By Ben NORTON

The decade-long dirty war on Syria proved to be a cash cow for some of the most prominent US and UK regime-change operatives. Western government contractors got hundreds of millions of dollars to run schemes to destabilize Damascus – and some of them took a cut for themselves, profiting off of the pillage.

One of the main players in the cottage industry of contractors that helped run the Western regime-change war on Syria,  and which was eventually implicated in a massive corruption scandal, was the Mayday Rescue Foundation.

Mayday served as the fiscal sponsor of Syria Civil Defense, known popularly as the White Helmets, a deceptive humanitarian interventionist operation that became a key propaganda weapon in the dirty war on Damascus.

With more than $120 million in funding from numerous Western governments, the White Helmets were portrayed in servile media campaigns and by slick PR films as a noble philanthropic group dedicated to saving civilian lives. In reality, the organization functioned as the de facto civil and medical infrastructure for areas in Syria that were controlled by brutal, theocratic Salafi-jihadist insurgents.

The White Helmets operated exclusively in areas run by the Syrian armed opposition, and collaborated extensively with extremists, including ISIS and al-Qaeda. White Helmets were even filmed assisting in public executions on numerous occasions.

The White Helmets helped NATO member Turkey militarily invade and ethnically cleanse Kurdish-majority towns in northern Syria as part of a plan to repopulate those areas with Sunni Muslim Arabs who supported Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Following the invasion, schoolchildren were indoctrinated with Turkish nationalist propaganda.

A Syria producer at the BBC has even stated that the White Helmets helped stage a fake chemical weapons attack in the city of Douma, to try to pin the blame on the Syrian government and spur Western military intervention against it.

Yet while Western governments were lavishing the White Helmets with praise and funneling huge sums of taxpayer money into their parent organization, the Netherlands-based Mayday Rescue Foundation, they were also quietly investigating the group for fraud.

A series of mainstream Dutch media reports document how the Netherlands knew Mayday had presided over serious financial irregularities, but top officials covered it up, refusing to inform elected lawmakers and even ignoring recommendations from their own regulators to reclaim millions of dollars worth of contracts.

Dutch officials feared that exposing Mayday’s corruption could harm the Western regime-change efforts targeting Syria, and might sully the benevolent image of the White Helmets that was carefully constructed over years of constant promotion and obsequious propaganda.

The scandal is a particularly disturbing illustration of how footsoldiers of the Non-Profit Industrial Complex tug at the heartstrings of Western liberals not only to advance Western foreign policy interests, but also to line their own pockets with millions of dollars flowing through opaque contracts.

The controversy also demonstrates how Western government officials protected war profiteers while keeping the constituents whose tax dollars were wasted away in the dark about the documented corruption in their midst.

The US government-funded White Helmets assist a public execution in Daraa, in rebel-held Syria in 2017

Dutch government investigated White Helmets sponsor Mayday Rescue for fraud – but covered it up

This May 7, the Dutch-language newspaper de Volkskrant published a report revealing that the Netherlands had investigated the Mayday Rescue Foundation for fraud.

Western European governments poured more than €100 million ($121 million) into Mayday to fund the White Helmets, including Britain, Germany, Canada, Denmark, and the Netherlands. The United States also pitched in, sending tens of millions of dollars to the White Helmets.

The Dutch government contributed €12.5 million ($15.2 million) to Mayday. But by late 2018, the Netherlands suspected corruption and stopped funding the organization, “due to concerns in The Hague about financial supervision and the organization,” de Volkskrant wrote.

The Dutch government subsequently investigated, and in mid-2020 the Netherlands’ Central Audit Service advised the government to reclaim more than €3.6 million in tax money that it had given to Mayday.

“It is not certain whether the millions were spent on their intended purpose,” the newspaper stated.

But the Dutch government did not request this money. Instead, the Netherlands’ minister for foreign trade and development cooperation, Sigrid Kaag, decided to halt a final payment of a mere €57,000 to Mayday – just 1.6 percent of what the audit office had recommended be returned to the state’s coffers.

Even this paltry decision was largely symbolic, because Mayday had already spent the more than $120 million in government contracts it received and was bankrupt by the time Kaag decided to halt payments.

Kaag wilde Kamer informeren over fraudemelding bij stichting, ambtenaren hielden brief tegen https://t.co/KT0pZ9UlWm

— de Volkskrant (@volkskrant) May 7, 2021

In a letter to Western governments, the late founder and director of Mayday Rescue, James Le Mesurier admitted to fraud and unethical financial behavior, such as “very high salaries, cash bonuses and unpaid taxes,” de Volkskrant noted.

But the newspaper report makes it clear that the fraud investigation had become a point of conflict inside the Dutch government. Officials who supported the regime-change war on Syria sought to downplay the scandal.

The foreign trade minister, Kaag, wanted to inform the parliament about the fraud investigation, so she wrote a letter, and planned to send it to the Dutch House of Representatives. (De Volkskrant obtained drafts of the document via a public records request.)

But Kaag was pressured to censor the letter. Top officials at the Foreign Affairs Ministry insisted she not send it because she was not legally obligated to do so. They feared the revelation “may unjustly harm” Mayday and the White Helmets.

The result: The letter was never sent, MPs were never informed of the known corruption, and Dutch taxpayers were not able to learn that Mayday mishandled enormous sums of money it received from numerous donor governments, including their own.

White Helmets czar James Le Mesurier admits fraud, then dies days later

In November 2019, the Mayday Rescue Foundation’s founder, former British military intelligence officer James Le Mesurier, died under strange circumstances in Istanbul, Turkey.

Turkish authorities said he committed suicide, jumping to his death.

Le Mesurier had served in the British army in Northern Ireland and former Yugoslavia, before later working for private security companies. By 2014, he founded Mayday Rescue and became the key Western point-man running the White Helmets psychological operation.

While corporate media marketed Le Mesurier as a humanitarian hero, he and his colleagues were cashing in on the regime-change scheme.

Three days before his death, Le Mesurier confessed to serious financial improprieties. On November 8, he sent an email to donor countries admitting that Mayday had committed fraud. He said he had forged receipts, writing, “I take full and sole responsibility for it.”

But Le Mesurier insisted that the corruption must not come to light, because if it were leaked to the media, it would be a “victory for Russia and the pro-Assad trolls.”

De Volkskrant reported this in July 2020, in an article titled “Founder of Foundation behind White Helmets Admits Fraud.”

A journalist who co-authored the report, Ana van Es, noted that the Western governments that had funded the White Helmets had heeded Le Mesurier’s warning and were “keeping quiet about the wrongdoings.”

Kaag wilde Kamer informeren over fraudemelding bij stichting, ambtenaren hielden brief tegen https://t.co/KT0pZ9UlWm

— de Volkskrant (@volkskrant) May 7, 2021

The earlier de Volkskrant report details how a Dutch accountant began investigating Mayday in November 2019, and found that Le Mesurier had forged receipts and paid money that was designated for the White Helmets to himself personally.

The article reveals just how suspicious Mayday’s financial dealings were. While the foundation was often portrayed in fawning Western media coverage as a benevolent non-profit humanitarian organization, it actually had for-profit commercial branches in Turkey and Dubai.

“There was no supervisory board, which meant that administrators could decide their own salaries, which in some cases amounted to 26,000 euros a month,” de Volkskrant wrote.

This means that some Mayday staff were being paid around $380,000 per year. “Such figures are above the approved salary ceiling of a subsidised organisation in the Netherlands,” the newspaper noted.

“In addition, Le Mesurier, his wife – also one of the administrators – and a third administrator would pay themselves cash bonuses, on top of their salaries,” the article continued.

James’ wife Emma Le Mesurier has rejected the claims of fraud which her own late husband admitted to, and aggressively trolls virtually any journalists on Twitter who mention the scandal.

However, a new administrator hired to try to clean up Mayday’s reputation, Cor Vrieswijk, acknowledged to the Dutch newspaper that the enormous salaries were indeed “excessive,” but added that the Western “donor countries knew about this and had given their consent.”

Western diplomats covered up White Helmets corruption to “avoid political risks” and ensure “minimal exposure”

The May 2021 report in de Volkskrant revealed that when Western governments learned of the corruption scandal at the Mayday Rescue Foundation, they immediately plotted to cover it up.

When Le Mesurier admitted fraud and died three days later, Western diplomats quickly convened a series of “crisis meetings” in the Dutch consulate in Istanbul, the newspaper said.

“The Netherlands saw itself politically as ‘extra vulnerable,’” de Volkskrant wrote. “After all, Mayday is located in Amsterdam. The millions of payments from the foundation went through Dutch accounts.”

When accountants subsequently investigated and found serious irregularities, the donor countries continued their damage control.

In February 2020, Western diplomats met again in Istanbul, where they discussed “avoiding political risks” and ways to ensure “minimal exposure.”

An accounting firm called Grant Thornton investigated Mayday. It technically said it did not find evidence of fraud beyond what Le Mesurier admitted to, but that was largely because the firm’s finances were such a mess that it was nearly impossible to audit them.

As Dutch government officials told de Volkskrant, “Fraud cannot be proven because ‘critical’ parts of the accounts are ‘not traceable.’”

“The bookkeeping was seriously inadequate,” the newspaper wrote. “There was no internal financial supervision. Payments turned out not to be traceable afterwards.”

De Volkskrant continued:

The report did not allay concerns at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Grant Thornton’s findings raised doubts about the accuracy of financial reports previously submitted by Mayday. According to officials, ‘it could not be established with certainty’ that the Dutch subsidy had indeed been spent on the White Helmets. When an officer asks which expenses cannot be audited, a colleague replies, ‘All expenses to the White Helmets.’

Western government funding for White Helmets continues despite corruption

Despite the corruption documented by the Dutch government, Western state funding for the White Helmets has continued, as the United States and European Union have doubled down on their dirty war against Syria.

The US and EU have imposed one of the most aggressive sanctions regimes in modern history to destabilize Syria and oust its government. The de facto blockade, amounting to collective punishment of millions of civilians, has unleashed a large-scale economic depression, fuel shortage, and food crisis.

Meanwhile, the Netherlands resumed its support for the White Helmets during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, claiming to use the group to provide humanitarian assistance to insurgent-held territory in Syria.

Western governments have been able to continue funding the White Helmets without a hitch, largely because a compliant corporate media has almost without exception refused to acknowledge anything negative about the proxy group.

These Dutch media reports on Mayday’s corruption have  received next to no attention in other countries. This can partially be explained because James Le Mesurier had forged many friendships within the Western press, cultivating journalists as assets in the dirty war by feeding them scoops and even facilitating propaganda trips into Syria across Turkey’s southern border.

The BBC – which The Grayzone exposed for covertly participating in UK Foreign Office information warfare campaigns – even created an error-filled, hagiographic podcast series dedicated to rewriting the history of the dirty war on Syria, sanctifying Le Mesurier, and rehabilitating the image of Mayday. Its subtle title? Mayday.

And Mayday is not the only Western government contractor exposed for corruption.

Another regime-change lobby group called the Commission for International Justice and Accountability (CIJA) received an estimated €42 million ($50 million) in funding from the United States and Western European nations to wage legal warfare, or lawfare, on Syria – and collaborated with al-Qaeda in the process.

CIJA, too, was investigated for large-scale fraud. As The Grayzone reported, the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) formally accused CIJA of fraud, “submission of false documents, irregular invoicing, and profiteering.” The EU regulator even recommended that legal authorities in the UK, the Netherlands, and Belgium prosecute CIJA.

.@CIJAOnline, a taxpayer-funded outfit that collaborated with al-Qaeda, lied to entrap a British academic in a sting operation.

CIJA’s goal was to discredit critics of the dirty war on Syria – and cover up an EU investigation exposing its corruption. https://t.co/etOI6DrLCu

— The Grayzone (@TheGrayzoneNews) March 27, 2021

But CIJA’s corruption was wholly ignored in corporate media as well. Le Mesurier’s friends and colleagues went to great lengths to depict the thoroughly documented fraud scandal as a malign campaign of disinformation supposedly run out of the Kremlin.

Western governments and their stenographers in the press have helped shield war profiteers from any consequences, as they have defrauded taxpayers in numerous countries out of huge sums of money, all in a desperate crusade to destroy Syria.

Today, a stunning array of mind-blowing scandals involving the dirty war on Syria remain either untouched or covered up by Western corporate media, from the White Helmets’ role in staging false chemical attacks to Western governments silencing and punishing scientific whistleblowers at the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).

Beneath the surface of the corruption scandal involving Mayday and the White Helmets is a seemingly bottomless pit of bloodshed and sleaze.

thegrayzone.com

A new BBC podcast, “Mayday,” uses smears, gaping omissions, leaps of logic, and factual errors in a desperate attempt to repair the image of late White Helmets founder James Le Mesurier, and discredit the OPCW inspectors who challenged a cover-up of their Syria chemical weapons probe. Mayday’s producer has failed to answer the following questions.

The new BBC podcast Mayday covers the life and death of James Le Mesurier, the former UK military officer who founded the group The White Helmets, which has operated extensively in Syria’s proxy war.

The White Helmets have been marketed to Western audiences as a neutral aid organization conducting rescue operations in opposition-held cities targeted by Syrian and Russian bombings. But as The Grayzone has extensively reported, the White Helmets have worked closely with jihadist groups in Syria, and have been used as a PR tool to whitewash the proxy war against Damascus by their US, UK, Turkey, and Gulf State sponsors.

The White Helmets were established thanks to tens of millions of dollars in funding from the UK, US and Qatari governments. Members of the organization have been filmed and photographed carrying guns and waving Salafi-jihadist flags, and have even participated in numerous public executions of citizens in militant-held territory.

A British former military officer-turned-mercenary, James Le Mesurier founded the White Helmets in southern Turkey in 2014. Le Mesurier died in an apparent suicide in November 2019 after falling from the roof of an Istanbul building where he kept an apartment and office. Days before his death, Le Mesurier admitted to pocketing tens of thousands of dollars in donor funds and committing financial fraud to cover it up. In an emailed confession, Le Mesurier urged Western donor countries to prevent a second forensic audit which, he warned, could uncover further “mistakes and internal failures” and provide “a victory for Russia and the pro-Assad trolls.”

The BBC podcast, “Mayday,” represents a prolonged effort to salvage Le Mesurier and the White Helmets’ tarnished reputations. Despite a forensic audit and Le Mesurier’s own confession, Mayday host and BBC producer Chloe Hadjimatheou makes the implausible claim that Le Mesurier was innocent of all financial wrongdoing. In her view, it was all the result of a misunderstanding. Hadjimatheou goes on to make the equally outlandish suggestion that Le Mesurier was at least partly driven to suicide as a result of the allegations leveled against him by Russia, Syria and critics on social media.

It would take several lengthy articles to detail all of the falsehoods and editorial lapses in Hadjimatheou’s eleven-episode series. These include false statements about The Grayzone editor Max Blumenthal – whom Hadjimatheou never contacted for comment – as well as cheap insinuations about my own reporting as well.

Here, The Grayzone is calling attention to glaring issues surrounding one particular topic: the OPCW’s scandal-ridden Douma investigation.

In an extra episode, “The Canister on the Bed,” Hadjimatheou attempts to refute the OPCW inspectors who have challenged a cover-up of their investigation into an alleged chemical weapons attack in Douma, Syria in April 2018. Hadjimatheou relies extensively on an anonymous source, identified as “Leon,” whom she claims “works for the OPCW.”

Hadjimatheou declined my request for an interview, but did agree to answer questions in writing. A BBC spokesperson also pledged to “endeavour to get you some replies.” I submitted a list of questions to Hadjimatheou and the BBC on Tuesday, November 24^th 2020. Having not yet heard back (I did not even receive an acknowledgment that my questions were received), I have published my questions in full below.

Should Hadjimatheou and the BBC ever respond to me, I will update this article accordingly.

Questions for Chloe Hadjimatheou from Aaron Maté (submitted November 24, 2020)

1) “Leon”

“Leon”, the purported OPCW source whom you interview for the episode “The Canister on the Bed”, tries to diminish and refute two highly experienced OPCW inspectors, as well as the organization’s first Director General, José Bustani. But it is not clear whether Leon had any serious involvement in the OPCW’s Douma investigation – if any involvement at all – or indeed whether he is actually an OPCW official, or just a contractor. It is also unclear what his scientific credentials are.

You claim that Leon “works for the OPCW.” (7:55). Is this something that you have confirmed independently? How did you verify that he “works for the OPCW”? Can you disclose anything about the nature of this work?

Leon’s comments suggest to me that he was not a part of the OPCW FFM team that deployed to Douma. “They had to wait for, like, two weeks,” he says of the Douma team (7:38). This indicates that he was not a part of that team. Can you confirm that “Leon” did not deploy to Douma? Assuming that he did not, what was his actual role in the Douma investigation, if any?

What is Leon’s competence to comment on the chemistry, ballistics and toxicology studies? Did you verify if he had any access to information, data, or evidence regarding the Douma investigation? If so, how?

2) Critical Omissions

Your Extra Episode (“The Canister on the Bed”) on the Douma incident omits critical information about the OPCW investigation that is in the public record. I hope to get your explanation as to why these omissions were made.

A) No mention of the original, censored OPCW report, or the egregious attempts to publish a bogus report

You make no mention of the OPCW FFM team’s original, initial report, which raised serious doubts that a chemical attack had occurred in Douma but was suppressed by unknown persons. This report has been publicly available since December 2019, via Wikileaks.

You omit the fact that this suppressed report was secretively substituted with a new, doctored version, which the Organization attempted to deceptively publish unknown to the inspectors. This doctored report had key facts and findings removed, and unsupported conclusions added, for example: “The team has sufficient evidence at this time to determine that chlorine, or another reactive chlorine-containing chemical, was likely released from cylinders.” This statement was clearly untrue, as the compromise Interim report that was subsequently published on July 6 2018 demonstrated. This doctored report has also been publicly available, via Wikileaks, since December 2019.

You also omit that one of the dissenting investigators, described by the OPCW as “Inspector B”, was the original report’s chief author, a fact that has been public knowledge (I reported it this July in The Nation, for example) for a long time. That Inspector B is Brendan Whelan is also now public knowledge; it has been the subject of public speculation for over a year and I reported it at The Grayzone last month, after he was doxxed by Bellingcat (with the help of a fake document allegedly leaked from the OPCW; more on that below).

You also failed to mention that Whelan/Inspector B protested the censorship of the initial report in a June 22, 2018 letter to the Chief of Cabinet. In this letter, published in November 2019 by Wikileaks, Whelan expressed his “gravest concern” about the doctored report that was about to be published. He alleged that it “misrepresents the facts,” thereby “undermining its credibility.” Because of this intervention, the imminent publication of this doctored report was thwarted just hours before it was due for release. The OPCW has never denied that this incident happened. Even OPCW Director General Fernando Arias, in his response (published on October 28 2020 at The Grayzone) to a letter of complaint Whelan sent to him (see below) detailing these events, does not deny the suppression and the failed attempt to publish a bogus report.

Critically, a number of key facts and findings contained in the original, censored report never made their way back to the final report. As Whelan wrote in his April 2019 letter to the DG, also published last month at The Grayzone: “Having read in detail the Final FFM Report issued on 1 March 2019, I am very concerned at the way the facts have been misrepresented and highly questionable conclusions drawn. The final report, in grand part, is the original report I had written (the same report that had been heavily redacted in June) but in which key conclusions have since been altered to contradict those of the original report. This is despite the fact that no substantive or valid new information, particularly with respect to the sampling and analysis results, has been gathered since the interim report was issued.”

Whelan’s letter also discloses that the initial report was “reviewed and agreed among 4-5 team members in mid-June” 2018. This, among other known facts, contradicts your claim that “there was a scientific consensus among investigators that a chlorine attack had very likely taken place.” Again, none of this is denied or challenged by the Director General in his response to Whelan.

Why did you make no mention of any of this? Given that you attempt to refute the dissenting inspectors and claim that their concerns were addressed, how can you exclude the incident that set off the entire dispute: the deceptive editing and censorship of the original team report, and subsequent attempts to publish a bogus replacement?

The omission of any mention of the doctored initial report is particularly glaring in light of the fact that you include a clip of “Leon” – a purported OPCW official – claiming that “there was no tampering, there was no doctoring.” (25:01) The redacted OPCW report is incontrovertible proof that there was indeed tampering and doctoring. You have thus aired without challenge a statement that is contradicted by the censorship that you ignored.

B) No mention that all but one of the Douma team members were sidelined and replaced by a so-called “core” team

You omit that the inspectors involved in the on-site Douma investigation were sidelined and replaced by a so-called “core” team. Those sidelined included Whelan – the mission’s scientific coordinator, the chief author of the initial report, and the author of the email of protest that challenged the initial report’s censorship.

The only member of this “core” team who set foot in Douma is a paramedic with no scientific expertise. It was this “core” team — not the inspectors who deployed to Syria, including some who signed off on the original report — that produced the final report of March 2019.

This fact alone should raise an automatic red flag about the final report’s credibility.

Why did you not mention it?

C) No mention of the toxicology assessment that doubted chlorine gas exposure

Experts from a NATO-member state conducted a toxicology review at the OPCW team’s request. They concluded that observed signs of the civilians in Douma, particularly the rapid onset of excessive frothing, as well as the concentration of victims filmed in the apartment building so close to fresh air, “were inconsistent with exposure to chlorine, and no other obvious candidate chemical causing the symptoms could be identified.” Yet this critical assessment was excluded from the final report.

Why did you omit this critical assessment, and also omit the fact that it was kept out of the OPCW’s final report?

D) No mention of your own BBC colleague Riam Dalati’s reporting on “staged” events

Incredibly, in an episode that attempts to refute the argument that the Douma incident was staged, you make no mention of the reporting of your own BBC colleague, Riam Dalati, that the hospital scene in Douma was staged. (This omission is made throughout your entire podcast series, including in the episode that discussed the Douma hospital scene, episode 7 “Managed Massacres.”)

As you are well aware, Riam has claimed, based on six months of his own research, that the scene in the Douma hospital was staged. If the hospital scene was staged, then this automatically raises doubts about the entire incident, including at the apartment block, where Riam also said that activists were “manipulating the scene” and “[used] corpses of dead children to stage emotive scenes for Western consumption.”

Truth is @James__Harkin got the basics right in terms of #Douma‘s “propaganda” value.
The ATTACK DID HAPPEN, Sarin wasn’t used, but we’ll have to wait for @OPCW to prove Chlorine or otherwise.
However, everything else around the attack was manufactured for maximum effect. https://t.co/abRvSIMV1L

— Riam Dalati (@Dalatrm) February 13, 2019

The Douma hospital staging also raises serious questions about the role of the White Helmets, the subject of your series. As you report in episode 7, the White Helmets were clearly involved in the events at the Douma hospital. The fact that they took part in a potentially staged incident could implicate them in a crime. You even report yourself that the White Helmets played a role in giving witness testimony and evidence to the OPCW. How credible are the White Helmets, and their “evidence,” if they may have been involved in staging a hospital scene used to allege a chemical weapons attack by the Syrian government? Only by ignoring your own colleague’s reporting can you ignore this critical question.

Given the significance of your own BBC colleague Riam Dalati’s reporting, and its profound relevance to the topics you’re reporting on, why did you omit any mention of it?

3) “Alex’s” non-existent Wikileaks award

You strongly imply that “Alex” leaked documents to Wikileaks in return for a $100,000 reward. Did you first check with Wikileaks, as a minimum journalistic step, whether they ever paid out such a reward, and particularly if they paid “Alex”?

By the way, in trying to falsely insinuate that “Alex” received money, you misrepresented the nature of the Wikileaks offer itself. You state that it was “for any leaked material relating to the Douma incident.” In fact – quoting the actual offer – Wikileaks sought “confidential information (intercepts, reports) showing who is responsible for the alleged attack in Douma.” Wikileaks tweeted this offer out on April 9, 2018, before the OPCW investigation had even begun. It appears that it was clearly aimed at government officials who would be in a position to possess intercepts or reports assigning responsibility.

A source close to Wikileaks told me that they have not paid this award to anyone. They also said there is no record of you contacting them to inquire about whether “Alex” was paid this award.

Will you issue an update to inform your audience that you made this false insinuation?

4) Hypotheses Regarding Staging

You state: “But reading the OPCW report, it’s clear that the inspectors took the idea that the attack might have been faked very seriously. They discussed it as a scenario and tested their evidence against that possibility.”

What is your evidence for this assertion? Can you show where such an alternative was discussed in the final report?

From my reading, any statements in the original report that might suggest a faked attack – such as that the victims may have died in a “non-chemical related” incident – were removed from the final report.

5) José Bustani

You: “Bustani was the director general of the OPCW back when the Iraq War started. Then in 2003, he was removed from his position, something he believes was the result of pressure from the US. And it’s unusual for a former Director General to weigh in like this. And Leon tells me he thinks Bustani might have an axe to grind with the Americans. Even so he says Bustani isn’t in a position to comment.”

That Bustani was removed under US pressure isn’t something he “believes”, it’s a documented fact. Bustani was personally threatened by John Bolton (“We know where your kids are“, Bolton said) and the US also threatened to cut the OPCW’s budget. The International Labor Organisation, a UN agency, sided with Bustani and ruled against his “unlawful dismissal.”

Why did you omit these critical facts, and instead portray them as merely a “belief” by someone who “might have an axe to grind with the Americans”?

Leon: “The work back then was completely different from today. In those days, the main point of the OPCW was to make sure that the massive stockpiles of the US and Russia were being destroyed. There was no mission to investigate the actual use of chemical weapons. This only really started with Syria. So how can Bustani say whether things are done properly or not?”

Apart from the fact that his statement is irrelevant, Leon seems unaware that the methodologies and procedures for investigations of alleged chemical weapons uses (including large field exercises) were developed under Bustani’s watch. Bustani explained this in his recent statement to the UN Security Council (a statement that the US, UK, and France blocked him from delivering – another fact that you have managed to omit).

Quoting Bustani: “More recently, the OPCW’s investigations of alleged uses of chemical weapons have no doubt created even greater challenges for the Organization. It was precisely for this kind of eventuality that we had developed operating procedures, analytical methods, as well as extensive training programs, in strict accordance with the provisions of the Chemical Weapons Convention. Allegations of the actual use of chemical weapons were a prospect for which we hoped our preparations would never be required. Unfortunately, they were, and today allegations of chemical weapons use are a sad reality.”

Additionally, you and Leon also omit that Bustani worked with the dissenting OPCW inspectors when Bustani headed the organization. If Leon – someone whose qualifications are kept hidden, along with his actual proximity to the Douma probe – is qualified to comment on the dissenting inspectors, why isn’t the first Director General of their organization?

As someone who worked with the two dissenting inspectors, Bustani is certainly qualified to comment on their level of expertise, integrity and credibility, as he has already publicly in effusive fashion, but which you also failed to include. “They are extremely competent,” Bustani said of the inspectors, in an interview with me at The Grayzone. “All of them. In fact, they always impressed me because they were extremely professional and extremely reliable.”

6) Bornyl chloride

You:

“I’m not an expert in chemistry. So I checked with actual chemists, who told me that what Mate suggests seems highly unlikely. I was told that heavily chlorinated water couldn’t have caused that chemical compound to penetrate the surface into the deeper layers of wood. Only a gas could have done that.”

This isn’t a question, but a correction. You and your sources are confused here. I never claimed that bornyl chloride was in the chlorinated water (to penetrate the wood). “Alex” never made that claim either. So you’re making a counterpoint to an argument that was never made.

I also should point out that the way that you and Leon address the bornyl chloride issue is illogical and contradictory.

At one point you say that there “was one specific piece of evidence that convinced the team that chlorine gas had been used.” You then quote Leon: “There is a chemical in wood samples, which is formed when the wood is exposed to chlorine gas. Those wood samples, they show that a chemical attack happened.”

But just a few lines later, you acknowledge something contradictory: “the report says this doesn’t definitively prove that the wood came into contact with chlorine gas, the investigators concluded, and check out the very careful language they use, that there were reasonable grounds to believe a chlorine attack had taken place and that the attack had come from the air.” (14:36)

So, putting aside your skewed definition of “the team” – which requires excluding the actual team that deployed to Syria in favor of the “core” team that did not (see “2b” above) – which one is it? Was the team “convinced… that chlorine gas had been used”, or did they only conclude that there were “reasonable grounds” to believe so?

This also contradicts your statement at the end, where you state that “all the evidence needs to be seen together, not in isolation” (29:13) Again, which is it? Was it that “one specific piece of evidence” – the wood samples, or was it “all the evidence… seen together, not in isolation”?

Contrary to what you and Leon claim, the presence of bornyl chloride does not confirm the presence of chlorine gas. As the original report states, it merely indicates that the wood was exposed to hydrogen chloride, which can come from chlorine gas but can also come from other benign sources.

This is why the final report also acknowledged the uncertainty about what the wood samples were exposed to: “Based on these findings alone, it cannot be unequivocally stated that the wood was exposed to chlorine gas, rather than to hydrogen chloride or hydrochloric acid.” It is curious then that Leon is now trying to revise the final report’s own words, and now tell your audience that the wood samples “show that a chemical attack happened.”

If you had been willing to acknowledge the initial, censored report, and Whelan’s letter to the DG expressing his concerns, you might have been able to catch Leon’s egregious error.

7) Note Verbal

Quoting you:

(32:02)

“But here’s something interesting: the OPCW leaker Alex has spent time and energy disputing the idea that there was ever chlorine gas released from those canisters in the two apartment buildings. But when the OPCW reached its conclusions, the Russian and Syrian states didn’t dispute those findings. I’ve managed to see their notes verbale. Those are the responses from member states to the final conclusions of the OPCW. And the OPCW answers all the Syrian and Russian representatives’ questions. But at no point do either the Russian or the Syrian states argue about the Bornyl Chloride found in the wood samples, or the idea that chlorine gas was present at both locations. And maybe that’s because in the document I’ve seen, it’s made clear that the Syrians were given samples from all the evidence gathered in Douma. And so they know the facts of what that evidence shows.” (33:03)

Your attempt to suggest here that Russia and Syria “didn’t dispute those findings” that “there was ever chlorine gas released from those canisters in the two apartment buildings” is deceptive.

First, you falsely insinuate here that you are seeing some kind of damning secret document – “I’ve managed to see their notes verbale”; “…in the document I’ve seen.” But anyone can “manage” to see the notes verbale – they’re freely available on the OPCW website. And reading the Russian note verbal, you’ll see that it undermines your characterization:

“The Russian Federation does not challenge the findings contained in the FFM report regarding the possible presence of molecular chlorine on the cylinders.  However, the parameters, characteristics and exterior of the cylinders, as well as the data obtained from the locations of those incidents, are not consistent with the argument that they were dropped from an aircraft. The existing facts more likely indicate that there is a high probability that both cylinders were placed at Locations 2 and 4 manually rather than dropped from an aircraft. Apparently the factual material contained in the report does not allow us to draw a conclusion as to the use of a toxic chemical as a weapon. On that basis, the Russian Federation insists on the version that there was false evidence and on the staged character of the incident in Douma.”

So Russia does not challenge the claim that there is a “possible” presence of molecular chlorine in the cylinders found in Douma. And that is for obvious reasons: no one has argued that there was no possibility of a chlorine presence. The issue is whether there is evidence to demonstrate that chlorine gas was used as a weapon with any level of confidence. Hence why Russia said – which you omitted – that “the factual material contained in the report does not allow us to draw a conclusion as to the use of a toxic chemical as a weapon,” and that it believes that “that there was false evidence” and a “staged character of the incident in Douma.”

This is clearly contradictory to your claim that Russia and Syria “didn’t dispute those findings” that “there was ever chlorine gas released from those canisters in the two apartment buildings”, because “they know the facts of what that evidence shows.”

8) Repeating Bellingcat’s dubious claims

Your deceptive and false claims, outlined in 6) and 7), happen to mirror the dubious claims recently published by Bellingcat, a website funded by NATO member states. Another supposed OPCW source tried, via Bellingcat, to launder the same deceptive arguments that you have made: that the bornyl chloride constituted a smoking gun (section 6, above), and that Russia and Syria did not challenge the report’s findings (section 7, above).

But as I exposed, the Bellingcat ploy turned out to be a hoax. A purported OPCW letter that made these claims, which Bellingcat claimed was sent to Whelan, was in fact, at best, only a draft that was never actually sent, or at worst a fake from someone outside the OPCW.

The fact that Bellingcat’s text was never sent to Whelan suggests that the OPCW itself might not even stand behind the arguments that Bellingcat’s source and your source, Leon, have each made.

Were you aware of the Bellingcat letter fraud before you published an “extra episode” that made the same dubious claims, and does it give you any pause about airing them?

My hope is that you did not knowingly take part in promoting the deceptive Bellingcat/Leon claims that you aired, and that you will now endeavor to confront your source(s) about how you were misled.

The Bellingcat connection here also raises another issue. The chemist who you interviewed in your attempt to refute me, Andrea Sella, did not actually challenge anything that I have said. But more importantly, Sella has previously contributed to Bellingcat’s attempts to prove that chlorine gas was used in Douma. Did Bellingcat play any role in connecting you with Sella?

9) A researcher with a conflict of interest

The Mayday: Intrigue credits state that Abdul Kader Habak conducted “Arabic translation and additional research.” According to Mr. Habak’s Facebook page, he has worked for the UK-led contractor ARK from 2013 to 2019. This poses a serious conflict of interest.

According to a 2018 report from the British journalist James Harkin in The Intercept, ARK “branded the White Helmets and provided its training and equipment.” ARK was also “funded by the U.S. State Department and the British Foreign Office.” Harkin additionally reported that “ARK was also gathering intelligence on Islamist groups in [Syria], and those reports were being privately forwarded by a British Army liaison officer to U.S. Central Command, with an email recommending additional funding for the organization’s filmmaking arm.” I believe that your researcher, Mr. Habak, worked for this filmmaking arm in Syria.

As the Guardian recently reported, James Le Mesurier – the subject of your “Mayday” series – previously worked for ARK, before taking the White Helmets project with him to his venture, Mayday Rescue.

And as my colleague Ben Norton at The Grayzone has reported based on leaked documents, ARK has also played a critical role in branding and marketing not just the White Helmets, but Syria’s Salafi-jihadist armed opposition:

In a leaked document it filed with the British government, ARK said its “focus since 2012 has been delivering highly effective, politically-and conflict-sensitive Syria programming for the governments of the United Kingdom, United States, Denmark, Canada, Japan and the European Union.” ARK boasted of overseeing $66 million worth of contracts to support pro-opposition efforts in Syria.

…ARK played a central role in developing the foundations of the Syrian political opposition’s narrative. In one leaked document, the firm took credit for the “development of a core Syrian opposition narrative,” which was apparently crafted during a series of workshops with opposition leaders sponsored by the US and UK governments.

…The firm even oversaw the PR strategy for the Supreme Military Council (SMC), the leadership of the official armed wing of Syria’s opposition, the Free Syrian Army (FSA). ARK created a complex PR campaign to “provide a ‘re-branding’ of the SMC in order to distinguish itself from extremist armed opposition groups and to establish the image of a functioning, inclusive, disciplined and professional military body.”

ARK admitted that it sought to whitewash Syria’s armed opposition, which had been largely dominated by Salafi-jihadists, by “Softening the FSA Image.”

…The leaked documents show ARK ran the Twitter and Facebook pages of Syria Civil Defense, known more commonly as the White Helmets. ARK took credit for developing “an internationally-focused communications campaign designed to raise global awareness of the (White Helmets) teams and their life saving work.”

All of this poses a major conflict of interest. The White Helmets is the topic of your podcast. Your researcher, Abdul Kader Habak, worked for a UK government contractor, ARK, that, among other things, branded the White Helmets; ran the White Helmets’ social media accounts; promoted the White Helmets to the public; and [may have] used the White Helmets to gather intelligence for the UK and US militaries.

Were you aware of your researcher’s work for ARK, and ARK’s critical role in establishing and promoting the White Helmets – the very topic of your series? What steps will you be taking to address this serious conflict of interest?

thegrayzone.com

Max BLUMENTHAL

The campaign manager of Amnesty International UK, Kristyan Benedict, appears to have removed an Amnesty International tweet announcing an Amazon Watch webinar to raise awareness both of Chevron’s pollution of an indigenous region of Ecuador and the company’s ruthless persecution of environmental lawyer Steven Donzinger.

A hardline advocate of Western intervention in Syria, Benedict apparently deleted the announcement because of the participation of Pink Floyd co-founder Roger Waters in the event.

Besides being Donzinger’s most prominent public supporter, Waters is an outspoken opponent of US and UK regime-change policy toward Syria.

Donzinger, for his part, is a self-described “corporate political prisoner” whose persecution began in 2011 after he won a multi-billion dollar legal judgment against Chevron over the oil giant’s toxic dumping in Ecuador’s indigenous Lago Agrio region. He is charged with contempt of court for refusing a federal judge’s order to turn over his cellphone and computer to Chevron. With the order still under appeal on constitutional grounds, Donziger has refused to obey it

Chevron has never paid the $9.5 billion it owes in damages. Instead, it has retaliated with a multimillion-dollar campaign to demonize Donzinger, hiring a massive team of corporate lawyers to oversee an attempt to disbar the environmental lawyer and freeze his personal bank accounts.

In August 2019, a federal judge ordered Donzinger placed under house arrest pending a contempt of court hearing, and confined him to his New York City apartment.

“I’m like a corporate political prisoner,” Donzinger told reporter Sharon Lerner this January. “They are trying to totally destroy me.”

Roger Waters has worked since 2012 to draw attention to Donzinger’s persecution, as well as to the suffering of the victims of Chevron’s toxic practices in Ecuador. The Amazon Watch webinar which Amnesty was supporting was to have been one of the most important events on the issue this year. Though the event itself was not canceled, its attendance was undoubtedly limited thanks the censorship campaign initiated by regime-change fanatics incensed by Waters’ views on Syria.

A crusading anti-war activist, Waters has been a vehement critic of US and British government intervention in Syria, and especially their funding of extremist proxy forces to advance a destabilizing regime-change policy.

At the end of the first week in April 2018, Washington claimed the Syrian government had launched a chemical weapons attack on the Damascus suburb of Douma, which had just been cleared of Saudi-backed extremist forces in a dramatic victory for the national army.

The central piece of evidence bolstering the dubious US claims was a video circulating on social media and produced by a US- and UK-created organization called the White Helmets. Waters told The Grayzone he “smelled a rat, did some research, realized the video was not credible, and decided to speak out.”

From the stage at his “Us and Them” show in Barcelona, Spain, on April 13, the Pink Floyd co-founder denounced the US and UK-funded White Helmets as “a fake organization that exists only to create propaganda for jihadists and terrorists.” By this point, the US, UK and France were signaling their intention to bomb Syria in reprisal for the supposed chemical attack.

Waters pleaded with his audience “to encourage the governments of the USA, UK, and France to properly investigate the alleged attacks before dropping bombs on the Syrian people.”

This August, when US- and UK-based Syria regime-change lobbyists learned of Waters’ participation in the Amnesty International-supported Amazon Watch event with Donzinger, they launched a coordinated campaign to pressure Amnesty into cancelling its support. Within hours, Amnesty’s Twitter announcement of the event mysteriously disappeared.

“Yep – not good at all – it’s been deleted,” Amnesty UK’s Benedict assured several allies after the tweet promoting Waters’ Amazon Watch event with Donzinger was erased.

I would appeal to @amnestyusa not to promote this event given Roger Waters participation because slandered #WhiteHelmets repeating Russian propaganda putting their lives at risk when saved over 150,000 lives & cannot remain silent as know them well as a filmmaker @SyriaCivilDef https://t.co/8e311Xcj2S

— Ronan L Tynan (@RonanLTynan) August 5, 2020

Among those who complained vociferously about Waters’ participation in the Amnesty USA event was Eliot Higgins, the founder of the US- and UK government-backed Bellingcat “open source” media operation, which was among the first major Western outlets to accuse the Syrian government of a chlorine attack in Douma in April, 2018.

In a tweet addressed to Amnesty USA, Higgins denigrated Waters as a “famous war crimes denier.” One minute later, he accused Waters of “spread[ing] conspiracy theories about chemical attacks.”

Benedict responded by assuring the Bellingcat founder that the “tweet was deleted a few hours ago.”

The coordinated attempt at canceling or undermining an event on corporate wrongdoing and the environment was just the latest instance of a tight-knit motley crew of Syria regime-change operatives sabotaging left-wing or social justice organizing.

The same cadre of regime-change fanatics has also sought to divide the Palestine solidarity movement, encouraging the movement to turn against any activist who contradicted the Syrian opposition’s line – which also happens to be the official line of the US State Department that has sponsored it.

This regime-change cadre has also viciously attacked critics of Washington’s hostile policy towards other sovereign nations like Venezuela, Nicaragua, Russia, and China.

Kristyan Benedict, for his part, is a central figure among the echo chamber of regime-change operatives. In recent years, he has helped organize several actions promoting Western military intervention and economic sanctions against Damascus.

Asked on Twitter by this reporter if he was responsible for deleting the tweet advertising the event on Chevron’s abuses, the Amnesty UK staffer declined to respond.

“While Dutch prosecutors prepare war crimes charges against the Syrian government for fighting off the onslaught”

Your man here is justifying torture.

Think what that means to those Syrians the regime tortured.

That should be all you need to know to not share such pieces. https://t.co/YXTfgp8yrI

— kristyan benedict (@KreaseChan) September 26, 2020

The Grayzone has obtained audio of a phone call between Waters and Amnesty International Chief Impact Officer Tamara Draut in which Draut claimed her organization had been lobbied to retract its support for the event by “folks in the White Helmets,” as well as “Syrian human rights activists,” who said they were “hurt by what they saw as [Amnesty’s] promotion” of Waters.

“What on earth has this got to do with a webinar about the plight of rain forest dwellers in northern Ecuador?” Roger Waters asked.

“Because your position on the White Helmets and [Amnesty USA’s] position on the White Helmets is so different from one another,” Draut replied, “people interpreted our promotion of an event where you were speaking as promoting your position on the White Helmets.”

Draut has spent her career in liberal non-profits and authored several books on the US economy; she has no apparent record of foreign policy experience or Middle East affairs.

Draut was joined on the call by Amnesty USA’s Head of Artist Relations Matt Vogel, a recruit from the recording industry who also has no notable experience in international affairs.

Without mentioning Benedict by name, Draut appeared to distance herself and the organization from his apparent actions.

“Sometimes staff try and solve problems on their own. I would not have taken down this tweet,” Draut told Waters. “That is not the policy I like to follow on Twitter. Instead, I would have much rather dealt with this directly and honestly, as opposed to disappearing the tweet.”

Draut privately apologized to Waters during the call. Waters responded by requesting a public apology from Draut for Amnesty USA’s withdrawal of support from the Amazon Watch event to free Donzinger and support Ecuador’s indigenous population.

Since the September 25 conversation, neither Draut nor anyone affiliated with Amnesty have expressed regret for the organization’s actions. Further, they have not clarified Benedict’s role in undermining the Amazon Watch event.

The Amnesty staffer lobbying Western governments for regime-change war

While Amnesty International states that its “mission is to undertake research and action focused on preventing and ending grave abuses of human rights,” Kristyan Benedict has engaged in a series of actions designed to pressure Western governments to enact interventionist policies that have demonstrably violated the rights of Syrians.

Amnesty UK’s Benedict has been a leading cheerleader for regime-change and Western intervention in Syria. In fact, his chapter sponsored a 2016 rally in London demanding that NATO forces impose a No Fly Zone over the country.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton admitted in a private 2013 speech that a No Fly Zone would lead to full-scale war and “kill a lot of Syrians.”

Rally for military escalation and regime change, brought to you by @AmnestyUK and @DailyMirror https://t.co/MKEk00u3dL

— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) October 22, 2016

Benedict has also advocated for the so-called Caesar Sanctions that the US Congress and Trump administration imposed on Syria, placing the country under an economic blockade that has limited vital medical supplies, including cancer medication, and triggered critical shortages of bread and heating oil.

As the Financial Times acknowledged in a June 24 report, “The first and biggest act of the Caesar act was felt, not by regime insiders, but by ordinary Syrians, who saw prices spike as the threat of sanctions roiled the country’s currency market.”

In 2015, Benedict participated in a London event sponsored by the Saudi- and Qatari-backed National Coalition of Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces, and aimed at promoting the economic blockade against Syria.

Joining the Amnesty UK staffer on stage were two of the key Washington lobbyists behind the sanctions push: Stephen Rapp, then the State Department’s “ambassador at-large for war crimes” presiding over US lawfare efforts against Syria; and Mouaz Moustafa, the Syrian opposition lobbyist who escorted the late Sen. John McCain to his infamous 2013 photo-op inside Syria with CIA-backed insurgents who turned out to be extremist kidnappers.

The so-called Caesar Sanctions were the result of an elaborate propaganda operation in which a still-unknown supposed military photographer was smuggled out of Syria and delivered to the CIA along with thousands of photographs showing casualties of Syria’s proxy war.

A team of lawyers was hired by the government of Qatar – one of the top sponsors of Syria’s armed opposition – to verify and analyze the trove of photos.

While the mysterious “Caesar” figure was shepherded around official Washington by Mouaz Moustafa, invariably covered in a blue shroud to shield his identity from the public, a selected handful of his alleged photos were put on display at events like the one Amnesty’s Benedict participated in in London.

In fact, as The Grayzone reported, nearly half of the photos depicted Syrians who had been killed by anti-government insurgents, inadvertently confirming the violence of the Syrian opposition. This highly inconvenient fact has been concealed from the British and American public by the operatives that brought forth the so-called Caesar file.

As regime-change lobbyists like Benedict pushed intervention in Syria in the name of human rights, they were forced onto the defensive after confidently claiming that an alleged bombing in Douma, Syria on April 7, 2018 was a chemical attack carried out by the Syrian government.

Punishment for sounding the alarm on Douma

The official story of the incident in Douma has since been upended by several Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) investigators, including two of the most important members of the organization’s fact-finding mission to Douma.

In testimony before the United Nations Security Council this January, former OPCW inspection team leader and engineering expert Ian Henderson stated that the organization’s investigation in Douma, Syria indicated in clear terms that no chemical attack took place, and that the incident was likely staged by the Syrian opposition to trigger Western military intervention.

Henderson and three other OPCW investigators have alleged that the organization’s initial report on Douma was censored by management under pressure from the US and UK governments.

Roger Waters has emerged as the most high-profile supporter of the OPCW whistleblowers, using his public platform to demand accountability for what appears to have been a cynical deception designed to justify a military assault on Syria and nearly led to another disastrous regime-change war.

But well before the OPCW staffers went public with evidence that US-aligned organization leadership censored their factual report, Waters issued his dramatic statement on stage in Barcelona condemning the White Helmets organization that spearheaded the apparent deception in Douma.

Marketed as peaceful heroes, designed to trigger military intervention

So who are the White Helmets, and why were they worthy of so much suspicion?

The White Helmets were established thanks to $55 million in funding from the British Foreign Office, $23 million or more from the United States Agency for International Development (USIAD) Office of Transition Initiatives — the State Department’s de facto regime-change arm — and untold millions from the Kingdom of Qatar, which has also backed an assortment of extremist groups in Syria including Al Qaeda.

A British former military officer-turned-mercenary named James Le Mesurier founded the White Helmets in southern Turkey in 2014. Le Mesurier would go on to die in an apparent suicide at his home in Istanbul on November 11, 2019. The Dutch paper NL Times revealed that he had stolen millions donated from Western governments to the White Helmets to finance a lavish lifestyle, and that some of the donor governments apparently looked the other way as the money disappeared into a web of accounts.

Marketed as a band of selfless rescuers, Le Mesurier’s White Helmets members operated exclusively in areas controlled by Salafi insurgents, including the local Al Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra and ISIS. Its members have been filmed participating in several documented public executions, and helped extremists dispose of beheaded corpses of those they’ve killed.

Throughout the Syrian proxy war, footage and testimony by the White Helmets provided the basis for the West’s accusations of government chemical attacks on civilians and other war crimes. When Defense Secretary James Mattis cited “social media” in place of scientific evidence of a chemical attack in Douma, he was referring to the now-infamous video shot by members of the White Helmets.

Similarly, when State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert sought to explain why the US bombed Syria before inspectors from the OPCW could produce a report from the ground, she claimed, “We have our own intelligence.” She, too, appeared to be referring to social media material published by members of the White Helmets.

However, the accounts by White Helmets members of a chlorine attack in Douma in April, 2018 were immediately challenged by Western journalists on the ground as well as by Syrian eyewitnesses. As the dust cleared, it became increasingly apparent that the armed extremists that had been driven out of Douma by the Syrian army had staged a bogus chemical attack in hopes of inviting military intervention by Western governments.

The White Helmets’ attempt to recruit Roger Waters backfires

During his Barcelona concert, Waters implored his audience to exercise critical thinking: “If we were to listen to the propaganda of the White Helmets and others, we would encourage our governments to start dropping bombs on people in Syria. This would be a mistake of monumental proportions for us as human beings.”

As The Grayzone reported days later, an eccentric French photojournalist had been lobbying Waters in the days ahead of his concert to allow him to deliver a message on behalf of the White Helmets and the “children of Syria” from the stage in Barcelona. He claimed to Waters that he represented a “powerful Syrian network.” It was in response to this appeal that Waters said he made his public statement.

Over a year earlier, in October 2016, a London-based public relations firm representing the White Helmets called The Syria Campaign attempted to recruit Waters by inviting him to a lavish dinner organized by a Saudi-British billionaire, Hani Farsi. The Pink Floyd founder was told that by signing on to the organization’s mission, he could help “elevate the voices of Syria’s peaceful heroes.”

Rather than signing on to a humanitarian interventionist public relations scheme as so many other celebrities had, Waters stood on stage in Barcelona on the eve of war and encouraged his audience to see through the wall of misinformation.

“What we should do is go and persuade our governments not to go and drop bombs on people,” Waters proclaimed, inspiring applause from the crowd. “And certainly not until we have done all the research that is necessary so that we would have a clear idea of what is really going on. Because we live in the world where propaganda seems to be more important than the reality.”

With his anti-interventionist jeremiad in Barcelona, Waters made himself the most prominent critic of the West’s catastrophic regime-change campaign in Syria – and a top target of the forces behind it.

He told The Grayzone that he saw the undermining of his Amazon Watch human rights event as part of a much wider phenomenon of censoring and smearing of public figures who challenge the official narrative on Syria. He pointed to the US, UK and French governments blocking the OPCW’s first Director-General, Jose Bustani, from delivering testimony to the United Nations on the organization’s cover-up of its own original Douma investigation, as a recent and especially disturbing example.

“What’s happened with Jose Bustani going public and The Grayzone having to publish the statement he wanted to make in person to the UN Security Council because the US and its allies blocked him is about the same thing that caused Kristyan Benedict to have Amnesty’s tweet in support of indigenous people in Ecuador deleted,” Waters reflected. “It’s all about covering up Douma and preserving the lies that led to missile strikes on a sovereign country and almost took us to war again.”

thegrayzone.com

Ben NORTON

Leaked documents show how UK government contractors developed an advanced infrastructure of propaganda to stimulate support in the West for Syria’s political and armed opposition.

Virtually every aspect of the Syrian opposition was cultivated and marketed by Western government-backed public relations firms, from their political narratives to their branding, from what they said to where they said it.

The leaked files reveal how Western intelligence cutouts played the media like a fiddle, carefully crafting English- and Arabic-language media coverage of the war on Syria to churn out a constant stream of pro-opposition coverage.

US and European contractors trained and advised Syrian opposition leaders at all levels, from young media activists to the heads of the parallel government-in-exile. These firms also organized interviews for Syrian opposition leaders on mainstream outlets such as BBC and the UK’s Channel 4.

More than half of the stringers used by Al Jazeera in Syria were trained in a joint US-UK government program called Basma, which produced hundreds of Syrian opposition media activists.

Western government PR firms not only influenced the way the media covered Syria, but as the leaked documents reveal, they produced their own propagandistic pseudo-news for broadcast on major TV networks in the Middle East, including BBC Arabic, Al Jazeera, Al Arabiya, and Orient TV.

These UK-funded firms functioned as full-time PR flacks for the extremist-dominated Syrian armed opposition. One contractor, called InCoStrat, said it was in constant contact with a network of more than 1,600 international journalists and “influencers,” and used them to push pro-opposition talking points.

Another Western government contractor, ARK, crafted a strategy to “re-brand” Syria’s Salafi-jihadist armed opposition by “softening its image.” ARK boasted that it provided opposition propaganda that “aired almost every day on” major Arabic-language TV networks.

Virtually every major Western corporate media outlet was influenced by the UK government-funded disinformation campaign exposed in the trove of leaked documents, from the New York Times to the Washington Post, CNN to The Guardian, the BBC to Buzzfeed.

The files confirm reporting by journalists including The Grayzone’s Max Blumenthal on the role of ARK, the US-UK government contractor, in popularizing the White Helmets in Western media. ARK ran the social media accounts of the White Helmets, and helped turn the Western-funded group into a key propaganda weapon of the Syrian opposition.

The leaked documents consist mainly of material produced under the auspices of the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office. All of the firms named in the files were contracted by the British government, but many also were running “multi-donor projects” that received funding from the governments of the United States and other Western European countries.

In addition to demonstrating the role these Western intelligence cutouts played in shaping media coverage, the documents shine light on the British government program to train and arm rebel groups in Syria.

Other materials show how London and Western governments worked together to build a new police force in opposition-controlled areas.

Many of these Western-backed opposition groups in Syria were extremist Salafi-jihadists. Some of the UK government contractors whose activities are exposed in these leaked documents were in effect supporting Syrian al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra and its fanatical offshoots.

The documents were obtained by a group calling itself Anonymous, and were published under a series of files entitled, “Op. HMG [Her Majesty’s Government] Trojan Horse: From Integrity Initiative To Covert Ops Around The Globe. Part 1: Taming Syria.” The unidentified leakers said they aim to “expose criminal activity of the UK’s FCO and secret services,” stating, “We declare war on the British neocolonialism!”

The Grayzone was not able to independently verify the authenticity of the documents. However, the contents tracked closely with reporting on Western destabilization and propaganda operations in Syria by this outlet and many others.

UK Foreign Office and military wage media war on Syria

A leaked UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office report from 2014 reveals a joint operation with the Ministry of Defence and the Department for International Development to support “strategic communications, research, monitoring and evaluation and operational support to Syrian opposition entities.”

The UK FOC stated clearly that this campaign consisted of “creating network linkages between political movements and media outlets,” by the “building of local independent media platforms.”

The British government planned “Mentoring, training and coaching for enhanced delivery of media services, including digital and social media.”

Its goal was “to provide PR and media handling trainers, as well as technical staff, such as cameramen, webmasters and interpreters,” along with the “production of speeches, press releases and other media communications.”

An additional 2017 government document explains clearly how Britain funded the “selection, training, support and communications mentoring of Syrian activists who share the UK’s vision for a future Syria… and who will abide by a set of values that are consistent with UK policy.”

This initiative entailed British government funding “to support Syrian grassroots media activism within both the civilian and armed opposition spheres,” and was targeted at Syrians living in both “extremist and moderate” opposition-held territory.

In other words, the UK Foreign Office and military crafted plans to wage a comprehensive media war on Syria. To establish an infrastructure capable of managing the propaganda blitz, Britain paid a series of government contractors, including ARK, The Global Strategy Network (TGSN), Innovative Communication & Strategies (InCoStrat), and Albany.

The work of these firms overlapped, and some collaborated in their projects to cultivate the Syrian opposition.

Western government contractor ARK plays the media like the fiddle

One of the main British government contractors behind the Syria regime-change scheme was called ARK (Analysis Research Knowledge).

ARK FZC is based in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates. It brands itself as a humanitarian NGO, claiming it “was created in order to assist the most vulnerable,” by establishing a “social enterprise,  empowering local communities through the provision of agile and sustainable interventions to create greater stability, opportunity and hope for the future.”

In reality ARK is an intelligence cutout that functions as an arm of Western interventionism.

In a leaked document it filed with the British government, ARK said its “focus since 2012 has been delivering highly effective, politically-and conflict-sensitive Syria programming for the governments of the United Kingdom, United States, Denmark, Canada, Japan and the European Union.”

ARK boasted of overseeing $66 million worth of contracts to support pro-opposition efforts in Syria.

On its website, ARK lists all of these governments as clients, as well as the United Nations.

In its Syria operations, ARK worked together with another UK contractor called The Global Strategy Network (TGSN), which is directed by Richard Barrett, a former director of global counter-terrorism at MI6.

ARK apparently had operatives on the ground inside Syria at the beginning of the regime-change attempt in 2011, reporting to the UK FCO that “ARK staff are in regular contact with activists and civil society actors whom they initially met during the outbreak of protests in spring 2011.”

The UK contractor boasted an “extensive network of civil society and community actors that ARK has helped through a dedicated capacity building centre ARK established in Gaziantep,” a city in southern Turkey that has been a base of intelligence operations against the Syrian government.

ARK played a central role in developing the foundations of the Syrian political opposition’s narrative. In one leaked document, the firm took credit for the “development of a core Syrian opposition narrative,” which was apparently crafted during a series of workshops with opposition leaders sponsored by the US and UK governments.

ARK trained all levels of the Syrian opposition in communications, from “citizen journalism workshops with Syrian media activists, to working with senior members of the National Coalition to develop a core communications narrative.”

The firm even oversaw the PR strategy for the Supreme Military Council (SMC), the leadership of the official armed wing of Syria’s opposition, the Free Syrian Army (FSA). ARK created a complex PR campaign to “provide a ‘re-branding’ of the SMC in order to distinguish itself from extremist armed opposition groups and to establish the image of a functioning, inclusive, disciplined and professional military body.”

ARK admitted that it sought to whitewash Syria’s armed opposition, which had been largely dominated by Salafi-jihadists, by “Softening the FSA Image.”

ARK took the lead in developing a massive network of opposition media activists in Syria, and openly took credit for inspiring protests inside the country.

In its training centers in Syria and southern Turkey, the Western government contractor reported, “More than 150 activists have been trained and equipped by ARK on topics from the basics of camera handling, lighting, and sound to producing reports, journalistic safety, online security, and ethical reporting.”

The firm flooded Syria with opposition propaganda. In just six months, ARK reported that 668,600 of its print products were distributed inside Syria, including “posters, flyers, informative booklets, activity books and other campaign-related materials.”

In one document spelling out the UK contractors’ communications operations in Syria, ARK and the British intelligence cutout TGSN boasted of overseeing the following media assets inside the country: 97 video stringers, 23 writers, 49 distributors, 23 photographers, 19 in-country trainers, eight training centers, three media offices, and 32 research officers.

ARK emphasized that it had “well-established contacts” with some of the top media outlets in the world, naming Reuters, the New York Times, CNN, the BBC, The Guardian, the Financial Times, The Times, Al Jazeera, Sky News Arabic, Orient TV, and Al Arabiya.

The UK contractor added, “ARK has provided regular branded and unbranded content to key pan-Arab and Syria-focused satellite TV channels such as Al Jazeera, Al Arabiya, BBC Arabic, Orient TV, Aleppo Today, Souria al-Ghadd, and Souria al-Sha’ab since 2012.”

“ARK products promoting HMG (Her Majesty’s Government) priorities by fostering attitudinal and behavioural change are broadcast almost every day on pan-Arab channels,” the firm bragged. “In 2014, 20 branded and un-branded Syria reports were produced on average by ARK each month and broadcast on major pan-Arab television channels such as Al Arabiya, Al Jazeera, and Orient TV.”

“ARK has almost daily conversations with channels and weekly meetings to engage and understand editorial preferences,” the Western intelligence cutout said.

The firm also took credit for placing 10 articles per month in pan-Arab newspapers such as Al Hayat and Asharq Al-Awsat.

US-UK program Basma cultivates Syrian media activists

The Syrian opposition media war was organized within the framework of a project called Basma. ARK worked with other Western government contractors through Basma in order to train Syrian opposition activists.

With funding from both the US and UK governments, Basma developed into an enormously influential platform. Its Arabic Facebook page had over 500,000 followers, and on YouTube it built up a large following as well.

Mainstream corporate media outlets misleadingly portrayed Basma as a “Syrian citizen journalism platform,” or a “civil society group working for a ‘liberatory, progressive transition to a new Syria.’” In reality it was a Western government astroturfing operation to cultivate opposition propagandists.

Nine of the 16 stringers used by Al Jazeera in Syria were trained through the US/UK government’s Basma initiative, ARK boasted in a leaked document.

In an earlier report for the UK FCO, filed just three years into its work, ARK claimed to have “trained over 1,400 beneficiaries representing over 210 beneficiary organisations in more than 130 workshops, and disbursed more than 53,000 individual pieces of equipment,” in a vast network that reached “into all of Syria’s 14 governorates,” which included both opposition- and government-held areas.

The Western contractor published a map highlighting its network of stringers and media activists and their relationships with the White Helmets as well as newly created police forces across opposition-controlled Syria.

In its trainings, ARK developed opposition spokespeople, taught them how to speak with the press, and then helped arrange interviews with mainstream Arabic- and English-language media outlets.

ARK described its strategy “to identify credible, moderate civilian governance spokespeople who will be promoted as go-to interlocutors for regional and international media. They will echo key messages linked to the coordinated local campaigns across all media, with consortium platforms able to cover this messaging as well and encourage other outlets to pick it up.”

In addition to working with the international press and cultivating opposition leaders, ARK helped develop a massive opposition media super-structure.

ARK said it was a “key implementer of a multi-donor effort to develop a network of FM radio stations and community magazines inside Syria since 2012.” The contractor worked with 14 FM stations and 11 magazines inside Syria, including both Arabic- and Kurdish-language radio.

To propagate opposition broadcasts across Syria, ARK designed what it called “Radio in a Box” (RIAB) kits in 2012. The firm took credit for providing equipment to 48 transmission sites.

ARK also circulated up to 30,000 magazines per month. It reported that “ARK-supported magazines were the three most popular in Aleppo City; the most popular magazine in Homs City; and the most popular magazine in Qamishli.”

A Syrian opposition propaganda outlet directly run by ARK, called Moubader, developed a huge following on social media, including more than 200,000 likes on Facebook. ARK printed 15,000 copies per month of a “high-quality hard copy” Moubader magazine and distributed it “across opposition-held areas of Syria.”

The British contractor TGSN, which worked alongside ARK, developed its own outlet called the “Revolutionary Forces of Syria Media Office (RFS),” a leaked document shows. This confirms a 2016 report in The Grayzone by contributor Rania Khalek, who obtained emails showing how the UK government-backed RFS media office offered to pay one journalist a staggering $17,000 per month to produce propaganda for Syrian rebels.

Another leaked record shows that in just one year, in 2018 – which was apparently the final year of ARK’s Syria program – the firm billed the UK government for a staggering 2.3 million British pounds.

This enormous ARK propaganda operation was directed by Firas Budeiri, who had previously served as the Syria director for the UK-based international NGO Save the Children.

40 percent of ARK’s Syria project team were Syrian citizens, and another 25 percent were Turkish. The firm said its Syria team staff had “extensive experience managing programmes and conducting research funded by many different governmental clients in Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Yemen, Turkey, the Palestinian Territories, Iraq and other conflict-affected states.”

Western contractor ARK cultivates White Helmets “to keep Syria in the news”

The Western contractor ARK was a central force in launching the White Helmets operation.

The leaked documents show ARK ran the Twitter and Facebook pages of Syria Civil Defense, known more commonly as the White Helmets.

ARK took credit for developing “an internationally-focused communications campaign designed to raise global awareness of the (White Helmets) teams and their life saving work.”

ARK also facilitated communications between the White Helmets and The Syria Campaign, a PR firm run out of London and New York that helped popularize the White Helmets in the United States.

It was apparently “following subsequent discussions with ARK and the teams” that The Syria Campaign “selected civil defence to front its campaign to keep Syria in the news,” the firm wrote in a report for the UK Foreign Office.

“With ARK’s guidance, TSC (The Syria Campaign) also attended ARK’s civil defence training sessions to create media content for its #WhiteHelmets campaign which launched in August 2014 and has since gone viral,” the Western contractor added.

In 2014, ARK produced a long-form documentary on the White Helmets, titled “Digging for Life,” which was repeatedly broadcast on Orient TV.

While it was running the White Helmets’ social media accounts, ARK bragged that it was boosting followers and views on the Facebook page for Idlib City Council.

The Syrian city of Idlib was taken over by al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra, which then went on to publicly execute women who were accused of adultery.

While effectively aiding these al-Qaeda-aligned extremist groups, ARK and the British intelligence cutout TGSN also signed a document with the FCO hilariously pledging to follow “UK guidance on gender sensitivity” and “ensure gender is considered in all capacity building and campaign development.”

Setting the stage for lawfare on Syria

Another leaked document shows the Western government-backed firm ARK revealing that, back in 2011, it worked with another government contractor called Tsamota to help develop the Syrian Commission for Justice and Accountability (SCJA). In 2014, SCJA changed its name to the Commission for International Justice and Accountability (CIJA).

The Grayzone exposed CIJA as a Western government-funded regime-change organization whose investigators collaborated with al-Qaeda and its extremist allies in order to wage lawfare on the Syrian government.

ARK noted that the project initially worked “with seed funding from the UK Conflict Pool to support investigative and forensic training for Syrian war crimes investigators” and has since “grown to become a major component of Syria’s transitional justice architecture.”

Since the US, European Union, and their Middle East allies lost the military phase of their war on Syria, CIJA has taken the lead in trying to prolong the regime-change campaign through lawfare.

InCoStrat creates media network, helps them interview al-Qaeda

In the leaked documents, another UK government contractor called Innovative Communications Strategies (InCoStrat) boasted of building a massive “network of over 1600 journalists and key influencers with an interest in Syria.”

InCoStrat stressed that it was “managing and delivering a multi donor project in support of UK Foreign Policy objectives” in Syria, “specifically providing strategic communication support to the moderate armed opposition.”

Other funders of InCoStrat’s work with the opposition in Syria, the firm disclosed, included the US government, the United Arab Emirates, and anti-Assad Syrian businessmen.

InCoStrat served as a liaison between its government clients and the Syrian National Coalition, the Western-backed parallel government that the opposition tried to create. InCoStrat advised senior leaders of this Syrian shadow regime, and even ran the National Coalition’s own media office from Istanbul, Turkey.

The Western contractor took credit for organizing a 2014 BBC interview with Ahmad Jarba, the then-president of the opposition National Coalition.

The firm added that “journalists have often reached out to us in search of the appropriate people for their programmes.” As an example, InCoStrat said it helped plant its own Syrian opposition activists in BBC Arabic reports. The firm then added, “Once making the initial connections we encouraged the Syrians to maintain the relationships with the journalists in the BBC instead of using ourselves as the conduit.”

Like ARK, InCoStrat worked closely with the press. The firm said it had “extensive experience in engaging Arab and international news media,” adding that it worked directly with “heads of regional news in major satellite TV networks, press bureaus and print media.”

“Key members of InCoStrat have previously worked as Middle East correspondents for some of the world’s largest news agencies including Reuters,” the Western contractor added.

Also like ARK, InCoStrat established a vast media infrastructure. The firm set up Syrian opposition media offices in Dera’a, Syria; Istanbul and Reyhanli, Turkey; and Amman, Jordan.

InCoStrat worked with 130 stringers across Syria, and said it had more than 120 reporters working inside the country, along with “an additional five official spokesmen who appear several times a week on international and regional TV.”

InCoStrat also established eight FM radio stations and six community magazines across Syria.

The firm reported that it penetrated the armed opposition by developing “strong relationships with 54 brigade commanders in Syria’s southern front,” that involved “daily, direct engagement with the commanders and their officers inside Syria,” as well as defected officers Free Syrian Army (FSA) units in government-held Damascus.

In the leaked documents, InCoStrat boasted that its reporters organized interviews with many armed opposition militias, including the al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra.

Don’t just plants media stories; “initiate an event” to create your own scandals

In its media war on Damascus, InCoStrat pursued a two-pronged campaign that consisted of the following: “a) Guerrilla Campaign. Use the media to create the event. b) Guerrilla Tactics. Initiate an event to create the media effect.”

The intelligence cutout therefore sought to use the media as a weapon to advance tangible political demands of the Syrian opposition.

In one case, InCoStrat took credit for a successful international campaign to force the Syrian government to lift its siege of the extremist-held opposition stronghold of Homs. The Grayzone contributor Rania Khalek reported on the crisis in Homs, which was besieged by Damascus after the far-right Sunni fundamentalists that controlled it began carrying out sectarian massacres against religious minorities and kidnapping Alawite civilians.

“We connected international journalists with Syrians living in besieged Homs,” InCoStrat explained. It organized an interview between Britain’s Channel 4 and a doctor in the city, which helped raise international attention, ultimately leading to an end to the siege.

In another instance, the UK contractor said it “produced postcards, posters and reports” comparing the secular government of Bashar al-Assad to the fundamentalist Salafi-jihadists in ISIS. Then it “provided a credible, Arabic-English speaking Syrian spokesperson to engage the media.”

The campaign was very successful, according to InCoStrat: Al-Jazeera America and The National published the firm’s propaganda posters. The British contractor also organized interviews on the topic with The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, The Guardian, The Times, Buzzfeed, Al-Jazeera, Suriya Al-Sham, and Orient.

After regime change comes Nation Building Inc.

InCoStrat has apparently been involved in numerous Western-backed regime-change operations.

In one leaked document, the firm said it helped to train civil society organizations in marketing, media, and communications in Afghanistan, Honduras, Iraq, Syria, and Libya. It even trained a team of anti-Saddam Hussein journalists inside Basra, Iraq after the joint US-UK invasion.

In addition to contracting for the United Kingdom, InCoStrat disclosed that it has worked for the governments of the United States, Singapore, Latvia, Sweden, Denmark, and Libya.

After NATO destroyed the Libyan state in a regime-change war in 2011, InCoStrat was brought in in 2012 to conduct similar communications work for the Libyan National Transitional Council, the Western-backed opposition that sought to take power.

Coordinating with extremist militias, cooking news to “reinforce the core narrative”

The leaked documents shed further light on a UK government contractor called Albany.

Albany boasted that it “secured the participation of an extensive local network of over 55 stringers, reporters and videographers” to influence media narratives and advance UK foreign policy interests.

The firm helped create an influential Syrian opposition media outfit called Enab Baladi. Founded in 2011 in the anti-Assad hub of Daraya, at the beginning of the war, Enab Baladi was aggressively marketed in the Western press as a grassroots Syrian media operation.

In reality, Enab Baladi was the product of a British contractor that took responsibility for its evolution “from an amateur-run entity into one of the most prominent Syrian media organizations.”

Albany also coordinated communications between opposition media outlets and extremist Islamist opposition groups by hiring an “engagement leader (who) has deep credibility with key groups including (north) Failaq ash-Sham, Jabha Shammiyeh, Jaysh Idleb al Hur, Ahrar ash-Sham, (center) Jaysh al Islam, Failaq al Rahman, and (south) Jaysh Tahrir.” Many of these militias were linked to al-Qaeda and are now recognized by the US Department of State and European governments as official terrorist groups.

Unlike other Western government contractors active in Syria, which often tried to feign a semblance of balance, Albany made it clear that its media reporting was nothing more than propaganda.

The firm admitted that it trained Syrian media activists in a unique “newsroom process” that called to “curate” news by “collecting and organising stories and content that support and reinforce the core narrative.”

In 2014, Albany boasted of running the Syrian National Coalition’s communications team at the Geneva Peace talks.

Albany also warned that revelations of Western government funding for these opposition media organizations that were being portrayed as grassroots initiatives would discredit them.

When internal emails were leaked showing that the massive opposition media platform Basma Syria was funded by the United States and Britain, Albany wrote, “the Basma brand has been compromised following leaks about funding project aims.”

The leaks on social media “have damaged the credibility and trustworthiness of the existing branded platform,” Albany wrote. “Credibility and trust are the key currencies of the activities envisaged and for this reason we consider it essential to refresh the approach if the content to be disseminated is to have effect.” The Basma website was taken down soon after.

These files provide clear insight into how the Syrian opposition was cultivated by Western governments with imperial designs on Damascus, and was kept afloat with staggering sums of cash that flowed from the pockets of British taxpayers – often to the benefit of fanatical militiamen allied with Al Qaeda.

While Dutch prosecutors prepare war crimes charges against the Syrian government for fighting off the onslaught, the leaked files are a reminder of the leading role that Western states and their war-profiteering companies played in the carefully organized destruction of the country.

thegrayzone.com

Ben NORTON

Video and a transcript of former OPCW engineer and dissenter Ian Henderson’s UN testimony appears at the end of this report.

A former lead investigator from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has spoken out at the United Nations, stating in no uncertain terms that the scientific evidence suggests there was no gas attack in Douma, Syria in April 2018.

The dissenter, Ian Henderson, worked for 12 years at the international watchdog organization, serving as an inspection team leader and engineering expert. Among his most consequential jobs was assisting the international body’s fact-finding mission (FFM) on the ground in Douma.

He told a UN Security Council session convened on January 20 by Russia’s delegation that OPCW management had rejected his group’s scientific research, dismissed the team, and produced another report that totally contradicted their initial findings.

“We had serious misgivings that a chemical attack had occurred,” Henderson said, referring to the FFM team in Douma.

The former OPCW inspector added that he had compiled evidence through months of research that “provided further support for the view that there had not been a chemical attack.”

A former OPCW inspection team leader and engineering expert told the UN Security Council that their investigation in Douma, Syria suggested no chemical attack took place. But their findings were suppressed and reversed

Read more here: https://t.co/HI028MZl0k

via @BenjaminNorton pic.twitter.com/rmaSzWzs5Z

— The Grayzone (@TheGrayzoneNews) January 22, 2020

Foreign-backed Islamist militants and the Western government-funded regime-change influence operation known as the White Helmets accused the Syrian government of dropping gas cylinders and killing dozens of people in the city of Douma on April 7, 2018. Damascus rejected the accusation, claiming the incident was staged by the insurgents.

At the time, Douma was controlled by the extremist Salafi-jihadist militia Jaysh al-Islam, which was created and funded by Saudi Arabia and formerly allied with Syria’s powerful al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra.

The governments of the United States, Britain, and France responded to the allegations of a chemical attack by launching airstrikes against the Syrian government on April 14. The military assault was illegal under international law, as the countries did not have UN authorization.

Numerous OPCW whistleblowers and leaks challenge Western government claims

In May 2019, an internal OPCW engineering assessment was leaked to the public. The document, authored by Ian Henderson, said the “dimensions, characteristics and appearance of the cylinders” in Douma “were inconsistent with what would have been expected in the case of either cylinder having been delivered from an aircraft,” adding that there is “a higher probability that both cylinders were manually placed at those two locations rather than being delivered from aircraft.”

After reviewing the leaked report, MIT professor emeritus of Science, Technology and International Security Theodore Postol told The Grayzone, “The evidence is overwhelming that the gas attacks were staged.” Postol also accused OPCW leadership of overseeing “compromised reporting” and ignoring scientific evidence.

In November, a second OPCW whistleblower came forward and accused the organization’s leadership of suppressing countervailing evidence, under pressure by three US government officials.

WikiLeaks has published numerous internal emails from the OPCW that reveal allegations that the body’s management staff doctored the Douma report.

As the evidence of internal suppression grew, the OPCW’s first director-general, José Bustani, decided to speak out. “The convincing evidence of irregular behavior in the OPCW investigation of the alleged Douma chemical attack confirms doubts and suspicions I already had,” Bustani stated.

“I could make no sense of what I was reading in the international press. Even official reports of investigations seemed incoherent at best. The picture is certainly clearer now, although very disturbing,” the former OPCW head concluded.

OPCW whistleblower testimony at UN Security Council meeting on Douma

On January 20, 2020, Ian Henderson delivered his first in-person testimony, alleging suppression by OPCW leadership. He spoke at a UN Security Council Arria-Formula meeting on the fact-finding mission report on Douma.

(Video of the session follows at the bottom of this article, along with a full transcript of Henderson’s testimony.)

China’s mission to the UN invited Ian Henderson to testify in person at the Security Council session. Henderson said in his testimony that he had planned to attend, but was unable to get a visa waiver from the US government. (The Trump administration has repeatedly blocked access to the UN for representatives from countries that do not kowtow to its interests, turning UN visas into a political weapon in blatant violation of the international body’s headquarters agreement.)

Henderson told the Security Council in a pre-recorded video message that he was not the only OPCW inspector to question the leadership’s treatment of the Douma investigation.

“My concern, which was shared by a number of other inspectors, relates to the subsequent management lockdown and the practices in the later analysis and compilation of a final report,” Henderson explained.

Soon after the alleged incident in Douma in April 2018, the OPCW FFM team had deployed to the ground to carry out an investigation, which it noted included environmental samples, interviews with witnesses, and data collection.

In July 2018, the FFM published its interim report, stating that it found no evidence of chemical weapons use in Douma. (“The results show that no organophosphorous nerve agents or their degradation products were detected in the environmental samples or in the plasma samples taken from alleged casualties,” the report indicated.)

“By the time of release of the interim report in July 2018, our understanding was that we had serious misgivings that a chemical attack had occurred,” Henderson told the Security Council.

After this inspection that led to the interim report, however, Henderson said the OPCW leadership decided to create a new team, “the so-called FFM core team, which essentially resulted in the dismissal of all of the inspectors who had been on the team deployed to locations in Douma and had been following up with their findings and analysis.”

Then in March 2019, this new OPCW team released a final report, in which it claimed that chemical weapons had been used in Douma.

“The findings in the final FFM report were contradictory, were a complete turnaround with what the team had understood collectively during and after the Douma deployments,” Henderson remarked at the UN session.

“The report did not make clear what new findings, facts, information, data, or analysis in the fields of witness testimony, toxicology studies, chemical analysis, and engineering, and/or ballistic studies had resulted in the complete turn-around in the situation from what was understood by the majority of the team, and the entire Douma [FFM] team, in July 2018,” Henderson stated.

The former OPCW expert added, “I had followed up with a further six months of engineering and ballistic studies into these cylinders, the result of which had provided further support for the view that there had not been a chemical attack.”

US government pressure on the OPCW

The US government responded to this historic testimony at the UN session by attacking Russia, which sponsored the Arria-Formula meeting.

Acting US representative Cherith Norman Chalet praised the OPCW, aggressively condemned the “Assad regime,” and told the UN that the “United States is proud to support the vital, life-saving work of the White Helmets” – a US and UK-backed organization that collaborated extensively with ISIS and al-Qaeda and have been involved in numerous executions in Syrian territory occupied by Islamist extremists.

The US government has a long history of pressuring and manipulating the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. During the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, the George W. Bush administration threatened José Bustani, the first director of the OPCW, and pressured him to resign.

In 2002, as the Bush White House was preparing to wage a war on Iraq, Bustani made an agreement with the Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein that would have permitted OPCW inspectors to come to the country unannounced for weapons investigations. This infuriated the US government.

Then-Under Secretary of State John Bolton told Bustani in 2002 that US Vice President Dick “Cheney wants you out.” Bolton threatened the OPCW director-general, stating, “You have 24 hours to leave the organization, and if you don’t comply with this decision by Washington, we have ways to retaliate against you… We know where your kids live.”

Attacking the credibility of Ian Henderson

While OPCW managers have kept curiously silent amid the scandal over their Douma report, an interventionist media outlet called Bellingcat has functioned as an outsourced press shop, aggressively defending the official narrative and attacking its most prominent critics, including Ian Henderson.

Bellingcat is funded by the US government’s regime-change arm, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), and is part of an initiative bankrolled by the British Foreign Office.

Following Henderson’s testimony, Bellingcat founder Eliot Higgins tried to besmirch the former OPCW engineer’s credibility by implying he was being used by Russia. Until 2019, Higgins worked at the Atlantic Council, a pro-war think tank financed by the American and British governments, as well as by NATO.

Supporters of the OPCW’s apparently doctored final report have relied heavily on Bellingcat to try to discredit the whistleblowers and growing leaks. Scientific expert Theodor Postol, who debated Higgins, has noted that Bellingcat “have no scientific credibility at any level.” Postol says he even suspects that OPCW management may have relied on Bellingcat’s highly dubious claims in its own compromised reporting.

Higgins has no expertise or scientific credentials, and even The New York Times acknowledged in a highly sympathetic piece that “Higgins attributed his skill not to any special knowledge of international conflicts or digital data, but to the hours he had spent playing video games, which, he said, gave him the idea that any mystery can be cracked.”

In his testimony before the UN Security Council, Ian Henderson stressed that he was speaking out in line with his duties as a scientific expert.

Henderson said he does not even like the term whistleblower and would not use it to describe himself, because, “I’m a former OPCW specialist who has concerns in an area, and I consider this a legitimate and appropriate forum to explain again these concerns.”

Russia’s UN representative added that Moscow had also invited the OPCW director-general and representatives of the organization’s Technical Secretariat, but they chose not to participate in the session.

Video of the UN Security Council session on the OPCW’s Douma report

Ian Henderson’s testimony begins at 57:30 in this official UN video:

Transcript: Testimony by OPCW whistleblower Ian Henderson at the UN Security Council

“My name is Ian Henderson. I’m a former OPCW inspection team leader, having served for about 12 years. I heard about this meeting and I was invited by the minister, councilor of the Chinese mission to the UN. Unfortunately due to unforeseen circumstances around my ESTA visa waiver status, I was not able to travel. I thus submitted a written statement, to which I will now add a short introduction.

I need to point out at the outset that I’m not a whistleblower; I don’t like that term. I’m a former OPCW specialist who has concerns in an area, and I consider this a legitimate and appropriate forum to explain again these concerns.

Secondly, I must point out that I hold the OPCW in the highest regard, as well as the professionalism of the staff members who work there. The organization is not broken; I must stress that. However the concern I have does relate to some specific management practices in certain sensitive missions.

The concern of course relates to the FFM investigation into the alleged chemical attack on the 7th of April in Douma, in Syria. My concern, which was shared by a number of other inspectors, relates to the subsequent management lockdown and the practices in the later analysis and compilation of a final report.

There were two teams deployed; one team, which I joined shortly after the start of field deployments, was to Douma in Syria; the other team deployed to country X.

The main concern relates to the announcement in July 2018 of a new concept, the so-called FFM core team, which essentially resulted in the dismissal of all of the inspectors who had been on the team deployed to locations in Douma and had been following up with their findings and analysis.

The findings in the final FFM report were contradictory, were a complete turnaround with what the team had understood collectively during and after the Douma deployments. And by the time of release of the interim report in July 2018, our understanding was that we had serious misgivings that a chemical attack had occurred.

What the final FFM report does not make clear, and thus does not reflect the views of the team members who deployed to Douma — in which case I really can only speak for myself at this stage — the report did not make clear what new findings, facts, information, data, or analysis in the fields of witness testimony, toxicology studies, chemical analysis, and engineering, and/or ballistic studies had resulted in the complete turn-around in the situation from what was understood by the majority of the team, and the entire Douma team, in July 2018.

In my case, I had followed up with a further six months of engineering and ballistic studies into these cylinders, the result of which had provided further support for the view that there had not been a chemical attack.

This needs to be properly resolved, we believe through the rigors of science and engineering. In my situation, it’s not a political debate. I’m very aware that there is a political debate surrounding this.

Perhaps a closing comment from my side is that I was also the inspection team leader who developed and launched the inspections, the highly intrusive inspections, of the Barzah SSRC facility, just outside Damascus. And I did the inspections and wrote the reports for the two inspections prior to, and the inspection after the chemical facility, or the laboratory complex at Barzah SSRC, had been destroyed by the missile strike.

That, however, is another story altogether, and I shall now close. Thank you.”

thegrayzone.com

A spate of leaks from within the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), the international inspectorate created for the purpose of implementing the Chemical Weapons Convention, has raised serious questions about the institution’s integrity, objectivity and credibility. The leaks address issues pertaining to the OPCW investigation into allegations that the Syrian government used chemical weapons to attack civilians in the Damascus suburb of Douma on April 7, 2018. These allegations, which originated from such anti-Assad organizations as the Syrian Civil Defense (the so-called White Helmets) and the Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS), were immediately embraced as credible by the OPCW, and were used by the United States, France and the United Kingdom to justify punitive military strikes against facilities inside Syria assessed by these nations as having been involved in chemical weapons-related activities before the OPCW initiated any on-site investigation.

The Douma incident was initially described by the White Helmets, SAMS and the U.S., U.K. and French governments as involving both sarin nerve agent and chlorine gas. However, this narrative was altered when OPCW inspectors released, on July 6, 2018, interim findings of their investigation that found no evidence of the use of sarin. The focus of the investigation quickly shifted to a pair of chlorine cylinders claimed by the White Helmets to have been dropped onto apartment buildings in Douma by the Syrian Air Force, resulting in the release of a cloud of chlorine gas that killed dozens of Syrian civilians. In March, the OPCW released its final report on the Douma incident, noting that it had “reasonable grounds” to believe “that the use of a toxic chemical as a weapon has taken place on 7 April 2018,” that “this toxic chemical contained reactive chlorine” and that “the toxic chemical was likely molecular chlorine.”

Much has been written about the OPCW inspection process in Syria, and particularly the methodology used by the Fact-Finding Mission (FFM), an inspection body created by the OPCW in 2014 “to establish facts surrounding allegations of the use of toxic chemicals, reportedly chlorine, for hostile purposes in the Syrian Arab Republic.” The FFM was created under the direction of Ahmet Üzümcü, a career Turkish diplomat with extensive experience in multinational organizations, including service as Turkey’s ambassador to NATO. Üzümcü was the OPCW’s third director general, having been selected from a field of seven candidates by its executive council to replace Argentine diplomat Rogelio Pfirter. Pfirter had held the position since being nominated to replace the OPCW’s first director general, José Maurício Bustani. Bustani’s tenure was marred by controversy that saw the OPCW transition away from its intended role as an independent implementor of the Chemical Weapons Convention to that of a tool of unilateral U.S. policy, a role that continues to mar the OPCW’s work in Syria today, especially when it comes to its investigation of the alleged use by the Syrian government of chemical weapons against civilians in Douma in April 2018.

Bustani was removed from his position in 2002, following an unprecedented campaign led by John Bolton, who at the time was serving as the undersecretary of state for Arms Control and International Security Affairs in the U.S. State Department. What was Bustani’s crime? In 2001, he had dared to enter negotiations with the government of Iraq to secure that nation’s entry into the OPCW, thereby setting the stage for OPCW inspectors to visit Iraq and bring its chemical weapons capability under OPCW control. As director general, there was nothing untoward about Bustani’s action. But Iraq circa 2001 was not a typical recruitment target. In the aftermath of the Gulf War in 1991, the U.N. Security Council had passed a resolution under Chapter VII requiring Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD), including its chemical weapons capability, to be “removed, destroyed or rendered harmless” under the supervision of inspectors working on behalf of the United Nations Special Commission, or UNSCOM.

The pursuit of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction led to a series of confrontations with Iraq that culminated in inspectors being ordered out of the country by the U.S. in 1998, prior to a 72-hour aerial attack—Operation Desert Fox. Iraq refused to allow UNSCOM inspectors to return, rightfully claiming that the U.S. had infiltrated the ranks of the inspectors and was using the inspection process to spy on Iraqi leadership for the purposes of facilitating regime change. The lack of inspectors in Iraq allowed the U.S. and others to engage in wild speculation regarding Iraqi rearmament activities, including in the field of chemical weapons. This speculation was used to fuel a call for military action against Iraq, citing the threat of a reconstituted WMD capability as the justification. Bustani sought to defuse this situation by bringing Iraq into the OPCW, an act that, if completed, would have derailed the U.S. case for military intervention in Iraq. Bolton’s intervention included threats to Bustani and his family, as well as threats to withhold U.S. dues to the OPCW accounting for some 22% of that organization’s budget; had the latter threat been implemented, it would have resulted in OPCW’s disbandment.

Bustani’s departure marked the end of the OPCW as an independent organization. Pfirter, Bolton’s hand-picked replacement, vowed to keep the OPCW out of Iraq. In an interview with U.S. media shortly after his appointment, Pfirter noted that while all nations should be encouraged to join the OPCW, “We should be very aware that there are United Nations resolutions in effect” that precluded Iraqi membership “at the expense” of its obligations to the Security Council. Under the threat of military action, Iraq allowed UNMOVIC inspectors to return in 2002; by February 2003, no WMD had been found, a result that did not meet with U.S. satisfaction. In March 2003, UNMOVIC inspectors were withdrawn from Iraq under orders of the U.S., paving the way for the subsequent invasion and occupation of that nation that same month (the CIA later concluded that Iraq had been disarmed of its weapons of mass destruction by the summer of 1991).

Under Pfirter’s leadership, the OPCW became a compliant tool of U.S. foreign policy objectives. By completely subordinating OPCW operations through the constant threat of fiscal ruin, the U.S. engaged in a continuous quid pro quo arrangement, trading the financial solvency of an ostensible multilateral organization for complicity in operating as a de facto extension of American unilateral policy. Bolton’s actions in 2002 put the OPCW and its employees on notice: Cross the U.S., and you will pay a terminal price.

When Üzümcü took over the OPCW’s reins in 2010, the organization was very much the model of multinational consensus, which, in the case of any multilateral organization in which the U.S. plays a critical role, meant that nothing transpired without the express approval of the U.S. and its European NATO allies, in particular the United Kingdom and France. Shortly after he took office, Üzümcü was joined by Robert Fairweather, a career British diplomat who served as Üzümcü’s chief of Cabinet. (While Üzümcü was the ostensible head of the OPCW, the daily task of managing the functioning of the OPCW was that of the chief of Cabinet. In short, nothing transpired within the OPCW without Fairweather’s knowledge and concurrence.)

Üzümcü and Fairweather’s tenure at the OPCW was dominated by Syria, where, since 2011, the government of President Bashar Assad had been engaged in a full-scale conflict with a foreign-funded and -equipped insurgency whose purpose was regime change. By 2013, allegations emerged from both the Syrian government and rebel forces concerning the use of chemical weapons by the other side. In August 2013, the OPCW dispatched an inspection team into Syria as part of a U.N.-led effort, which included specialists from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the U.N. itself, to investigate allegations that sarin had been used in attack on civilians in the town of Ghouta. While the mission found conclusive evidence that sarin nerve agent had been used, it did not assign blame for the attack.

Despite the lack of causality, the U.S. and its NATO allies quickly assigned blame for the sarin attacks on the Syrian government. To forestall U.S. military action against Syria, the Russian government helped broker a deal whereby the U.S. agreed to refrain from undertaking military action if the Syrian government joined the OPCW and subjected the totality of its chemical weapons stockpile to elimination. In October 2013, the OPCW-U.N. Joint Mission, created under the authority of U.N. Security Council resolution 2118 (2103), began the process of identifying, cataloging, removing and destroying Syria’s chemical weapons. This process was completed in September 2014 (in December 2013, the OPCW was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for its disarmament work in Syria).

If the destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons was an example of the OPCW at its best, what followed was a case study of just the opposite. In May 2014, the OPCW created the Fact-Finding Mission, or FFM, charged with establishing “facts surrounding allegations of the use of toxic chemicals, reportedly chlorine, for hostile purposes in the Syrian Arab Republic.” The FFM was headed by Malik Ellahi, who served as head of the OPCW’s government relations and political affairs branch. The appointment of someone lacking both technical and operational experience suggests that Ellahi’s primary role was political. Under his leadership, the FFM established a close working relationship with the anti-Assad Syrian opposition, including the White Helmets and SAMS.

In 2015, responsibility for coordinating the work of the FFM with the anti-Assad opposition was transferred to a British inspector named Len Phillips (another element of the FFM, led by a different inspector, was responsible for coordinating with the Syrian government). Phillips developed a close working relationship with the White Helmets and SAMS and played a key role in OPCW’s investigation of the April 2017 chemical incident in Khan Shaykhun. By April 2018, the FFM had undergone a leadership transition, with Phillips replaced by a Tunisian inspector named Sami Barrek. It was Barrek who led the FFM into Syria in April 2018 to investigate allegations of chemical weapons use at Douma. Like Phillips, Barrek maintained a close working relationship with the White Helmets and SAMS.

Once the FFM wrapped up its investigation in Douma, however, it became apparent to Fairweather that it had a problem. There were serious questions about whether chlorine had, in fact, been used as a weapon. The solution, brokered by Fairweather, was to release an interim report that ruled out sarin altogether, but left the door open regarding chlorine. This report was released on July 6, 2018. Later that month, both Üzümcü and Fairweather were gone, replaced by a Spaniard named Fernando Arias and a French diplomat named Sébastien Braha. It would be up to them to clean up the Douma situation.

The situation Braha inherited from Fairweather was unenviable. According to an unnamed OPCW official who spoke with the media after the fact, two days prior to the publication of the interim report, on July 4, 2018, Fairweather had been paid a visit by a trio of U.S. officials, who indicated to Fairweather and the members of the FFM responsible for writing the report that it was the U.S. position that the chlorine cannisters in question had been used to dispense chlorine gas at Douma, an assertion that could not be backed up by the evidence. Despite this, the message that Fairweather left with the OPCW personnel was that there had to be a “smoking gun.” It was now Braha’s job to manufacture one.

Braha did this by dispatching OPCW inspectors to Turkey in September 2018 to interview new witnesses identified by the White Helmets, and by commissioning new engineering studies that better explained the presence of the two chlorine cannisters found in Douma. By March, Braha had assembled enough information to enable the technical directorate to issue its final report. Almost immediately, dissent appeared in the ranks of the OPCW. An engineering report that contradicted the findings published by Braha was leaked, setting off a firestorm of controversy derived from its conclusion that the chlorine cannisters found in Douma had most likely been staged by the White Helmets.

The OPCW, while eventually acknowledging that the leaked report was genuine, explained its exclusion from the final report on the grounds that it attributed blame, something the FFM was not mandated to do. According to the OPCW, the engineering report in question had been submitted to the investigation and identification team, a newly created body within the OPCW mandated to make such determinations. Moreover, Director General Arias stood by the report’s conclusion that it had “reasonable grounds” to believe “that the use of a toxic chemical as a weapon has taken place on 7 April 2018.”

Arias’ explanation came under attack in November, when WikiLeaks published an email sent by a member of the FFM team that had participated in the Douma investigation. In this email, which was sent on June 22, 2018, and addressed to Robert Fairweather, the author noted that, when it came to the Douma incident, “[p]urposely singling out chlorine gas as one of the possibilities is disingenuous.” The author of the email, who had participated in drafting the original interim report, noted that the original text had emphasized that there was insufficient evidence to support this conclusion, and that the new text represented “a major deviation from the original report.” Moreover, the author took umbrage at the new report’s conclusions, which claimed to be “based on the high levels of various chlorinated organic derivatives detected in environmental samples.” According to email’s author “They were, in most cases, present only in parts per billion range, as low as 1-2 ppb, which is essentially trace quantities.” In short, the OPCW had cooked the books, manufacturing evidence from thin air that it then used to draw conclusions that sustained the U.S. position that chlorine gas had been used by the Syrian government at Douma.

Arias, while not addressing the specifics of the allegations set forth in the leaked email, recently declared that it is “the nature of any thorough inquiry for individuals in a team to express subjective views,” noting that “I stand by the independent, professional conclusion” presented by the OPCW about the Douma incident. This explanation, however, does not fly in the face of the evidence. The OPCW’s credibility as an investigative body has been brought into question through these leaks, as has its independent character. If an organization like the OPCW can be used at will by the U.S., the United Kingdom and France to trigger military attacks intended to support regime-change activities in member states, then it no longer serves a useful purpose to the international community it ostensibly serves. To survive as a credible entity, the OPCW must open itself to a full-scale audit of its activities in Syria by an independent authority with inspector general-like investigatory powers. Anything short of this leaves the OPCW, an organization that was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for its contributions to world peace, permanently stained by the reality that it is little more than a lap dog of the United States, used to promote the very conflicts it was designed to prevent.

truthdig.com

Vanessa BEELEY

On November 11, 2019, the British founder of the notorious White Helmets, James Le Mesurier, died in Istanbul, Turkey. The circumstances surrounding his death immediately elicited a flurry of Turkish and corporate media reports, many of them contradictory, as the details of his final hours came to light.

Mark Urban, the diplomatic editor at BBC Newsnight, immediately tweeted that “a former colleague” had told him it was impossible to “fall from that balcony,” referencing Le Mesurier’s reported cause of death and intimated that there may have been “state involvement.” Urban did not identify his mysterious “former colleague” or explain what made him sufficiently qualified to conclude that Le Mesurier’s death may have been a state-sanctioned hit.

Urban, declaring ignorance over Le Mesurier’s suspected ties to Britain’s MI6 intelligence agency, then suggesting that a “black propaganda campaign by Russian and Syria media and their social media acolytes” against Le Mesurier was “a prelude to murder” (emphasis added). Extraordinary claims for a journalist to make prior to the publication of any official autopsy.

Urban deleted his tweets soon after, maintaining that “there is a good deal of suspicion it may be murder by a state actor, but others suggest he may have taken his own life.” Did Urban jump the gun? Was he instructed to delete the tweets, and if so, by whom?

In the tangle of media reports that ensued, a pattern of denials and misdirection became apparent. The overriding response from the narrative curators in corporate media was to blame Russia for everything. Russian Foreign Office spokesperson Maria Zakharova was vilified for her description of Le Mesurier as a British intelligence agent and for condemning his previous association with al-Qaeda in Kosovo in 1999. The author and investigative journalist, Whitney Webb, previously exposed those connections for MintPress News.

One of the many headlines blaming Russia for Le Mesurier’s death

Part one of this series will attempt to bring a greater degree of transparency and context to the Le Mesurier affair by examining his role in Syria and his financial responsibility as founder of Mayday Rescue, an NGO he established in 2014 to act as the UK Foreign Office’s (UK FCO) implementing partner, responsible for the management of the White Helmets. Suspected collusion between Le Mesurier, his Mayday Rescue colleagues and UK state media to crush dissent or questioning of the establishment narrative on Syria will also be examined.

As the corporate media rushed to file reports on Le Mesurier’s death, two narratives emerged that effectively attempt to revise his career history.

Disconnecting Le Mesurier from the White Helmets

Raed Saleh is the “chairman” of the White Helmets. Saleh has connections to extremist armed factions and individuals inside Syria. In fact, he was refused entry into the United States in April of 2016 because of these “extremist connections.” Saleh writes for The Guardian, although he does not speak a word of English. His appearances at UN-sponsored events and in the corporate media appear heavily scripted and managed. So, when Saleh announced that Le Mesurier was not the founder of the White Helmets, alarm bells rang. Why would a spokesperson for the White Helmets deny something that Le Mesurier himself had admitted many times? That he founded the group while contracted to Analysis Research and Knowledge Group (ARK), even Le Mesurier’s Wikipedia entry doesn’t dispute the fact.

In April of 2017, the online news outlet The Middle Ground interviewed Le Mesurier. In its background for the interview, they described the founding of the White Helmets thusly:

The White Helmets was started by Mr Mesurier when he was working for ARK, a for-profit international contracting firm based in Turkey.”

Le Mesurier confirmed his role in founding the organization in the interview, stating:

ARK was funded by Friends of Syria, “a coalition of about 35 different countries who provide support to those that are in opposition to the Assad Government.”

Le Mesurier not connected to “any” British intelligence

Chris York of the Huffington Post sprang to the defense of the White Helmets immediately after Le Mesurier’s demise. York, who prior to 2017 had written a number of superficial commentaries about the Syrian conflict, began a campaign of attacking anyone exposing the White Helmets’ links to terrorist groups and their criminal activities alongside those groups.

York’s campaign gathered momentum in 2017 and continued in 2018, attacking, smearing and attempting to discredit independent journalists and academics who were countering the state-established narratives on Syria coming mostly out of Washington and London.

One of York’s articles, published three days after Le Mesurier’s death, bore the title, This is why James Le Mesurier’s White Helmets are the target of a Russian disinformation campaign. Beyond the multiple inaccuracies in the report, York’s heavy-handed blame Russia approach effectively disappeared the voices of those Syrians who reject the White Helmets and who have accused them of organ trafficking, child abduction and abuse, torture, murder, theft, and collaboration with the armed groups that persecuted civilians in the areas they occupied.

In reality, Russia’s role has been to provide those voices with a media platform and to give them a chance to speak. But York would prefer they keep quiet. If he really were interested in truth or impartiality, he would support a public inquiry into the White Helmets to allow evidence against them to be legally reviewed.

There is one point in York’s article that curiously echoes a statement made by the UK representative to the UN, Karen Pierce. Under the subheading, “James Le Mesurier was a spy”, York writes:

Russian authorities have never provided any evidence that Le Mesurier was a spy or worked for any intelligence agencies and have only repeated unsubstantiated claims made by bloggers that write about the White Helmets.” (emphasis added)

One day before York’s article was published, The Guardian quoted Karen Pierce’s statement that (Russian) claims that he worked for British Secret Services were “categorically untrue.”

Apart from the fact that Le Mesurier was active in various areas of NATO intervention, suggesting he had links with British intelligence agencies, The Guardian itself previously stated categorically that Le Mesurier was working for British military intelligence during his time in Kosovo in 1999.

Wiping the slate clean for Le Mesurier

Almost immediately after Le Mesurier’s alleged plunge to his death from the window of his Istanbul apartment, reports began to emerge of tampering with video reports and of the removal of links to articles detailing the career of the controversial “private security” operative. A Men’s Journal article which detailed Le Mesurier’s career path was removed from the Mayday Rescue website as well as the White Helmets Wikipedia page. The Men’s Journal article opens with the following description:

“Sweating in the 104-degree heat in Adana, Turkey, former British infantry officer James Le Mesurier is training a group of average Syrians to become members of the U.S.-funded Syria Civil Defense (SCD) team”

Russia-24 news channel:
“Since the announcement of the death of #WhiteHelmets founder in Istanbul, suspicious activity has been taking place on the org’s website, which is run by #JamesLeMesurier personally.
Old news is being deleted & some modified by changing narratives &words” pic.twitter.com/pCsCgzs7I8

— Marwa Osman (@Marwa__Osman) 13 ноября 2019 г.

But the whitewashing of Le Mesurier’s past was not confined to traditional media. RT’s Murad Gadziev reported on the frantic cleaning of controversy from Le Mesurier’s Wikipedia page by the notorious Philip Cross. Cross has a history of obsessively stalking and editing Wikipedia pages belonging to journalists or academics challenging influential Syria narratives.

There certainly appears to be a concerted campaign to remove specific data from the public domain and to obfuscate, omit and redirect information regarding a valuable asset for British intelligence agencies – whether Cross was directly working for them or not.

Disregarding details of Le Mesurier’s death

In its reporting on Le Mesurier’s death, certain details were released in the Turkish media that do not appear to have been picked up or emphasized by corporate media. Some of those details provide insight into the possible reasons for Le Mesurier’s death.

One week before he died, Le Mesurier allegedly told his colleagues in the White Helmets: “in Turkey, we’re done, we are leaving.” Le Mesurier and his wife, Emma Winberg, Chief Impact Officer at Mayday Rescue since January 2017, had also allegedly “fought violently” while they were dining in Beyoglu, an upscale Turkish cafe and bar, one day before his death.

In the week before the incident, another Turkish media outlet reported that deliveries made to the offices of Mayday Rescue, a White Helmets partner organization that even shares its headquarters, addressed to Mary Salvatore were returned to sender because nobody was available to take delivery. The same thing had allegedly been happening to previous deliveries for a few weeks according to the report. Salvatore was the office manager at Mayday Rescue, her contact details appear on a 2016 employment advertisement for a chief operating officer position at Mayday Rescue, as well as other positions in the organization based in Ankara, Turkey.

Another Turkish media report stated that Mayday Rescue is now “persona non grata in Turkey” and that the White Helmets have “distanced” themselves from Mayday, “the building remains closed despite the fact that both organisations share offices in the same building” (emphasis added). One article reiterates how Le Mesurier informed his White Helmet colleagues that he would be leaving Turkey. Another quotes him as saying, “our business in Turkey is over.”

Among the other significant, yet overlooked facts reported by Turkish media was that “research maps and sketches” belonging to James Le Mesurier were removed from his home by investigators from the Istanbul Homicide Bureau and Anti-Terrorism and Intelligence Branch Directorates and that Emma Winberg was questioned by police regarding seven electronic devices, including PCs, tablets and mobile phones that were found and seized for examination at the home she shared with Le Mesurier.

Forensic officials work the site where Le Mesurier’s body was found in Istanbul, Nov. 11, 2019. Emrah Gurel | AP

According to recent information, the source of Le Mesurier’s stress was him not being able to pay back a large amount of financial aid he had received. It was also found that Le Mesurier planned to leave Turkey just before his death.” (emphasis added)

These details paint a very different, and much more intriguing, picture of the possible drivers for Le Mesurier’s allegede suicide and certainly render claims that Russia was behind the death both questionable and precipitative.

Former UK Ambassador to Syria weighs in

Peter Ford, the United Kingdom’s former ambassador to Syria and Bahrain, doubts the official narratives over the mysterious death of Le Mesurier. Ford told MintPress the following when asked to weigh in on the burgeoning controversy.

It is sad for anyone to be so stressed that they take their own life. But if Le Mesurier was stressed, how do we know it wasn’t because he was afraid that the truth about financial irregularities he was suspected of was beginning to leak out? Fear of being uncovered in impropriety has sent many over the edge. Le Mesurier’s company Mayday Rescue was coming under the microscope.

Last year the Dutch government stopped funding Mayday because they weren’t sure what Mayday were doing with the money. That’s in the public record.

Le Mesurier sat at the centre of a tangled web of money laundering companies. The wheels were beginning to come off his operation.

With so much money passing through his hands – Western governments sent upwards of $200 million to the White Helmets – and such lax controls the temptation to defraud must have been immense.

Are we sure Le Mesurier was not under investigation by the British authorities? The British Foreign Office statement following his death was strangely tight-lipped:

“We are deeply saddened by the news of the death of James Le Mesurier. Our condolences go out to his family and friends at this difficult time.”

Why no mention of his wonderful work? Funny, that.”

Considering that Le Mesurier was awarded an OBE (Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) in 2016 for his “life-saving work,” it is a strange statement, bereft of the plaudits one might expect under the circumstances.

Emma Winberg and the UK-funded PR machine for terrorists

Some may consider it harsh to include Le Mesurier’s grieving widow in an investigation over her own husband’s death, but exploring Emma Winberg’s role in Mayday Rescue and its associated organizations provides much-needed context to such a complex and convoluted case.

According to her LinkedIn profile, Winberg worked as a political officer for the UK’s FCO (Foreign and Commonwealth Office) for seven years, until 2014. In January of 2015, she co-founded a company called Incostrat, presumably with Paul Tilley, who like Le Mesurier, had a British military background.

Incostrat was effectively established as an outsourced public relations contractor for the “moderate armed opposition” in Syria and was funded by the UK FCO Conflict Stability and Security Fund (CSSF) – which also heavily funds both Mayday Rescue and the White Helmets.

An Incostrat contracting document seen by The Guardian named the Saudi-backed Jaish Al Islam (JAI) as one of the “suitable moderate opposition” groups to have received media advice and guidance on promotional strategies from Incostrat.

JAI was one of the most brutal extremist groups to occupy Syria’s Eastern Ghouta. The group, alongside the al-Qaeda affiliated Nusra Front, was responsible for the 2013 massacre of civilians in Adra that included burning prisoners alive in huge bread furnaces. In 2015, JAI caged religious minorities in Douma and paraded them through the streets as human shields. I previously covered some of the many atrocities that the group committed against civilians in Douma during their occupation of the Damascus suburb. In that article, I also explore the close collaboration between the White Helmets and JAI.

One video circling the internet was ostensibly a part of the JAI’s foreign-funded media blitz. It was a promotional short made to showcase the military prowess of the group, which at the time was occupying areas of Eastern Ghouta, Damascus – including Douma, the scene of an alleged chemical weapon attack in 2018.

Winberg leaves after being questioned by Turkish police in Istanbul, Nov. 13, 2019. Photo | AP

In January of 2017, according to her Linkedin page, Winberg became chief impact officer of Mayday Rescue. Her Skoll Foundation profile presents her as a Director of Mayday Rescue. Winberg describes her role as “developing new solutions for building upstream grassroots community resilience in the context of global threats from issues such as forced migration, violent extremism and climate change” (emphasis added)

She describes her background in the familiar “security, stabilisation and peace building”. Her postings “have been in Kabul, Damascus, East Jerusalem, Istanbul and Erbil with shorter postings in Yemen and East Africa” – a very similar posting map to Le Mesurier – while Winberg was employed as a political officer for the UK FCO.

Political officers can be described as UK FCO scouts, information gatherers and community networkers tasked with identifying “opportunities for UK engagement,” a euphemism for political, economic or proxy military intervention under the faux pretext of humanitarian war known as the Responsibility to Protect doctrine, particularly when taking into consideration the specific nations prospected by Winberg.

Peter Ford described political officers as follows:

The most famous ‘political officers’ were Lawrence (of Arabia) and Gertrude Bell. A term redolent of imperialism it has been brought back into use by the [UK] FCO for its agents who control, in the field, the UK’s various local proxies in Syria. Mostly based in Turkey they act as handlers for armed groups and their auxiliaries such as the White Helmets and local councils.”

The integration of the Skoll Foundation into the complex network of billionaire financing and directing the promotion of the White Helmets and driving the war in Syria has been investigated extensively by author and journalist Whitney Webb.

Winberg’s other connections to the NATO alliance include appearances alongside Eliot Higgins, an activist and publisher of the Atlantic Council-aligned Bellingcat blog, at an Atlantic Council DFR Lab event called, “Archiving atrocities in Syria.”

The DFR Lab is also a recipient of UK FCO funds and clearly included in the British government’s drive to silence diverging views and undermine genuine anti-war movements or individuals when it comes to Syria.

Fascinating! UK FCO paid a whopping £ 450,000 to Ben Nimmo DFR (troll) Lab in October 2018! Seems ‘Global Britain’ govt is on major drive to silence dissent & to destroy anti-war movements & leadership https://t.co/IjlDKkli9d @RenieriArts @Malinka1102 @DerbyChrisW pic.twitter.com/TaP6TNnl88

— vanessa beeley (@VanessaBeeley) 15 декабря 2018 г.

During her talk, Winberg makes scant reference to the atrocities carried out by the extremist armed groups working alongside the White Helmets in the areas they occupy. This policy of revisionism and whitewashing of the terrorist threat facing Syria extends to the White Helmets, a group that has reported on atrocities by the Nusra Front only once out of its 4,354 tweets according to research carried out by author Mike King.

The White Helmets promote the fiction of a single belligerent in the war: Assad. In 4,354 White Helmet tweets the military powers controlling rebel-held Syria are mentioned this often:

ISIS = 18
FSA =3
Nusra = 1
Al-Qaeda = 0
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) = 0
Jaysh al-Islam = 0 pic.twitter.com/WCfu11to8E

— Mike Ralph King (@MikeKingWriter) 19 ноября 2019 г.

Instead, Winberg focuses on the White Helmet “high profile” work with the OPCW (Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons) and their role in the burial of the dead and “maintaining records and identities of those who have been killed.” Again, this claim does not seem to be evidenced by the White Helmets themselves:

Co-founder of White Helmets besieged by funding worries and Russian propaganda campaign against him https://t.co/jxJ9zk55ba

— Richard Hall (@_RichardHall) 17 ноября 2019 г.

Winberg also presents evidence of a “sustained disinformation campaign” waged against the White Helmets by Russia, independent journalists and academics. This is important because of the apparent connection between Winberg joining Mayday Rescue in January 2017 and the subsequent campaign of disinformation waged in the media against journalists and academics who expose the inner workings of the White Helmets and their affiliation with extremist groups in Syria.

A propaganda campaign against researchers and journalists

In January of 2017, three months after Winberg arrived at Mayday Rescue, Chris York of the Huffington Post launched a media campaign to attack the critics of the White Helmets. York produced a series of articles attempting to discredit this author and other independent journalists. York rarely engaged in any constructive debates on social media, instead favoring the Russia-centric or “Assadist” tropes that have become the hallmark of attacks on dissidents and genuine anti-war activists alike.

A Times headline following the now-discredited Douma chemical attack

York’s attacks were soon reinforced by Olivia Solon at The Guardian, The UK’s Timesnewspaper, former Guardian correspondent, Brian Whitaker, Bellingcat, the BBC, journalist Nafeez Ahmed, academic Idrees Ahmad, and a 48-page report from the White Helmet PR agency, Syria Campaign.

The Syria Campaign report appeared to be in direct response to this author’s presentation on the White Helmets at the Geneva Press Club that received unprecedented threats of censorship and disruption. These are not the only attempts to smear and discredit dissenting voices, but they are the most notable.

It may also be that Winberg joined Mayday Rescue after Russian media finally intervened to platform voices that were critical of the White Helmets. Contrary to the “blame Russia” memes circulated by the majority of state-aligned media in the West – the first RT program to give a platform to any such criticism was Cross Talk in October of 2016.

Prior to that, Russia had not paid much attention to the White Helmet operating in ever-dwindling areas of Syrian territory. Perhaps Winberg was drafted by her UK FCO colleagues to counter the perceived threat to the supremacy of the established narratives in the Syrian information war.

The most compelling evidence that this campaign may have been orchestrated by Le Mesurier and Winberg came from Oliver Kamm, a Times newspaper columnist and online bully with a history of endorsing and protecting British neo-colonialism and globalist policies worldwide, including in the former Yugoslavia and Libya.

Two days after Le Mesurier died, Kamm tweeted that, in 2018, Le Mesurier had “reached out to this newspaper to urge us” to keep on the case of “academics at UK universities” who were confronting Le Mesurier with the inconvenient facts surrounding the alleged chemical attacks in Syria. Kamm later deleted those tweets.

It seems @OliverKamm has deleted the tweet captured here. I wonder why? https://t.co/P1geRvenni

— David Miller (@Tracking_Power) 25 ноября 2019 г.

The academics that Le Mesurier was referencing were members of the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media who have been instrumental in exposing the gaping holes in the chemical weapon narratives disseminated without question or deviation by the majority of corporate media outlets.

Were Mayday Rescue funds diverted to extremists in Syria?

In September of 2018, the Dutch government withdrew funding from Mayday Rescue, and by default, the White Helmets.

A comprehensive review of Mayday Rescue and White Helmets monitoring systems was carried out by an IOB evaluation team which concluded that the payment system used to transfer donor funds to the White Helmets was “problematic.” The IOB team also identified the close collaboration between Mayday Rescue and the White Helmets already mentioned in this article:

“The White Helmets are formally an independent organisation registered in Turkey, but in practice they are closely tied to Stichting Mayday Rescue Foundation (Mayday), the implementing partner for the majority of the White Helmets’ donors. Both organisations have their headquarters in the same office building.”

The use of the “Hawala” system to move money around raised concerns over the amounts of money involved and the lack of systematic monitoring of the funds’ recipients. A worrying lack of transparency was identified which led to the Dutch government’s withdrawal of funding, as there were no guarantees that funding was not being funneled to armed extremist groups inside Syria.

“The Hawala system relies on personal connections between various agents in different locations and in different countries. Because the various agents manage cash pools in these different locations, there is no need for physical border crossings. Transactions therefore cannot be viewed in isolation, but are part of the wider system. Single transactions are managed by various layers of agents, and because the system is based on trust, it does not leave a paper trail. [..]

There exists a risk of diversion of funds by armed groups, since it does not provide insight into who receives payments and taxes along the way or how the money is used. In addition, by using the wider system, organisations may indirectly facilitate harmful or illicit trade.”

Systems in place to detect terrorist infiltration were not adequate and the report concluded that the existing automated screening could not pick up on false information that would be used by terrorists or “non-sanctioned” individuals.

Donors were dealt with separately, with no overlap of financial information (in other words each donor had no idea who the other donors were, how much they were donating, or where the money was being assigned). Furthermore, there were no real insights into the White Helmet’s “achievements”.

“Reports only include progress on activities directly funded by the separate donors, and donors seem to have little insight into who else finances which other parts of the project.”

While the Dutch government was concerned about the misdirection of funding into the pockets of terrorist groups, perhaps Peter Ford has identified another reason to be concerned about the lack of transparency in Mayday Rescue’s system of accountability. Certainly, the IOB report identified loopholes that could just as easily be exploited by dishonest brokers elsewhere within the organization.  

Emma Winberg’s former associate at Incostrat, Paul Tilley, has branched out into a new venture that appears to be connected to the financial dealings of Mayday Rescue and the White Helmets, a possibility that will be explored in part two of this series.

Many questions remain unanswered

To date, no official autopsy has been completed on Le Mesurier. Many questions remain unanswered. Why was his body repatriated so quickly to the UK while the Turkish investigation was presumably still ongoing?

Airport workers load the body of former Le Mesurier onto a cargo plane prior to his repatriation at Istanbul Airport, Nov. 13, 2019. Photo | IHA via AP

The media clamor to hold Russia, independent journalists and academics responsible for Le Mesurier’s death has been strident but has largely failed. How can anyone be held responsible for the death of a former British military intelligence officer when the cause of death is not yet known?

No amount of media spin is going to make the questions go away. There is an apparent effort to disconnect the White Helmets from Le Mesurier, perhaps because the results of a possible UK FCO investigation will come to light, as Peter Ford suggests. Under such circumstances, the UK FCO would be able to protect its propaganda construct while distancing it from any further loss of reputation as a result of potential financial misdemeanors committed by the primary implementing partner, and from its own founder.

A survey of the UK FCO’s monthly funding in excess of £25,000 ($32,000) revealed that Mayday Rescue has received only one payment of £1.8 million ($2.32 million) in July of 2019 while other related organizations, including Incostrat, have received regular payments throughout 2019. In fact, Incostrat received £4.76 million ($6.1 million) between January and September of 2019. This may suggest a throttling back of funding for Mayday Rescue, pending, perhaps, an investigation into their financial practices.

The United Nations, for its part, has funded the Mayday Rescue Foundation to the tune of $607,311 according to its own financial tracking services analysis. Ford suspects that Mayday Rescue may have been a money-laundering hub receiving donor contributions and distributing them with very little internal or external monitoring or transparency, a theory that is becoming increasingly feasible as the facts trickle out.

A conspiracy theorist’s guide to the White Helmets https://t.co/37Zv4BxDB8

— Chris York (@ChrisDYork) 14 ноября 2019 г.

Le Mesurier played a pivotal role in organizing the witnesses used in OPCW inquiries into the alleged chemical attacks blamed on the Syrian government. As British academic, David Miller pointed out, “the process of ‘witness’ selection was contaminated by an operative (JLM) paid by several of the belligerents in the conflict most obviously the UK government.”

As details continue to emerge, the possibility of a correlation between recent revelations of OPCW corruption and Le Mesurier’s demise is becoming increasingly plausible, a possibility that will be covered further in part two of this series. Certainly, the pressure was building and Le Mesurier must have been feeling the heat as the Douma chemical attack narratives were collapsing under the weight of the exposure of manipulation, obfuscation, and staging by the White Helmets.

An image published in March 2018 by the White Helmets in Douma depicts an alleged Syrian government-instigated chemical attack. Photo | White Helmets

One very important question remains and perhaps it was haunting Le Mesurier. Who murdered the children and civilians who were used as macabre props in the White Helmet “chemical weapon” scenes in Douma? Where are the bodies? White Helmets leader Raed Saleh claimed that he disclosed their location to the OPCW. Where are they and how were they killed if indeed there was no chemical attack?

Claims of organ trafficking have been levied against the White Helmets by Syrian civilians and the death of Le Mesurier appears to have been exploited to redirect blame to the Turkish proxies now occupying areas of north-east Syria, a possibility that will be explored in part two of this series.

Le Mesurier’s death may well be an important watershed. What happens next will determine the future of the White Helmets and other important elements of the war against Syria. Le Mesurier’s creation, the White Helmets, has been instrumental in maintaining the propaganda that underpins the U.S. Coalition’s military adventurism in Syria. And as that narrative, carefully constructed over the course of a nine-year-long propaganda war, begins to crumble, governments and corporate media alike are circling the wagons in a last-ditch effort to save face.

mintpressnews.com

Aaron MATÉ

Facing a growing controversy, the head of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has offered his most extensive comments to date on a leaked internal assessment that challenged allegations that the Syrian government carried out a chemical weapons attack in the city of Douma in April 2018.

But the remarks from OPCW chief Fernando Arias have done little to address concerns that his UN-backed watchdog suppressed the document and published a flawed report that ignored countervailing data.

In an exclusive interview with The Grayzone, the award-winning rocket scientist and MIT professor emeritus Theodore Postol accused Arias of badly mischaracterizing the document in order to paper over his organization’s errors.

According to Postol, the OPCW appeared so determined to attribute blame to the Syrian government that it overlooked clear evidence the incident was staged.

In the end, Postol said, the OPCW produced “a product of compromised reporting of the inspection and analysis process by upper level OPCW management.”

Serious questions surrounding the Douma gas attack

The unfolding scandal relates to an incident that took place in Douma, a suburb of Syrian capital Damascus that had been occupied for years by a Saudi-backed extremist militia called Jaysh al-Islam.

As Syrian forces moved in to retake the area in April 2018, opposition activists linked to Jaysh al-Islam accused the Syrian government of dropping gas cylinders on a shelter and killing at least 43 people.

This allegation prompted the United States, France, and Britain to bomb three sites in Syria one week later.

An OPCW investigation later concluded that the cylinders in Douma were likely dropped by from the air, a finding that effectively pinned blame on the Syrian military, the only warring party with aircraft.

But a leaked engineering assessment revealed that an expert with the OPCW Fact Finding Mission (FFM) had in fact challenged that conclusion.

The leaked document, authored by Ian Henderson, found that the “dimensions, characteristics and appearance of the cylinders and the surrounding scene of the incidents were inconsistent with what would have been expected in the case of either cylinder having been delivered from an aircraft.”

Accordingly, Henderson wrote, there is “a higher probability that both cylinders were manually placed at those two locations rather than being delivered from aircraft.” Henderson’s conclusion suggests that the attack was in fact staged on the ground.

Henderson’s work was excluded from the OPCW’s final report to the UN Security Council on March 1, 2019. It remained unknown until it was leaked to a group of UK-based academics known as the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media (WGSPM) in May.

After initially attempting to downplay the document’s significance and refusing to address the issue publicly, the OPCW is now on the defensive.

OPCW chief: ‘Reasonable grounds’ for believing the official story on Douma

In newly revealed comments to OPCW member states on May 28th, the organization’s director-general, Fernando Arias, confirmed that he had ordered an investigation into the leak. But Arias did not appear concerned with the implications of Ian Henderson’s buried finding – only the fact that it was publicly disclosed without permission.

“When further evidence appeared that the document drafted by the staff member had been shared outside this framework,” Arias said, “I considered I had sufficient information to authorize the initiation of an investigation to clarify the situation.”

Arias also confirmed that Henderson was an OPCW staff member who was on the ground in Syria at the time of the investigation. Without naming him, Arias said that Henderson was a “liaison officer at our Command Post Office in Damascus” who was “temporarily assisting… with information collection at some sites in Douma.”

Henderson is, in fact, a veteran OPCW official who is listed on internal documents as a staff expert dating back to 1998, one year after the organization’s founding. In past investigations, he has served as OPCW Inspection Team Leader.

Notably, while Henderson was initially misidentified as being a non-member of the FFM, Arias not only confirmed that he was a member, but also that the OCPW relied on “external experts” for a crucial part of its investigation.

According to Arias, ballistics data from the scene was “analysed by three external experts commissioned by the FFM, and working independently from one another. In the end, while using different methods and instruments, they all reached the same conclusions that can be found in the FFM final report.”

Seeking to address why Henderson’s findings were excluded from the final report, Arias claimed that his assessment “pointed at possible attribution,” and was therefore “outside of the mandate of the FFM [Fact-Finding Mission] with regard to the formulation of its findings.” Under OPCW guidelines, the FFM is prevented from assigning blame to parties involved in chemical attacks.

But the obvious inference of the OPCW’s published conclusion was to blame the Syrian government – an act of attribution – since the Syrian military (or its Russian ally) was the only warring party in Douma with aircraft.

Arias added that he issued instructions for Henderson’s work to be submitted to the Investigation and Identification Team, a body within the OPCW that has yet to become operational.

Ultimately, Arias said, “I stand by the impartial and professional conclusions of the FFM … that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the use of a toxic chemical as a weapon took place in Douma on 7 April 2018.”

Expert: OPCW’s initial report ‘bear[s] no relationship to what was observed at the scene’

Ian Henderson’s findings have received an unambiguous endorsement from award-winning physicist and MIT professor emeritus Theodore Postol, a leading expert in missile technology.

After reviewing Arias’ comments, Postol told The Grayzone that the OPCW chief had “mischaracterized the contents” of Henderson’s assessment.

“Unlike the claims made by Ambassador Arias, the leaked internal OPCW engineering completely undermined the findings of his report to the UN Security Council about two alleged chlorine cylinder attacks on April 7, 2018 in Douma, Syria,” Postol said.

“The leaked document provided unambiguous contradictory data from the UN Fact-Finding Mission (FFM) and supporting technical analysis that explicitly showed that the attacks were instead staged.”

Postol punched holes in Arias’ excuse for excluding Henderson’s findings. “The leaked OPCW report did not, as mischaracterized by Ambassador Arias, assign attribution to these attacks,” the MIT professor emeritus explained.

“The leaked OPCW document merely showed that the evidence was unambiguous that someone had placed the chlorine cylinders at the alleged locations in the hope of making it appear like the cylinders had been dropped from an aircraft.”

Postol argued that the OPCW’s “calculations produced as proof for the conclusions” in its report “bear no relationship to what was observed at the scene and both the observed data from the scene and the calculations bear no relationship to the reported findings.”

The prominent scientist was especially withering in his assessment of the OPCW’s published report on Douma, describing it as “a product of compromised reporting of the inspection and analysis process by upper level OPCW management.”

On-the-ground reporters and Syrian witnesses echo Henderson’s OPCW conclusions

OPCW investigator Ian Henderson’s findings dovetail with overlooked field reports that raised serious doubts about Western claims of a chemical attack by the Syrian government.

Robert Fisk, the veteran correspondent for the British newspaper The Independent, spoke to a doctor in Douma who said the victims he treated suffered from dust and dirt inhalation, not toxic gas exposure. The doctor said he witnessed a member of the US and UK-funded White Helmets operation start a panic among Douma residents by shouting, “Gas!”

Riam Dalati, a BBC producer who has covered Syria extensively, claimed in February to have uncovered evidence that the attack “was staged.” Dalati was referring to harrowing images from the Douma hospital showing doctors and White Helmets workers treating young victims of alleged chemical attack.

Strangely, the reporter made his Twitter account private six hours after his initial tweet, and never mentioned the issue again.

These reports were supported by testimony by staff at the hospital where Douma victims were treated and by some of the supposed victims themselves.

For example, an 11-year-old boy named Hassan Diab said he never experienced a chemical attack, but was rushed to a hospital and hosed down with cold water on camera.

Ahmad Kashoi, an emergency ward administrator at the hospital, echoed Diab’s account, recalling how opposition activists doused people with water even though, “No one has died. No one suffered from chemical exposure.”

Because these testimonies and many more like them were delivered in Brussels at a press conference organized by the Russian government, Western states and their attack dogs in the media attempted to discredit them with baseless claims of coercion.

The Intercept’s Robert Mackey took the lead on attempts to take down the Syrian testimonies, suggesting that because Diab had been initially interviewed by Russian state broadcasters on or near Syrian military facilities, he had been held under duress. Yet Mackey produced no evidence to support his insinuation that the testimonies were coerced.

Since the release of Henderson’s dissenting OPCW report, the Intercept pundit has all but ignored the inconvenient issues it raised.

Mackey’s silence is characteristic of Western media’s treatment of the report across the board. The near-uniform silence is glaring in light of the document’s implications: a chemical attack appears to have been staged by extremist insurgents to trigger Western military intervention in Syria, and the world’s top chemical watchdog publishing flawed data to retroactively lend credibility to that violent outcome.

With the OPCW facing a growing fallout, it may be more difficult for Henderson’s stunning dissent to remain out of the public eye for much longer.

thegrayzone.com

The US has provided no evidence to support its accusations. This time, it seems to have run out of “material”, relying on bombastic assertion and the dubious “word” of Washington alone. Yes, that’s how desperately hard-up the master weaver of false flags has become. “It is because, er, well, we say it is.”

The American claims come (there’s the giveaway clue) just when the Syrian Arab Army and its Russian ally are moving to clear the country of the last-remaining anti-government militant stronghold in northeast Idlib province. These aren’t cuddly “moderate rebels” the Western media would have you believe. They are affiliated to the barbaric, internationally outlawed Al Qaeda network and myriad offshoots. The terrorists who supposedly carried out 9/11 whom the US has been purportedly waging a war against for the past two decades.

Moreover, the Syrian, Russian offensive has been brought on because the terrorists repeatedly broke ceasefire agreements by firing on Syrian citizens in nearby Aleppo city and the Russian airbase at Hmeimim.

So, what the breathless US claims about chemical weapons is really about is to hamper the Syrian, Russian offensive routing the terrorist enclave plaguing Syria. That’s because despite all the rhetoric about fighting terrorism, the Americans and their NATO allies have covertly sponsored the same terrorists over the past eight years to destabilize Syria for regime change. Having an enclave in Syria not under government control is a convenient way for the foreign enemies of President Assad to maintain a destabilizing influence on the country, to ensure that it never fully recovers from the eight-year war that these foreign enemies orchestrated, but for all intents and purposes have lost.

Additionally, the hackneyed old “chemical weapons against civilians” ruse could be used to justify the Americans launching missile strikes on Syria and intervening directly for its regime-change objective. With the buildup of US firepower in the Persian Gulf ostensibly to counter alleged Iranian aggression, Washington has got the military resources in place if it choses to redirect them for aggressing Syria. (Double-think alert!)

What makes this all so brazen is the flagrant nature of false flags with chemical weapons that the Americans and their NATO allies have been complicit in. Just last week it emerged that the UN-affiliated Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) suppressed its own expert opinion which concluded that a chemical weapon incident last year in Syria was most likely contrived by Western-backed terrorists as a false flag. The incident was in Douma near the capital Damascus last April. At the time, the Western media dutifully broadcast the sensational claims that it was the Syrian government forces which had dropped the deadly munitions from the air. Within a week of the alleged atrocity, the Americans, British and French launched a barrage of over 100 air strikes, killing several Syrian civilians, in what they claimed was “retaliation” for Syrian government “barbarity” against civilians. (Sick bag please for the overwhelming double-think.)

Many observers at the time of the Douma incident strenuously pointed out the anomalies of the claim that Syrian government forces were to blame. Witness accounts, including local doctors, testified that the whole scenario was set up by jihadists and their White Helmets accomplices. The chemical munitions were not dropped from the sky by aircraft, it was reliably claimed; they were delivered on the ground by the so-called “rebels”. An OPCW expert corroborated that account. Yet his report was suppressed by the OPCW chiefs. The Hague-based organization seems to have been pressured politically to conceal the truth. Why? Because it would show the US, Britain and France were guilty of a huge war crime by attacking Syria with air strikes based on a complete lie.

Notably and damnably, too, the Western news media have not reported on the OPCW cover-up. Because the corporate-controlled networks, newspapers and state-owned news services like the BBC are part of the propaganda machine. They don’t sell truth, they sell war. And they’re not going to admit that.

The lie over the Douma chemical weapons incident, just like many other such incidents in the past such as in East Ghouta in August 2013 and presently in Idlib, is an expedient. It is expedient for the US and its allies to demonize the Syrian government and its Russian ally, and to lionize “rebels” who in reality are nothing but foreign terrorist mercenaries who have been sent to that country on the errand of regime change for the US and its criminal allies.

The expedient lie extends to the ultimate deception of giving Washington and its NATO accomplices an excuse for attacking a sovereign country. In other words, carrying out a Nazi-like aggression – the supreme war crime – but in the guise of a chivalrous protector of civilians, human rights and international law.

You can’t get more audacious than that, nor more nauseating.

The one upside, however, to all this repeated chicanery is that the American master weaver of false flags has spun so many of them over the years (Havana Harbor, Pearl Harbor, Gulf of Tonkin, 9/11, Iraqi WMD, Syrian CWs, Iranian aggression, and so on) that the lie material has now become threadbare to the point of transparency.