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Syria Podcast Episode 3 · UK Column Radio

0:00
Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the third episode of the Syria Podcast,
0:03
Speaker 1: and today I'm joined by Pierce Robinson. Welcome to the program, Piers.
0:07
Speaker 2: Very good to be with you. Mike.
0:08
Speaker 1: We're two weeks since the activity in Syria which has
0:12
Speaker 1: resulted in the fall of the Assad government, and we've
0:17
Speaker 1: already seen images in the mainstream press of Rose and Rose,
0:21
Speaker 1: of big brown boxes full of paperwork. And the question
0:25
Speaker 1: that we were asking each other a couple of weeks ago, Piers,
0:28
Speaker 1: when this first kicked off, was would we see a
0:31
Speaker 1: resurgence of the chemical weapons narrative and would we see
0:35
Speaker 1: documents being produced to apparently provide evidence and proof for
0:40
Speaker 1: that chemical weapons narrative. Where are we at with this? Certainly,
0:44
Speaker 1: I think we have seen mention of this, quite a
0:47
Speaker 1: bit of mention of this in the minstream press already.
0:50
Speaker 2: Well, I think that it's very likely that there's going
0:53
Speaker 2: to be an attempt to shore up the general chemical
0:57
Speaker 2: weapons allegation, simply because it's ultimately so central to the
1:03
Speaker 2: legitimation of Western action in Syria and always has been.
1:07
Speaker 2: You know, there have been two sort of broad core
1:10
Speaker 2: arguments which Western governments have used in order to justify
1:14
Speaker 2: the dirty war that we've had since twenty eleven, arguably before,
1:18
Speaker 2: and that's been as Sad as a torturer and second
1:22
Speaker 2: a sad Gas is his people. And you can see
1:24
Speaker 2: the stripping tongues, especially to gas attacks from politicians at
1:28
Speaker 2: the moment. This is back in as it were, as
1:30
Speaker 2: you say, the headlines. So these have been central components
1:34
Speaker 2: of the Western narrative on Syria, and more than ever,
1:38
Speaker 2: they have to legitimate a what's been going on for
1:42
Speaker 2: the last fourteen years, thirteen years, but also whatever is
1:46
Speaker 2: going to be playing out now in Syria, and in
1:50
Speaker 2: a way, you know, if they are going to try
1:52
Speaker 2: to sort of build a state and have a population
1:57
Speaker 2: which is orientated towards the West, which is I suspect
2:01
Speaker 2: you know what one of the calculations or objectives is
2:05
Speaker 2: in all of this. They want to solidify that belief
2:09
Speaker 2: I think in the minds of both Western publics but
2:12
Speaker 2: also people with in Syria and so on, this becomes
2:16
Speaker 2: part of, you know, constructing a nation state. So I
2:21
Speaker 2: think the stakes are incredibly high now for the West
2:24
Speaker 2: and the pressure is on in order to shore up
2:28
Speaker 2: the chemical weapons allegation, whether that might be through finding
2:33
Speaker 2: witnesses of course, it's always been the case that there
2:36
Speaker 2: have been witnesses. Witnesses were insuited by the organization the
2:40
Speaker 2: prohibition of chemical weapons in relation to all the attacks,
2:44
Speaker 2: but sort of finding new witnesses to say things, finding
2:48
Speaker 2: documents outside chants that you know, they find a rows
2:52
Speaker 2: of shiny missiles and some tip with siren that might
2:56
Speaker 2: be in the playbook. So the incentives are very very high.
3:00
Speaker 2: Of course, there's you know, one has to be open
3:03
Speaker 2: to the possibility that, you know, maybe the Syrian government
3:06
Speaker 2: did hold some limited capability, etc. It's always of possibility.
3:12
Speaker 2: But I think for me, in terms of what work
3:14
Speaker 2: I've been doing, you know, the big question is it's
3:17
Speaker 2: not just a question of possession. It's this continual allegations
3:22
Speaker 2: and events in Syria which have been pointed at the
3:24
Speaker 2: Syrian government Goo to twenty thirteen Sarahn attack men, all
3:30
Speaker 2: of these alleged chemical chlorine incidents post Guta up until
3:34
Speaker 2: twenty seventeen when he had hard Chakun, which was alledly
3:37
Speaker 2: a Sarahn attack. All of those alleged incidents I think
3:42
Speaker 2: need to be confirmed and if one of them falls, yeah,
3:48
Speaker 2: in the sense of the truth comes out about one
3:50
Speaker 2: of you know, whether it's good To twenty thirteen or
3:54
Speaker 2: hard Chikun or Duma twenty eighteen, then the entire narrative
3:58
Speaker 2: potentially crumbles. There's a lot of incentive there for Western
4:02
Speaker 2: governments to confirm the allegations they've made, and we're going
4:06
Speaker 2: to have to see how this actually plays out and
4:08
Speaker 2: lasting on this. I guess a lot of this is
4:10
Speaker 2: very much dependent upon what was actually going to occur
4:13
Speaker 2: in Syria in the coming weeks and months. I think
4:16
Speaker 2: it's anybody's guess, and you listen to a different analyst,
4:19
Speaker 2: you'll get a different sort of prediction. Whether we're looking
4:23
Speaker 2: at severe internal conflict or even a regional conflict Iran
4:29
Speaker 2: Israel and so on. All of these things seem to
4:31
Speaker 2: be on the cards, and I suspect that there are
4:33
Speaker 2: sort of strategic calculations being made by all the major
4:36
Speaker 2: players as to what to do and so on, and
4:41
Speaker 2: what position to take, and so probably none of this
4:44
Speaker 2: has decided. We probably are in a situation where we
4:47
Speaker 2: have a genuine sort of state of flux in terms
4:50
Speaker 2: of the situation in across the Beliee, but also globally
4:53
Speaker 2: in a way between the West and Russia and between
4:57
Speaker 2: the Western's allies in the Middle East, and we don't
5:00
Speaker 2: know where that's going to go. If we go into
5:01
Speaker 2: a major war, which is possible, I think the chemical
5:05
Speaker 2: weapons issue might then become less of a priority. But
5:10
Speaker 2: as long as they think they have some kind of
5:12
Speaker 2: control over the political process in Syria and some kind
5:17
Speaker 2: of sense in which we can sort of stabilize the
5:20
Speaker 2: country and start to build it and build a client state,
5:24
Speaker 2: which is probably what the Western governments want, they're going
5:27
Speaker 2: to be pushing extremely hard. I think on the chemical
5:31
Speaker 2: weapons I refer to it as propaganda, because I think
5:35
Speaker 2: overall the evidence points towards this being a deception operation
5:39
Speaker 2: in order to demonize the Syrian government.
5:42
Speaker 1: I think the first time I saw the term chemical
5:45
Speaker 1: weapons being used since the insurgency began was just a
5:49
Speaker 1: few days ago, actually, whenever the mainstream media finally started
5:53
Speaker 1: admitting that Israel was significantly bombing Syria, and one of
5:56
Speaker 1: the first things they said was that Israel had bombed
5:59
Speaker 1: a sad chemical weapons factory. And I thought to myself, well,
6:03
Speaker 1: hold on a second, if this was genuinely a chemical
6:07
Speaker 1: weapons factory or a storage place for chemical weapons, is
6:11
Speaker 1: it sensible to bomb that does that not release the
6:14
Speaker 1: chemical weapon into the environment at that point, I mean,
6:19
Speaker 1: is this really a narrative that they're expecting people to swallow?
6:22
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, I think technically, I mean saren for example,
6:28
Speaker 2: these are normally binary weapons, where you have to bring
6:30
Speaker 2: together two materials in order for it to become, as
6:33
Speaker 2: it were, a nerve agent weapon. So bombing the materials
6:39
Speaker 2: which haven't been combined isn't necessarily going to release clouds
6:43
Speaker 2: of siren as it were. But I think, look, okay,
6:47
Speaker 2: it's ready. Government is simply relaying the narrative that we've
6:50
Speaker 2: had for years as a way of justifying the bombing
6:52
Speaker 2: the destruction of the Syrian infrastructure. It's also a way
6:55
Speaker 2: of covering their tracks, right, is that you know, if
6:59
Speaker 2: the Organization Prohibition and Chemical Weapons finally gets in on
7:03
Speaker 2: the ground and they come out and say, well everything's
7:05
Speaker 2: being blown up, you know, Western governments can then plausibly say, well, yeah,
7:09
Speaker 2: there was a stock pile there, but it's been destroyed
7:12
Speaker 2: in all of these air strikes, so that they're covering themselves.
7:15
Speaker 2: It serves that purpose, but it also serves the purpose
7:17
Speaker 2: of legitimating in a sense that the bombing that they're
7:20
Speaker 2: carrying out, saving people from chemical weapons. You know, I
7:25
Speaker 2: think those are the major issues in relation to those
7:27
Speaker 2: planes coming from the Israeli government covering tracks. And then
7:31
Speaker 2: it's also just pulling upon an already established narrative in
7:34
Speaker 2: the minds of Western public that Sad has chemical weapons,
7:37
Speaker 2: so then it's okay for israelatively bombing these targets.
7:43
Speaker 1: Many people will know that you have been working on
7:46
Speaker 1: the issue of propaganda for many, many, many years, but
7:49
Speaker 1: what was it that brought you into the chemical weapons issue.
7:53
Speaker 2: It's useful to have a sense of the history in Syria,
7:56
Speaker 2: because of course this is the dominant narra. Sad uses
8:01
Speaker 2: chemical weapons against his population, and really the alleged use
8:06
Speaker 2: of chemical weapons in Syrias long before I paid any
8:09
Speaker 2: attention to the Syrian conflict. Actually, when a time I
8:12
Speaker 2: was really primarily looking at the Iraq two thousand and
8:16
Speaker 2: three war and examining the manipulation of intelligence in relation
8:20
Speaker 2: to weapons of mass destruction. That was when the Syrian
8:23
Speaker 2: War started. But if you go back to the very
8:25
Speaker 2: early days you do see for example, ARC, which is
8:30
Speaker 2: the UK government funded organization which is responsible for the
8:35
Speaker 2: strategic communication and various other activities in Syria and across
8:40
Speaker 2: the Middle East. Essentially a key component of the UK
8:45
Speaker 2: destabilization dirty war in Syria. ARC, I think is one
8:50
Speaker 2: of their media spills. Basmara I think reported earlier on
8:53
Speaker 2: sort of some sort of suggested chemical attack, I think
8:57
Speaker 2: as early as twenty twelve, but it disappeared and so on,
9:02
Speaker 2: and then you had in I think it was twenty
9:07
Speaker 2: thirteen or in late twenty twelve, you had an alleged
9:10
Speaker 2: attack which came to nothing and is quickly robutted I
9:14
Speaker 2: think by experts saying that that seems to be a
9:17
Speaker 2: stage or a constructed event. And then you get into
9:20
Speaker 2: twenty and thirteen and so okay, just to clarify, and
9:24
Speaker 2: we know that this ARC organization has formed, and we
9:27
Speaker 2: know that there's a strategic communication campaign emerging from the
9:33
Speaker 2: UK government and it's aimed at supporting the moderate opposition
9:38
Speaker 2: and providing sort of communications, et cetera, trying to sort
9:42
Speaker 2: of mobilize populations against the Syrian government. Effectively, we know
9:46
Speaker 2: we have that emerging, and then these few hints of
9:49
Speaker 2: chemical attacks surfacing, and in twenty thirteen, in March, you
9:54
Speaker 2: had an attack which killed Syrian soldiers, okay, and that
10:00
Speaker 2: was Syian government said that it was a Saren attack
10:04
Speaker 2: against their soldiers. Now everybody knew that Syria held a
10:09
Speaker 2: significant arsenal of strategic Saren capabild a strategic Saren capability,
10:15
Speaker 2: primarily that they had that in order to counter is
10:19
Speaker 2: Raeli nuclear capability. It was a strategic weaponry and so on.
10:23
Speaker 1: What do you mean by strategic in this context title,
10:26
Speaker 1: because people will understand what a strategic nuclear weapon is.
10:30
Speaker 1: Is this the same kind.
10:31
Speaker 2: Of thing, same same kind of thing, but but you
10:34
Speaker 2: don't have nuclear but you do have Saren, So that's
10:38
Speaker 2: it's not a it's not an absolute balancing of Israelian
10:43
Speaker 2: nuclear capability obviously because Saren tipicalistic missiles cannot do as
10:47
Speaker 2: much damage as a nuclear tip missile. But it's still
10:51
Speaker 2: a form of strategic defense. The key thing is that
10:53
Speaker 2: it's not seen really so much as a battlefield weapon.
10:57
Speaker 2: So no, you have this urging conflict in Syria and
11:02
Speaker 2: this regime change operations, sporting extremist groups, and then you
11:05
Speaker 2: have these kind of hints of these chemical attacks sort
11:08
Speaker 2: of going into the narrative, and then you actually have
11:11
Speaker 2: an attack which is Syrian government calls it out and says,
11:14
Speaker 2: you know, our soldiers have been attacked. We think it's
11:17
Speaker 2: a nervation and they reported this straight to the United
11:19
Speaker 2: Nations and they asked for an investigation and said that
11:23
Speaker 2: we believed that rebel groups, opposition groups have used a
11:28
Speaker 2: chemical weapon and nervation against our soldiers. And as soon
11:32
Speaker 2: as this happened, almost immediately you had I think it
11:36
Speaker 2: was France and Britain starting to make these counter allegations, okay,
11:41
Speaker 2: saying that sort of well we think that the Syrian
11:44
Speaker 2: government is using chemical weapons and so on, and then
11:49
Speaker 2: you had a string of events. Sheik Masud was one,
11:53
Speaker 2: and I've forgot the name of the other, but it
11:57
Speaker 2: had a series of attacks which the British government and
11:59
Speaker 2: French coumans say, look, this is the Syrian government attacking
12:02
Speaker 2: and there's a string of these which emerged at a
12:04
Speaker 2: point when we know that an individual Hamish to Breton
12:07
Speaker 2: Gordon form of British military was involved in six sample
12:12
Speaker 2: gathering operations in the country and they were sort of
12:15
Speaker 2: feeding back this material to the British government, and the
12:18
Speaker 2: British government actually Cameron came out and said, oh, well,
12:21
Speaker 2: Portland Down has confirmed that Saren was used by the
12:25
Speaker 2: Syrian government in the attack on Shikmathod and another attack,
12:31
Speaker 2: and so you can see what's playing out here that
12:34
Speaker 2: there's been a clear attack against Syrian soldiers using sarin
12:39
Speaker 2: by groups who are trying to overthrow the Syrian government.
12:42
Speaker 2: Syria has gone straight to the UN. And then you
12:45
Speaker 2: have this flurry of alleged attacks which appeared to be
12:50
Speaker 2: we should been blamed on the Syrian government being reported
12:53
Speaker 2: by the Times newspaper, by the Telegraph, and with Hamish
12:56
Speaker 2: to Breton Gordon being a player who's passed and new
13:00
Speaker 2: information and doing the sample gathering to get it back
13:03
Speaker 2: to Portland down leading to camera and making that allegation,
13:07
Speaker 2: and the US making similar allegations, and all of this
13:11
Speaker 2: time there's this negotiation going on to bring in a
13:14
Speaker 2: UN OPCW investigation of all of these chemical attacks as
13:19
Speaker 2: well as the original one which the Assyrian government had
13:22
Speaker 2: gone straight to the UN about. And then of course
13:25
Speaker 2: in twenty thirteen, about four to five days after an
13:30
Speaker 2: agreed UN OPCW team went into Syria to investigate a
13:35
Speaker 2: the initial event that the Assyrian government has flagged up,
13:39
Speaker 2: and then all of these other apparent events which are British,
13:42
Speaker 2: Americans and French said were occurring. And within about four
13:46
Speaker 2: days of the team led by ak Selstrom and it
13:50
Speaker 2: was Scott Kens was the OPCW rep. Within four days
13:54
Speaker 2: you had the Massaren attack in Damascus. Okay, And so
14:01
Speaker 2: just to be very clear about this, Syrian government has
14:04
Speaker 2: called in the UN to examine this attack on their soldiers,
14:08
Speaker 2: and then a few months later they've got the UN
14:11
Speaker 2: team to come into Damascus, and then literally within days
14:15
Speaker 2: with a team on the ground, there's a mass Saren
14:17
Speaker 2: attack with rockets. And you know, there's a very good
14:21
Speaker 2: book coming out by William Vaganan in the Very Near Future,
14:26
Speaker 2: and he goes through the details of this event. But
14:29
Speaker 2: this was all This all occurred also in the context
14:32
Speaker 2: where the Obama administration had set down this red line
14:36
Speaker 2: about if Asad uses chemical weapons, that's a red line
14:40
Speaker 2: he's crossing, and we will intervene with major air strikes,
14:44
Speaker 2: no fly zones, and so on. So I think probably
14:47
Speaker 2: your audience can get the picture or a picture what's
14:51
Speaker 2: going on here. It made very very little sense for
14:54
Speaker 2: the Syrian government obviously to launch a mass Saren attack,
14:58
Speaker 2: killing hundreds of people in the suburbs of Samascus. As
15:01
Speaker 2: an OPCW team arrives, what it looks like and I
15:04
Speaker 2: think you know William's book documents us in great detail.
15:09
Speaker 2: This was an attempt to push Obama to intervene fully
15:13
Speaker 2: in Syria by giving the appearance that the Syrian government
15:18
Speaker 2: had carried out a Saraen rocket attack and killed hundreds
15:21
Speaker 2: of people. And so this is the point early on,
15:24
Speaker 2: when you know there was a real potential for a major,
15:27
Speaker 2: full blown Western intervention in the conflict. You know that
15:31
Speaker 2: the uprisings in inverted Commas hadn't succeeded. The war was
15:35
Speaker 2: evolving into the West having to support these extremist groups.
15:38
Speaker 2: But the government was standing firm as it were, and
15:41
Speaker 2: the country was standing firm against these attacks. And so
15:45
Speaker 2: you know, you got to up the ante and get
15:49
Speaker 2: a full blown intervention. In order to do that, you
15:52
Speaker 2: need an event which you can blame on the Syrian government.
15:54
Speaker 2: I think that's the broad picture of what you have
15:56
Speaker 2: with a goo to twenty thirteen. Now, what then happened
16:01
Speaker 2: was that the Russians negotiated with Assyrian government and said, look, okay,
16:05
Speaker 2: a way of getting out of this corner that you're
16:08
Speaker 2: being put into is to just agree to sign up
16:11
Speaker 2: to the Chemical Weapons Convention and to have all your
16:14
Speaker 2: stock piles of strategic sarm weapons basically dismantled. And that
16:19
Speaker 2: was a deal that was reached and a sad agree
16:22
Speaker 2: or Assyrian government agreed to that, and Syria was as
16:25
Speaker 2: it were, it became signatory to the Chemical Weapons Convention
16:29
Speaker 2: and its stockpile as strategic sarum was then overseen by
16:34
Speaker 2: inspectors and so on, was then dismantled on a US
16:38
Speaker 2: warship in the end taken out and dismantled. And that was,
16:42
Speaker 2: you know, in a sense, so that the de escalated
16:46
Speaker 2: the crisis situation where you had, you know, the red line.
16:50
Speaker 2: People could claim the red line had been crossed and
16:52
Speaker 2: Obama had to act. Obama didn't act. And this is
16:56
Speaker 2: of course si Hirsh's reporting on this. Si Hirsch's reporting
16:59
Speaker 2: was his contacts in the intelligence services said that obamall
17:04
Speaker 2: was told it's not a slam dunk. And of course
17:07
Speaker 2: the suggestion, with the suggestion with sy Hirsh was that
17:10
Speaker 2: you had materials being supplied to opposition groups in the
17:14
Speaker 2: country via Turkey, I think with Saren and that that
17:18
Speaker 2: was the source of the attacks and so on, and anyway,
17:22
Speaker 2: long and short of it that it was communicated to
17:24
Speaker 2: Obama that this it might not have been a Syrian government,
17:27
Speaker 2: So he was clearly backing down at that point. But
17:30
Speaker 2: still they sort of were able to get Syria to
17:33
Speaker 2: agree to dismantle its Saren strategic capability at that point.
17:40
Speaker 1: Was there any noise at that stage that they hadn't
17:43
Speaker 1: cooperated fully with that process.
17:45
Speaker 2: No, that was supposed to be the end of it.
17:48
Speaker 2: And I would assume from the point of view the
17:50
Speaker 2: Syrian government they were thinking, well, okay, there's no way
17:53
Speaker 2: they can blame us anymore, for you know, Saren attacks
17:56
Speaker 2: on etc. And you know, it was understood to be complete.
18:02
Speaker 2: And then there was the DAPT team was then deployed
18:04
Speaker 2: from the OPCW to then monitor and so on. But
18:07
Speaker 2: what you then had come twenty fourteen, a little time
18:11
Speaker 2: after you then had the emergence of these alleged chlorine
18:16
Speaker 2: attacks in Syria. And so this was this idea that
18:19
Speaker 2: the Syrian government was dropping canisters of chlorine on the population.
18:25
Speaker 2: And this was the narrative that started to be weaved
18:28
Speaker 2: and promoted by for example, how much to Bredn Gordon
18:32
Speaker 2: Berlin cat as well, creating the impression that there was
18:36
Speaker 2: this systematic use of chlorine in the country and so on.
18:39
Speaker 2: So it basically sort of revived this idea of the
18:44
Speaker 2: Syrian government being a chemical weapons threat.
18:47
Speaker 1: And chlorine wouldn't have been part of the chemical weapons
18:50
Speaker 1: decommissioning process.
18:52
Speaker 2: Chlorine, if it's used as a weapon, then it's a
18:55
Speaker 2: chemical weapon. But of course, you know, all countries have
18:58
Speaker 2: large stocks of chlorine. We use it in water and
19:01
Speaker 2: swimming pools, and so it becomes you know, it's not
19:05
Speaker 2: a nerve agent, so you know, and again, having looked
19:09
Speaker 2: through a lot of these alleged incidents, a lot of
19:12
Speaker 2: them are obviously fraudulent. They're being constructed by groups on
19:15
Speaker 2: the ground. The White Helmets come into play, I think
19:18
Speaker 2: around twenty fifteen, where they appear to be involved in
19:22
Speaker 2: presentation of canisters and then claiming here you have a
19:25
Speaker 2: chlorine attack. They have some witnesses to claiming that it's occurred,
19:29
Speaker 2: et cetera. Of course, dropping chlorine cylinders on populations doesn't
19:34
Speaker 2: tend to be very dangerous unless the cylinder hits you
19:36
Speaker 2: on the head. A large release of chlorine. People will
19:39
Speaker 2: normally run away from and so these aren't terribly effective weapons.
19:43
Speaker 2: But you know, the appeal was made to the First
19:45
Speaker 2: World War when you actually had some massive quantities of
19:48
Speaker 2: chlorine being pumped out through the trenches which would then
19:51
Speaker 2: cause injury to soldiers and some which is a chloring
19:54
Speaker 2: gas cylinder. But this was the kind of narrative building
19:58
Speaker 2: that was going on, and that runs through to twenty
20:00
Speaker 2: seventeen where you then had harn Chakun, shortly after Donald
20:06
Speaker 2: Trump had said I'm going to pull out of Syria,
20:09
Speaker 2: you then suddenly had an alleged Saren attack, and then
20:12
Speaker 2: a year later in Duma in twenty eighteen, you had
20:16
Speaker 2: another attack, alleged attack which initially they claimed was Saren.
20:21
Speaker 2: So again I was sort of upping the ante here.
20:23
Speaker 2: It was like, sort of the chlorine isn't quite sort
20:26
Speaker 2: of doing the trick in terms of galvanizing great public
20:31
Speaker 2: awareness or outcry. So you need a Saren attack. You
20:33
Speaker 2: have a Saren event in harms Chakun, and then initially
20:37
Speaker 2: what was alleged to be a Saren attack in Duma,
20:40
Speaker 2: and all of these, all of these ledge attacks are
20:43
Speaker 2: always being promoted as well. You know, here's just here's
20:45
Speaker 2: the sad he's carrying on, he's using these chemical weapons,
20:49
Speaker 2: he's now using chlorine. And then some of these were
20:52
Speaker 2: investigatiated by the organization of a prohibition of chemical weapons.
20:57
Speaker 2: But with all of these tax they were completely reliant
21:01
Speaker 2: upon third parties supplied them with information. Okay, it ended
21:06
Speaker 2: up being heavily reliant upon the White Helmets for example,
21:09
Speaker 2: for information being supplied, so that the investigations weren't actually
21:14
Speaker 2: even following so normal OPCW protocol in terms of chain
21:18
Speaker 2: of custody, but they were doing that, and then they
21:21
Speaker 2: were producing reports which were sort of ambiguous but then
21:25
Speaker 2: kind of like saying, well, it looks like an attack
21:26
Speaker 2: possibly dig did happen, And then there was the GYM
21:29
Speaker 2: Joint Investigent Mechanism would come in and say, yeah, well
21:33
Speaker 2: we think there's a chance here that the Syrian government
21:36
Speaker 2: is doing this. But all of those reports were heavily
21:39
Speaker 2: reliant upon so say, third party information coming from effectively
21:44
Speaker 2: groups connected to belligerents and the conflict i US. And
21:48
Speaker 2: all of those reports are very I mean, some of
21:51
Speaker 2: them are very easy to tease apart the kind of
21:54
Speaker 2: flaws that there are and the problems they actually identify
21:58
Speaker 2: in one case evidence of stage, but then say, well,
22:01
Speaker 2: there was another cylinder here which we think was real,
22:05
Speaker 2: but this crater here was staged all at the same time,
22:09
Speaker 2: which of course doesn't make any sense. But they end
22:11
Speaker 2: up concluding, well, there's reasonable grounds to say that an
22:13
Speaker 2: attack occurred without thinking through. Well, wait a minute, if
22:18
Speaker 2: one crater is being staged and the other scene is
22:21
Speaker 2: not being sage, that doesn't really make an awful lot
22:23
Speaker 2: of sense. What are you saying, as a real chemical
22:26
Speaker 2: attack is occurring, somebody is busily staging a scene eighty
22:30
Speaker 2: meters away. It sounds laughable, but that's what they get
22:34
Speaker 2: away with in one of the gym stroke OPCW fat
22:38
Speaker 2: Finding Mission report.
22:39
Speaker 1: Well, what are your PCW able to get on the
22:41
Speaker 1: grind or.
22:42
Speaker 2: This is a really important point because in twenty fourteen,
22:46
Speaker 2: the first deployment of an OPCW fact finding mission into
22:50
Speaker 2: Syria to investigate one of these alleged chlorine attacks. When
22:55
Speaker 2: the team got clearance from the opposition groups to move
23:00
Speaker 2: into the area, they were attacked. I think there's an
23:04
Speaker 2: Ied involved and the team were taken hostage for a
23:08
Speaker 2: number of hours. Okay, so this is again to be
23:13
Speaker 2: clear about this so you have opposition groups claiming that
23:16
Speaker 2: there's been a chlorine attack. The OPCW team negotiate access
23:20
Speaker 2: to go into that area, and they go into that area,
23:23
Speaker 2: ied goes off, inspectors are held hostage, and at that
23:27
Speaker 2: point the OPCW said, this is just too dangerous to
23:30
Speaker 2: send our inspectors in on the ground. And that's what
23:34
Speaker 2: really solidified the process where they were basically relying upon
23:39
Speaker 2: third parties to provide the evidence of these attacks having occurred.
23:44
Speaker 2: You know, we don't know the details of what happened
23:46
Speaker 2: with that, but one could readily speculate that that was
23:48
Speaker 2: a very deliberate attempt by the opposition groups to make
23:51
Speaker 2: sure that the OPCW couldn't get in on the ground
23:54
Speaker 2: and would have to be reliant upon the likes of
23:57
Speaker 2: the CBRN Task Force set up Hay, mister Brett and
24:01
Speaker 2: Gordon for the supply of information to the ultimately to
24:04
Speaker 2: the OPCW. And so that was the case all the
24:07
Speaker 2: way up until twenty eighteen in Duma or the alleged
24:12
Speaker 2: Saren attack, which they very quickly stopped saying it was
24:14
Speaker 2: a siren attack and started saying it's a chlorine attack
24:18
Speaker 2: that has occurred. But with that incident, within days where
24:22
Speaker 2: the alleged attack had occurred, that area basically was taken
24:26
Speaker 2: back by the Syrian government and there was actually an
24:29
Speaker 2: opportunity for the first time since Scooter To twenty thirteen,
24:33
Speaker 2: for a fact finding mission to get in on the
24:35
Speaker 2: ground and investigate what had supposed what was claimed to
24:39
Speaker 2: have happened. In doing this, as forty three civilians were
24:42
Speaker 2: found dead a couple of chlorine gas cylinders. And that
24:46
Speaker 2: was the point at which I mean I had started
24:48
Speaker 2: to study about a year before, but not in great detail,
24:52
Speaker 2: but I was becoming more aware of the chemical weapons allegations,
24:56
Speaker 2: how they looked so they might well be a propaganda
25:00
Speaker 2: product linkable to the British government.
25:02
Speaker 1: It was this something that you were just interested in
25:05
Speaker 1: and involved yourself in, or did somebody point this ie
25:09
Speaker 1: you and say maybe this is something you should be
25:11
Speaker 1: looking at.
25:12
Speaker 2: This was basically when I started looking at Syria around
25:15
Speaker 2: twenty seventeen. I was aware that the war was ongoing,
25:19
Speaker 2: and I was aware of, for example, the controversy over
25:21
Speaker 2: the goose To twenty thirteen and sy Hirsh and so.
25:26
Speaker 2: But the main thing is I've become aware of the
25:27
Speaker 2: White Helmets and various You know that the linkages between
25:31
Speaker 2: the White Helmets and the British government at that point
25:34
Speaker 2: was it they would be always being presented as this
25:36
Speaker 2: neutral humanitarian organization, but it was becoming more and more
25:39
Speaker 2: clear at that point that they were actually linked to
25:41
Speaker 2: the British government through conflict, security and stability funding made
25:45
Speaker 2: a rescue James will measure another form of British military
25:49
Speaker 2: officer who'd set up the White Helmets. So I was
25:52
Speaker 2: paying a lot of attention to that, and I was
25:53
Speaker 2: aware of this, you know, the controversy, the background controversy
25:57
Speaker 2: on these chemical attacks, but primarily in a quite straightforward
26:01
Speaker 2: way that they didn't make an awful lot of sense. Okay,
26:04
Speaker 2: it made no sense that a SAD would deploy a
26:07
Speaker 2: major SARAH attacked in Damascus when the OPCW turned up
26:11
Speaker 2: to inspect an incident which he'd invited them to come
26:13
Speaker 2: in to look at and so on. It made very
26:16
Speaker 2: little sense. All of these claims about chlorine gasoland is
26:20
Speaker 2: being dropped around the country. So I was aware of that,
26:24
Speaker 2: and then almost immediately DOOMA, of course, was very controversial
26:27
Speaker 2: because I mean the Russian Federation at the times. You know,
26:30
Speaker 2: in the Syrian government said this has been staged. Witnesses
26:34
Speaker 2: did the Russians flew witnesses to the Hague, the OPCW headquarters,
26:38
Speaker 2: who said that some of the scenes had been at
26:40
Speaker 2: the hospital, scenes have been fabricated, et cetera. And there
26:44
Speaker 2: was a lot of controversy Britain, France and America bond
26:48
Speaker 2: and that's when sort of my background sort of interest
26:51
Speaker 2: in the chemical weapons issue then transformed into Okay, this
26:55
Speaker 2: has been pushed right under my research agenda. And you know,
26:59
Speaker 2: I'd set up the working group in Syria Propaganda and
27:02
Speaker 2: Media at that point, and you know, we were looking
27:04
Speaker 2: quite closely at the incident and also at the first
27:08
Speaker 2: interroim report which came out, and you know, a lot
27:11
Speaker 2: of people were saying at the time, this is very,
27:13
Speaker 2: very odd. We've got these cylinders which appear to have
27:16
Speaker 2: fallen off. I suppose we've fallen off a helicopter, punched holes,
27:21
Speaker 2: bounced around a room, ended up on a bed. You've
27:24
Speaker 2: got a very large number of civilians dead in a building,
27:27
Speaker 2: and that's not what you normally expect from chlorine. You
27:29
Speaker 2: expect maybe a very small number of people might be suffocated.
27:34
Speaker 2: But you know, most people run away from chloring clouds
27:36
Speaker 2: and they have lung damage and they end up in
27:39
Speaker 2: the hospital. They don't just drop dead on the spots.
27:41
Speaker 2: So the whole thing didn't look right. And this is
27:43
Speaker 2: why it was so controversial at the time. And you know,
27:47
Speaker 2: and that was the start of the focus attention, and
27:50
Speaker 2: we issued a briefing note on the interim report that
27:53
Speaker 2: was published by the OPCW in the summer of twenty eighteen,
27:56
Speaker 2: and we said, well, look this the scenes we're presented
27:59
Speaker 2: with in Doom, it don't make sense as a character
28:02
Speaker 2: attack this, you know, essentially it looks like an attack
28:05
Speaker 2: didn't occur, and that would mean you've got some kind
28:08
Speaker 2: of staging that is going on in this incident. And
28:12
Speaker 2: so we published a briefing note on this in the
28:13
Speaker 2: summer of twenty eighteen. You know, we were we had
28:16
Speaker 2: already had some flat from the Times newspaper for questioning
28:20
Speaker 2: such some of the chemical weapons narrative, but that was
28:24
Speaker 2: when the attention was quite focused on it.
28:26
Speaker 1: But you were still a professor at chef Yes Sheffield,
28:31
Speaker 1: and were you starting to come under professional pressure for
28:34
Speaker 1: what you were doing on this at this point.
28:37
Speaker 2: No. I mean I did do a little interview on
28:39
Speaker 2: the Sky News after the alleged event had happened, the
28:43
Speaker 2: attack had happened at Duma and before France, Britain and
28:45
Speaker 2: America bond Syria. I did an interview and I was
28:48
Speaker 2: up against Henry Jackson Society executive director Mendez, and I
28:53
Speaker 2: was saying, well, look, we need to wait for the inspectors,
28:55
Speaker 2: and he was saying bomb bomb bomb, which had attacked Syria.
28:59
Speaker 2: And you know, my working group and I had ended
29:01
Speaker 2: up in the front page at a time at the
29:03
Speaker 2: same time as we were bonding Syria being described as
29:06
Speaker 2: a saddist working in British universities. So I think my
29:10
Speaker 2: university was a little bit concerned at that and had
29:14
Speaker 2: a few interviews with heads of department and so on
29:17
Speaker 2: to explain the work I was doing. But it was well,
29:19
Speaker 2: that's all perfectly. Okay has got doing research on Syria,
29:23
Speaker 2: and you know this is just trashy journalism that's been
29:26
Speaker 2: used to attack him. So I wasn't coming under any
29:29
Speaker 2: pressure there. And it was that in twenty nineteen I'd
29:33
Speaker 2: left the university so for combination of personal and professional reasons,
29:38
Speaker 2: and that was the point around early twenty nineteen when
29:43
Speaker 2: the final OPCW report on doing that came out, and
29:47
Speaker 2: that's when basically it emerged one way or another that
29:50
Speaker 2: there had been internal dissent within the organization, that some
29:54
Speaker 2: inspectors involved with the investigation were very unhappy with how
29:58
Speaker 2: it had been conducted, and ultimately, through leaked documents, it
30:04
Speaker 2: became apparent that actually the investigation had been manipulated in
30:09
Speaker 2: order to reach a preordained conclusion to point the finger
30:12
Speaker 2: at the Syrian government, and effectively you had to. It
30:16
Speaker 2: was not whistle blowers, but two scientists who had tried
30:19
Speaker 2: to stand their ground within the organization when you're when
30:24
Speaker 2: the investigation was being conducted, and then when the final
30:27
Speaker 2: report came out and it was obvious that it was flawed,
30:30
Speaker 2: they then made further efforts to try to ring the
30:33
Speaker 2: alarm bell within the organization, but we were sidelined and
30:38
Speaker 2: the rest is really history is certain from my point
30:41
Speaker 2: of view. So since since then, there's been a long
30:44
Speaker 2: process of these inspectors trying to get accountability for the
30:49
Speaker 2: manipulation and the Doomer investigation. And you know, there's a
30:53
Speaker 2: lot of details one can go into on that, but basically,
30:57
Speaker 2: how I would summarize this. You know, you've had this
31:00
Speaker 2: deeply questionable chemical weapons narrative constructed over time, going back
31:05
Speaker 2: to good to twenty thirteen, at the point of dooma
31:08
Speaker 2: where the OPCW team is actually able to get in
31:11
Speaker 2: on the ground. You know, the way I present it
31:14
Speaker 2: as that, you know, sort of the awareness amongst inspectors
31:17
Speaker 2: that there's a real problem here with these alleged tacks,
31:20
Speaker 2: now that we can actually look at the evidence for
31:22
Speaker 2: ourselves rather than just be handed it by these aligned groups,
31:26
Speaker 2: that this doesn't look right at all. And then they
31:28
Speaker 2: were controlled or they were subjected to you know, essentially
31:33
Speaker 2: the investigations manipulated, and then you had it was in
31:37
Speaker 2: Henderson and Brendan Wheeling and their internal disputes or challenges
31:44
Speaker 2: are well documented now in the public domains is well.
31:47
Speaker 1: Known, this is understood where the pressure came from to
31:51
Speaker 1: release the final report in the state that was in.
31:54
Speaker 2: I've been working for a number of years with hands
31:56
Speaker 2: von Schbonnick. He's a former Assistant Secretary General United Nation,
32:00
Speaker 2: Professor Richard Folk, and also Jose Bostani, who was the
32:03
Speaker 2: first Director General of the OPCW, and we've essentially been
32:06
Speaker 2: representing that the issues raised by the OPCW scientists trying
32:11
Speaker 2: to get a proper investigation, trying to get accountability what
32:15
Speaker 2: we do now. And this is detailed in the report
32:18
Speaker 2: we produced a review of the Doomer investigation, but it's
32:22
Speaker 2: also in the Way Forward report which clad Ali and
32:25
Speaker 2: Mick Wallace produced. The central problem with the fact finding
32:29
Speaker 2: missions and Syria is that these missions were set up
32:32
Speaker 2: for Syria, yeah, and their unique creations, and they actually
32:36
Speaker 2: operate they don't operate fully within the Chemical Weapons Convention framework, Okay.
32:41
Speaker 2: And the key problem with the fact finding missions is
32:43
Speaker 2: that they're controlled from the OPCW officers a director General.
32:48
Speaker 2: That there is not scientific oversight from the inspectorate divisions
32:52
Speaker 2: of the OPCW. So you have investigations which are essentially
32:55
Speaker 2: being controlled by a bureaucratic office rather than a scientific
32:59
Speaker 2: off And if you look at the OPCW officer, the
33:03
Speaker 2: director General, I mean at the time of Dooma you
33:07
Speaker 2: had Robert Fairweather. He was Chief of Cabinet key position
33:12
Speaker 2: you're in officer of the Director General. He's a British
33:17
Speaker 2: career diplomat. And then when the scandal or the leak
33:21
Speaker 2: started to emerge regarding the OPCW. You then I forget
33:25
Speaker 2: his name now, but you had a French cred diplomat
33:28
Speaker 2: had taken over that point. So what you have is,
33:31
Speaker 2: you know, you have basically investigations not being controlled by
33:36
Speaker 2: the scientific by the scientists, but being controlled by an
33:39
Speaker 2: office which is then occupied by actors who are from
33:46
Speaker 2: belligerents in the country. And I'm not saying that's a
33:48
Speaker 2: direct source of exactly what was going on with a
33:52
Speaker 2: Doom investigation, but you can see how the structural set
33:54
Speaker 2: up at these investigations is clearly deeply problematic and I
33:58
Speaker 2: think that's where where the problem starts. Now. Whether or
34:03
Speaker 2: not there are individuals, for example, working within EUPCW who
34:07
Speaker 2: are actually effectively assets of the UK government, I wouldn't
34:10
Speaker 2: want to say at this point in time, but you
34:13
Speaker 2: certainly have decisions being made which are favoring essentially the
34:19
Speaker 2: narratives promoted by Western governments to point a finger at
34:22
Speaker 2: the Syrian government, and you've got decisions being made over
34:25
Speaker 2: investigations which helped steer the investigations in that direction. And
34:29
Speaker 2: a very good example of this DUMA is that after
34:33
Speaker 2: the initial sort of bust up within the investigation when
34:38
Speaker 2: believe it or not, somebody had taken the original report
34:43
Speaker 2: and substituted it with a very very different report and
34:46
Speaker 2: try to get it published without the team knowing about it.
34:49
Speaker 2: There was obviously a big bust up when this was
34:53
Speaker 2: discovered by accident, and they managed to stop the faulty
34:57
Speaker 2: report from being issued, a report which would and was
35:01
Speaker 2: going to point the finger at the Syrian government. When
35:03
Speaker 2: that happened, you then sort of had an internal attempt
35:07
Speaker 2: to try to sort of get you know, okay, let's
35:10
Speaker 2: get a report out which has everybody on board with
35:14
Speaker 2: a diplomatic word putting it. And immediately prior to the
35:17
Speaker 2: interim report being published, the OPCW DOOMA team were called
35:22
Speaker 2: in and they had a visit paid by three American officials.
35:27
Speaker 2: They weren't quite clear who where these officials were from,
35:30
Speaker 2: but these officials and they were very polite by all accounts,
35:33
Speaker 2: but they sat down and said, look, here's our assessment
35:37
Speaker 2: of how of what happened at Duma. And you know
35:40
Speaker 2: it was a chlorine attack. It was a Syrian government
35:43
Speaker 2: and the people did dive from chloring poisoning, et cetera,
35:45
Speaker 2: et cetera, without any any evidence as such to back
35:49
Speaker 2: up what they were saying. The simply sort of bullet
35:51
Speaker 2: pointing this is this is what happened. Now, of course
35:54
Speaker 2: it wasn't presented to the inspectors. This is what you've
35:57
Speaker 2: got to find. But you can understand how that sort
36:01
Speaker 2: of message being communicated to the inspectors that what the
36:04
Speaker 2: expected outcome of the investigation was from a major power,
36:09
Speaker 2: and that, you know, this is a kind of influence
36:13
Speaker 2: on an investigation which the state's party is not supposed
36:16
Speaker 2: to have. A government can say, look, we have information
36:20
Speaker 2: which we would like to pass to you and your
36:22
Speaker 2: team can look at it and so on, and that's fine, okay,
36:26
Speaker 2: But pulling in a team, sitting them down and having
36:29
Speaker 2: a bullet point presentation telling them the Syrian government did
36:33
Speaker 2: it is exerting influence, however subtle it might might be,
36:37
Speaker 2: but it's exerting influence on the team. So you had
36:40
Speaker 2: that incident, and again you know that was allowed to
36:44
Speaker 2: happen by Robert Fairwever, who's the Chief of Cabinet, the
36:48
Speaker 2: British diplomat. He shouldn't have done that. The team should
36:52
Speaker 2: have been insulated from that. But the team. You know,
36:55
Speaker 2: the team's identity was no was you know, essentially revealed
36:59
Speaker 2: to the Americans who turned up. So this was interference
37:03
Speaker 2: with investigation. And that's a good example I think of
37:08
Speaker 2: how when you have these investigations controlled not in a
37:12
Speaker 2: scientific way, but from a bureaucratic stroke political office occupied
37:16
Speaker 2: by people who are on one side effectively in the conflict,
37:21
Speaker 2: how that can start to shape and distort the investigations.
37:25
Speaker 1: So we have the effort to put out a false report,
37:28
Speaker 1: then we have the effort to influence. But the final
37:32
Speaker 1: report comes out and there are two scientists in particular
37:35
Speaker 1: who are deeply unhappy with that report and start to
37:39
Speaker 1: push back even though it's being published. And what sort
37:43
Speaker 1: of pressure did they come under to keep their eyes
37:46
Speaker 1: shut after that?
37:47
Speaker 2: Well effect, I mean this is well documented now through
37:50
Speaker 2: effectively testphony material in the public domain. I mean, what
37:56
Speaker 2: the inspector is initially trying to do was to actually
38:00
Speaker 2: ensure that there was a proper discussion within the team
38:05
Speaker 2: as to what had gone on, how certain conclusions have
38:09
Speaker 2: been reached. And there's one very important element example here
38:13
Speaker 2: is that when the team started to when they came
38:17
Speaker 2: back from Doinger, you know, the assumption was that these
38:20
Speaker 2: people had to be killed by siren, right, because if
38:22
Speaker 2: you've got forty three people who have all dropped dead
38:25
Speaker 2: in a building, no obvious effort to escape, foaming at
38:29
Speaker 2: them out, and no siren was found. And that was
38:33
Speaker 2: the point at which the team visited NATO toxicologists and
38:38
Speaker 2: Germany and they basically said, yeah, this isn't chlorine that's
38:43
Speaker 2: killed these people. Chlorine doesn't cause that number of people
38:45
Speaker 2: to drop dead with those symptoms that quickly something else,
38:50
Speaker 2: something else has happened here. And so you know that
38:54
Speaker 2: was that report from the NATO toxicologists was basically obvious
39:00
Speaker 2: you skated or disappeared come the final report. So this
39:04
Speaker 2: is one of the issues that for example, the inspectors rise, look,
39:07
Speaker 2: this is what's happened to what the German doctorgologists said,
39:10
Speaker 2: because actually this is a bombshell finding because if these
39:14
Speaker 2: people weren't caused killed by chlorine gas, then something else
39:18
Speaker 2: has happened. Be there's no siren there, so something else
39:21
Speaker 2: that these people have been killed some other way, ie
39:23
Speaker 2: not because of an attack from the Syrian government, but
39:26
Speaker 2: that was just suppressed and that was sort of one
39:28
Speaker 2: of the Christians there are many other criticisms. They had
39:31
Speaker 2: been exaggerating chemical analysis to suggest that chlorin had been
39:35
Speaker 2: released and basically manipulating that there was a big sort
39:41
Speaker 2: of issue over the cylinders and the fact that the
39:45
Speaker 2: damage on the cylinders relative to the damage on the
39:48
Speaker 2: roof which location two, they weren't compatible. You had a
39:52
Speaker 2: cylinder which had very little damage on it, which is
39:55
Speaker 2: supposed to punch the hole in a concrete and it's
39:58
Speaker 2: sort a metal bar reinforce or ceiling to then lead
40:02
Speaker 2: the contents of chloring into the building. And so you know,
40:05
Speaker 2: the engineering didn't add up. So you had these clear
40:08
Speaker 2: sort of scientific issues and problems as well as what
40:14
Speaker 2: had happened earlier on in the investigation when somebody had
40:17
Speaker 2: altered the report and tried to publish a effectively falsified report.
40:22
Speaker 2: So you know, this is a huge set of major problems,
40:26
Speaker 2: and so the inspectors were trying to initially saying that, look,
40:31
Speaker 2: we should at least be allowed to have a proper
40:35
Speaker 2: meeting with these people who actually weren't in the Duma
40:38
Speaker 2: who ended up writing the final report, and they were
40:42
Speaker 2: simply sidelined and blocked, and then they were attempting to
40:45
Speaker 2: talk to the you know, can we arrange a meeting
40:48
Speaker 2: with the Director General because something has gone seriously wrong
40:51
Speaker 2: with this investigation, and they were just sidelined the whole time.
40:55
Speaker 2: They were sidelined and blocked. Andy made repeated efforts to
40:57
Speaker 2: do that and so on, but the OPCW just was
41:00
Speaker 2: interested in allowing them to voice entirely legitimate, scientific based
41:06
Speaker 2: concerns about the investigation what had been going on, So
41:10
Speaker 2: they were sidelined. And then, you know, within really from
41:15
Speaker 2: that point on, in twenty nineteen, you did have an
41:18
Speaker 2: OPCW person familiar with the investigation, gave testimony in Brussels
41:23
Speaker 2: at the Courage Foundation panel to a panel of international experts.
41:27
Speaker 2: And around that period documents were leaked to Wiki leaks,
41:31
Speaker 2: and this became a very public issue, and the response
41:37
Speaker 2: at that point from the OPCW was just to smear
41:40
Speaker 2: the inspectors subject them to an internal investigation. And then
41:46
Speaker 2: in years after that, when myself enhanced and Jose Bistani,
41:50
Speaker 2: for example, was supposed to brief the UN Security Council
41:53
Speaker 2: and the British and Americans blocked him from speaking. It's
41:58
Speaker 2: a long litany, well documented because we have it all
42:01
Speaker 2: in the BG twenty one review of these events, no
42:05
Speaker 2: attempt to say even the most reasonable reasonable claims are saying,
42:11
Speaker 2: can we just have the OPCW's Scientific Advisory Board just
42:14
Speaker 2: sit down with the Doomer team and to go through
42:18
Speaker 2: the scientific evidence because there seems to be huge problems
42:21
Speaker 2: with the investigation. They wouldn't even allow that. They basically
42:25
Speaker 2: doubled down on either stone walling or effectively smearing the inspectors.
42:31
Speaker 2: So the I think the Director General the OPCW and
42:36
Speaker 2: certainly on one occasion, try to make out that the
42:39
Speaker 2: inspectors were so one of them wasn't part of the
42:42
Speaker 2: fact finding mission and so on, just you know, inaccurate claims,
42:46
Speaker 2: disgruntled employees, et cetera, no engagement with the scientific factory
42:51
Speaker 2: issues which were being raised. And that's what they've done
42:55
Speaker 2: up until now, up until this point now where chemical
42:58
Speaker 2: weapons is back in the headlines. And obviously I've been
43:01
Speaker 2: heavily involved in this because of my work with representing
43:05
Speaker 2: the issues raised by the scientists. I've obviously been attacked
43:07
Speaker 2: relentlessly and smeared. Hans and I you know, we've distributed
43:13
Speaker 2: our reports to the states parties. Brazil raised the issue
43:16
Speaker 2: for example a year ago ago, both at you and
43:19
Speaker 2: Security Council and with the OPCW Executive Council asking for
43:24
Speaker 2: can we have answers to all these questions which have
43:26
Speaker 2: now been clearly set out by BG twenty one. Of
43:30
Speaker 2: course no response just in it's extraordinary in a way,
43:34
Speaker 2: but just a refusal to even engage. And of course
43:38
Speaker 2: the reason is is because something did go very badly
43:41
Speaker 2: wrong with the Doomer investigation.
43:43
Speaker 1: And of course if there's questions like this over the
43:46
Speaker 1: domain investigation, as you said earlier, that then raises questions
43:49
Speaker 1: over every investigation.
43:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean Doomer is the case where they get
43:53
Speaker 2: in on the ground. Okay, all the other cases they're
43:57
Speaker 2: having to rely upon information being given to them and
43:59
Speaker 2: so on, and they get to doom and they get
44:01
Speaker 2: on the ground and like this. Okay, none of this
44:03
Speaker 2: looks right at all. And yes, it opens up obviously
44:08
Speaker 2: all of the investigations because they've all been effectively information
44:11
Speaker 2: has been controlled. But it does go back to go
44:15
Speaker 2: to twenty thirteen where there was already controversy, you know
44:18
Speaker 2: si Hirsh's reporting over this apparent event where SAD decided
44:23
Speaker 2: to fire lots of sarn rockets just as the OPCW
44:26
Speaker 2: arrives in Damascus. So yeah, I mean the whole and
44:30
Speaker 2: actually doomer is in a sense because we have inspectors
44:35
Speaker 2: involved in the investigation who have clearly been struggling to
44:40
Speaker 2: get the truth told about what happened. You know, this
44:43
Speaker 2: is a critical case which you know, if Hans and
44:48
Speaker 2: I had ever been successful in terms of getting a
44:51
Speaker 2: proper getting the Scientific Advisory Board to come in and
44:55
Speaker 2: look at the toxicology analysis, to look at the ballistics
44:58
Speaker 2: and say well, yeah, there's problem, these people didn't die
45:02
Speaker 2: from chlorine, then this would have completely opened up and
45:05
Speaker 2: it would be completely opened up the OPCW to scrutiny
45:08
Speaker 2: and all the previous attacks, and I think ultimately would
45:12
Speaker 2: confirm that, yeah, all of these are alleged attacks. These
45:15
Speaker 2: are essentially false flag either stayed real tax blind on
45:19
Speaker 2: Assyrian government, or staged events and so on where nothing
45:22
Speaker 2: much has happened, but you know footage in the media,
45:26
Speaker 2: images and cylinders and so on are served up as
45:29
Speaker 2: evidence of something having happened. It unravels the entire narrative.
45:34
Speaker 2: I think objectively, looking at the facts that I know
45:37
Speaker 2: from the research I've done on several of these cases,
45:40
Speaker 2: and going back to GOO to twenty thirteen, is that, yeah,
45:43
Speaker 2: these are false flag type events designed to frame the
45:47
Speaker 2: Syrian government. Duma is where the wheels really came off.
45:51
Speaker 2: This when a team got in on the ground and
45:54
Speaker 2: a couple of members of those that team, who I
45:57
Speaker 2: will reiterate, we're two of the most experienced scientists in
46:00
Speaker 2: the OPCW. Yeah, these weren't just like new guys who'd
46:04
Speaker 2: just come in. Had the courage, and it does take
46:07
Speaker 2: great courage, the courage to actually stand up to what
46:12
Speaker 2: was obviously a corrupted investigation, and that's where we are now.
46:17
Speaker 1: We're pretty much out of time. So let me leave
46:19
Speaker 1: it with this question, because none of this could have
46:22
Speaker 1: happened without the full complicity of the mainstream media. Who
46:27
Speaker 1: should be It seems to me looking at the fact
46:30
Speaker 1: that two, as you say, extremely experienced senior investigators for
46:35
Speaker 1: the ORPCWR saying this isn't right if they if the
46:39
Speaker 1: mainstream media was doing its job, it would be listening
46:42
Speaker 1: to those guys and it would be rising red flags
46:45
Speaker 1: themselves and asking many many questions. But instead of doing that,
46:49
Speaker 1: they're complicit in the attacks, not only on you, but
46:52
Speaker 1: on them as well.
46:54
Speaker 2: Absolutely, the mainstream media are caught up in this. I
46:58
Speaker 2: mean it's no surprise the Times New Space who've attacked
47:00
Speaker 2: me relentlessly over the issue. They were one of their
47:04
Speaker 2: journalists working with going back to the start of that
47:06
Speaker 2: conversation with Hamish Breck and Gordon and reported on Shake
47:10
Speaker 2: Maford in twenty thirteen. So you know, they're up to
47:15
Speaker 2: their necks in these six operations. Yeah, I mean, you know,
47:20
Speaker 2: in drawing a historical parallel, I mean, you know, the
47:23
Speaker 2: BBC and Andrew Gilligan covered Dr David Kelly and that
47:28
Speaker 2: was you know, the crack and the dam which led
47:31
Speaker 2: to all of the truth coming out about the manipulation
47:34
Speaker 2: of intelligence up to the Iraq War. And in that situation,
47:38
Speaker 2: the BBC did as it were of dutifully report upon.
47:41
Speaker 2: In that case Dr David Kelly and his you know,
47:46
Speaker 2: testimony to manipulation of intelligence, et cetera. Here he had
47:50
Speaker 2: two scientists from within the OPCW very senior with you know,
47:55
Speaker 2: in a sense of a litany of confirmed manipulations, etc.
48:02
Speaker 2: Peter Hitchins covered the story, but the rest of the
48:05
Speaker 2: mainstream media have doubled down on the official narrative and
48:08
Speaker 2: are doubling down now hoping that they're going to come
48:11
Speaker 2: up with some more evidence to sort of confirm the
48:15
Speaker 2: official narrative on all these things. But yeah, it's a
48:17
Speaker 2: major example of media failure, I think, apart from Peter
48:21
Speaker 2: Hitchins having covered the story at least in the early stages.
48:25
Speaker 2: And it really shouldn't be rocket science, right. You know,
48:28
Speaker 2: You've got two scientists and they're very experienced, and you know,
48:32
Speaker 2: they clearly take a lot of risks and personal standing
48:37
Speaker 2: up against this, and then they're ignored. This is testament
48:41
Speaker 2: to how big and how important this narrative is and
48:45
Speaker 2: the propaganda surrounding it. We've had only time to scratch
48:49
Speaker 2: the surface of. You know, we can get into the
48:51
Speaker 2: White ailments another time and so on. But this is
48:54
Speaker 2: a major deception operation, obviously with the involvement of Western
48:59
Speaker 2: governments and intelligence services, and it's underpinning a much wider
49:04
Speaker 2: narrative which is being applied against Russia for example in
49:07
Speaker 2: the Ukraine, and also is part of essentially the Western
49:11
Speaker 2: attempt to shore up Agemony. Is shoring up this notion
49:15
Speaker 2: that the West is this protector of international norms such
49:19
Speaker 2: as the Chemical Weapons Convention against the barbarians at the
49:23
Speaker 2: gate the Russians, and so this is a high level
49:26
Speaker 2: narrative that Syria and this OPCW issue ultimately connect up to,
49:33
Speaker 2: and it's a it's a narrative which you know, you
49:36
Speaker 2: can look at the OPCW doing rush in a number
49:39
Speaker 2: of ways. Is this to do with the Syrian war?
49:41
Speaker 2: And is what we're most mostly concerned about. But what
49:44
Speaker 2: in the sense of people should be most concerned about
49:46
Speaker 2: is that if you ever corrupted OPCW, or an OPCW
49:50
Speaker 2: which has potential to be corrupted and used in order
49:53
Speaker 2: to promote false narratives, then it becomes a trigger mechanism
49:58
Speaker 2: for war. And you can bet the day that it's
50:02
Speaker 2: likely to be a playbook which will be employed again,
50:05
Speaker 2: Iran being the obvious example. So this has implications for
50:09
Speaker 2: international security. But this narrative and this playbook they have of,
50:14
Speaker 2: you know, creating false narratives around chemical weapons use is
50:18
Speaker 2: of central importance to where we are at the moment
50:23
Speaker 2: in the international system and where we might be going,
50:26
Speaker 2: and which is why it's more important than ever that
50:28
Speaker 2: people start to see beyond the headlines on chemical weapons
50:32
Speaker 2: in Syria and start to pay a bit more attention
50:35
Speaker 2: to both the researchers who've been looking critically at this,
50:38
Speaker 2: but also, for example, the OPCW scientists who are brave
50:42
Speaker 2: enough to stand up and call out the manipulation of
50:45
Speaker 2: their investigation of Doomer peers.
50:48
Speaker 1: I'm going to say thank you very much for taking
50:50
Speaker 1: the time to do this today. We chose to do
50:53
Speaker 1: this now because obviously this has started to appear in
50:56
Speaker 1: the mainstream press. Undoubtedly we will come back to this
51:00
Speaker 1: issue in the coming days and weeks as the mainstream
51:04
Speaker 1: narrative develops, and we will go into this in more detail.
51:07
Speaker 1: But thank you very much for joining me tonight.