5/15/20 Aaron Maté on the OPCW’s Douma Cover-up and the Latest ‘Russiagate’ Revelations

Scott Horton 0:10
All right, y’all welcome it’s Scott Horton Show. I am the director of the Libertarian Institute editorial director of antiwar.com, author of the book Fool’s Errand: Time to End the War in Afghanistan. And I’ve recorded more than 5000 interviews going back to 2003, all of which are available at ScottHorton.org. You can also sign up to the podcast feed. The full archive is also available at youtube.com/ScottHortonShow. All right, you guys introducing Aaron montay. He is a regular writer at the Gray Zone. That’s the grayzone.com and he hosts the podcast there, Push Back. Welcome back to the show. How you doing Aaron?

Aaron Mate 0:54
Hey, Scott, how are you?

Scott Horton 0:55
I’m doing great. appreciate you joining us here today. So the first thing I want to ask you about is something that you’re essentially the editor of. You didn’t write it. It’s OPC W. whistleblowers. OPC w insiders slam compromised in new Syria chemical weapons probe. And this is not about Duma. This is at a place called I’m not sure I’ll let you pronounce it a different attack from March of 2017. So just before the con shake Kuhn fake attack, which I don’t know if we got any whistleblowers on that one yet, but these people wrote this scathing report for your website here. It’s quite remarkable. Tell us about it, please.

Aaron Mate 1:44
You know, I can’t say too much about it. It. What I can say is that it was written by a team of OPC insiders. I can’t really detail exactly what that means, but what I can say is that the the piece was written by people who represent the views of a small group of current and former OPC W. Officials. And the message from them is that there is dissension inside the ranks and there is deep skepticism about the OPC w being politicized. And we saw that most starkly with the Duma leaks, which I’m sure we’ll talk about. But now these people are also coming out and saying that this same political ization, is being applied to this other investigation as well. And that was, as you say, this probe of an alleged chemical weapons attack in the Syrian town wattana in March 2017. And what’s interesting about that report, it was done by this it’s the first report of this newly formed team at the OPC w called the investigation and identification team and it was established extensively to identify alleged perpetrators of chemical weapons attacks in Syria. But what these op CW insiders write in their op ed is that basically it was set up with the sole aim of blaming any chemical weapons attack on the Syrian government so that the US and other Western powers, the ones who helped set up this new team and pushed it through, can blame Syria for chemical weapons attacks and pursue their proxy war and sanctions against Syria further, and so, this op ed just goes through the reasons to be skeptical about this latest report. It’s interesting, when you look at the media reports about this i t report, everybody took it as the OPC w saying that the that this investigation has found conclusively that the Assad government carried out this chemical weapons attack of both Farren and chlorine in this town in March 2017 When you actually read the report, all it says is that there are, quote, reasonable grounds to believe on quote, that a chemical attack occurred, which is far different from saying a chemical attack occurred and it was a standard government. All they’re saying is that it’s reasonable to believe that that it that it that the Syrian government was responsible. But as these op CW insiders point out, because that language is actually so tentative, and so ambiguous, that it also means that you can’t rule out that there are reasonable grounds to believe that it wasn’t the Syrian government that it wasn’t the Syrian government. And so even the way that this report has been ripped, has been taken by the media doesn’t even act accurately represent what the report says. And of course, these obviously, they’ll be used and give up plenty of other reasons to question even the case for even believing that there might be reasonable grounds to think that the Syrian government did it and people can read it. more of it at the gray zone com?

Scott Horton 5:02
Well, look, the deal is that if you had written this thing, it would have been great. But the fact that this was written by insiders and organization for the prevention of chemical weapons, and just the attitude behind it again, it’s absolutely scathing report the way that they criticize the official story here, such as it is, and they completely dismantle it with prejudice. You can tell. So, yeah. Can you talk a little bit about what are their arguments in here?

Aaron Mate 5:33
Well, I mean, the the most, I mean, first of all, what they do is they they enter actually the political realm, which is something that, you know, in a normal OPC w report, you wouldn’t do this case, they looked at the political question of motive. So what motive with the Syrian government after having been told that this red line by the US What motive would they have to drop chemical weapons into basically an empty field, which is, which is what allegedly happened here? If we’re supposed to believe the official narrative, that this that this was a Syrian chemical weapons attack in this town, then the what we have to believe is that the Syrian government dropped Sharon and chlorine into basically an empty space. And so why would they do that? They’re after they’ve been told of this red line and not in the many instances before. When, you know, you have instances like when when the Syrian militants were closing in on Latakia and threatening to carry out, you know, mass murder. There was no chemical weapons use then and all these other cases where, you know, even the Syrian government has lost areas, no chemical weapons use is there. So why all the sudden would they decide to use it now on this empty field, especially now that they’re working with Russia and This will also basically require Russia’s cooperation essentially, because they’re sharing military bases with Russia now, too, because now we’re talking about 2017. Well, after Russia has entered the war, so even from a point of view of motive, it doesn’t make sense. And then they get into some of the other technical stuff, which I, I will leave to them to, to summarize, because it’s complicated, and it requires a careful reading to understand and they get into, you know, the composition of bonds and, and things that technically, I’m not very well versed in, so I won’t, I won’t try. But they basically just make the case for why the idea that this was a Syrian Government attack is so implausible.

Scott Horton 7:39
Well, and a couple of points are general enough that I think that they can be paraphrased, where they’re just saying the chain of custody of the so called evidence here is completely suspect. And the people who wrote the report sat in Turkey, and received it at the hands of these NGOs who are all tied to the opposition. There’s no objective source for any of the information about This attack in the first place. So that was the chain of custody at any criminal trial in America, we get thrown right out.

Aaron Mate 8:07
So that’s the obvious one. That’s that. That’s a very good point. And Thanks for pointing it out. Yes, they they point out that the obviously there’ll be you it investigation says that they maintained chain of custody, quote, after the receipt of the items, unquote. So basically, after you get, you know, these these samples, and by the way, you don’t even get them right after the alleged incident, you get them over the course of a year, slowly coming in and into Turkey. And you’re saying that you only confirm the chain of custody, you can only vouch for the chain of custody after you’ve gotten custody, which is basically is totally meaningless. And yes, as you say, by those standards, this case, there is no court that would ever accept this stuff as evidence.

Scott Horton 8:56
Yeah. You know, and they talk about there too, he talks about, you know, these small little bits of shrapnel, little pieces of metal that they brought. And they said, Well, how come you didn’t bring the rest of it? Or we just have these little pieces instead of the actual container. And they had a plausible explanation for the container to that the Syrians when they gave up all their chemical weapons, after the big fake attack of 2013, that they kept some of the containers to fill them with conventional explosives. So if you had pieces of those, that would make sense since they were dropping regular, you know, conventional explosive bombs in the same form at By that time, since they’d gotten rid of all their chemical weapons and had some leftover.

Aaron Mate 9:48
Yeah, yeah. Now, that claim requires relying on the Syrian government’s account and, you know, so that has to be noted, but look The this is where it gets the the other cases as well, you have so many doubts now I’ve been raised about ghouta. I mean, Ted postal has done some of the some of the definitive work on that showing that the rocket ranges that were alleged against the Syrian government were actually implausible. And then it’s far more likely that the rockets that that delivered the chemical weapons and that incident actually came from militant controlled territory. And then we have the just preponderance of evidence in the Duma case, which shows how the opa CW superiors intervened to suppress all the evidence that the inspectors collected on the ground excluded their findings and excluded the key inspectors who carried out the investigation from the process and basically doctored all their evidence so you have just a series of questionable in one case in case of doom I just just completely scandalous. investigations and now you know, the fact that you’re seeing people close to the OPC W. Now feeling compelled to publicly directly challenge when it comes out with and basically say it’s been compromised, it just speaks to. It’s a huge scandal that deserves a lot of scrutiny and certainly a lot more attention.

Scott Horton 11:53
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Aaron Mate 14:29
So the Duma attack allegedly happens in April 2018. A few weeks later, the OPC w inspection team gets on the ground. They go to the sites, they take the cylinders, they tagged them, they do the measurements at the locations. They put out an interim report in July 2018. That’s pretty inconclusive, but doesn’t really say too much basically says we need to do some more investigation. Less than a year later, March 1 2019. They put out a final report and that’s when they say that there are reasonable grounds to believe that a chemical weapon that a chemical weapons attack took place, and that the chemical weapon was chlorine. And the influence of their finding, although they don’t directly say it is that the chlorine attack was carried out by the Syrian government, because that is the only party with aircraft. So and then is taken by, you know, by the media, by the US government as, as being validation for the US government airstrikes that Trump ordered shortly after the alleged attack. But then, in May of 2019, and engineering report, surfaces on the internet leaked to a group of British academics called the working group who by that point had been raising questions about some flawed or questionable language inside the final report. They were already pointing out some inconsistencies. And basically this engineering assessment is attributed to an A ob CW staff. Member named in Henderson. And it actually argues based on a detailed study of the Duma location where the cylinder where the cylinders were found. And based on the measurements that were taken there that actually, there’s a much higher likelihood that the cylinder is found there. Were not dropped from the sky, but we’re, quote manually placed. And in saying that, if you’re saying that it’s manually placed, you’re basically saying that the attack was staged. And so that sets off a huge controversy. The opposite view announces an investigation into the leak, but then we get more leaks from WikiLeaks. And now we learn a second OPC w expert, like Ian Anderson, who has written letters to the OPC w leadership right after that final report gets released in March 2019. Basically voicing his objection and saying that so much critical evidence not just in Henderson study, but A lot more, including toxicology and chemical samples from the scene showing that chlorine was found basically at trace levels. So basically at a meaningless level, and in fact, and that the chlorine that was found, can be found in basically everyday household chemicals like, you know, like bleach products and so on. So now we have to, obviously, they’ll be you, inspect rs, saying that all their evidence saying that their evidence was excluded, and we have no explanation for it. And then we get more and more leaks showing that these inspectors were minimize from the process that even though they were the ones on the ground in Syria, collecting the evidence and and actually one of them was tasked with writing the first draft of the report, because he was the he was the most senior investigator and most experienced, we see that they’ve been excluded from the process and that the opposite will be true. leadership has basically installed a very small team called the so called core team to basically take charge of writing the report. And it’s these people who are basically leaving out all the evidence that these inspectors found and, and putting in some disingenuous language and in terms of Ian Henderson’s report, we never get an explanation as to why his findings are excluded. We only learn that the OIC CW then consults three unnamed outside experts. We have no idea who they are, and we can’t even see their work except for a few fragments of it in the final report to judge for ourselves whether they’re accurate or not. Whereas we now have Ian Henderson’s you know, full detailed study where he makes the case for why the cylinders were likely manually placed so we have no way even to we have no explanation as to why Henderson’s report was excluded, and we have no way even to compare it to the reports that were relied on for the OPC W’s final conclusions.

Scott Horton 18:01
Yep. And the same question of motive remains. Why in the world would Assad do that? When the only thing that could accomplish to get him in trouble and nothing else?

Oh, yeah. I mean, Well, look, it’s, you know, with what, you know, contra mckuen happened right after Trump had been talking about and the Trump ministration. And we talking about, you know, regime change, no longer being a priority. For the US right after that. concha. Kuhn happens, and there have been all sorts of questions raised about that. And maybe one day we’ll we’ll hear more even from within the Opie CW ranks, I definitely would not rule that out. But the motive there never, ever made sense. And then you have fat and Trump, you know, responded to that allegation of Cancun with bombings, e bombs here one year later, a similar thing I thought is about to take back Duma on the outskirts of Damascus. He’s about to win and all of a sudden, we get This allegation, again, from militants on the ground in Duma, the group that controlled it at the time was j shell Islam, which is heavily backed by Saudi Arabia. They now accuse Assad of a new cup chemical weapons attack, and that again leads to Trump administration strike. So it just from a point of view, forgetting all the evidence, even of motive, why would Assad do the one thing that could trigger that he knows will trigger a US military response it you know, it makes no sense.

Yeah, well, which is funny because none of his motives make any sense as according to the Americans here, and they’re lying against him this whole time that well, all he wanted to do was get up in the morning and kill every last woman, man, woman and child in his country. But luckily, the plucky moderate rebels were there to resist him and try to stop him from doing that. And we don’t matter that none of that ever made any sense whatsoever. They had a narrative. They’re sticking with it, which is fine. But you know, what’s funny is this one that they’re debunking here in this piece is one that I didn’t even hear of which I guess, maybe goes to what you were saying about how, if it even happened at all, it was a bomb dropped out in the middle of an empty field somewhere. And there were no real consequences of it to report on. But I wonder, do you even think there was an attack at all at this point, or what was there?

Aaron Mate 20:31
No, I, I, I, I I have no reason to doubt that something happened. I mean, there was some militant activity around there and you know, this is a a crazy proxy war. So there’s bombings all over the place, it wouldn’t be hard to to take an attack that happens and pretend it was a chemical weapons attack if you’re the militants on the ground. It is interesting, though, that, you know, the reason why hasn’t gotten much attention is because there were no even casualties. Also, by the way, the hospital records, there are no available hospital records. And you know, that’s possibly because maybe there is a you know, it’s it’s a war and it’s hard to keep, you don’t have records for everything, or there just weren’t any actual casualties, which, you know, which seems to be the case. So look, it’s it’s very sketchy. And it’s funny. It’s interesting to me that they chose this one first, and not Duma. And I think the reason is, even though the AI, even though the IIT is mandated to investigate Duma, I don’t see how they can do that. Now. I don’t see how they can put their name anybody can put their name on a report that carries out the OPC W’s function now, which is basically to lend credibility to, you know, war mongering with Syria and to justify the US strikes that took place in response to the doom allegations, but how can they put anybody seriously put their name on that without Taking on the evidence that was excluded from the initial do my reports from the OPC w just anybody with any credibility? I just can’t do it. I think the best they could do is say that the evidence is inconclusive. But given now that all the evidence has come out the engineering report and the toxicology and the chemical samples, I mean, they’re gonna have to grapple with that, especially because Ian Henderson, before the ultra CW started trying to paint him falsely as this rogue actor who, you know, acted on his own without permission. He was even asked to submit his report to the IIT for their consideration. So they actually have to consider his report now. So for them to come out and weigh in on Duma means they’ll have to basically refute his engineering and he being an experienced engineering engineer at the open cw, I mean, he’s been with them since its inception in 1997. And him having taken the measurements at the scene, in Duma, and literally Got on his got down on all fours and crawled around and took the measurements. It’s gonna be very hard for them to take on his findings and dismiss them. So I think the fact that they did this one first, where there’s no countervailing evidence available and it’s it’s something people hadn’t even heard of, that strikes me as possibly being a deliberate choice. Yeah. Which I’d say also, it’s the dissension within the ranks is not just confirmed to being with these two whistleblowers we know about in Henderson and his colleague who was also a senior member of the opposite w team at the grey zone. We’ve published now, two separate notes from other whistleblowers at the OPC w people expressing serious discomfort with how the OPC W is being run, and both of them expressing just strong objections to how the Duma investigators were treated. So just just to show that this is an organization, and now with our with this piece we published about the IoT report. There is, there is major dissension inside the ranks, and I suspect we’re gonna hear more about it. As things unfold, great.

Scott Horton 24:56
Well, we’ll be keeping our eyes on the gray zone about that. And now listen, let me ask you a couple things about some Russia gate updates here. Yeah. First of all, we’ve known all along, since I’m not sure when I think 2017 or at least 18, that Mike Flynn, in fact, had colluded with a foreign government in the or to even in during the election campaign season and then during even the run up to the inauguration there in the transition period. And now, apparently, there’s even a little bit more information coming out about a possible collusion between the Trump campaign and a foreign power Russia?

Not Russia, but Israel and that was made known to us. pretty clearly when Michael Flynn was indicted it’s just the problem is the media ignored the Israel part of Michael Flynn’s indictment were basically he confirmed that at Israel’s request, the Trump the Trump transition team tried to intervene to undermine a UN Security Council vote that condemned Israeli settlement building in the occupied territories. The vote was taken in December 2016, just one month after Trump’s victory. And the Trump transition, including Michael Flynn, tried very hard to get another country to to veto that, that vote to vote against it because the Obama administration for pretty much the first time was not going to veto a UN resolution criticizing Israel. He wasn’t going to vote for But it was going to abstain, which meant that unless somebody else intervened, it would pass it would be approved. And so the Israeli government asked the Trump transition to intervene, and they tried and Michael Flynn helped carry that out when he called the Russian ambassador, Sergei Kislyak. And one of the things that they discussed was, you know, Flynn trying to convince him to vote against this, but the Russian government declined. So we’ve known about this for a long time, it’s all gotten completely ignored, because we’re not supposed to air about possible Israeli collusion. We’re only supposed to care about this non existent Russian collusion, which occupied everybody for three years until the fantasy collapsed. And now to back

Kislyak didn’t hear about it, he would have known that it was his job to give Flynn his marching orders not to decline a request

Aaron Mate 26:50
for Exactly, exactly. And, and then there is more documents that have come out recently with Roger stone where we’re in his case he was in contact with some some prominent Israeli figures. I don’t think we know exactly who yet. But it’s and Roger stone is relaying some offers of assistance from, from some prominent Israelis to help to help out the Trump campaign. Although you know, Roger stone is a pretty big blowhard saw. It’s hard for me to take anything he says seriously. I mean, for example, he was claiming for a long time that he had a secret back channel to WikiLeaks. And that was, of course a complete fabrication too. So but you know, look, there certainly that the, the fact that the Trump administration tried to undermine the the fact that the Trump transition tried to undermine the outgoing administration’s policy, at the request of the Israeli government and donors like Sheldon Adelson shows that certainly there was a close tie between the Trump circle and Israel and it’s just funny that unfortunately, because you know, blanket support for these really government is bipartisan. Even though we’ve known about this forever, it’s just you know, it doesn’t register. We don’t see it covered on msnbc. There’s, you know, the there’s like there’s liberal groups called the Moscow project, but there’s no you know, which is formed to investigate Trump Russia context, but there’s no Tel Aviv project, which is formed to investigate or scrutinize Trump Israeli contact. And that’s just because, you know, the policy of blind support for Israel is pretty much bipartisan. And whereas this Russia thing was a completely partisan and baseless scam, two that consumed our attention for three years and now we’re just the only information we’re learning now is just getting more of a window into to the extent of the scam and in the Michael Flynn case. We’ve had new documents this week, you know, that strongly point to what has been pretty apparent all along is that he was set up by the FBI who interviewed him? Because they wanted to get him fired? And that’s an interesting question as to why they did I suspect, it might even have something to do with Syria, because, you know, I, as you’ve covered extensively on your show, it was Flynn’s agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency that came out with that report, very early on in the story in the Syria proxy, where basically saying that, you know, the people who were the strongest fighting forces inside Syria, who we were supporting, or talking about supporting were the Salafi militias were al Qaeda and ISIS. And so, you know, there is antagonism towards Michael Flynn, inside the national security state. And I’ve always wondered whether the fact that he was calling out what the US was doing in Syria, I’ve always wondered whether that was a factor.

Scott Horton 29:51
Yeah, I mean, it wasn’t that he was such a hawk on Iran, which he is because they’re all hawks on Iran didn’t seem to bother him that much. So it’s not like he was going to be able to, you know, single handedly undo the Iran deal or something like that. And that ended up happening anyway under his replacement john bolton,

Aaron Mate 30:17
so. Yeah, ah, yep.

Scott Horton 30:18
So yeah, I think you’re right. It probably was about Syria. And now one more thing here about the collusion is the new report about Christopher Steele. And his meeting with Clinton campaign officials and whether this amounted to collusion. Obviously, Christopher Steele was a Brit, not an American. I don’t know if that counts or not. But then I want to ask you, too, about this whole Oh, no, the Russian collusion was really for Hillary and they were trying to sabotage Trump’s spin that’s going on around here lately, which seemed to have been attached to these new revelations here about the clinton lawyers meeting with Steel.

Aaron Mate 31:01
Oh, so you’re saying that that the allegation is that in fact that, that the Russian dissident that there was a Russian disinformation campaign trying to under

Scott Horton 31:13
Trump rather than Clinton? Yah.

Aaron Mate 31:15
Yeah. I mean, you know, whether this is whether this is Russian disinformation? I don’t know. I mean I, I suspect that I mean, the odds of the Russian government trying to get involved one way or the other. You know, I, I don’t see what motive they would have. They would have had to try to hurt Trump. I mean, Trump was trying to Trump is calling for better ties with Russia. So I don’t see the Russian government having an interest in trying to undermine him. And at that point, it was everybody believed that Hillary was gonna win anyway. So I don’t give that allegation, much weight. I mean, what I do know is that the fact that Steel was meeting with Clinton and DNC people to show the extent to which the Clinton campaign the DNC had a role in basically every facet of the Russia gate scam. They had a major role in the collusion aspect and that it was Christopher Steele, who first generated these allegations. And Christopher Steele says that one, you know, some of the things he included in his report actually came from the clinton DNC people he met with. So he says that this one DNC attorney last name assessment, gave him the idea which he included in his dossier, that there was some secret communication between the Trump campaign and this Russian bank, alpha bank. And then this led to all these crazy theories that that was the way the Trump administration and Russia conspired by speaking over the servers. There was like a major article in The New Yorker and in slate, and of course endlessly on MSNBC and CNN. And it turns out that you know that this idea comes from a Clinton campaign lawyer and steel just puts that in his dossier is somehow being a serious allegation or a serious theory. And so it just underscores that, and basically much every aspect of the Russia scam, you have a major DNC Clinton camp role in the collusion piece of this, you have the steel dossier, and all that stuff and how that was the bait that was used in the FBI investigation to get surveillance warrant on Carter page at minimum, as we already know, and then you have even in the Russian hacking education, who does that come from? CrowdStrike. Who are they they’re, they’re a DNC contractor. Even the you know, all the all the fear mongering about Russian social media trolls, that comes from according to The Washington Post, veterans from of the Obama and Clinton camps, who after the election came up with this theory that Russian so Media trolls had use sophisticated propaganda to sway voters in key states. And that’s what helped elect Trump and they shared those findings with the Senate or they shared their theories with the Senate Intelligence Committee, and the Senate Intelligence Committee Chair mark warner then flew out to Facebook. And, and and shared that idea with Facebook and not long after that, Facebook after initially concluding that these Russian social media pages were just basically juvenile clickbait commercial operations. Then they came out with these findings, basically lending credence to the theories of the Obama and Clinton operative so all the key aspects of the Russia scam collusion, the hacking, social media, you have a major part is enroll and it’s you know, if we had a minimally serious media all this would have been laughed at a long time ago but yet look what happened. It consumed our US media in politics for over three years.

Scott Horton 35:02
Yeah. It’s really kind of amazing. And yet also typical, shocking, but not surprising, as they say. Yeah, for sure. And especially I love the one about the alpha bank where it turned out that it was just a spam bot for the Trump hotels or whatever it

Aaron Mate 35:19
as. Yeah, it was mining. It was it was it was sending out marketing emails. Yeah. And using the same server, it’s, you know, but yet, if you go back, I mean, you could, on every aspect of this thing. There’s hours and hours of cable news footage of, you know, serious people supposedly taking all his with, you know, sober very, very serious concern as if all this means something when really it’s just it’s, it’s all fantasy. It’s all complete fantasy.

Scott Horton 35:50
Yeah. Well, and now they’re doing the same thing to China as well. They just had this story last week or Trump is in hock to China 10s of millions of dollars. Oops. And then they retracted it because that wasn’t true.

Yeah, they they said that Trump owes the Bank of China 10s of millions. And then they came out a week later and say, oops, we made a mistake. We forgot to call the Bank of China. And when we did, they told us that he wants out us this, but that the that alone was passed on to someone else. So it’s not even us anymore. That that that holds alone. You know, it’s so yes, the the sloppy reporting definitely continues.

Yeah. And I think that even sold it. The Chinese bank had sold the debt off back in 2012. So four years before he even an.

Aaron Mate 36:43
Yeah, yah. difficult. Yeah. All right.

Scott Horton 36:44
Well, listen, I appreciate all your great journalism and you do a great job and I love your show and all your articles and really appreciate your time on the show again here.

Aaron Mate 36:55
Scott, thank you. Thanks for having me b

Scott Horton 36:57
ck. Aren’t you guys that is Aaron Mata. He is actually The gray zone project that is the gray zone.com and first of all you got to read this thing by the OPC w whistleblowers. It’s something else here. Exclusive OPC w insider slam compromised new Syria chemical weapons probe and then also check out Aaron’s show he’s got a brand new interview of Noam Chomsky up there on pushback. And all of that is available for you at the gray zone calm. The Scott Horton show, Antiwar Radio can be heard on kpfk 90.7 FM in LA, APSradio.com antiwar.com ScottHorton.org and libertarianinstitute.org