{"id":690,"date":"2014-04-25T15:03:30","date_gmt":"2014-04-25T15:03:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/freemasonrywatch.org\/blog\/?p=690"},"modified":"2014-04-25T15:03:30","modified_gmt":"2014-04-25T15:03:30","slug":"syria-the-red-line-and-the-r-t-line-by-sermour-m-hersh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/freemasonrywatch.org\/blog\/2014\/04\/25\/syria-the-red-line-and-the-r-t-line-by-sermour-m-hersh\/","title":{"rendered":"Syria: The Red Line and the R.t Line, by Sermour M. Hersh"},"content":{"rendered":"

London Review of Books<\/a><\/p>\n

The Red Line and the Rat Line<\/p>\n

Obama, Erdo\u011fan and the Syrian rebels<\/p>\n

Seymour M. Hersh<\/p>\n

\"Solomon
U.S.S. Barry, Washington Navy Yard<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In 2011 Barack Obama led an allied military intervention in Libya without consulting the US Congress. Last August, after the sarin attack on the Damascus suburb of Ghouta, he was ready to launch an allied air strike, this time to punish the Syrian government for allegedly crossing the \u2018red line\u2019 he had set in 2012 on the use of chemical weapons.\u200b\uff0a Then with less than two days to go before the planned strike, he announced that he would seek congressional approval for the intervention. The strike was postponed as Congress prepared for hearings, and subsequently cancelled when Obama accepted Assad\u2019s offer to relinquish his chemical arsenal in a deal brokered by Russia. Why did Obama delay and then relent on Syria when he was not shy about rushing into Libya? The answer lies in a clash between those in the administration who were committed to enforcing the red line, and military leaders who thought that going to war was both unjustified and potentially disastrous.<\/p>\n

Obama\u2019s change of mind had its origins at Porton Down, the defence laboratory in Wiltshire. British intelligence had obtained a sample of the sarin used in the 21 August attack and analysis demonstrated that the gas used didn\u2019t match the batches known to exist in the Syrian army\u2019s chemical weapons arsenal. The message that the case against Syria wouldn\u2019t hold up was quickly relayed to the US joint chiefs of staff. The British report heightened doubts inside the Pentagon; the joint chiefs were already preparing to warn Obama that his plans for a far-reaching bomb and missile attack on Syria\u2019s infrastructure could lead to a wider war in the Middle East. As a consequence the American officers delivered a last-minute caution to the president, which, in their view, eventually led to his cancelling the attack.<\/p>\n

For months there had been acute concern among senior military leaders and the intelligence community about the role in the war of Syria\u2019s neighbours, especially Turkey. Prime Minister Recep Erdo\u011fan was known to be supporting the al-Nusra Front, a jihadist faction among the rebel opposition, as well as other Islamist rebel groups. \u2018We knew there were some in the Turkish government,\u2019 a former senior US intelligence official, who has access to current intelligence, told me, \u2018who believed they could get Assad\u2019s nuts in a vice by dabbling with a sarin attack inside Syria \u2013 and forcing Obama to make good on his red line threat.\u2019<\/p>\n

The joint chiefs also knew that the Obama administration\u2019s public claims that only the Syrian army had access to sarin were wrong. The American and British intelligence communities had been aware since the spring of 2013 that some rebel units in Syria were developing chemical weapons. On 20 June analysts for the US Defense Intelligence Agency issued a highly classified five-page \u2018talking points\u2019 briefing for the DIA\u2019s deputy director, David Shedd, which stated that al-Nusra maintained a sarin production cell: its programme, the paper said, was \u2018the most advanced sarin plot since al-Qaida\u2019s pre-9\/11 effort\u2019. (According to a Defense Department consultant, US intelligence has long known that al-Qaida experimented with chemical weapons, and has a video of one of its gas experiments with dogs.) The DIA paper went on: \u2018Previous IC [intelligence community] focus had been almost entirely on Syrian CW [chemical weapons] stockpiles; now we see ANF attempting to make its own CW \u2026 Al-Nusrah Front\u2019s relative freedom of operation within Syria leads us to assess the group\u2019s CW aspirations will be difficult to disrupt in the future.\u2019 The paper drew on classified intelligence from numerous agencies: \u2018Turkey and Saudi-based chemical facilitators,\u2019 it said, \u2018were attempting to obtain sarin precursors in bulk, tens of kilograms, likely for the anticipated large scale production effort in Syria.\u2019 (Asked about the DIA paper, a spokesperson for the director of national intelligence said: \u2018No such paper was ever requested or produced by intelligence community analysts.\u2019)<\/p>\n

Last May, more than ten members of the al-Nusra Front were arrested in southern Turkey with what local police told the press were two kilograms of sarin. In a 130-page indictment the group was accused of attempting to purchase fuses, piping for the construction of mortars, and chemical precursors for sarin. Five of those arrested were freed after a brief detention. The others, including the ringleader, Haytham Qassab, for whom the prosecutor requested a prison sentence of 25 years, were released pending trial. In the meantime the Turkish press has been rife with speculation that the Erdo\u011fan administration has been covering up the extent of its involvement with the rebels. In a news conference last summer, Aydin Sezgin, Turkey\u2019s ambassador to Moscow, dismissed the arrests and claimed to reporters that the recovered \u2018sarin\u2019 was merely \u2018anti-freeze\u2019.<\/p>\n

The DIA paper took the arrests as evidence that al-Nusra was expanding its access to chemical weapons. It said Qassab had \u2018self-identified\u2019 as a member of al-Nusra, and that he was directly connected to Abd-al-Ghani, the \u2018ANF emir for military manufacturing\u2019. Qassab and his associate Khalid Ousta worked with Halit Unalkaya, an employee of a Turkish firm called Zirve Export, who provided \u2018price quotes for bulk quantities of sarin precursors\u2019. Abd-al-Ghani\u2019s plan was for two associates to \u2018perfect a process for making sarin, then go to Syria to train others to begin large scale production at an unidentified lab in Syria\u2019. The DIA paper said that one of his operatives had purchased a precursor on the \u2018Baghdad chemical market\u2019, which \u2018has supported at least seven CW efforts since 2004\u2019.<\/p>\n

A series of chemical weapon attacks in March and April 2013 was investigated over the next few months by a special UN mission to Syria. A person with close knowledge of the UN\u2019s activity in Syria told me that there was evidence linking the Syrian opposition to the first gas attack, on 19 March in Khan Al-Assal, a village near Aleppo. In its final report in December, the mission said that at least 19 civilians and one Syrian soldier were among the fatalities, along with scores of injured. It had no mandate to assign responsibility for the attack, but the person with knowledge of the UN\u2019s activities said: \u2018Investigators interviewed the people who were there, including the doctors who treated the victims. It was clear that the rebels used the gas. It did not come out in public because no one wanted to know.\u2019<\/p>\n

In the months before the attacks began, a former senior Defense Department official told me, the DIA was circulating a daily classified report known as SYRUP on all intelligence related to the Syrian conflict, including material on chemical weapons. But in the spring, distribution of the part of the report concerning chemical weapons was severely curtailed on the orders of Denis McDonough, the White House chief of staff. \u2018Something was in there that triggered a shit fit by McDonough,\u2019 the former Defense Department official said. \u2018One day it was a huge deal, and then, after the March and April sarin attacks\u2019 \u2013 he snapped his fingers \u2013 \u2018it\u2019s no longer there.\u2019 The decision to restrict distribution was made as the joint chiefs ordered intensive contingency planning for a possible ground invasion of Syria whose primary objective would be the elimination of chemical weapons.<\/p>\n

The former intelligence official said that many in the US national security establishment had long been troubled by the president\u2019s red line: \u2018The joint chiefs asked the White House, \u201cWhat does red line mean? How does that translate into military orders? Troops on the ground? Massive strike? Limited strike?\u201d They tasked military intelligence to study how we could carry out the threat. They learned nothing more about the president\u2019s reasoning.\u2019<\/p>\n

In the aftermath of the 21 August attack Obama ordered the Pentagon to draw up targets for bombing. Early in the process, the former intelligence official said, \u2018the White House rejected 35 target sets provided by the joint chiefs of staff as being insufficiently \u201cpainful\u201d to the Assad regime.\u2019 The original targets included only military sites and nothing by way of civilian infrastructure. Under White House pressure, the US attack plan evolved into \u2018a monster strike\u2019: two wings of B-52 bombers were shifted to airbases close to Syria, and navy submarines and ships equipped with Tomahawk missiles were deployed. \u2018Every day the target list was getting longer,\u2019 the former intelligence official told me. \u2018The Pentagon planners said we can\u2019t use only Tomahawks to strike at Syria\u2019s missile sites because their warheads are buried too far below ground, so the two B-52 air wings with two-thousand pound bombs were assigned to the mission. Then we\u2019ll need standby search-and-rescue teams to recover downed pilots and drones for target selection. It became huge.\u2019 The new target list was meant to \u2018completely eradicate any military capabilities Assad had\u2019, the former intelligence official said. The core targets included electric power grids, oil and gas depots, all known logistic and weapons depots, all known command and control facilities, and all known military and intelligence buildings.<\/p>\n

Britain and France were both to play a part. On 29 August, the day Parliament voted against Cameron\u2019s bid to join the intervention, the Guardian reported that he had already ordered six RAF Typhoon fighter jets to be deployed to Cyprus, and had volunteered a submarine capable of launching Tomahawk missiles. The French air force \u2013 a crucial player in the 2011 strikes on Libya \u2013 was deeply committed, according to an account in Le Nouvel Observateur; Fran\u00e7ois Hollande had ordered several Rafale fighter-bombers to join the American assault. Their targets were reported to be in western Syria.<\/p>\n

By the last days of August the president had given the Joint Chiefs a fixed deadline for the launch. \u2018H hour was to begin no later than Monday morning [2 September], a massive assault to neutralise Assad,\u2019 the former intelligence official said. So it was a surprise to many when during a speech in the White House Rose Garden on 31 August Obama said that the attack would be put on hold, and he would turn to Congress and put it to a vote.<\/p>\n

At this stage, Obama\u2019s premise \u2013 that only the Syrian army was capable of deploying sarin \u2013 was unravelling. Within a few days of the 21 August attack, the former intelligence official told me, Russian military intelligence operatives had recovered samples of the chemical agent from Ghouta. They analysed it and passed it on to British military intelligence; this was the material sent to Porton Down. (A spokesperson for Porton Down said: \u2018Many of the samples analysed in the UK tested positive for the nerve agent sarin.\u2019 MI6 said that it doesn\u2019t comment on intelligence matters.)<\/p>\n

The former intelligence official said the Russian who delivered the sample to the UK was \u2018a good source \u2013 someone with access, knowledge and a record of being trustworthy\u2019. After the first reported uses of chemical weapons in Syria last year, American and allied intelligence agencies \u2018made an effort to find the answer as to what if anything, was used \u2013 and its source\u2019, the former intelligence official said. \u2018We use data exchanged as part of the Chemical Weapons Convention. The DIA\u2019s baseline consisted of knowing the composition of each batch of Soviet-manufactured chemical weapons. But we didn\u2019t know which batches the Assad government currently had in its arsenal. Within days of the Damascus incident we asked a source in the Syrian government to give us a list of the batches the government currently had. This is why we could confirm the difference so quickly.\u2019<\/p>\n

Article Continues<\/a><\/p>\n

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