria, Russia and NATO.

We welcome the OPCW’s admission that this document is genuine. However, we would suggest the question is not “How was it leaked?”, but rather “Why was it suppressed in the first place?”

https://off-guardian.org/2019/05/16/...rt-is-genuine/

Assessment by the engineering sub-team of the OPCW Fact-Finding Mission investigating the alleged chemical attack in Douma in April 2018
Paul McKeigue, David Miller, Piers Robinson

Members of Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media

1 Introduction
2 Commentary on the Engineering Assessment
2.1 Methodology
2.2 Results: Location 2
2.3 Results: Location 4
2.4 Conclusions of the Engineering Assessment
3 Implications of the Engineering Assessment combined with other findings
4 The hijacking of OPCW
5 Acknowledgements

1 Introduction
In our Briefing note on the Final Report of the OPCW Fact-Finding Mission on the Douma incident, we noted that the FFM had sought assessments in October 2018 from unidentified engineering experts on the “the trajectory and damage to the cylinders found at Locations 2 and 4”. The Final Report provided no explanation for why the FFM had not sought engineering assessments in April 2018, when the experts could have inspected the sites with cylinders in position, rather than six months later when inspection of the sites with cylinders in position was no longer possible and the assessments had to rely on images and measurements obtained by others. We raised this as an obvious anomaly.

OPCW staff members have communicated with the Working Group. We have learned that an investigation was undertaken by an engineering sub-team of the FFM, beginning with on-site inspections in April-May 2018, followed by a detailed engineering analysis including collaboration on computer modelling studies with two European universities. The report of this investigation was excluded from the published Final Report of the Fact-Finding Mission, which referred only to assessments sought from unidentified “engineering experts” commissioned in October 2018 and obtained in December 2018.

A copy of a 15-page Executive Summary of this report with the title “Engineering Assessment of two cylinders observed at the Douma incident” has been passed to us and we have posted it here. Please download and share this document via your own server if you link to it, so as not to overload our server.

We are studying this document, and encourage others with relevant expertise to contribute. We provide some initial comments below:-

2 Commentary on the Engineering Assessment
The report is signed by Ian Henderson, who is listed as one of the first P-5 level inspection team leaders trained at OPCW in a report dated 1998. We have confirmed that as the engineering expert on the FFM, Henderson was assigned to lead the investigation of the cylinders and alleged impact sites at Locations 2 and 4. We understand that “TM” in the handwritten annotation denotes Team Members of the FFM.

In response to an enquiry on 11 May 2019, the OPCW press office stated that “the individual mentioned in the document has never been a member of the FFM”. This statement is false. The engineering sub-team could not have been carrying out studies in Douma at Locations 2 and 4 unless they had been notified by OPCW to the Syrian National Authority (the body that oversees compliance with the Chemical Weapons Convention) as FFM inspectors: it is unlikely that Henderson arrived on a tourist visa.

The OPCW press office also attempted to suggest that the report of the engineering sub-team was not part of the FFM’s investigation. This statement also is false. The sub-team report refers to external collaborators and consultants: we understand that this included two European universities. This external collaboration on such a sensitive matter could not have gone ahead unless it had been authorised: otherwise Henderson would have been dismissed instantly for breach of confidentiality. We can therefore be confident that the preparation of the report had received the necessary authorisation within OPCW. What happened after the report was written is another matter.
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3 Implications of the Engineering Assessment combined with other findings
The conclusion of the Engineering Assessment is unequivocal: the “alternative hypothesisâ€� that the cylinders were manually placed in position is “the only plausible explanation for observations at the scene”.

Our last Briefing Note listed two other key findings:

It is no longer seriously disputed that the hospital scene was staged: there are multiple eyewitness reports supported by video evidence
The case fatality rate of 100%, with no attempt by the victims to escape, is unlike any recorded chlorine attack.

Taken together, these findings establish beyond reasonable doubt that the alleged chemical attack in Douma on 7 April 2018 was staged.
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We conclude that the staging of the Douma incident entailed mass murder of at least 35 civilians to provide the bodies at Location 2. It follows from this that people dressed as White Helmets and endorsed by the leadership of that organization had a key role in this murder.
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4 The hijacking of OPCW
In our last Briefing Note, we concluded by asserting that “It is doubtful whether [OPCW’s] reputation as an impartial monitor of compliance with the Chemical Weapons Convention can be restored without radical reform of its governance and working practices”. The new information we have removes all doubt that the organization has been hijacked at the top by France, UK and the US. We have no doubt that most OPCW staff continue to do their jobs professionally, and that some who are uneasy about the direction that the organization has taken nevertheless wish to protect its reputation. However what is at stake here is more than the reputation of the organization: the staged incident in Douma provoked a missile attack by the US, UK and France on 14 April 2018 that could have led to all-out war.

Read more
Assessment by the engineering sub-team of the OPCW Fact-Finding Mission investigating the alleged chemical attack in Douma in April 2018 ? Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media

Leaked OPCW memo casts doubt on watchdog’s Douma ‘chemical attack’ conclusions
18 May, 2019

A leaked report by OPCW engineers contradicts the chemical watchdog’s official report on the April 2018 incident in Syria, and raises questions about political pressure by US, UK and France on the UN body.

In April 2018, as Syrian government forces recaptured the city of Douma from Islamist militants, the “White Helmets” claimed a chemical attack with chlorine and sarin gas killed over 40 people. Not waiting for UN investigators to reach the site, the US, UK and France launched airstrikes against government positions and declared President Bashar Assad was to blame.

In its final report on the incident, published in March 2019, the fact-finding mission of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) found no sarin, but said the cylinders with “molecular chlorine” were dropped from the air. The report cited unnamed, unspecified external “experts.” But there was another report, by OPCW engineers, that challenged these conclusions – and was never included in the final document.

On Friday, Russian envoy to the UN Vassily Nebenzia said that Moscow wanted to get the OPCW “back on track.”
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“It used to be a technical body where consensus prevailed, but it has become highly politicized,” said Nebenzia. “We want it to return to the way it was originally.”

Following the publication of the FFM report in March, Russian envoy to the OPCW Alexander Shulgin told RT that the organization was under tremendous pressure and “simply didn’t dare” to contradict the US narrative blaming Damascus for the attack.

“Admitting that it was a staged provocation… would deny the US and their allies the legitimacy they claimed for carrying out the missile strike on Syria,” Shulgin told RT.

https://www.rt.com/news/459643-opcw-...-report-syria/

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo: "I was the CIA director. We lied, we cheated, we stole. We had entire training courses."

Originally Posted by Neverna

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo: "I was the CIA director. We lied, we cheated, we stole. We had entire training courses."

Sounds like counter-intelligence to me.

What did you think they did?

Originally Posted by Neverna

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo: "I was the CIA director. We lied, we cheated, we stole

And afterwards, nothing but the true...

The first weapon of mass destruction for the Pentagon and CIA is the lies they spread !!!

Leaked OPCW memo casts doubt on watchdog’s Douma ‘chemical attack’ conclusions

(another retraction? in deafening silence?)

Mayday: The Canister on the Bed, Radio 4, 20 November 2020
02 September 2021

Complaint
The programme, part of a series on aspects of the conflict in Syria, dealt with the chemical weapons attack at Douma, which it described as “one of the most contested events in the war”, and included an account of the role subsequently played by a former inspector with the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), known pseudonymously as Alex, who had expressed concerns about the OPCW’s conclusions on the matter. The journalist Peter Hitchens complained that the programme had been inaccurate in insinuating that Alex’s disclosures had been motivated by a reward of $100,000 offered by WikiLeaks, that he believed the attack had been staged, and that he had made his views known only through “a select few journalists who share the Russian and Syrian state views on the war”. The ECU considered the complaint in the light of the BBC’s editorial standards of due accuracy.

Outcome
The programme, having referred to Alex’s disclosures in the winter of 2019, said it was “interesting” that they “came at a time when WikiLeaks was offering a $100,000 reward for any leaked material relating to the Douma incident”. The ECU agreed that this amounted to an insinuation about Alex’s motives. It considered the evidence, some of it from confidential sources, which had led the programme-makers to believe the insinuation justified, but judged that, although it was such as to warrant reporting (on an attributed basis) that Alex’s motives had been questioned, it was not strong enough to warrant the programme itself calling them into question. Similarly, the programme’s statement that Alex “believed the attack was staged” seemed to the ECU to rest on evidence which, although strongly suggestive, was not so conclusive as to justify stating as a fact that he believed the attack to have been staged. As to Alex’s dealings with journalists, although he had collaborated with journalists who held broadly the same views on the war as the Russian and Syrian governments, he had also collaborated with journalists of whom that could not be said (Mr Hitchens among them).

The ECU found that, although they were limited to one aspect of a investigation into a complex and hotly contested subject, these points represented a failure to meet the standard of accuracy appropriate to a programme of this kind. The ECU noted that a posting about one point of the complaint had been made on the Corrections and Clarifications page of bbc.co.uk but, as it was not reflected in the extended version of the programme which continued to available on BBC Sounds and the website of the series, it did not suffice to resolve the issue in question.

Mayday: The Canister on the Bed, Radio 4, 20 November 2020 | Contact the BBC


Quite "diplomatically"retracted after 3 years, in not so clear language, others tell it more strongly:

BBC Admits Propaganda Report Smearing OPCW Syria 'Gas Attack' Whistleblower Was Filled With Lies

A BBC propaganda report from journalist Chloe Hadjimatheou that smeared an OPCW whistleblower, Wikileaks and columnist Peter Hitchens for questioning the alleged April 2018 "gas attack" in Douma was loaded with lies and disinformation, the BBC has admitted.

From The Daily Mail, "BBC admits Syria gas attack report had serious flaws in 'victory for truth' after complaint by Peter Hitchens"