Alright y'all, Scott Horton Show.
Check out the archives at scotthorton.org and at libertarianinstitute.org slash scotthortonshow.
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Alright, on the line, I got our friend Phil Giraldi.
He's a former CIA and DIA officer and is the Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest.
And he writes, of course, for UNZ.com and for the American Conservative Magazine at theamericanconservative.com.
Welcome back to the show, Phil.
How's it going?
I'm fine, Scott.
How about you?
I'm doing good.
Hey, I forgot to put my ear goggles on here.
Hey, so, big poison gas attack and a lot of hype.
I think I've seen this movie before, but I don't know.
Sometimes the sequel's got a different director or something.
Can you fill us in what you know about this thing?
Well, there's definitely a different director in Washington.
Maybe not for the better.
The fact is that I'm hearing from sources on the ground in the Middle East, people who are intimately familiar with the intelligence that is available, who are saying that the essential narrative that we're all hearing about the Syrian government or the Russians using chemical weapons on innocent civilians is a sham.
The intelligence confirms pretty much the account that the Russians have been giving since last night, which is that they hit a warehouse where the rebels—now, these are rebels, of course, that are connected with al-Qaeda, where the rebels were storing chemicals of their own, and it basically caused an explosion that resulted in the casualties.
Apparently, the intelligence on this is very clear.
People in both the agency and in the military who are aware of the intelligence are freaking out about this because essentially Trump completely misrepresented what he already should have known but maybe didn't, and they're afraid that this is moving towards a situation that could easily turn into an armed conflict.
Crying out loud, Phil.
All right, so tell me everything you can, again, about these sources.
I know you can't say too much, but say everything that you can about how you're learning this, please.
Okay.
These are essentially sources who are right on top of the issue in the Middle East.
They're people that are stationed there with the military and with the intelligence agencies that are aware and have seen the intelligence.
And as I say, they are coming back to contacts over here in the States and telling us essentially that they are astonished by how this is being played by the administration and by the U.S. media.
And they are, in some cases, people are considering going public to stop it.
So, you know, they're that concerned about it.
They're that upset by what's going on.
And on that, can you say specifically, you're saying former or current CIA or military officers are considering going public at this point right now?
There are some.
Apparently, they are considering that because they're really shocked about the way this thing is moving.
And I wouldn't categorize them as CIA and military officers.
They're certainly military personnel and their intelligence personnel who are stationed in the Middle East and are, you know, active duty there and seeing the intelligence that the United States government has in its hands about what happened in Syria.
And the intelligence indicates that it was not an attack by the Syrian government using chemical weapons.
All right.
But you're saying that the intelligence is that it seems like it was a Syrian government attack, but that all they did was hit a building that had some chemicals in it and that was what caused the exposure.
That's what they think?
That's what they believe.
They believe that the evidence indicates, yes, there was indeed an attack, but it was an attack with conventional weapons with a bomb and that the bomb basically ignited the chemicals that were already in place that had been put in there by the, as I say, the terrorist group that is affiliated with al-Qaeda.
And now you say that they're so concerned they might come forward because how fast this thing is moving.
How fast is it moving?
Well, it's moving really fast.
Apparently, the concern is among the people who are active duty personnel is that the White House is anticipating doing something to take steps against the Syrian government.
What that might consist of, nobody knows.
But Trump, I think, was sending a fairly clear signal yesterday.
And so was our ambassador to the U.N. about the heinousness of this act.
Trump spoke about crossing numerous red lines and essentially they are fearful that this is going to escalate.
Now, bear in mind also the other side of the story, which I'm sure you're fully aware of, is that Assad had no motive to do this.
Assad, if anything, had a negative motive.
He had gotten off the hook with the administration basically saying that there was no longer an imperative to remove him from office.
And this was a big win for him.
To then turn around and use chemical weapons 48 hours later does not fit any possible scenario.
Although I've seen several quoted out there, but they're quite ridiculous.
It was completely in Assad's interest to not create an incident.
Well, what about just some dumb colonel?
Well, there are plenty of dumb colonels around, but most of them are in our army.
That was an argument made in the last.
There was always the argument made in 2013 that there was a dumb guy at the lower level, the guy who was on the phone.
Do you remember?
They were talking about him, and they were confused by what had happened.
And they took the confusion as verification that he was somehow involved.
Now, we don't have, as far as I know, any evidence in any direction indicating that that was the case.
But, hey, if it turns out there is evidence and there was a dumb colonel, I would assume that the United States government, NSA, already has that.
And it's already in their possession, and if that's true, they should perhaps be forthcoming with it.
But this is a story we've seen repeatedly over and over and over again where allegations are made for political reasons, and they're not backed up by facts.
Well, Nancy Youssef, who's a great reporter that I respect very much, a Pentagon reporter, she quoted some Pentagon general, I guess, maybe paraphrased him, saying that, well, what they think is that because Rex Tillerson had signaled that Assad, now that regime change is no longer the object of American policy in Syria, that that was why Assad chose this time to test Donald Trump to see how much he could get away with.
What do you think of that?
I think that's ridiculous.
You know, why, if you have everything going your way, you're winning the war, and you suddenly have your major antagonist basically saying they're going to leave you alone, why would you test the situation?
Yeah, I've seen that argument.
She's not the only one to make it, but it's a ridiculous argument.
Don't they have a psychological warfare division in the Pentagon where they can check these narratives and talking points before they use them on us?
I guess not.
Well, presumably they do fact checks on stuff like this, but I don't know how deep that goes.
I was just doing an article earlier today on some of these comments that the commander of Central Command, General Votel, was making about the Iranians, and the arguments being made are totally ridiculous.
And I think we're into something like a fantasy world now where there's a political narrative that dictates what these people in power are going to say, and it's become an astonishing, like a netherworld of some kind.
As I was reading Votel's comments, I was thinking, this is ridiculous.
He had arguments about what Iranians were doing that were not even plausible, and yet he was making them as if they were facts.
Well, and he's also said, was it him or Nicholson that said that, oh yeah, it's perfectly plausible that the Russians are backing the Taliban in Afghanistan now, even though America is having the Indians buy helicopters from the Russians to give to the Afghan government to get around the American sanctions.
Hey, will you buy some Russian helicopters for us, India?
Thanks.
Yeah, well, and it wasn't Flynn who was saying that the Iranians were actually supporters of al-Qaeda, pretending not to be, but they actually were.
I mean, you know, these people are three- and four-star generals, and you wonder if they're sane.
And this is, again, with this Syrian business coming up here, instead of the media, instead of waiting and seeing what the evidence was concerning what had happened, they went immediately to the source material that was provided by the opposition.
And they took the opposition's point of view and accepted that as if it were fact.
And, all right, it might turn out that, hey, Assad really had a brain fart, and he actually did this.
But let's wait to see, before we start a war, what the actual evidence is and what evidence the U.S. government, the U.S. government intelligence agencies, have Syria covered completely.
If there was a phone call made, we'll have it.
If there was a trajectory of a bomb coming in, we'll have it.
If there's analysis of what the actual chemical on the ground was, we'll have it.
But instead, we're, again, going through this kind of rush to war that we almost had with Obama back in 2013.
Well, I'm glad you brought up 2013 again, because at that time, John Kerry, of course, was way out ahead, saying, we know, we know, we know, 35 times in one statement, as counted by Ray McGovern, that Assad did this sarin attack.
And then it turned out that story completely fell apart.
And we know this especially from Seymour Hersh's great reporting and later confirmations of it.
And yet we also know from just right around this time last year, Phil, in Obama's big exit interview with Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic magazine, even though the article begins with, oh, yeah, Assad did it, and everybody knows that, and the red line, blah, blah, buried in the middle of the article is that right at the time they were to be starting the attack, the director of national intelligence, James Clapper, came to Obama and said, the intelligence here is not a slam dunk.
In other words, I refuse to stand by it, and I won't back you up, Mr. President.
And we also know that Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had told the media, when questioned, he said, me?
I don't know why we have to do this right now.
And that was both of them signaling to Barack Obama that, hey, you don't have to do this.
In fact, we prefer you don't, this kind of thing.
I'm not exactly sure how to paraphrase it, but it seemed like it was the national security state was saving the president from his stupid red line trap that he had set for himself.
But now maybe things have changed about who's on whose side.
What's with Pompeo?
What's with Dan Coats?
Are they going to try to protect Donald Trump from doing the dumbest thing since Bush invaded Iraq right now, or are they just going to push him right on into it?
Well, I mean, the scary thing about Trump is that there's no clear indication that he listens to anybody.
And, you know, is McMaster going to be able to do this, or Mattis, or any of them in the food chain?
If he's basically like my impression yesterday, again, with the press conference was that he was shooting from the lip, that he could not possibly have seen all the intelligence or known what, you know, what we even knew at that point about this situation in Syria.
But I think he was just saying what he wanted to.
All right, Phil.
Well, I know your phone's ringing off the hook and you got to go.
But thanks very much.
We'll catch up on this probably.
I may just interview you about this again tomorrow, if that's all right.
Well, tomorrow I'm going to be down in Ron Paul country.
I'm going to be speaking at his conference on Saturday on Trump foreign policy, of all things.
All right.
Well, everybody anywhere near Houston, show up for that.
OK.
All right.
Thanks, Phil.
Appreciate it.
All right.
Bye-bye.
Thanks.
You heard him.
