From Sarin Nerve Agent Attacks to Chlorine Gas: the Syria Chemical Weapons Story Telling Continues

Author’s Note: Allegations that the now deposed Syrian Government systematically deployed chemical weapons against civilians during the 2011-2020 war are repeated frequently by Western politicians, mainstream media, think tanks, and ‘regime-change’ activists. To varying degrees, these claims have been supported by the world’s premier chemical weapons watchdog, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). In 2019, however, whistleblower scientists from this organisation testified to the manipulation of the investigation of one of these alleged attacks in order to reach a “pre-ordained conclusion” blaming the Syrian Government. In fact, the entire history of alleged chemical weapons (CW) incidents in Syria, dating back to 2012, is controversial. This series explores this history and sets out a preliminary case that the entire CW narrative is a strategic deception designed to delegitimise the Syrian Government and underpin the ‘regime change’ policy. This article is Part Three of the series; Parts One and Two are available here and here. 

In Parts One and Two, we learned how a series of dubious-looking chemical attacks were alleged to have occurred during 2012 and 2013. They were dubious because there was little evidence to substantiate their existence and, most importantly, they bore the fingerprints of groups aligned against the Syrian Government and the intelligence services of belligerent nations seeking its overthrow. In fact, a 2013 UN-OPCW investigation ultimately found more evidence supporting allegations that opposition groups were carrying out CW attacks than they did for those accusing the Syrian Government. This was an early indication that the Syrian Government CW use narrative was actually a strategic deception or, in other words, a lie. 

Then, during the summer of 2013, an apparent Sarin mass casualty attack — referred to here as ‘Ghouta 2013’ — combined with the Obama Administration’s ‘Red Line’ warning that any CW use would trigger massive overt military intervention created a political crisis that led to Syria’s accession to the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) and the dismantling of its strategic chemical weapons stockpiles. This act of disarmament appears to have been a fatal mistake for the Syrian Government. Firstly, it did not end the ‘regime change’ operation against the Syrian Government. Secondly, it did not stop allegations that it was using chemical weapons. As Kit Klarenberg points out, although internal reports suggested the UK Government knew the Syrian CW issue was “largely … resolved”, it continued to make claims to the contrary. For example, in April 2014, it declared that “recent credible reports that chemical weapons have again been used by the regime in Syria call into question the regime’s commitment to comply”.

The new post-CWC accession allegations started with a flurry of purported attacks in Talmenes, Al Tamanah, and Kafr Zita during April and May 2014 and which reportedly involved the use of chlorine gas as a chemical weapon. According to the narrative spun, the Syrian Government had decided after joining the CWC and dismantling its arsenal of strategic nerve agent stocks to start dropping cylinders of chlorine gas on its population. As we shall now see, close analysis of these first incidents and their investigation by the OPCW suggests that they were simply the continuation of the strategic deception initiated back in 2012. 

Creating a Flawed Investigation Process: the OPCW’s New “Fact-Finding Mission”

In response to this new round of allegations, and rather than utilise existing mechanisms within the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), the OPCW established an “ad hoc investigatory mechanism” called the Fact-Finding Mission (FFM). As an EU report issued by MEPs Mick Wallace and Clare Daley describes, the FFM involved “processes and procedures” not “agreed in any intergovernmental treaty” and which lacked “transparency and accountability”. 

Disaster then struck during the FFM’s first field visit to Syria. The initial on-site deployment on 22 May 2014 was intended to be to the town of Harasta but, on that same day, the allegations of an attack at Kafr Zita emerged, and it was decided to travel there instead. According to the OPCW, “this decision was welcomed by the opposition” groups. However, during the attempt to travel into opposition-held territory, the FFM team’s lead vehicle was hit by an improvised explosive device and, while attempting to get to safety, the remaining vehicles were attacked with small arms fire. Two occupants were “briefly detained” by gunmen.

The immediate impact of this event was to force the OPCW to adopt a policy that represented a major deviation from expected norms. Previously, the OPCW had made clear that it would never “get involved in testing samples that our own inspectors don’t gather in the field because we need to maintain chain of custody of samples from the field to the lab to ensure their integrity”. This doctrine was dropped following the attack on the FFM convoy: 

The attack on the Team and the resulting denial of access to the FFM prevents it from presenting definitive conclusions … The Director-General has taken the decision for the FFM to continue its work “by closely monitoring the situation and using all possible means to father information and data … While field visits are not envisaged for the immediate future, these remain an option.

At the stroke of the Director General’s pen, the OPCW FFM could now investigate alleged chemical weapons attacks without ever having to visit a site and collect evidence first-hand.

Hamish de Bretton-Gordon (Re-)enters the Stage

We learned in Part Two how a former British military officer, Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, played a role in feeding back allegations regarding alleged sarin attacks prior to Ghouta 2013. And, as we saw in Part Two, the reporting of at least one of these alleged incidents involved an MI6 sample gathering operation and which was subsequently not deemed to be worthy of further investigation by the 2013 joint UN-OPCW investigation. It was at this stage that de Bretton-Gordon, as he writes in his book Chemical Warrior, started to work with Houssam Alnahhas in order to develop the CBRN (chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear) Task Force that would “collect the samples, then high-tail it to the border, where I would be waiting at the other side to test them”.

Now, with the OPCW FFM having suspended on-site visits and first-hand evidence collection, Hamish’s activities apparently moved to centre-stage with respect to evidence collection. As he himself described during a presentation at the UK Houses of Parliament:

I have covertly been in Syria collecting evidence of chemical weapons attacks and have been giving it to the OPCW and the UN. They cannot get to the places the chemical weapons attacks have happened because they’re in rebel held areas. When I present evidence with our teams from UOSSM, we are not an international body etcetera etcetera. We provided the evidence of the chemical weapons attack in a town called Talmenes in April 2014, on the 29th of April 2014, three weeks after the attack; two weeks ago, two years later, the UN Security Council announced to the world that they had conclusive evidence that the regime had attacked Talmenes in April 2014 with chemical weapons.

But how reliable and valid was this new set up, whereby actors linked to belligerents in the war would convey information on alleged attacks to the OPCW investigation teams? A closer look at the Talmenes 2014 alleged attack is instructive.

Talmenes, 2014

Information from de Bretton-Gordon’s CBRN Task Force supplied information to the OPCW FFM investigation that commenced its investigations later in the year and, as per the new doctrine, relied upon information supplied by third parties. The FFM and subsequent Joint Investigatory Mechanism (JIM) investigations eventually led to the conclusion that the Syrian Government had carried out the alleged attack at Talmenes. 

The extent to which evidence supplied by de Bretton-Gordon’s CBRN Task Force contributed to this conclusion is not fully understood. Analysis, however, of three OPCW reports associated with Talmenes by the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media identified that, at minimum, the CBRN passed information to the FFM, including around 43 photographs and films of the two alleged impact sites. An OPCW FFM Interim Report itself stated that:

Independently of the individuals from the three villages who were interviewed, the FFM interviewed and received information from members of the ‘CBRN Task Force’, who had performed a systematic collection of data in the field following reported attacks in Talmenes and Kafr Zita.

So, for sure, we can say that the activities of what was effectively a proxy for the UK Government were having an influence on the OPCW’s FFM. Certainly, the overall ability to influence had moved up a notch from 2013 when, as we saw in Part Two, information from de Bretton-Gordon and MI6 regarding the Sheikh Maqsood incident was disregarded by the UN-OPCW on grounds of insufficiency.

Whatever level of influence was at work, the final conclusions reached by the OPCW Talmenes investigations presented a demonstrably absurd claim and one that, logically speaking, actually confirmed the entire alleged attack was inauthentic.

Two Impact Sites: One Staged and One Real! 

As Chris Friel documents via analysis of social media reports at the time of the alleged incident, news about an attack at Talmenes was first reported within an hour of it occurring via a combination of activists on the ground and Western-based influencers. These included Eliot Higgins, who was to later establish Bellingcat, the Western-government linked propaganda operation. Also in the mix were Professor Scott Lucas (then at the University of Birmingham) and, unsurprisingly, Hamish de Bretton-Gordon. British journalist Ruth Sherlock from the Daily Telegraph also reported on the alleged incident and described analysis of soil samples gathered by Hamish de Bretton-Gordon’s CBRN Task Force.

As documented by the Working Group on Syria, Media and Propaganda back in 2018, two impact sites were indicated in these early social media reports. The first was what came to be known as ‘Location 1’ during the OPCW FFM investigation and involved a large crater in an enclosed courtyard-like area and which was surrounded by dead animals. A statement and film were released within hours of the alleged attack and reposted by Professor Lucas:

The second site, designated ‘Location 2’ by the OPCW FFM and which was strangely absent in the early social media reports, was a kitchen building just 75 metres away from Location 1.

The subsequent investigation of these alleged attack sites, relayed across three different reports, indicated clearly, however, that the Location 1 alleged attack site was not authentic. Specifically, the Joint Investigative Mechanism (JIM) report stated that only the Location 2 Kitchen site was “found plausible”. Location 1, conversely, was deemed to be implausible. 

In fact, the large crater found at Location 1 made little sense. A chlorine device dropped from a helicopter would not be expected to contain the large amount of explosive necessary to create such a large hole in the ground. In addition, the dead animals surrounding the crater showed no signs of any blast injuries:

The JIM concluded that the crater was probably created by “an explosive charge of 5 to 10kg TNT-equivalent buried in the ground” and was “disregarded for further investigation”.

Despite the evidence of staging, the JIM went on to conclude that Location 2 was sufficiently plausible to enable a conclusion that an actual chlorine attack had occurred at Talmenes. The logic applied here is flawed because it involves having to believe that, as one real attack was occurring, another one less than 100 metres away was being staged, complete with explosives buried in the ground and dead animals. This scenario is, quite literally, preposterous. 

It is unclear how the investigation was able to reach such a daft conclusion. Across the FFM and JIM reports, the fact that both of the alleged attack sites were reported via activists on the ground in real-time, as shown by Friel’s analysis is not made particularly explicit. This means that the implications of Location 1 being staged for the claims of an attack at Location 2 are left obfuscated, and perhaps the investigators themselves became confused and started to think Location 1 was staged at some other time. Or perhaps they were simply refusing to seriously consider the obvious possibility that both alleged attack sites were entirely staged. It is notable that several years later UN lead investigator Åke Sellström, when reflecting upon the JIM investigations, stated that:

The second problem, encountered particularly during the JIM’s initial work, was the difficulty of performing a proper investigation when the guilty party was already obvious to many of the investigators from the outset. Some investigators even refused to consider alternative scenarios.

Whatever the case, the incongruity of the overall conclusion that Location 1 was not plausible whilst Location 2 was plausible entirely undermines the integrity of the investigation. Finally, review of the multiple reports indicates that it was de Bretton-Gordon’s CBRN Task Force that is most likely to have supplied the video footage of the fraudulent scenes at Location 1. 

“If You Can Make People Believe Absurdities, You Can Make Them Commit Atrocities’ (a Quote Frequently Attributed to Voltaire)

In sum, by 2014, the Syria CW narrative had developed into a series of claims about chlorine gas use and involved the integration of Western-backed information sources (e.g. de Bretton-Gordon) with the investigation of alleged attacks by the OPCW’s ad hoc FFM mechanism. This setup was underpinned by the willingness of the OPCW to avoid site visits and rely instead on information given to them by third parties. These claims started with the absurd Talmenes allegations affirmed through investigations involving extraordinarily flawed logic that required turning a blind eye toward clear evidence of staging. As such, the world’s gold standard CW watchdog was becoming ever more entangled with the production of these deceptions.

This phase had, in turn, been preceded by a series of dubious and discounted claims (e.g. Homs 2012 and Sheikh Maqsood 2013), communicated via entities with tangible links to belligerent nations, and their respective intelligence services, seeking to overthrow the Syrian Government. These early alleged incidents, spanning 2012 to 2013, culminated in the Ghouta 2013 false flag event in which publics were asked to believe the proposition that the Syrian Government made an entirely irrational decision to launch a mass Sarin attack in full view of newly arrived UN-OPCW inspectors.

As we shall see in Part 4 of this series, the chlorine gas allegations were to persist for the next four years and involved similar instances whereby OPCW investigators asked us to accept absurdities. At times these were comical, as when a chlorine gas binary device was presented as a plausible weapon. In this case the OPCW FFM teams asked us to believe that, rather than dropping a cylinder of chlorine gas, the Syrian Government had decided to start dropping devices designed to mix hydrochloric acid with potassium permanganate in order to create a chemical reaction that released chlorine gas when the device was detonated.

That such a reaction could only ever create a fraction of the chlorine gas that would have been contained in a device filled simply with chlorine was left without remark. In other cases, such as the alleged chlorine gas attack in Douma, 2018, the narratives spun were not comical at all and involved the deaths of many women and children.

Ultimately, as we shall see in Part Four, these absurdities were to become too much to bear for some of the OPCW’s own scientists.