Der OPCW Skandal 2019

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Analysis of #OPCW #Douma reports

Stephen McIntyre@ClimateAudit


I've been reading Wikileaks OPCW documents with keen interest. IMO the most intriguing document is Draft Report of ~Jun 10, 2018, also the earliest document. It was much longer and contained far more information than Interim Report, Jul 7, 2018. Indeed, its structure is identical



to the Final Report. Here is spreadsheet listing documents http://climateaudit.info/legal/opcw/opcw_wikileaks_summary.csv.

By June 10, OPCW had sample analyses which disproved sarin allegations promoted by White Helmets, SAMS, UOSSM and US-UK governments, a key finding of draft report. June Draft Report also included epidemiology analysis which effectively refuted possibility of chlorine attack

the June Draft Report also observed that witness testimony from Damascus differed sharply from witness testimony from Turkey (Country X), reported both, carefully distinguishing. (This distinction was dropped in Final Report, which almost totally cited evidence from Turkey).

subsequent events are appalling. Subsequent to June Draft Report, the FFM team who traveled to Douma were shut out of report process. All subsequent reports were drafted by some combination of FFM Turkish team and people who hadn't participated in either mission.

the June Redacted Report chopped out many sections and annexes of June Draft Report (some restored in 2019 Final Report) and reversed key conclusions. A Jun 22, 2018 email from Douma FFM vigorously protested the Redacted Report and asked for right to submit dissent.

after the July 2018 Interim Report, OPCW leadership attempted to limit participation by Douma FFM. Ian Henderson, a member of Douma FFM, carried out ballistic studies which, as is well known, refuted theory that cylinders had dropped from helicopters at Syrian operating height

when Henderson attempted to submit his ballistic report, encountered puzzling resistance. OPCW Chief of Staff Sebastian Braha even ordered that it be removed from OPCW document registry and any trace of its deposit be expunged.

unbeknowst to Henderson, the FFM (Turkey) had commissioned their own ballistic reports which proposed a reconciliation of large crater and little cylinder damage through "low speed" drop - while shutting their eyes to implausible operating altitude implied by low speed drop.

OPCW released their Final Report on Mar 1, 2019 without the involvement of the FFM Douma team, which objected strongly to their findings.

the structure of the Final Report and June Draft Report are more or less identical, as are the annexes. Indeed, some of the sections and annexes in Final Report that are "new" relative to Interim Report were already in June Draft Report.

the major changes are in the ballistics and epidemiology sections. There has been quite a bit of online discussion about ballistics over the past year, but the changes in epidemiology are just as important and just as questionable.

Example of OPCW deception. June Draft: difference in symptoms reported by witnesses in Damascus vs in Turkey. Damascus witnesses reported symptoms "commensurate with dust and fumes" from bombing; Turkey witnesses reported "chemical" symptoms. Final Report based only on Turkey



this is a very clear example because wording can be traced between two documents. June Draft provided more complete and more honest account of witness testimony. March Final withheld testimony from Damascus, only giving testimony from jihadi partisans in Turkey

moving to Epidemiology, here are two comparable paragraphs from June 2018 Draft and Mar 2019 Final discussing symptoms observed in videos. Mostly similar, but note changes. - comment on brown-stained skin deleted - June (red): froth/secretions DON'T show pink hue from blood



but in March Final, opposite is stated: that some secretions have light brown hue characteristic of blood tinged sputum. Original comment appears to have been from FFM Douma team; changed by FFM Turkey team.

comment on hospital videos in March 2019 Final mostly tracks June 2018 Draft. Other than three pediatric patients (infants), adults and all other children display none or mild respiratory distress. Report of no "frothing" in Draft deleted by FFM Turkey in Final.



now we start getting to the crunch. June Draft stated contradiction clearly: crime scene at apartment with dead bodies was "more consistent with exposure to a highly toxic nerve agent than a choking agent such as chlorine or phosgene", but analytics showed NO organophoshates.



this contradiction was fudged in 2019 Final to point of concealment. They agreed with June 2018 Draft that "location and position" of victims in videos "a very rapid or instant onset", but deleted previous information that this counter-indicated chlorine attack.

next a battleground contradiction. June 2018 Draft observed that white froth secretions inconsistent with "exposure to choking agents" e.g. chlorine, where secretions pinkish (blood), also that "rapid" even "immediate onset" of frothing inconsisent with chlorine.



Douma FFM team noted that they had verified this opinion with "toxicologists, specialists in chemical-weapons-related intoxication". Minutes of their June 6, 2018 meeting are included in Wikileaks documents https://wikileaks.org/opcw-douma/doc

in contrast, corresponding paragraph in 2019 Final is word salad. They say that secretions show "exposure to some chemical weapons, toxic industrial chemicals [etc] but are more profound and seem to have a consistency more like viscous foam". They evaded

the key inconsistency observed by Douma FFM team: the inconsistency of these symptoms displayed in the videos with chlorine or similar "choking agent".

next paragraph of June 2018 epidemiology raised another contradiction: rapid incapacitation such that no escape requires high concentration, but, under high concentration, asphyxiation would take place prior to frothing. Deleted in Final Report without rebutting.



paragraph 7.84 of June 2018 epidemiology also removed by OPCW without rebutting. Citing peer reviewed literature, June Draft observed that "people will escape however possible " and "victims would instinctively have retreated and exited building", exit only few metres away



this section of 2018 Draft ends forcefully whereas 2019 Final is limp and evasive. FFM Douma stated "chlorine gas...would not have resulted in the severe and rapid frothing symptoms reported by witnesses and observed in video footage and photos"; 2019 Final ends with wet hair



both 2018 Draft and 2019 Final cite 3 elements of epidemiological analysis, third of which: "there must not be any likely alternative explanation for the symptoms". Despite advertising this criterion, this element of analysis was totally omitted in 2019 Final (but not Draft)



watch what June Draft said. Having shown rebutting evidence against both sarin and chlorine, they first ask whether there might be "some unknown highly toxic chemical, which so far has eluded detection", but observe "no evidence" for this.


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You should write and publish a full article on your findings in one of the Alt Media resources or go to one of the many YouTube Alt Media shows.

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Tim Hayward@Tim_Hayward_16 Min.
OPCW's corrupted Douma report: Robert Fisk gets mention of leaked evidence into mainstream media. (He could be clearer how the problem is of concern above all to supporters of OPCW rather than putative detractors. But he's clear this needs addressing.)
An interesting revelation added by Fisk is that within NATO it was apparently quite common knowledge about OPCW Douma report that “They’ve already censored their own documents.”

The Syrian conflict is awash with propaganda – chemical warfare bodies should not be caught up in it
The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons has an important role to play in ensuring people know the truth. Nothing should get in the way of that
> https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/syr...62336.html

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Von Craig Murray: Die furchterregende Zunahme des Zombie-Staat-Märchens Der spanische Generaldirektor der OPCW: der stramm franquistische Diplomat Fernando Arias. Sein französischer Kabinettschef Braha: ein schleimiger, korrupter und lügender Kriegstreiber

The Terrifying Rise of the Zombie State Narrative
The ruling Establishment has learnt a profound lesson from the debacle over Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction. The lesson they have learnt is not that it is wrong to attack and destroy an entire country on the basis of lies. They have not learnt that lesson despite the fact the western powers are now busily attacking the Iraqi Shia majority government they themselves installed, for the crime of being a Shia majority government.
No, the lesson they have learnt is never to admit they lied, never to admit they were wrong. They see the ghost-like waxen visage of Tony Blair wandering around, stinking rich but less popular than an Epstein birthday party, and realise that being widely recognised as a lying mass murderer is not a good career choice. They have learnt that the mistake is for the Establishment ever to admit the lies.
The Establishment had to do a certain amount of collective self-flagellation over the non-existent Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, over which they precipitated the death and maiming of millions of people. Only a very few outliers, like the strange Melanie Phillips, still claimed the WMD really did exist, and her motive was so obviously that she supported any excuse to kill Muslims that nobody paid any attention. Her permanent pass to appear on the BBC was upgraded. But by and large everyone accepted the Iraqi WMD had been a fiction. The mainstream media Blair/Bush acolytes like Cohen, Kamm and Aaronovitch switched to arguing that even if WMD did not exist, Iraq was in any case better off for having so many people killed and its infrastructure destroyed.
These situations are now avoided by the realisation of the security services that in future they just have to brazen it out. The simple truth of the matter – and it is a truth – is this. If the Iraq WMD situation occurred today, and the security services decided to brazen it out and claim that WMD had indeed been found, there is not a mainstream media outlet that would contradict them.
The security services outlet Bellingcat would publish some photos of big missiles planted in the sand. The Washington Post, Guardian, New York Times, BBC and CNN would republish and amplify these pictures and copy and paste the official statements from government spokesmen. Robert Fisk would get to the scene and interview a few eye witnesses who saw the missiles being planted, and he would be derided as a senile old has-been. Seymour Hersh and Peter Hitchens would interview whistleblowers and be shunned by their colleagues and left off the airwaves. Bloggers like myself would be derided as mad conspiracy theorists or paid Russian agents if we cast any doubt on the Bellingcat “evidence”. Wikipedia would ruthlessly expunge any alternative narrative as being from unreliable sources. The Integrity Initiative, 77th Brigade, GCHQ and their US equivalents would be pumping out the “Iraqi WMD found” narrative all over social media. Mad Ben Nimmo of the Atlantic Council would be banning dissenting accounts all over the place in his role as Facebook Witchfinder-General.
Does anybody seriously wish to dispute this is how the absence of Iraqi WMD would be handled today, 16 years on?
If you do wish to doubt this could happen, look at the obviously fake narrative of the Syrian government chemical weapons attacks on Douma. The pictures published on Bellingcat of improvised chlorine gas missiles were always obviously fake. Remember this missile was supposed to have smashed through ten inches of solid, steel rebar reinforced concrete.......

weiter > https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/...narrative/

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Übersetzung:

[The Blog Cat]

Das Schweigen der Medien zu den WikiLeaks-Veröffentlichungen ist an sich schon ein Skandal

Es wird wirklich sehr sehr seltsam. WikiLeaks hat eine Reihe weiterer geleakter interner Dokumente der Organisation für das Verbot chemischer Waffen (OPCW) veröffentlicht und dem Berg an Beweisen noch mehr Material hinzugefügt, dass man uns über den angeblichen Chemiewaffenangriff in Douma, Syrien belogen hat. Diese Lüge führte zu den Luftangriffen auf Syrien durch die USA, UK und Frankreich. Diese neue WikiLeaks-Veröffentlichung beinhaltet eine E-Mail des Kabinettschefs der OPCW, Sebastien Braha, der einem Tobsuchtsanfall gleicht, weil eine Ingenieur-technische Einschätzung von Ian Henderson herausfand, dass der Douma-Vorfall wahrscheinlich eine Inszenierung war......

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Lessons Of The OPCW's Douma Gas Attack Report: When The Narrative Fails, Lie

Authored by Robert Fisk via The Independent,
In the very early spring of this year, I gave a lecture to European military personnel interested in the Middle East. It was scarcely a year since Bashar al-Assad’s alleged use of chlorine gas against the civilian inhabitants of the Damascus suburb of Douma on 7 April 2018, in which 43 people were said to have been killed.
Few present had much doubt that the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which represents 193 member states around the world, would soon confirm in a final report that Assad was guilty of a war crime which had been condemned by Donald Trump, Emmanuel Macron and Theresa May. 
But at the end of my talk, a young Nato officer who specialises in chemical weapons – he was not British – sought me out for a private conversation.
“The OPCW are not going to admit all they know,” he said. “They’ve already censored their own documents.”
I could not extract any more from him. He smiled and walked away, leaving me to guess what he was talking about. If Nato had doubts about the OPCW, this was a very serious matter.
When it published its final report in March this year, the OPCW said that testimony, environmental and biomedical samples and toxicological and ballistic analyses provided “reasonable grounds” that “the use of a toxic chemical had taken place” in Douma which contained “reactive chlorine”.
The US, Britain and France, which launched missile attacks on Syrian military sites in retaliation for Douma – before any investigation had taken place – thought themselves justified. The OPCW’s report was splashed across headlines around the world – to the indignation of Russia, Assad’s principal military ally, which denied the validity of the publication.......

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As official Douma narrative crumbles, mainstream already constructing backstop

Catte Black

The official narrative on the OPCW’s deception about the alleged ‘chlorine gas attack’ on Douma, Syria, in April 2018 is falling apart. The dam of media silence is cracking and straining. Trickles of truth are dribbling out. The Mail on Sunday has allowed Peter Hitchens to blog about it. Jonathan Steele and other mainstream journalists are suddenly noticing the whistleblowers they ignored for so long and salving their consciences by going public before the dam bursts.
No one is going to say this is a bad thing. However cynical it might appear, it can only be good if the wholesale corruption in the OPCW evidenced by leaked documents and whistleblower statements, is finally and officially acknowledged. It might at least make it less likely we’ll be dragged into WW3 by faked evidence of phony war crimes.
But let’s not forget in our excitement at getting some attention from the big table that when/if this story finally does burst into the mainstream consciousness it will also simultaneously be neutered of its most important reality – viz that the OPCW are just one tiny part of the massive war-manufacturing, war-justifying, war-sanitising lie-machine that is the entirety of western political society.
Of course they’re staffed with strategically placed yes-men. Of course they produced a report that was fudged into a gigantic if obfuscated deception. What do you expect when our institutions are totally subsumed by warmongers, for warmongers? When our financial and political system is built around the pursuit of wars that are not supposed to be won but merely to continue indefinitely?
If the mainstream finally deigns to recognise the malfeasance of the OPCW, it will treat the whole shady episode as a strange anomaly, a dreadful ‘misjudgment’ by a few misguided individuals. A teeny stain on an otherwise impeccable record. Some middle-ranking unfortunates in the OPCW may be sacked or ‘disciplined’. The media may run stories about how the ‘rebels’ (who will suddenly be bad guys) ‘misled’ the lovely innocent (white) investigators into accepting cunningly planted evidence. There may even be talk of how ‘tunnel vision’ about Syria had taken over at the State Department and FCO.

weiter > https://off-guardian.org/2020/01/02/as-o...-backstop/

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Tim Hayward@Tim_Hayward8 Std.
UN Security Council today discusses OPCW report on 2018 Douma 'chemical attack'. This is the report that has been severely challenged by whistleblower testimony and leaked documents.

http://webtv.un.org/live/

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Jochen_Mitschka@jochen_mitschka29 Min.
Wetten, haben Sie nicht in unseren Medien gehört: Gerade läuft eine UNO Sicherheitsrats-Sondersitzung wg. #Douma http://webtv.un.org Sie werden auch später nichts wesentliches hier darüber hören. Es stört das Narrativ, beweist Kriegsverbrechen d. #USA #UK #France

Und pünktlich zur UNSC Sitzung twittern die Amerikaner weiter die Sarin #Douma Lügen , es wird sich nichts ändern.

U.S. Mission to the UN@USUN2 Std.
The world will not forget the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons to kill dozens of civilians in #Syria in April 2018. Neither will the Syrian people. The Assad regime has a clear history of using these horrific weapons. Ask @OPCW. https://go.usa.gov/xdxBW

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21. Januar 2020 um 17:02
 
Ian Henderson, der Whistleblower der OPCW im Fall Douma, hat jetzt im UN-Sicherheitsrat seine Aussage zu dem Fall gemacht. Ging allerdings nur über Videokonferenz, da er aus mysteriösen Gründen kein Visum für die USA erhalten hat.
https://off-guardian.org/2020/01/21/watc...-the-unsc/
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2020/01/un...ports.html
Was die MSM zu den ganzen Enthüllungen zu sagen haben: Wie man hört, hört man nichts.

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January 21, 2020

UN Security Council Hears OPCW Inspector Testimony About The Manipulation Of 'Chemical Attack' Reports

We have long maintained that the alleged chemical attack in Douma, Syria, on April 7 2018 was faked by Jihadists shortly before they were evicted from that Damascus suburb.
By the end of last year leaked documents and a whistle blower from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) had proven that the OPCW managers had manipulated the report their staff had written about the incident. The OPCW inspectors who had investigated the case on the ground in Douma found that there was evidence that a chemical attack had happened. The murdered people seem in videos from the alleged attack must have died of other causes. The yellow canisters found at the locations of the alleged attack were not dropped from helicopters but clearly manually placed.

Using the Arria-formula, a procedure to have witnesses testify to the UN Security Council, Russia and China invited other UN members to listen to the testimony of OPCW inspector Ian Henderson. He denounced the false final report the OPCW management had published. Henderson, a South African engineer, was a team leader at the OPCW where he had worked for more than twelve years.
Henderson's testimony can be watched here. Philip Watson transcribed Henderson's speech:

Cont. reading: UN Security Council Hears OPCW Inspector Testimony About The Manipulation Of 'Chemical Attack' Reports