MEMORANDUM FOR: U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, and Foreign Minister of Russia Sergey Lavrov<\/p>\n
FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)<\/p>\n
SUBJECT: Sarin Attack at Ghouta on Aug. 21, 2013<\/p>\n
In a Memorandum of Oct. 1, 2013<\/span>, we asked each of you to make public the intelligence upon which you based your differing conclusions on who was responsible for the sarin chemical attack at Ghouta, outside Damascus on Aug. 21, 2013. On Dec. 10, 2015, Eren Erdem, a member of parliament in Turkey, citing official documents, blamed Turkey for facilitating the delivery of sarin to rebels in Syria.<\/p>\n Mr. Kerry, you had blamed the Syrian government. Mr. Lavrov, you had described the sarin as \u201chomemade\u201d and suggested anti-government rebels were responsible. Each of you claimed to have persuasive evidence to support your conclusion.<\/p>\n Neither of you responded directly to our appeal to make such evidence available to the public, although, Mr. Lavrov, you came close to doing so. In a speech<\/span><\/p>\n at the UN on Sept. 26, 2013, you made reference to the views we presented in our VIPS Memorandum, <\/span>Is Syria a Trap?<\/span><\/em>, sent to President Obama three weeks earlier.<\/p>\n Pointing to strong doubt among chemical weapons experts regarding the evidence adduced to blame the government of Syria for the sarin attack, you also referred to the \u201copen letter sent to President Obama by former operatives of the CIA and the Pentagon,\u201d in which we expressed similar doubt.<\/p>\n Mr. Kerry, on Aug. 30, 2013, you blamed the Syrian government, publicly and repeatedly, for the sarin attack. But you failed to produce the kind of \u201cIntelligence Assessment\u201d customarily used to back up such claims.<\/p>\n We believe that this odd lack of a formal \u201cIntelligence Assessment\u201d is explained by the fact that our former colleagues did not believe the evidence justified your charges and that, accordingly, they resisted pressure to \u201cfix the intelligence around the policy,\u201d as was done to \u201cjustify\u201d the attack on Iraq.<\/p>\n Intelligence analysts were telling us privately (and we told the President in our Memorandum<\/span> of Sept. 6, 2013) that, contrary to what you claimed, \u201cthe most reliable intelligence shows that Bashar al-Assad was not<\/em><\/strong> responsible for the chemical incident that killed and injured Syrian civilians on August 21.\u201d<\/p>\n This principled dissent from these analysts apparently led the White House to create a new art form, a \u201cGovernment Assessment,\u201d to convey claims that the government in Damascus was behind the sarin attack. It was equally odd that the newly minted genre of report offered not one item of verifiable evidence.<\/p>\n (We note that you used this new art form \u201cGovernment (not Intelligence) Assessment\u201d a second time \u2013 again apparently to circumvent intelligence analysts\u2019 objections. On July 22, 2014, just five days after the shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, after the media asked you to come up with evidence supporting the charges you leveled against \u201cpro-Russian separatists\u201d on the July 20 Sunday talk shows, you came up with the second, of only two, \u201cGovernment Assessment.\u201d Like the one on the chemical attack in Syria, the assessment provided meager fare when it comes to verifiable evidence.)<\/p>\n Claims and Counterclaims<\/strong><\/p>\n Speaking to the United Nations General Assembly on Sept. 24, 2013, President Obama asserted: \u201cIt\u2019s an insult to human reason and to the legitimacy of this institution to suggest that anyone other than the [Syrian] regime carried out this attack [at Ghouta].\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Lavrov, that same day you publicly complained that U.S. officials kept claiming \u201c\u2019the Syrian regime,\u2019 as they call it, is guilty of the use of chemical weapons, without providing comprehensive proof.\u201d Two days later you told the U.N. General Assembly you had given Mr. Kerry \u201cthe latest compilation of evidence, which was an analysis of publicly available information.\u201d You also told the Washington Post, \u201cThis evidence is not something revolutionary. It\u2019s available on the Internet.\u201d<\/p>\n On the Internet? Mr. Kerry, if your staff avoided calling your attention to Internet reports about Turkish complicity in the sarin attack of Aug. 21, 2013, because they lacked confirmation, we believe you can now consider them largely confirmed.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Documentary Evidence<\/strong><\/p>\n Addressing fellow members of parliament on Dec. 10, 2015, Turkish MP Eren Erdem from the Republican People\u2019s Party (a reasonably responsible opposition group) confronted the Turkish government on this key issue. Waving a copy of \u201cCriminal Case Number 2013\/120,\u201d Erdem referred to official reports and electronic evidence documenting a smuggling operation with Turkish government complicity.<\/p>\n In an interview with RT four days later, Erdem said Turkish authorities had acquired evidence of sarin gas shipments to anti-government rebels in Syria, and did nothing to stop them.<\/p>\n The General Prosecutor in the Turkish city of Adana opened a criminal case, and an indictment stated \u201cchemical weapons components\u201d from Europe \u201cwere to be seamlessly shipped via a designated route through Turkey to militant labs in Syria.\u201d Erdem cited evidence implicating the Turkish Minister of Justice and the Turkish Mechanical and Chemical Industry Corporation in the smuggling of sarin.<\/p>\n The Operation<\/strong><\/p>\n According to Erdem, the 13 suspects arrested in raids carried out against the plotters were released just a week after they were indicted, and the case was closed \u2014 shut down by higher authority. Erdem told RT that the sarin attack at Ghouta took place shortly after the criminal case was closed and that the attack probably was carried out by jihadists with sarin gas smuggled through Turkey.<\/p>\n Small wonder President Erdogan has accused Erdem of \u201ctreason.\u201d It was not Erdem\u2019s first \u201coffense.\u201d Earlier, he exposed corruption by Erdogan family members, for which a government newspaper branded him an \u201cAmerican puppet, Israeli agent, a supporter of the terrorist PKK and the instigator of a coup.\u201d<\/p>\n In our Sept. 6, 2013 Memorandum for the President<\/span>, we reported that coordination meetings had taken place just weeks before the sarin attack at a Turkish military garrison in Antakya \u2013 just 15 miles from the Syrian border with Syria and 55 miles from its largest city, Aleppo.<\/p>\n In Antakya, senior Turkish, Qatari and U.S. intelligence officials were said to be coordinating plans with Western-sponsored rebels, who were told to expect an imminent escalation in the fighting due to \u201ca war-changing development.\u201d This, in turn, would lead to a U.S.-led bombing of Syria, and rebel commanders were ordered to prepare their forces quickly to exploit the bombing, march into Damascus, and remove the Assad government.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n A year before, the New York Times reported<\/span> that the Antakya area had become a \u201cmagnet for foreign jihadis, who are flocking into Turkey to fight holy war in Syria.\u201d The Times quoted a Syrian opposition member based in Antakya, saying the Turkish police were patrolling this border area \u201cwith their eyes closed.\u201d<\/p>\n And, Mr. Lavrov, while the account given by Eren Erdem before the Turkish Parliament puts his charges on the official record, a simple Google search including \u201cAntakya\u201d shows that you were correct in stating the Internet contains a wealth of contemporaneous detail<\/span> supporting Erdem\u2019s disclosures.<\/p>\n Mr. Kerry, while in Moscow on Dec. 15, you said to a Russian interviewer<\/span> that Syrian President Assad \u201chas gassed his people \u2013 I mean, gas hasn\u2019t been used in warfare formally for years \u2013 for \u2013 and gas is outlawed, but Assad used it.\u201d<\/p>\n Three days later The Washington Post dutifully repeated the charge about Assad\u2019s supposed killing \u201chis own people with chemical weapons.\u201d U.S. media have made this the conventional wisdom. The American people are not fully informed. There has been no mainstream media reporting on Turkish MP Erdem\u2019s disclosures.<\/p>\n Renewed Appeal<\/strong><\/p>\n We ask you again, Secretary Kerry and Foreign Minister Lavrov, to set the record straight on this important issue. The two of you have demonstrated an ability to work together on important matters \u2013 the Iran nuclear deal, for example \u2013 and have acknowledged a shared interest in defeating ISIS, which clearly is not<\/em><\/strong> Turkish President Erdogan\u2019s highest priority. Indeed, his aims are at cross-purposes to those wishing to tamp down the violence in Syria.<\/p>\n After the shoot-down of Russia\u2019s bomber on Nov. 24, President Vladimir Putin put Russian forces in position to retaliate the next time, and told top defense officials, \u201cAny targets threatening our [military] group or land infrastructure must be immediately destroyed.\u201d We believe that warning should be taken seriously. What matters, though, is what Erdogan believes.<\/p>\n There is a good chance Erdogan will be dismissive of Putin\u2019s warning, as long as the Turkish president believes he can depend on NATO always to react in the supportive way it did after the shoot-down.<\/p>\n One concrete way to disabuse him of the notion that he has carte blanche<\/em> to create incidents that could put not only Turkey, but also the U.S., on the verge of armed conflict with Russia, would be for the U.S. Secretary of State and the Russian Foreign Minister to coordinate a statement on what we believe was a classic false-flag chemical attack on Aug. 21, 2013, facilitated by the Turks and aimed at mousetrapping President Obama into a major attack on Syria.<\/p>\n One of our colleagues, a seasoned analyst of Turkish affairs, put it this way: \u201cErdogan is even more dangerous if he thinks that he now has NATO license to bait Russia \u2014 as he did with the\u00a0shoot-down. I\u00a0don\u2019t think NATO is willing to give him that broader license, but he is a loose cannon.\u201d<\/p>\n FOR THE STEERING GROUP, VETERAN INTELLIGENCE PROFESSIONALS FOR SANITY<\/p>\n Graham E. Fuller, Vice-Chair, National Intelligence Council (ret.)<\/p>\n Philip Giraldi, CIA, Operations Officer (ret.)<\/p>\n Larry Johnson, CIA & State Department (ret.)<\/p>\n John Kiriakou, Former CIA Counterterrorism Officer<\/p>\n Edward Loomis, NSA, Cryptologic Computer Scientist (ret.)<\/p>\n David MacMichael, National Intelligence Council (ret.)<\/p>\n Ray McGovern, former US Army infantry\/intelligence officer & CIA analyst (ret.)<\/p>\n Elizabeth Murray, Deputy National Intelligence Officer for the Near East, National Intelligence Council (ret)<\/p>\n Todd E. Pierce, MAJ, US Army Judge Advocate (Ret.)<\/p>\n Scott Ritter, former Maj., USMC, former UN Weapon Inspector, Iraq<\/p>\n Coleen Rowley, FBI Special Agent and former Minneapolis Division Legal Counsel (ret.)<\/p>\n Robert David Steele, former CIA Operations Officer<\/p>\n Peter Van Buren, U.S. Department of State, Foreign Service Officer (ret.) (associate VIPS)<\/p>\n Kirk Wiebe, former Senior Analyst, SIGINT Automation Research Center, NSA<\/p>\n Ann Wright, Col., US Army (ret.); Foreign Service Officer (resigned)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) is a group of current and former officials of the United States Intelligence Community, including some from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the U.S. State Department’s Intelligence Bureau (INR), and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). It was formed in January 2003 as a “coast-to-coast enterprise” to protest the use of faulty intelligence “upon which the US\/UK invasion of Iraq was based.” The group issued a letter before the 2003 invasion of Iraq stating that intelligence analysts were not being listened to by policy makers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" MEMORANDUM FOR: U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, and Foreign Minister of Russia Sergey Lavrov FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) SUBJECT: Sarin Attack at Ghouta on Aug. 21, 2013 In a Memorandum of Oct. 1, 2013, we asked each of you to make public the intelligence upon which you based your differing conclusions…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2382","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2382"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2382\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}