Sy Hersh's Bombshell

A lot of reporters write articles purporting to expose secrets of the American intelligence community, but this is different. The article is written by Seymour Hersh, the country's foremost investigative journalist. He began his career in 1969 by exposing the My Lai massacre in Vietnam and its coverup. Younger folks will know him for his reporting of American torture at the Abu Ghraib prison complex in Iraq.

In an article appearing today in the London Review of Books, Hersh accuses the Obama administration of “cherry picking” intelligence to support the conclusion that the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad was responsible for the chemical weapons attack in Eastern Ghouta last August, said to have killed somewhere between 280 and 1400 people. This conclusion was used to justify the threat of US bombing of Syria. His article begins this way:

Barack Obama did not tell the whole story this autumn when he tried to make the case that Bashar al-Assad was responsible for the chemical weapons attack near Damascus on 21 August. In some instances, he omitted important intelligence, and in others he presented assumptions as facts. Most significant, he failed to acknowledge something known to the US intelligence community: that the Syrian army is not the only party in the country's civil war with access to sarin, the nerve agent that a UN study concluded—without assessing responsibility—had been used in the rocket attack.

That other party is al-Nusra, a group affiliated with al-Qaeda, that is part of the coalition of rebel groups trying to overthrow Assad that the US government supports.

Hersh doesn't say Assad was not responsible for the attack, just that the US doesn't have enough evidence to threaten to start a Middle Eastern war. In effect, he is saying the Obama administration was as foolish and/or dishonest as the George W. Bush administration was during the buildup to the American invasion of Iraq. You might say it's deja vu all over again.

You should read the article, but I'll try to summarize: The US had wiretaps intended to monitor coversations of the Syrian high command, and sensors in the ground near chemical weapons facilities designed to detect any movement of these weapons. The wiretaps, and possibly the sensors, were discovered and neutralized sometime earlier in the year, so if the Syrians carried out the attack, the US was taken by surprise. Two days after the attack, the US used computer keywords to analyze several thousand radio communications from the Syrian army, looking for evidence of the attack. In other words, they started with the assumption that the Syrian government was responsible and look for confirming evidence—a clear example of confirmatory bias. They then assembled a scenario of what the Syrian army would have done if they had carried out the attack, based in part on a training exercise that the Syrians carried out the year before. This scenario was presented as if the US had monitored it in real time, which of course they did not. Hersh says the US also ignored evidence that the shells said to have been used to deliver the sarin had a shorter range than they claimed.

At the same time, another suspect, al-Nusra, has emerged. Hersh cites US intelligence sources claiming to be certain that al-Nusra has sarin, and others stating that the evidence is inconclusive. Those who claim al-Nusra does have sarin refer to the presence in their ranks of Ziyaad Tariq Ahmed, a chemical weapons expert from Iraq—a bit of possible  “blowback” from the Iraq War. Needless to say, the US didn't try to construct a case implicating al-Nusra. They probably didn't have the necessary data.

As journalist Marcy Wheeler points out, Hersh's story helps to answer such questions as why our European allies did not support our threat to attack Syria, and why Obama surprisingly backed off from the threat, agreeing to take the question to Congress, where he faced almost certain defeat, and eventually accepting the Russian plan for dismantling Syria's chemical weapons that is now being carried out. As Hersh puts it:

Do we have the whole story of Obama's willingness to walk away from his 'red line' threat to bomb Syria? He claimed to have an iron-clad case but suddenly agreed to take the issue to Congress, and later to accept Assad's offer to relinquish his chemical weapons. It appears possible that at some point he was directly confronted with contradictory information: evidence strong enough to persuade him to cancel his attack plan, and take the criticism sure to come from Republicans.

Hersh's article appears in a journal unlikely to be encountered by many Americans. (Why was it not published by The New Yorker, his usual outlet?) It will be interesting to see how many American media cover this article, and how it is covered. The corporate media usually jump on any story likely to embarrass the President. But in this case, the story conflicts with their usual unquestioning loyalty to the American security state. We'll probably hear a lot of anonymous denials coming from Washington in the next few days.

Update (12/10):

The corporate media have been largely silent about Hersh's article.  The exceptions are interviews he did on Democracy Now (see the interview below, in two parts) and CNN. As expected, a national intelligence spokesperson denied everything.

The most interesting facts to emerge so far are that the piece was turned down by both The New Yorker and The Washington Post.  The Post told Hersh the sourcing of the article did not meet their standards.

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Deja Vu

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Deja Vu

Our understanding of what has already happened in Syria is grounded in facts, informed by conscience, and guided by common sense.

                                                                                 John Kerry, 8/26/13

Here are the Secretary of State's remarks:

Mr. Kerry is obviously preparing Americans for an illegal U.S.-led military intervention in Syria by claiming that the Syrian regime is guilty of atrocities. The corporate media have fallen into line and are beating the drums of war. This may be a tough sell, since a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted last week (August 19-23) found that 60% of Americans oppose intervention in Syria while only 9% support it. Of course, past experience shows that the easiest way to increase support for war is to go to war.

In his statement, Mr. Kerry emphasized that the evidence that chemical weapons have been used is “undeniable” and that this action was a “moral atrocity.” His factual claim is almost certainly true, and his moral judgment is shared by almost everyone, but none of this proves that Syrian President Bashar Assad knowingly carried out the chemical attack. His invitation to Americans to watch videos of the dead victims is a transparent encouragement to be swayed by our emotional responses and ignore the lack of evidence that the Syrian government is responsible.

To what extent is our understanding of what happened in Syria “grounded in facts?” So far, Kerry has provided few facts. Although United Nations representatives are investigating the incident, Kerry explicitly stated that this investigation will only determine whether chemical weapons were used, not who used them. Having defined the U. N. fact-finding mission as irrelevant, he seems to be saying that we will intervene regardless of the contents of their report, and maybe before it is released. Meanwhile, our government is showing disturbing signs of confirmatory bias, behaving as if it were a prosecutor gathering evidence in support of its initial hypothesis, rather than exploring all possible hypotheses.

What “facts” have been presented? Kerry said, “We know that the Syrian regime maintains custody of these weapons. We know that the Syrian regime has the capacity to do this with rockets.” This proves absolutely nothing, since the same can be said about the Syrian opposition, which includes some defectors from the Syrian military, and several other Middle Eastern governments and political groups.

Kerry's other argument is that President Assad has delayed U. N. inspections—which, remember, are irrelevant anyway—and is either destroying evidence or allowing it to dissipate. This argument assumes that Assad's only reason for not wanting foreign investigators inside his country is concealment of evidence. As a thought experiment, imagine how Americans might respond if a committee of representatives of enemy nations demanded entry to the D. C. suburbs to investigate our government's activities.

Kerry promises that he will release evidence of Syria's guilt at some unspecified future time. He didn't say whether this will occur before military action is debated in Congress or the U. N. Security Council—if in fact it is debated by either of those bodies. One commentator referred to this speech as Kerry's “Colin Powell moment,” but it seems that the lesson Kerry has taken from Powell's experience is not to be specific about details that later can be proven false. The central point is that, so far, no one has publicly presented any evidence of who was responsible for the attack.

To what extent is our understanding of what happened in Syria “informed by conscience?” There is no doubt that using poison gas is a terrible actrocity, but I'm not sure that the rest of the world is impressed by moral lectures from a country that saturated Vietnam with Agent Orange (also a chemical weapon), that poisoned Iraq with white phosphorous and depleted uranium. A country that stands by while the Egyptian military we fund and support mows down over a thousand protesters in the streets. It might be a useful exercise to discuss whether it is more heinous to murder women and children with poison gas than to burn them alive in drone attacks. Of course, there is very little news footage of the aftermath of drone attacks, and what there is is usually censored in this country by the corporate media.

To what extent is our understanding of what happened in Syria “guided by common sense?” In fact, Kerry seems to be assuming we have checked our common sense at the door. For months, it has been reported that the Syrian government is winning the war and that the insurgency is collapsing. If so, what sense does it make for Assad to risk foreign intervention by using chemical weapons that are unnecessary for him to succeed anyway?  It seems obvious that the insurgents have much more to gain by encouraging foreign governments to become more involved. (Syria's lack of motivation for the attack is so obvious that even the New York Times published an article filled with speculation about why Assad was behaving so irrationally, but, of course, never questioning the premise that Syria is responsible for the incident.)

Kerry may be appealing to a different kind of “common sense”—the knowledge that if you repeatedly tell Americans that some foreign leader is a brutal dictator, they will believe him to be capable of anything. The easiest way to mobilize support for war is to create a negative image of the intended enemy and accuse him of terrible atrocities. And so the recent past repeats itself in the Middle East.

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A Stroll Down Memory Lane