EU Parliament Quickly Shuts Down Questioning of OPCW Chief on Douma False-Flag Fiasco

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EU Parliament session gets chaotic as MEP accused of 'fake news' for daring to question OPCW on whistleblower scandal 

Mick Wallace speaks to OPCW Director-General Fernando Arias at the European Parliament in Brussels, April 15, 2021

© European Parliament

Despite whistleblower leaks casting doubts on the OPCW’s findings, the EU Parliament is determined to enforce the organization’s anti-Assad line on Syria. MEP Mick Wallace was accused of spreading “fake news” when he spoke out.

The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons has taken an intense interest in Syria’s civil war, and has accused President Bashar Assad of deploying chemical weapons against his own people on several occasions. Its conclusions have twice been used to justify US military action against Syria, and a new OPCW report on Monday found “reasonable grounds” to suspect that a Syrian Army helicopter dropped chemical weapons on the town of Saraqib in 2018.

The OPCW’s reports are good news for Western interventionists, but the organization is not without its critics. 

Interventionists are Deep State - the western war industry.

OPCW chief must ‘find the courage to address’ Douma coverup allegations,

says group including 5 senior ex-officials of watchdog

Mick Wallace, an Irish MEP, is among them. When OPCW Director-General Fernando Arias addressed the European Parliament Subcommittee of Security and Defence on Thursday, Wallace accused the OPCW of squashing evidence that Assad may not have been behind one particularly heinous 2018 attack in Douma, near Damascus.

“Why will you not heed calls from renowned international figures...to meet with all the investigators?” Wallace asked Arias. “This problem is not going away. Are you going to investigate all aspects in a transparent manner?"

He is far from a lone crank. Whistleblower testimony and internal documents suggest that the OPCW suppressed “key information about chemical analyses, toxicology consultations, ballistics studies, and witness testimonies” relating to the Douma attack, in order to “favor a preordained conclusion,” in the words of one panel of skeptics. 

A scientific paper challenging the OPCW’s conclusion was shelved following an outcry from Bellingcat, and one director within the OPCW worried that were the truth to get out, it could aid Russia, an ally of Assad. Furthermore, while multiple whistleblowers have come forward to dispute the OPCW’s findings, more have been “frightened into silence,” one claimed last year.

Bellingcat is accused of being the mouthpiece for NATO and other Deep State organizations.

Wallace also accused Arias of ignoring a “false leak,” made to the BBC and the NATO-affiliated Bellingcat, which he claimed was used to discredit former OPCW Director-General José Bustani, who disagrees with Arias’ blaming of Assad for the Douma attack.

Yet before Arias could respond, subcommittee chairwoman Nathalie Loiseau stepped in to do his job for him. Loiseau apologized to Arias for Wallace’s tough questioning, and accused the Ireland South MEP of peddling “fake news.” 

“I cannot accept that you can call into question the work of an international organization, and that you would call into question the word of the victims in the way you have just done,” she scolded Wallace.

And that's the age-old trick of attacking the messenger to avoid having to answer his questions.

“Is there no freedom of speech being allowed in the European Parliament any more,” Wallace shot back, “today you’re denying me my opinion!”

Wallace’s microphone was then cut, and Arias allowed to speak. However, the OPCW chief did not directly address his questions. Instead he thanked the other MEPs present for their “words of support,” and reiterated his claims that Assad’s government is responsible for “a humanitarian catastrophe of massive proportions.” 

Though Loiseau apparently wanted to shield Arias from Wallace’s uncomfortable questions, skepticism within the OPCW goes all the way to the top. Former Director-General Bustani has accused the organization of “potentially fraudulent conduct in the investigative process,” a position that saw him banned from addressing the UN Security Council on the issue last year.

The whistleblower scandal has been mostly ignored by the mainstream media, with only a handful of alternative outlets picking up the story.

And the disgraceful conduct of western countries in this affair continues unabated and unquestioned by most western media. 

Does Deep State Have Control of OPCW - Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons?

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OPCW chief must ‘find the courage to address’ Douma coverup allegations,

says group including 5 senior ex-officials of watchdog

12 Mar, 2021 13:51

FILE PHOTO. The building of the OPCW in The Hague, Netherlands. ©REUTERS / Piroschka van de Wouw

The scandal surrounding alleged manipulation of scientific data in the chemical weapons watchdog the OPCW, ignored by both the organization and the mainstream media, is only getting worse with time, a pro-whistleblower group said.

A new statement from whistleblower-supporting organization the Courage Foundation complains that the leadership of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has failed to properly address accusations of a coverup involving the alleged chemical weapons attack in Douma, Syria in April 2018.

Instead it tried to “side-step the issue” entirely by targeting directly and apparently indirectly the whistleblowers who brought their concerns about the integrity of the OPCW’s investigation of the incident into public view.

The statement was signed by almost 30 public figures, including author Noam Chomsky, Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, journalist and filmmaker John Pilger, and musician and activist Roger Waters. The list also includes multiple scientists, including four former OPCW inspectors, as well as the organization’s founding director, Jose Bustani.

“We believe that the interests of the OPCW are best served by the Director General [Fernando Arias] providing a transparent and neutral forum in which the concerns of all the investigators can be heard as well as ensuring that a fully objective and scientific investigation is completed,” the group said.

Arias should “find the courage to address the problems within his organization relating to this investigation and ensure States Parties and the United Nations are informed accordingly. In this way we hope and believe that the credibility and integrity of the OPCW can be restored.”

The Douma incident happened in a jihadist-controlled neighbouhood of Damascus, which was on the cusp of being captured by the Syrian government forces at the time. The predominant narrative about it in the Western media was that the Syrian army deployed chlorine gas by dropping canisters from a helicopter, killing scores of civilians as a result. The US, the UK and France launched barrages of missiles at Syrian government targets days later in retaliation for the purported atrocity.

The OPCW’s final report on the incident, published in March 2019, all but confirmed justification for the Western attack. But evidence which has mounted since points to possible political meddling in the organization’s work. Evidence collected by OPCW inspectors on the ground, which contradicted the theory of a government attack in Douma, had been apparently suppressed so that the conclusions reached in the final report would not be undermined.

The Courage Foundation, which seeks to protect and encourage whistleblowers, became involved in the incident early on. It helped convene a panel of experts, including Bustani, the former OPCW director, to assess the evidence and testimonies of two original sources of the coverup allegation. In October 2019, it made public its concerns over what the experts had found and called for a transparent and neutral inquiry.

The new statement lists a number of developments that have happened since. Bustani, for example, was barred from speaking at the UN Security Council by representatives of the very same member states that attacked Syria after the Douma incident. Investigative outfit Bellingcat made a dubious attempt to smear one of the whistleblowers, Brendan Whelan, with a never-sent draft letter addressing him. And the BBC gave a platform to an anonymous source, who was said to be working for the OPCW and apparently sought to discredit the dissenting inspectors.

The OPCW itself dismissed them as rogue and untrustworthy individuals, who violated the organization’s rules by leaking internal documents and had no full picture of what had happened in Douma. It also refused multiple calls by the scientists and their supporters to put all the scientific data underlying its final report forward for independent scrutiny. The Courage Foundation says the OPCW is only hurting itself, casting doubts on all other reports it produces.

Search this blog for 'OPCW' for many more disturbing stories like this.

The Media is the Message - Grayzone Releases OPCW Emails Admitting Political Bias in Reporting on Douma

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OPCW director worried truth about Syria ‘chemical attack’

report would feed ‘Russian narrative’

7 Dec 2020 23:57

Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) tags inside a damaged house in Douma, Syria, April 23, 2018. ©  REUTERS/ Ali Hashisho

By Nebojsa Malic, senior writer at RT

As you can see this report is from RT (Russia Today), and so I feel I must include a warning as to its partiality. At the same time, the facts listed here seem to be accurate, and most certainly, I believe, are the assertions.

The reference to 'feeding the Russian narrative' strikes me as being very hypocritical. 'The Russian narrative', or, perhaps, 'The Anti-Russian narrative' in NATO, the USA, UK, and France is 'Russia bad; western weapons good!' Anything that counters that narrative is counterintuitive to the Military-Industrial Complex and the completely unnecessary sale of extremely expensive weapons.

While praising the OPCW whistleblower’s integrity and professionalism, one director worried that seeking truth about the altered report on a ‘chemical attack’ in Syria might help Russia, which he denounced as the enemy.

“I fear there is little one can do since the report is final and out – unless one wants to feed in the Russian narrative and that I would never do as they really are not bona fide friends of this organization, that’s for sure,” was the message of one director to Dr. Brendan Whelan, one of the whistleblowers who challenged the ‘interim’ report by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) as doctored for political purposes.

This is according to emails published on Monday by *Grayzone, an investigative outlet that has been following the OPCW whistleblower story since the beginning.

The director – whose name was redacted to protect his privacy – is the same one who in 2018 praised Whelan for his initial objections to the report, saying his email was “very carefully crafted, without emotions, not accusing anybody but laying out the facts and concerns very clearly.” Whelan’s June 22, 2018 email “took all the steps to maintain your moral and professional integrity,” he added, according to documents published by Grayzone.

Robert Fairweather, a British diplomat who was OPCW chief of cabinet at the time, requested that Whelan’s email be “recalled” – erased from the organization’s documents and archives – without explanation, having previously said the report was not “redacted” at the behest of the OPCW director-general, and that he only asked “that the report did not speculate.”

The “core” team, appointed from new OPCW hires, was then tasked with writing the final report, but apparently waited until Whelan’s term at the organization expired in September 2018 to publish its version of the report. Ironically, it did nothing but speculate – conveniently omitting any evidence actually gathered by the Douma inspectors to blame the government of President Bashar Assad in Damascus for what might have been a “chlorine” attack on the town held by Jaysh al-Islam militants. Fairweather was later made an officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for “services to international relations.”

Four whistleblowers have since come forth to challenge the OPCW’s alterations of the initial report. The organization’s response has been to defame them as disgruntled employees, while NATO-affiliated narrative management outfit Bellingcat actually doxxed Whelan.

The 16-year veteran of the organization, who was praised for his professionalism and integrity by multiple directors – as Grayzone documented – was thus hung out to dry because challenging the report would help “Russian narratives.”

He wasn’t the only one. In October, OPCW’s founding director general Jose Bustani was blocked from addressing the UN Security Council by the US, UK and France – the same countries that launched missile strikes against Syria without waiting for the Douma investigation, and have been accused of pressuring the OPCW into publishing the report retroactively validating that action.

The OPCW director mentioned above also told Whelan that talking about the report was “difficult to pursue out in the open, knowing that it is already being played by parties who are decidedly not bona fide supporters of the [Chemical Weapons Convention].” This is according to an April 17, 2019 email.

The “parties” reference here are highly likely to be Russia, which the UK had accused of a chemical attack on a former spy in Salisbury, without any evidence but Bellingcat speculation. The US didn’t exactly object, choosing to take London’s word for it.

Western governments are trying to politicize the OPCW and “in fact, turn it into an obedient tool to realize their military and political agenda,” Russia’s envoy to the OPCW Alexander Shulgin told RT last month. These emails appear to support his assessment.

Meanwhile, mainstream media coverage of the OPCW whistleblower complaints has consisted of repeating the official defamatory claims about them or citing Bellingcat, leaving the job of digging for actual documents to outlets like the Grayzone and other independent journalists.

Mainstream media, if they cover this story at all, takes the acceptable anti-Russian narrative. They are not interested in finding the truth, indeed, they would probably be in big trouble if they even started looking for the truth. 

Search this blog for 'Douma' for a number of articles to support my position on this atrocity.

*Grayzone

Max Blumenthal (born December 18, 1977) is an American journalist, author, blogger, and filmmaker. Blumenthal established The Grayzone in December 2015; he is the website's editor and one of its contributors. 

Blumenthal is a regular contributor to Sputnik and RT. He was formerly a writer for The Nation, AlterNet, The Daily Beast, Al Akhbar, and Media Matters for America, and has contributed to Al Jazeera English, The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. He was selected as a Fellow of the Nation Institute.

Blumenthal has written four books. His first, Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party (2009), made the Los Angeles Times and New York Times bestsellers lists. He was awarded the 2014 Lannan Foundation Cultural Freedom Notable Book Award for Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel, which was published in 2013.

OPCW Chief Made False Claims to Denigrate Douma Whistleblower and Justify Bombing

The Grayzone has obtained documents exposing numerous falsehoods and misleading claims by OPCW Director General Fernando Arias to degrade the reputation of Douma whistleblower Ian Henderson

By Aaron Mate

The Grayzone

The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons has made false and misleading statements about two veteran inspectors who challenged a cover-up of their investigation in Syria, leaked documents show. The inspectors probed an alleged chemical weapons attack in the Syrian city of Douma in April 2018, and later objected when their evidence was suppressed. 

Documents obtained by The Grayzone reveal that OPCW leaders have engaged in a pattern of deception that minimized the inspectors’ senior roles in the Douma mission and diminished the prestige they enjoyed within the world’s top chemical weapons watchdog. 

OPCW Director General Fernando Arias has claimed that the first inspector, South African chemical engineering and ballistics expert Ian Henderson, “was not a member” of the Douma investigative team and only played a “minor supporting role.” 

However, contemporaneous communications from the OPCW’s Douma Fact-Finding Mission (FFM) directly contradict Arias. They show that Henderson was indeed a Douma team member, and that OPCW leadership directed him to lead its most critical inspections. They also show that Arias, rather than acknowledge that Henderson was an FFM member, offered up a false explanation for why Henderson was in Syria at the time of the probe. 

Arias has also disingenuously minimized the role of the second inspector, known only to the public as “Inspector B.” This will be examined in part two of this article. 

The OPCW’s investigation was triggered when extremist anti-Syrian government militants and Western states accused the Syrian army of dropping gas cylinders on two buildings in Douma, killing dozens of civilians. The U.S., France, and Britain bombed Syrian government targets days later, asserting their right to enforce the chemical weapons “red line.” (And before anyone from the OPCW was able to make it to the site to investigate). After a nearly year-long investigation, the OPCW issued a final report in March 2019 that claimed “reasonable grounds” existed to believe that a chlorine attack occurred. 

However, a trove of leaked documents has shown that the OPCW leadership suppressed and manipulated evidence that undermined the allegation against the Syrian military. The first of such leaks was an engineering assessment authored by Henderson that concluded that the gas cylinders in Douma were likely “manually placed.” 

That conclusion suggested the incident was staged on the ground by the armed militants who controlled Douma at the time. Additional leaks later revealed that Inspector B protested the censorship of critical evidence and toxicology reports, as well as the manipulation of chemical samples and witness statements. 

Henderson and B also complained that OPCW leaders excluded all of the Douma investigators except for one paramedic from a so-called “core” team that wrote the organization’s final report. 

In response to the scandal, OPCW Director General Arias convened an inquiry into the Henderson leak and unveiled its findings in February 2020. In a bid to strip Henderson and Inspector B of credibility, Arias and the inquiry team painted the two as rogue actors with only peripheral roles.

Evidence obtained by The Grayzone reveals that Arias’ characterization of the two inspectors was inaccurate, and contradicted by facts OPCW officials kept private. 

“ODG is happy if the visits to the cylinders and hospital are led by Ian Henderson”

Arias and the inquiry team have asserted that Ian Henderson was not an official participant in the Douma investigation. Henderson, they claimed, “was not a member of the FFM” [Fact-Finding Mission], and instead merely “accompanied the FFM to certain sites of interest” in a “minor supporting role.” 

Contemporaneous OPCW documents undermine this characterization, revealing that the OPCW leadership disingenuously minimized Henderson’s involvement by issuing false statements and omitting key facts about his real role.

An April 2018 letter obtained by The Grayzone shows that while it was headed by Arias’ predecessor, the OPCW’s Office of Director General (ODG) specifically requested that Henderson lead inspections at three high-priority locations in Douma. The letter, an operations communication relaying instructions from OPCW headquarters, instructed the Douma team to visit the two locations where the gas cylinders were found; the hospital where a video was filmed of alleged gas attack victims; and a fourth, redacted location. 

“…ODG is happy,” the letter instructed, “if the visits to the cylinders and hospital are led by Ian Henderson.” 

Extract from an OPCW communiqué on behalf of the Director General’s Office.

The April 2018 directive by OPCW leadership for Henderson to lead the inspections at three of the investigation’s most critical and sensitive locations was completely at odds with the claims by organization leadership that Henderson merely “accompanied the FFM to certain sites of interest,” and “assisted” in a “minor supporting role.” 

The two cylinders were undoubtedly the mission’s most important inspections: it was at these locations that the alleged chemical weapons attack took place, and the cylinders were the alleged means of delivery. The fact that Henderson was tasked with leading the inspection of the alleged crime scene shows that OPCW leaders did not see him as playing a “minor supporting role,” but a major leadership one. 

“Ian HENDERSON | FFM”

If Henderson was “not a member” of the Douma Fact Finding Mission, as Arias now claims, why did his predecessor’s office specifically request that Henderson lead three inspections at the mission’s most important locations? The answer is that Arias had made another false statement: a second leaked OPCW document from the Douma mission explicitly listed Henderson as an FFM member. 

The document obtained by The Grayzone is a sensitive security-planning memorandum, known as a CONOPS (Concept of Operations). It detailed the operational and security arrangements for one of the FFM’s location visits in Douma. On a page outlining the OPCW’s “Mission Personnel” and their roles, Henderson is listed, next to the title, “FFM.” 

Extract from an OPCW CONOPS document listing Ian Henderson as a member of the FFM in Douma. The Grayzone has viewed the document to confirm its authenticity but is only publishing this extract due to the sensitive nature of the document for UN security operations.

“INSPECTOR HENDERSON, IAN WILL BE PART OF THE TEAM”

In trying to justify his current claim that Henderson was not an FFM member, Arias has adduced the fact that Henderson’s “name is not included in the mandates issued for FFM deployments signed by my predecessor.” But Arias’ account distorts the actual timeline of events and omits other OPCW documents.

As Henderson has previously noted publicly, he was not included in the initial OPCW “mandate,” because at that point he was on a separate mission in Nepal. Upon his return, Henderson was immediately assigned to the FFM team in Douma. The Syrian government was then notified that Henderson was joining the mission – a communication that Arias has conveniently ignored. 

The Grayzone has obtained an “F038” notification document advising the Syrian government that Henderson is joining the Douma mission as a member of the FFM team. “PLEASE NOTE THAT INSPECTOR HENDERSON, IAN WILL BE PART OF THE TEAM CONDUCTING THE TECHNICAL SECRETARIAT VISITS,” the communiqué reads. Henderson is also listed as the newly added member of a 7-person “LIST OF INSPECTORS.”  

Extract from an OPCW notification to the Syrian government adding Ian Henderson to the FFM team of inspectors in Douma.

Why Henderson was in Douma

Rather than acknowledge the documented fact that Henderson was a member of the FFM tasked with leading some of its most high-priority and sensitive operations, the OPCW has offered an unusual explanation for his presence in Douma. 

The OPCW leadership has attributed Henderson’s on-the-ground involvement to happenstance, the result of his already being in Syria anyway. “[Henderson] provided support to the FFM team investigating the Douma incident since he was at the command post in Damascus at the relevant time,” the OPCW’s inquiry stated. [emphasis added]  “It is customary for the inspector serving at the command post to provide assistance to the FFM.” 

But an OPCW document obtained by The Grayzone shows that Henderson only took over the Damascus command post after the Douma FFM mission had finished its deployment. On May 3rd 2018 – two days after Henderson and the FFM wrapped up 10 days of inspections in Douma – the OPCW’s Damascus mission recorded that Henderson had taken control. 

OPCW document acknowledging that Ian Henderson has taken over the OPCW’s Command Post in Damascus on May 3rd – two days after the end of the Douma FFM’s mission.

“Our best ITL… used for the most complex and sensitive missions”

In addition to making false statements about Henderson’s role in the Douma FFM, Arias and the OPCW inquiry have also made several denigrating statements about the inspector’s standing within the organization that omitted important facts.

In a February 2020 letter published by The Grayzone, Henderson confronted Arias for making “underhanded” and “demeaning” comments that falsely minimized his experience and seniority within the OPCW. Henderson served with the organization since its inception, first from June 1997 to December 2005, and then for a second tenure from June 2016 to May 2019. 

Arias said that Henderson was “eventually… promoted to Team Leader,” when in fact he was among the first group of Inspection Team Leaders (ITLs) to be appointed at the P-5 level – the OPCW’s most senior designation for an inspector. Arias has also claimed that Henderson “was rehired at a lower level” upon his return in June 2016, when in fact, at that point, the P-5 designation for OPCW ITLs no longer existed due to budgetary decisions.

Annual performance appraisals and letters obtained by The Grayzone also reveal that Henderson was highly regarded within the organization. In 2005, the Director of the OPCW’s Inspectorate Division – which oversees all of the organization’s global inspections – wrote that “in all of Mr. Henderson’s annual appraisal reports” during his OPCW tenure, he had received “the highest rating possible.” 

The Director added: “In my opinion, I consider that Mr. Henderson is one of the best of our Inspection Team Leaders… Being one of the best Inspection Team Leaders, Mr. Henderson is aware that he can expect to be selected to lead the most demanding and sensitive assignments.”  

In 2018, an OPCW manager described Henderson as having “a wealth of knowledge,” whose “negotiation talent paired with his technical knowledge and skill make him an asset.” The previous year, a manager lauded Henderson for having “contributed to CBCP [Capacity Building and Contingency Planning Cell] cell achievements significantly.” The manager particularly praised Henderson for “leading and participation” in sensitive contingency operations, including the OPCW’s inspection of Syria’s Scientific Studies and Research Center (SSRC) in 2017.

Who went rogue?

In his letter to Arias, Henderson invoked his and Inspector B’s lengthy, celebrated tenures inside the OPCW. “We are long-serving and dedicated OPCW supporters,” Henderson wrote. “We both have reams of documents such as performance appraisals, emails, letters of commendation and others, that reflect a history of service at the highest level in terms of qualifications, skills, expertise, leadership, integrity and professionalism throughout our time at the OPCW.”

“Does this not place the efforts by some to smear our reputations, on questionable ground?” he continued. “As a manager, as the highest official in the Organisation, does this not lead to the question: Why would a pair of the top Inspection Team Leaders, both with impeccable records… suddenly ‘go rogue’?”

The documentary evidence that Henderson played a leading role in the Douma investigation – and that Arias has made false statements to the contrary – adds new salience to those questions. It also raises an inverse question for Arias: why has the OPCW Director General falsified Henderson’s role in the Douma investigation?  

New (4th) OPCW Whistleblower Slams ‘Abhorrent Mistreatment’ of Douma Investigators

A fourth OPCW whistleblower has emerged to defend the two veteran inspectors who challenged a cover-up of the chemical weapons probe in Douma, Syria. The new whistleblower lamented that other staffers have been “frightened into silence.” 

By Aaron Mate

The Grayzone

A new Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) whistleblower has surfaced in response to a malicious and factually flawed attack by OPCW leadership on two veteran inspectors who challenged the official story of an alleged chemical attack by the Syrian government in Douma. 

In a statement provided to The Grayzone, the new OPCW whistleblower described being “horrified” by the “abhorrent … mistreatment” of the inspectors. The new whistleblower also warned of a climate of intimidation designed to keep other staffers “frightened into silence.”

The official is now the fourth OPCW whistleblower to air serious concerns about the chemical watch dog’s Douma probe. The Grayzone has independently verified the official’s identity and status with the OPCW, and granted them anonymity to protect them from potential retaliation.

The first two whistleblowers – the inspectors – are veteran OPCW experts and team leaders who deployed to Syria in April 2018. A third staffer has dissented from the official version of events, but declined to make their views public out of fear that they and their family would be harmed.

The findings by the first two whistleblowing inspectors severely undermined allegations by Western nations and Syrian opposition groups that the Syrian government carried out a chemical attack in Douma.

However, OPCW leadership excluded their scientific work, re-wrote their initial report, and barred them from adding any further input to the investigation. The inspectors’ evidence and the high-level campaign to bury it came to light through a series of leaks that began in May 2019. OPCW leadership has retaliated against the two by falsely portrayed them as rogue actors with only minor roles in the investigation and incomplete information.

The statement by the new OPCW whistleblower forcefully defends the inspectors and denounces the campaign by organization leadership to destroy their reputations.

“The mistreatment of two highly regarded and accomplished professionals can only be described as abhorrent,” the OPCW official wrote. “I fully support their endeavours, in that it is for the greater good and not for personal gain or in the name of any political agenda. They are in fact trying to protect the integrity of the organisation which has been hijacked and brought into shameful disrepute.”

One of the two whistleblowing former inspectors has been identified publicly. He is Ian Henderson, a 12-year veteran of the organization and weapons expert. Henderson led on-the-ground inspections in Douma and conducted a detailed engineering study of gas cylinders found at the scene. He concluded that the cylinders were likely “manually placed” rather than being dropped by air – a finding that suggests the attack was staged on the ground by the militants who controlled Douma at the time.

The OPCW buried Henderson’s study and released a final report that echoed the version put forward by the US Department of State and British Foreign Ministry, strongly implying that the cylinders were dropped by the Syrian military.

The second inspector has not identified themself, and is known only as Inspector B. This person is a 16-year OPCW veteran who coordinated the OPCW team’s scientific and technical activities in Douma and was the chief author of the main report – until OPCW leaders seized control of the investigation and rewrote its findings.

In remarks last month, OPCW Director-General General Fernando Arias dismissed the pair’s scientific work as “erroneous, uninformed, and wrong,” and insisted that they “could not accept that their views were not backed by evidence.”

In letters published by The Grayzone, the inspectors rebutted Arias’ claims and argued, in B’s words, that they in fact “could never accept that a scientific investigation is not backed by science.”

The new OPCW whistleblower stood by the inspectors. “It is quite unbelievable that valid scientific concerns are being brazenly ignored in favour of a predetermined narrative,” they wrote. “The lack of transparency in an investigative process with such enormous ramifications is frightful.”

The official went on to suggest that fear of retaliation is preventing more OPCW officials from coming forward. “I am one of many who were stunned and frightened into silence by the reality how the organisation operates,” the official wrote. “The threat of personal harm is not an illusion, or else many others would have spoken out by now.” The official does not provide additional details.

Another OPCW veteran, who served in a senior role but no longer works at the organization, has also warned of severe threats to their security. In a letter published by The Grayzone, the former senior OPCW official expressed alarm about a cover-up of the Douma probe and of the intimidation of dissenting voices. The former official described their tenure at the OPCW as “the most stressful and unpleasant ones of my life,” and voiced concern that “they will not hesitate to do harm to me and my family.”

In their rebuttal letter to Arias, Inspector B complained that Arias’ public statements have left “so many obvious clues, that anyone within the Organisation (and among many delegations) would have no doubt as to [the whistleblower’s] identities. Such recklessness has created a serious safety concern.”

According to the inspectors, a delegation of US officials visited the OPCW to apply “unacceptable pressure” on the Douma team to place blame on the Syrian government for a chemical attack that might not have happened at all. 

Both Henderson and Inspector B have called on Arias to allow for a transparent, scientific hearing where all of the suppressed evidence and studies can be heard. In their statement, the new OPCW whistleblower echoed the inspectors’ demand.

“The lack of transparency in an investigative process with such enormous ramifications is frightful,” the official wrote. “The allegations of the two gentlemen urgently need to be thoroughly investigated and the functionality of the organisation restored.”

Full text of statement on Douma scandal from new OPCW whistleblower is available on the Grayzone

Whistleblowers Defend Themselves Against OPCWs Sleazy Smear Campaign on Douma False Flag Op.

OPCW whistleblowers wrote to watchdog chief,

say it ‘defies all logic’ that they’d ‘go rogue’ for no reason

© AFP / ANP / Bart Maat

The whistleblowers who accused the OPCW of covering up evidence on the Douma chemical weapons investigation have accused the watchdog of trying to “smear” their reputations, after it ignored them as disgruntled former employees.

In letters sent to the OPCW Director-General and obtained by The Grayzone, the two whistleblowers demand that their findings – which contradicted those that made it into the OPCW’s official report – get a fair and scientific hearing.

Veteran OPCW official Ian Henderson and an individual referred to as ‘Alex’ were sidelined from the investigation into the alleged chemical weapons attack in the Damascus suburb of Douma in April 2018, after they produced evidence indicating the incident – which was used to justify US missile strikes – was in fact staged by anti-Assad jihadist militants.

The OPCW dubbed the pair ‘Inspector A’ and ‘Inspector B’ and framed them as disgruntled former employees who simply “could not accept that their views were not backed by evidence.” 

In his letter to OPCW Director-General Arias, Henderson (‘Inspector A’) defended himself and ‘Alex,’ writing that they both had “reams of documents” including performance appraisals, letters of commendation and others that reflect “a history of service at the highest level in terms of qualifications, skills, expertise, leadership, integrity and professionalism” at the chemical weapons watchdog.

“Does this not place the efforts by some to smear our reputations, on questionable ground?” Henderson asked, questioning why two top inspectors with “impeccable records” would suddenly “go rogue.”

“Our sole duty is to be true to the facts and the science, and once that has been achieved, we will gladly accept the proven and agreed scientific outcomes,” he added. Henderson also accused the organization of “sleaze” in seeking to diminish or cast doubt on his level expertise, given that he was described as one of the watchdog’s “best” inspectors in previous performance records.

While the official OPCW report concluded that gas cylinders were likely dropped on Douma from the air (presumably by Assad’s forces), Henderson concluded there was a “higher probability” that they were “manually placed” – potentially by anti-Assad rebels in a false-flag operation. Henderson claims no explanation was ever offered as to why his significant findings were excluded.

The letter from ‘Alex’ (‘Inspector B’) assured the OPCW that there was no intent to cause harm to the organization and echoed the disbelief that two experts would go rogue “at the autumn of our careers, with nothing to gain and everything to lose,” saying such a suggestion “defies all logic.”

Despite the OPCW’s claims that the men’s assertions were not backed by evidence, a third whistleblower came forward in February to corroborate their complaints that evidence was suppressed, saying his time at the OPCW was “the most stressful and unpleasant” of his life and that he was “ashamed” for the organization. 

Retired British general John Taylor Holmes, who was on a panel of experts who heard testimony from ‘Alex’ also told RT that the whistleblowers’ evidence was “very convincing.”

Western media has barely given any attention to the scandal and appears largely to have accepted the organization’s shaky claims that the whistleblowers are not credible. 

Of course, any other approach would force mainstream journalists to reexamine their coverage of the Douma incident, which helped drum up support for airstrikes carried out by the US, UK and French militaries – before OPCW inspectors had even arrived at the scene to investigate.

Another (Third) Whistleblower Trashes OPCW's Douma Account

New doc & THIRD whistleblower hit OPCW for throwing dirt at leakers claiming Douma account was fabricated — report

A bulletproof vest displayed at the OPCW headquarters at The Hague, the Netherlands. April 2017.

© AFP / John Thys

A third whistle-blower has come forward to corroborate the previous complaints that the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) tried to suppress evidence-gathering in the Douma probe, a report says.

The alleged new whistleblower, whose redacted email was shared by the Grayzone Project on Tuesday, backed the complaints made by two former OPCW employees — South African engineer and organization's veteran Ian Henderson, and another whistleblower known as 'Alex.' 

OPCW Director-General Fernando Arias had earlier dismissed the pair — dubbed Inspector A and Inspector B in the organization's inquiry into their claims — as low-level rogue employees who conducted field work without proper authorization and which simply "could not accept that their views were not backed by evidence."

However, the person, described by Grayzone as a former senior official with the OPCW, stood by Henderson and 'Alex,' writing that his time with the organization was "the most stressful and unpleasant" one in his life.

'I feel ashamed for the Organization and I am glad I left it.'

"I fear those behind the crimes that have been perpetrated in the name of 'humanity and democracy,' they will not hesitate to do harm to me and my family," the person wrote, explaining the decision to remain anonymous.

Henderson was deployed with the fact-finding mission to Syria shortly after the alleged chemical attack in Douma. The inspector concluded that the cylinders, supposedly containing chlorine, were more likely manually placed on the ground rather than dropped from planes. According to him, the higher-ups discarded his findings without explanation, and sidelined him from the rest of the mission. 

Its final report was later used by the US and some European countries to implicate the Syrian government of Bashar Assad in conducting the attack, which the Syrian authorities vehemently deny.

The Grayzone published what they say is a written copy of Henderson's testimony at the UN in January this year.

video 4:54

According to the document, two senior fact-finding mission (FFM) officials refused to formally accept Henderson's engineering report on Douma upon its completion. The inspector unlimitedly submitted the report to OPCW's secure archive himself. But the Chief of OPCW Director-General's Cabinet instructed Henderson in an email to "remove the document from the Registry, and remove all traces, if any, of its delivery and storage there," Henderson's testimony reads.

In his alleged testimony, Henderson also refuted the claim that he was a low-level employee by pointing out that he served as "inspector/team leader," up until he was suspended in mid-May 2019. Grayzone, meanwhile, noted that an official OPCW report from February 2018 described Henderson as an "OPCW Inspection Team Leader" just two (????) before his deployment to Douma.

This was also corroborated in an email, published by WikiLeaks, in which a person believed to be Henderson's colleague claimed that it was "falsehood" that "Ian did not form part of the Douma FFM team," and accused the OPCW of "discrediting" the whistleblower's work.

Angelina Jolie Teams Up with BBC to Fight Fake News. Just Don’t Mention the BBC’s History, Kids

FILE PHOTO: Angelina Jolie poses as she attends the UK premiere of "Maleficent: Mistress of Evil" in London, Britain

October 9, 2019. Reuters / Peter Nicholls

Graham Dockery

The BBC has hired Angelina Jolie to teach kids how to spot fake news and make up their own minds on pressing issues. But given its own history of bias, is the BBC the right authority to lecture children on the real and the fake?

The venerable broadcaster will air a new series every Sunday at 11:30am - right after the morning cartoons – on BBC World News, and on YouTube and the BBC iPlayer in the UK. The series will use the reporting of the BBC World Service to illustrate how reporters sift fact from fiction, and help kids aged 13 and up to “distinguish the real from the false online,” in the words of BBC World Service Group Director Jamie Angus.

“I hope it will help children find the information and tools they need to make a difference on the issues that matter to them, drawing on the BBC World Service’s network of thousands of journalists and multiple language services around the world,” Jolie said in a statement this week.

Jolie’s fake-news-busting credentials check out. As some of her fellow celebrities spouted garbage about vaccines causing autism and Gwyneth Paltrow implored women to “steam clean” their vaginas, Jolie has been credited for speaking out about her own experiences with cancer, drawing attention to the disease and justifying her decision to opt for a double mastectomy using solid scientific research. This time, she’ll have to call again on those research skills – a more complicated task, given the political games the BBC used to play. 

A history of bias

The BBC has a less-than-stellar reputation in the information game. Though its coverage is undoubtedly more balanced than the hyper-partisan squawking of Fox News and MSNBC across the Atlantic, the BBC has over the years allowed itself to be used as a propaganda bullhorn by the British government.

I should mention here that this report comes from RT (Russia Today), otherwise known as VoP (Voice of Putin). Nevertheless, it's a good history lesson on how western media is manipulated, with their complicity, by western governments. 

Earlier this month, declassified government documents revealed how Her Majesty’s Government persuaded Reuters to set up a reporting service in the Middle East in the late 1960s, funding it covertly through the BBC. Officials at the government’s Information Research Department hoped the service would allow them to exert “a measure of political influence” over this politically volatile region, at the height of the Cold War.

At the time, British diplomats in the Middle East described the service in familiar language, saying it would combat the “calculated fabrications” of rival “slanted” news agencies.

Which is a valid argument. If only they were still combating the propaganda coming from the Palestinians, but they don't seem to be doing that anymore.

In 1953, the BBC was used by MI6 and the CIA to support a coup attempt against Iran’s democratically-elected Prime Minister, Mohammed Mossadegh. Even the BBC itself admits this, with a 2011 documentary describing how “Anti-Mossadegh material was repeatedly aired on the radio channel to the extent that Iranian staff at the BBC Persian radio service went on strike in protest.” The service was also accused of sending coded messages to the coup plotters in its broadcasts.

Flashing forward to present times, the BBC used unverified video footage and the assertions of US officials to finger Syrian leader Bashar Assad for allegedly gassing his own citizens in the city of Douma in 2018. Footage supposedly showing civilians being treated for sarin gas exposure in a hospital was used to justify joint British, American and French missile strikes on Syria, despite BBC Syria’s own producer describing the attack as staged, and an OPCW whistleblower accusing the chemical weapons watchdog of falsifying its report on the attack.

Later that year, BBC Russia correspondent Olga Ivshina was caught messaging a contact in Paris, desperate to prove that “Russia is behind” the ‘Yellow Vests’ protests consuming the city at the time. “The editorial board wants blood,” she told her contact, after failing to find any Russian influence in the demonstrations.

So is the BBC the best authority to lecture children on bias and impartiality? Probably not. But then again, no news outlet is completely free of slant. Perhaps kids should instead keep an old Russian proverb, popularized by Ronald Reagan, in mind: “Trust, but verify.”

Mainstream media has long-ago lost my trust. My attitude is 'Assume bias, don't trust anything they say if it lines up with political correctness, climate hysteria, Russia - Syria bashing, or anything else that justifies a world gone mad.'

Yes, I know Syria and Russia do some very awful things, but most of what they are accused of is propaganda for the sake of moving military equipment and the inventories of war, made by the countries who make the most profit from their military industries - USA, France & Britain.

OPCW Report Behind Syria Bombings was Altered, Whistle-blower Tells UNSC

Worst lie since fake claim sparked Iraq war? 

A former inspector with the OPCW has accused the chemical weapons watchdog of issuing a sanitized report on the alleged 2018 attack in Douma, Syria, arguing it ignored serious reservations of its own fact-finding team.

The OPCW’s final report on the Douma incident, released last March, omitted key findings of its own inspection team which would have cast serious doubt on whether a chemical attack took place at all, a now former OPCW specialist, Ian Henderson, told members of the United Nations Security Council in a recorded video address – after his visa application to attend the meeting in person was rejected.

“The findings in the final [Fact Finding Mission] report were contradictory, were a complete turnaround with what the team had understood collectively during and after the Douma deployments,” Henderson said.

Max Blumenthal✔
@MaxBlumenthal
Ian Henderson, member of OPCW team on Douma, spoke today at the UN. 

He re-stated his belief that no chemical attack occurred & called the final OPCW report a "complete turnaround in the situation from what was understood by the majority of the team and the entire Douma team." https://twitter.com/LennyZuber/status/1219372375764021249 …

Even though several members of the fact finding team “had serious misgivings that a chemical attack had occurred” as early as July 2018, the organization’s final report – compiled by another group that never even visited the incident site – nonetheless concluded there were “reasonable grounds” to all but pin the blame for the attack on Damascus.

Sanitized of any dissenting opinion, the report ignored “findings, facts, information, data or analysis” gathered by the team in the areas of witness testimony, toxicology studies, chemical analysis, as well as ballistics, the retired inspector said.

Ian Henderson, OPCW whistle-blower

Washington and its allies blamed the Syrian government for the Douma incident, with the US, France, and the UK launching joint strikes against Syria a week later, well before any official investigation could even start, and even delaying it. Western politicians and media claimed at the time – based purely on visual materials and witness accounts provided by the notorious White Helmets and other militant-linked sources – that the Syrian government forces had ‘highly likely’ dropped two poisonous gas cylinders, killing scores of civilians.

Henderson carried out a closer analysis of that pair of cylinders mysteriously found in a residential area of Douma. His ‘Engineering Assessment’ was initially leaked last May, laying out a number of hypotheses for how the cylinders wound up at the site in Douma. Most significantly, it noted a “higher probability” that they were “manually placed” instead of being “delivered from aircraft,” suggesting a party other than the Syrian government may have planted them there.

In my case, I had followed up with a further six months of engineering and ballistics studies into the cylinders, the result of which had provided further support for the view that there had not been a chemical attack.

Subsequent WikiLeaks publications would reveal that a senior OPCW official ordered “all traces” of Henderson’s assessment to be scrubbed from its archives. But despite the internal battle undermining the OPCW’s credibility, Henderson insisted the dispute should not be a matter of “political debate,” urging for any discrepancies to be “properly resolved… through the rigors of science and engineering.”

On 27 December 2019, Wikileaks released a new batch of internal documents from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). [1] An email among them reveals that Inspector Ian Henderson’s report was pulled by order of the OPCW’s chief of cabinet Sébastien Braha. [2]

The French diplomat is an "officer of the Orient" (high ranking official of the French Foreign Affairs Ministry) who was seconded to the OPCW three months after the alleged chemical attack on Douma in order to oversee the organization’s investigation.

In the email, Sébastien Braha (photo) demands: “Please get this document out of DRA [Documents Registry Archive]... And please remove all traces, if any, of its delivery/storage/whatever in DRA”.  - Voltaire Network

The informal UNSC meeting to assess the situation and inconsistencies around the FMM’s report was convened at the request of Moscow on Monday. The US and its allies accused Russia of trying to “discredit the well-respected OPCW and its staff,” even though Moscow insists that the goal, on the contrary, was to restore trust in the organization.

“The chemical incident in Syrian Douma. Why is it so important? Because it was a justification of missile strikes by the US, France and the UK in April 2018, who immediately named the Syrian Government guilty,” said Vassily Nebenzia, Russia’s permanent representative to the UN, who accused the US and allies of “crying wolf.”

Since not so long... ago, some of our colleagues invented a new paradigm, the world of 'highly likely'.

Besides listening to Henderson’s testimony, the UNSC was addressed by Russia’s OPCW representative, Alexander Shulgin, and the chief of a NGO (Foundation for the Study of Democracy) that had previously interviewed over 300 residents of Douma, shattering the official Western narrative.

Remarks by Mr. Maxim Grigoriev, Head of the Foundation for the Study of Democracy, at an Arria-formula meeting of UNSC member states "Implementation of UNSCR 2118: OPCW FFM Report on Douma

Individual responses by people living in the apartment building allegedly affected by the chlorine canisters can be found at the link immediately above.

NGO “The Foundation for the Study of Democracy” conducted an independent evaluation of the Douma incident on 7 April, 2018. 

We have interviewed:

•       Fifteen witnesses in the Douma Hospital;

•      10 residents of a house in Douma where human bodies were found;

•       300 residents of houses, situated within one kilometer from the building where the bodies were found.

The testimony of witnesses is an undisputable proof that the chemical attack in Douma was falsified. 

Those witnesses to the falsification tell how exactly it all happened: 

•       The fighters who came with the White Helmets, brought dead bodies, intimidated locals, shot at windows, forcing some people to leave their homes and isolating the rest in their apartments. Then, they brought the bodies outside and filmed the footage.  

•       One body the fighters left outside was identified by a witness. It was his brother who had earlier been killed in an artillery shelling and taken by fighters from hospital. The remaining bodies, as the witnesses supposed, were brought from the Al Thoba prison where fighters kept the people they captured, including women and children.  

•       Taking into account that other bodies had no injuries, the witnesses are confident that the people featured in the video recordings were killed just to organize the falsification.

The testimony presented above unequivocally proves that the chemical attack on 7 April, 2018, was falsified.

When preparing the report:

OPCW abstained from inquiring the above-mentioned witnesses who were permanently residing at the place of incident and were ready to testify. By all means, this is the first thing to be done to investigate the accident. The fact that OPCW Mission did not do this proves their low level of competence or lack of willingness to reveal the truth;

OPCW used data provided by people who may not have been present at the scene of incident, and who were inquired in Idlib Governorate and in other countries;

OPCW deliberately used falsified materials provided by the “White Helmets” as the main basis for their conclusions. 

On 11 March 2019,  a briefing was held at OPCW. I presented our report ”White Helmets: fact checking by eyewitnesses  and former volunteers”. It contains numerous proofs that falsification of chemical attacks was an essential part of the work of White Helmets and they can not be considered as a credible source of information. 

Officials of OPCW concealed conclusions made by its experts, deleted a number of vital facts from the report, and falsified the report itself.

For the first time over 23 years of its existence, Officials of the OPCW take part in falsification of a report. This is an unprecedented blow to the reputation of the OPCW.

Secretary-General of the United Nations is depositary of the Chemical Weapons Convention. OPCW works based on this CWC. 

NGO “The Foundation for the Study of Democracy” prepared a letter addressed to the Secretary-General (показать) that contains testimonies of above mentioned witnesses. I kindly request to circulate it among Security Council members in order to reveal the truth about the falsification of chemical attack in Douma on 7 April, 2018.

Search this blog for Douma, for many more posts on the appalling story.