If a "Sarin Bomb" Exploded Where WH Claims, Casualties Would Have Occurred Directly Across the Street

Accounting for wind direction at the time of the so-called "sarin bombing," the red oval indicates where large numbers of casualties would have been found — including immediately across the road from the site the White House intelligence report identifies as the bomb site. (See report below for more information. Click to enlarge all images.)

by Gaius Publius

Earlier we reported on Dr. Theodore Postol's work examining the alleged 2017 "sarin bombing" in Khan Sheikhoun, Syria — see "New Evidence that Syrian Gas Story Was Fabricated by the White House" and "Theodore Postol: Khan Sheikhoun Victim Videos Can’t Be from the Claimed "Sarin" Munitions Site" for more information.

We also wrote about the 2017 Khan Sheikhoun incident here, citing other sources: "Another Intelligence Group Makes the Case: Assad's Responsibility Is Not Proved." It's not just Dr. Postol who's raising questions.

The first of the two reports we reproduced from Dr. Postol (first link above, issued April 14) contained this conclusion (emphasis mine):

It is now clear from video evidence that the WHR report [White House Intelligence Report of April 11, justifying the U.S. Tomahawk strike after the fact] was fabricated without input from the professional intelligence community.

The press reported on April 4 that a nerve agent attack had occurred in Khan Shaykhun, Syria during the early morning hours locally on that day. On April 7, The United States carried out a cruise missile attack on Syria ordered by President Trump. It now appears that the president ordered this cruise missile attack without any valid intelligence to support it.

In order to cover up the lack of intelligence to supporting the president’s action, the National Security Council produced a fraudulent intelligence report on April 11 four days later. The individual responsible for this report was Lieutenant General H. R. McMaster, the National Security Advisor. The McMaster report is completely undermined by a significant body of video evidence taken after the alleged sarin attack and before the US cruise missile attack that unambiguously shows the claims in the WHR could not possibly be true. This cannot be explained as a simple error.

These charges are serious and two-fold. First, that it's not at all certain there was a "sarin bombing" to begin with. There's plenty of indication that evidence of sarin use, and evidence that it was from an aerial bombing, may well have been manufactured or tampered with by "health officials" in rebel-held (al-Qaeda-connected) Idlib province, where Khan Sheikhoun is located.

Second, that given the obvious video evidence of possible tampering — along with videos of health workers and others handling supposed "sarin" victims with bare hands — the White House report (WHR) must both be in error, and be knowingly in error. There's a phrase for a government issuing knowingly wrong reports that lead to war, and quite a history behind the practice, including in the U.S.

Keep both of Dr. Postol's conclusions in mind as you read what's below — that the case for an aerial sarin attack in Khan Sheikhoun at the site identified by the White House as "ground zero" is seriously undercut by available video evidence, and that the White House intelligence officials faked conclusions to the contrary in its official Tomahawk-justifying report.

Corrections to Dr. Postol's April 18 Report

On April 18, Dr. Postol issued a Correction to his April 14 report (the second link at the top of this piece; also here), that's even more damning than the original. The Correction document is printed in full below. To my knowledge, so far this is the only Web source for the entire text of this document.

The error Dr. Postol made, and corrects below, is a miscalculation in the direction of the wind at the time of the bombing. In the original report, Dr. Postol had mistakenly identified the wind as carrying the supposed sarin away from the White House-identified "bomb site" toward the southwest [CORR: southeast] and through a small open (unbuilt) area of the town.

The corrected wind direction is to the northwest, directly into a densely populated section of housing — housing that starts immediately across the road, no more than ten or twenty meters away. (See the image at the top, taken from the report below.) The logical conclusion is obvious, since no victims were ever identified adjacent to the site — not by the White House nor anyone else. As Dr. Postol writes:

When the error in wind direction is corrected, the conclusion is that if there was a significant sarin release at the crater as alleged by the White House Intelligence Report issued on April 11, 2017 (WHR), the immediate result would have been significant casualties immediately adjacent to the dispersion crater. [emphasis in original]

The fact that there were numerous television journalists reporting from the alleged sarin release site and there was absolutely no mention of casualties that would have occurred within tens to hundreds of meters of the alleged release site indicates that the WHR was produced without even a cursory low-level review of commercial video data from the site by the US intelligence community. [emphasis mine]

The report below contains more information. Note that the location of the "dead goat," supposedly killed by sarin, is upwind of the location that the White House alleges the munition exploded.

Who Is Dr. Theodore Postol?

Dr. Theodore Postol is Professor Emeritus and former Chair of the Department of Science, Technology and National Security Policy at MIT. You can read a little more about Dr. Postol's background and bona fides at his MIT faculty page.

Note especially his work at Argonne National Laboratory; with the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment; and as a scientific adviser to the Chief of Naval Operations. One of his areas of expertise is missile defense systems. Dr. Postol was also called as an expert witness in a pre-Iraq War lawsuit brought against a prominent defense contractor, TRW, for fraud.

And now Dr. Postol's document in full.

GP

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April 21, 2017

IMPORTANT CORRECTION TO
The Nerve Agent Attack that Did Not Occur:

Analysis of the Times and Locations of Critical Events in the
Alleged Nerve Agent Attack
at 7 AM on April 4, 2017 in Khan Sheikhoun, Syria

Introduction

This report corrects an important error in the earlier report released on April 18, 2017 titled The Nerve Agent Attack that Did Not Occur: Analysis of the Times and Locations of Critical Events in the Alleged Nerve Agent Attack at 7 AM on April 4, 2017 in Khan Sheikhoun, Syria.

In my earlier report released on April 18, 2017 I quite stupidly misinterpreted the wind-direction convention resulting in my estimates of plume directions being exactly 180° off in direction. This document corrects that error and provides very important new analytic results that follow from that error [emphasis mine (GP)].

When the error in wind direction is corrected, the conclusion is that if there was a significant sarin release at the crater as alleged by the White House Intelligence Report issued on April 11, 2017 (WHR), the immediate result would have been significant casualties immediately adjacent to the dispersion crater.

The fact that there were numerous television journalists reporting from the alleged sarin release site and there was absolutely no mention of casualties that would have occurred within tens to hundreds of meters of the alleged release site indicates that the WHR was produced without even a cursory low-level review of commercial video data from the site by the US intelligence community. This overwhelmingly supports the conclusion that the WHR identification of the crater as a sarin release site should have been accompanied with an equally solid identification of the area where casualties were caused by the alleged aerosol dispersal. The details of the crater itself unambiguously show that it was not created by the alleged airdropped sarin dispersing munition. [emphasis mine (GP)]

These new details are even more problematic because the the WHR cited commercial video as providing information that it used to derive its conclusions that there was a sarin attack from an airdropped munition at this location.

As can be seen by the corrected wind patterns in the labeled photographs on the next page, the predicted direction of the sarin plume would take it immediately into a heavily populated area [emphasis mine (GP)]. The area immediately adjacent to the north northwest of the road is may not be populated, as there was likely heavy damage to those homes facing the road from a bombing attack that occurred earlier at a warehouse to the direct east of the crater (designated on map below). However, houses that were immediately behind those on the road would have been substantially shielded from shock waves that could have caused heavy damage to those structures.

Since the reported wind speeds were very low, and the area is densely packed with buildings, a sarin dispersal would certainly not have simply followed a postulated plume direction as shown with the blue lines in the map below. Sarin aerosol and gas would have been dispersed both laterally and downwind by building fronts and would also have been dispersed downward and upward as the gases and aerosols were gently carried by winds modified by the presence of walls, space ways and other structures. A purely notional speculation on how a sarin plume might be dispersed by the structures as prevailing winds push the aerosol and gas through the structures is shown in the figure at the bottom of page 4.

The complicated wind pattern inside the densely populated living area would have resulted in sarin accumulating in basements and rooms that are roughly facing into the wind. There would also have been areas in spaces between buildings where sarin densities were much higher or much lower as the gentle prevailing winds moved around corners and created pockets of high and low density sarin concentrations.

In addition, the crater-area where the alleged sarin release was supposed to have occurred was close enough to the densely populated downwind area that significant amounts of sarin that would have fallen near the crater during the initial aerosol release would have resulted in a persistent plume of toxic sarin being carried into this populated area as the liquid on the ground near the crater evaporated during the day [emphasis mine (GP)].

The close proximity to the crater would have certainly led to high casualties within the populated area.

The images on page 4 are taken from two different videos published on YouTube by the same crew of journalists who reported in detail on the site of the alleged sarin attack. Additional video frames from these two videos are shown on pages five and six.

In one of the video reports the journalist takes the observer on a short walk to the location of a dead goat. A close-up of the dead goat suggests that the animal was foaming at its mouth and nose as it died.

Video taken from a drone at high-altitude operated by the television crew shows the location of the dead goat, which is clearly well up wind of the sarin release point. Under all but implausible conditions, the wind would have carried sarin away from the goat and it would not have been subjected to a significant dose of sarin had largely been within the area where it was found [emphasis mine (GP)].

If one instead guesses that the goat might have been wandering around and had wandered into the path of the newly dispersed sarin, the goat should have been found on the ground near the release point as the sarin dose within the plume would have killed it very quickly.

Other images from the video report are of two examples of dead birds. Neither of these video images can be connected to the crater scene as there was no continuity of evidence from the movement of the cameras.

This assessment with corrected wind directions leads to a powerful new set of questions – why were the multiple sets of journalists who were filming at the crater where the alleged sarin release occurred not showing the numerous victims of the alleged release who would have been immediately next to the area?

It is now clear that the publicly available evidence shows exactly where the mass nerve agent poisoning would have occurred if in fact there was an event where significant numbers of people were poisoned by a nerve agent release. This does not rule out the possibility of a nerve agent release somewhere else in the city. However, this completely discredits the WHR’s claims that they knew where the nerve agent release occurred and that they knew the nerve agent release was the result of a airdropped munition [emphasis mine (GP)].

There is a second issue that I have refrained from commenting on in the hope that such a discussion would not be necessary.

The mainstream media is the engine of democracy. Without an independent media providing accurate and unbiased information to citizens, a government can do pretty much what it chooses without interference from the citizens who elected it. The critical function of the mainstream media in the current situation should be to report the facts that clearly and unambiguously contradict government claims.

This has so far not occurred and this is perhaps the biggest indicator of how incapacitated the mechanisms for democratic governance of the United States have become.

The facts are now very clear – there is very substantial evidence that the President and his staff took decisions without any intelligence, or far more likely ignored intelligence from the professional community that they were given, to execute an attack in the Middle East that had the danger of creating an inadvertent military confrontation with Russia. The attack has already created a very serious further downward spiral in Russian-US relations, and has had the effect of seriously undermining US efforts to defeat the Islamic State – a common enemy of the United States, Russia, and the Western European powers.

As such, it is a sacred duty of the mainstream media to our democracy and its people to investigate and report on this matter properly.

Theodore A. Postol

Professor Emeritus of Science,
Technology, and National Security Policy
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Email: postol@mit.edu

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Video Images of the Area where the Alleged Sarin-Releasing Crater Was Extensively Photographed and Reported on by Local Journalists in Khan Sheikhoun

Video Images from the First of Two Videos of the Area where the Alleged Sarin-Releasing Crater Was Extensively Photographed and Reported on by Local Journalists in Khan Sheikhoun

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLEjpNCSfHs

Video Images from the Second of Two Videos of the Area where the Alleged Sarin-Releasing Crater Was Extensively Photographed and Reported

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Theodore Postol: Khan Sheikhoun Victim Videos Can’t Be from the Claimed "Sarin" Munitions Site

Worker in rebel-held Idlib province squatting with minimal protective clothing at the site claimed by the White House Intelligence Report to be ground-zero for the "sarin bomb." Note the constructed (i.e., not carved from rock face) dwellings in the background.

by Gaius Publius

"I think there is no motive for [Assad] doing this and I think it makes it highly incredible that this was actually carried out by Syria. [...]

"First of all, [Assad] knew with certainty that if he used sarin gas, he would incur the wrath of the entire world. Secondly, he is winning the war on every front and so there is no incentive to do something desperate. Third, if he were to feel that somehow he had to use sarin gas … he wouldn’t waste it on simply killing some people walking down the street."

— Virginia State Sen. Richard Black, April 7, 2017

Bottom line first — I know this story line is starting to sound very "aluminum tubes"-like (a reference to Colin Powell's now-proved-false testimony to the U.N. about Saddam's imagined weapons of mass destruction). That's because the story is looking very "aluminum tube"-like. Sorry; I can't help that. More and more of the evidence is pointing away from "reason to go to war" and toward a "fake reasons to go to war."

Sorry, but again, I can't help that. We're just following the evidence, as unorthodox as that makes the story sound. For consolation, remember how unorthodox, even unpatriotic, the anti-Iraq War voices were presented as sounding in 2002 and 2003 — and how "well, that was obvious" they sound today.

Now the story for today. (To skip my introduction and go directly to Dr. Postol's latest report, printed in full below, click here.)

I've recently been featuring various analyses of the so-called "gas attack" on April 4 against the Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun — the one that caused the U.S. military and Trump administration to respond with a Tomahawk missile strike against the Shayrat airfield on April 7.

As a result of questions raised in the U.S. and international community about the U.S. strike — not only about its legality, but the intelligence that determined Assad's guilt — the U.S. put out a White House Intelligence Report (WHR) on April 11 containing its justifications for the airfield strike.

In the U.S., skepticism about the U.S. government's conclusion — that they have a "very high level of confidence that the attacks were carried out by aircraft under the direction of the Bashar al-Assad regime" — is almost non-existent, at least among members of Congress on both sides of the aisle, elite opinion makers like the New York Times, and the vast majority of those in broadcast news.

There have been voices, though, expressing skepticism, but just as during the run-up the Iraq war in 2002, those voices are little heeded, rarely amplified, frequently ridiculed.

Among those dissenting voices are groups of ex-intelligence officials with contacts among their still-working peers (detailed here: "The "Assad Launched a Chemical Attack" Story Has Not Been Proved"). Many of these former intelligence officials were also involved in the pushback against the 2003 Iraq War, and were also ridiculed then. Others are noted whistleblowers with solid reputations for integrity, such as William Binney and Thomas Drake.

Dr. Theodore Postol Weighs In

More recently, one of the more prominent voices expressing doubt (great doubt in fact, as you'll read shortly) about the now-canonical story — "Assad gassed his own people!" — is Dr. Theodore Postol, Professor Emeritus of Science, Technology and National Security Policy at MIT.

You can read a little more about Dr. Postol's background and bona fides at his MIT faculty page. Note the work at Argonne National Laboratory; with the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment; and as a scientific adviser to the Chief of Naval Operations. One of his areas of expertise is missile defense systems. Dr. Postol was also called as an expert witness in a pre-Iraq War lawsuit brought against a prominent defense contractor, TRW, for fraud.

Up to this point, Dr. Postol has published or distributed three documents looking at the publicly available physical evidence at the Khan Sheikhoun site, including hundreds of videos, many purporting to be videos of the victims at Khan Sheikhoun, others showing the crater the White House Report alleges to be the source of the "sarin bomb." The videos also show how the munitions crater and nearby areas were handled and treated by men wearing (rebel-held) Idlib province health directorate uniforms.

Dr. Postol's first assessment report is available here. In it, he looks at the supposed "bomb" — a pipe really (see image below) — found in a roadbed crater in Khan Sheikhoun. He notes that the pipe appears to have been been "flattened from the outside [as to exploded from within] and has failed along its length and at the far end" as though it were subject to strong downward pressure from above it.

In other words, the munition claimed by the U.S. government, if it contained sarin at all, which has not been demonstrated, appears to have been crushed from above by an explosive device place on top of it. The figure following Figure 2 in Postol's report shows how that could be accomplished.

Dr. Postol's first report was a quick assessment produced immediately after the WH report was issued. Dr. Postol then issued an Addendum (a copy can be found here) that studied pictures of Idlib province workers at the munition site. In it, Postol considers the protective clothing of those workers (my emphasis below):

Figure 1 shows a man standing in the alleged sarin-release crater. He is wearing a honeycomb facemask that is designed to filter small particles from the air. Other apparel on him is an open necked cloth shirt and what appear to be medical exam gloves. [...]

If there were any sarin present at this location when this photograph was taken everybody in the photograph would have received a lethal or debilitating dose of sarin.

Dr. Postol's third report — published in full here — expands on his earlier work and concludes that no competent intelligence professional could have reached the conclusion found in the WHR by examining the evidence available (emphasis mine):

As noted in my earlier reports, the assumption in WHR that the site of the alleged sarin release had not been tampered with was totally unjustified and no competent intelligence analyst would have agreed that this assumption was valid. The implication of this observation is clear – the WHR was not reviewed and released by any competent intelligence experts unless they were motivated by factors other than concerns about the accuracy of the report. [...]

It is now obvious that this incident produced by the WHR, while just as serious in terms of the dangers it created for US security, was a clumsy and outright fabrication of a report that was certainly not supported by the intelligence community.

That's fairly damning. If you read the reports yourself, you'll see why.

Were the Videos of the Victims Shot Near the "Bomb" Site?

Dr. Postol has now released a new report, "The Nerve Agent Attack that Did Not Occur," which is reprinted in full below, that examines the wind and terrain at the supposed "bomb" site. There he finds the following (my emphasis):

Analysis using weather data from the time of the attack shows that a small hamlet about 300 m to the east southeast of the crater could be the only location affected by the alleged nerve agent release. The hamlet is separated from the alleged release site (a crater) by an open field. The winds at the time of the release would have initially taken the sarin across the open field. Beyond the hamlet there is a substantial amount of open space and the sarin cloud would have had to travel long additional distance for it to have dissipated before reaching any other population center.

Video taken on April 4 shows that the location where the victims were supposedly being treated from sarin exposure is incompatible with the only open space in the hamlet that could have been used for mass treatment of victims. This indicates that the video scenes where mass casualties (dead and dying) were laid on the ground randomly was not at the hamlet. If the location where the bodies were on the ground was instead a site where the injured and dead were taken for processing, then it is hard to understand why bodies were left randomly strewn on the ground and in mud as shown in the videos.

The evidence for this is in the report, again, published in full below. Dr. Postol concludes:

The conclusion of this summary of data is obvious – the nerve agent attack described in the WHR did not occur as claimed. There may well have been mass casualties from some kind of poisoning event, but that event was not the one described by the WHR.

To summarize:

• There is doubt that the munition was a bomb dropped from a plane. It appears to be a pipe bomb placed in the street and exploded from a charge placed above it.
   
• There is doubt that the munition contained sarin. Workers at the site were inadequately protected against sarin and appear to be unharmed.
   
• There is evidence of possible tampering with the site and the munition by by those workers, some of whom are dressed as province health officials. Ibdib province is rebel-held.

And now there's doubt that videos of the victims were even shot where the WHR says they were shot.

As you read the report below, if you do, note that the videos of the victims were taken in an area that has dwellings carved out of rock in the background. The only empty area near the munition site where the wind could have taken airborne sarin contains constructed dwellings:

The last collection of 18 video frames is from the area where mass casualties were piled on the ground haphazardly dead or dying. Among these casualties were infants as well as men and women. This scene clearly could not have been at the location of the Hamlet as one can see that the walls surrounding the area are carved out of rock. Thus, this scene could not possibly have been at the Hamlet.

Here are two images from the report below. The first shows the area round the supposed munition site.

The yellow arrow at the left shows which direction is north. The yellow arrow at the right starts at the munition site and points in the direction of the wind at the time of the blast. Most of the victims would have been located in the open area that begins at the upper right. Note the constructed dwellings.

The second is taken from videos of the handling of the victims:

Note in these images, and other victim images in the report, that dwellings in the background are carved from rock. People in the images above do not appear to have been transported to a treatment area; many seem to be laying where they fell. Clearly this raises considerable doubts as to whether the videos of these victims were shot near the "bomb" site as claimed in the White House intelligence report justifying the Tomahawk missile strike.

With that, I offer Dr. Postol's complete fourth report below.

GP

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April 18, 2017

The Nerve Agent Attack that Did Not Occur:

Analysis of the Times and Locations of Critical Events in the
Alleged Nerve Agent Attack
at 7 AM on April 4, 2017 in Khan Sheikhoun, Syria

Introduction

This analysis contains a detailed description of the times and locations of critical events in the alleged nerve agent attack of April 4, 2017 in Khan Shaykhun [aka Sheikhoun], Syria – assuming that the White House Intelligence Report (WHR) issued on April 11, 2017 correctly identified the alleged sarin release site.

Analysis using weather data from the time of the attack shows that a small hamlet about 300 m to the east southeast of the crater could be the only location affected by the alleged nerve agent release. The hamlet is separated from the alleged release site (a crater) by an open field. The winds at the time of the release would have initially taken the sarin across the open field. Beyond the hamlet there is a substantial amount of open space and the sarin cloud would have had to travel long additional distance for it to have dissipated before reaching any other population center.

Video taken on April 4 shows that the location where the victims were supposedly being treated from sarin exposure is incompatible with the only open space in the hamlet that could have been used for mass treatment of victims. This indicates that the video scenes where mass casualties (dead and dying) were laid on the ground randomly was not at the hamlet. If the location where the bodies were on the ground was instead a site where the injured and dead were taken for processing, then it is hard to understand why bodies were left randomly strewn on the ground and in mud as shown in the videos [emphasis mine].

The conclusion of this summary of data is obvious – the nerve agent attack described in the WHR did not occur as claimed. There may well have been mass casualties from some kind of poisoning event, but that event was not the one described by the WHR [emphasis mine].

The findings of this analysis can serve two important purposes:

1. It shows exactly what needs to be determined in an international investigation of this alleged atrocity. In particular, if an international investigation can determine where casualties from the nerve agent attack lived, it will further confirm that the findings reported by the WHR are not compatible with the data it cites as evidence for its conclusions.
    
2. It also establishes that the WHR did not utilize simple and widely agreed upon intelligence analysis procedures to determine its conclusions.
   
   This raises troubling questions about how the US political and military leadership determined that the Syrian government was responsible for the alleged attack. It is particularly of concern that the WHR presented itself as a report with “high confidence” findings and that numerous high-level officials in the US government have confirmed their belief that the report was correct and to a standard of high confidence.

Methodology Used in This Analysis

The construction of the time of day at which particular video frames were generated is determined by simply using the planetary geometry of the sun angle during the day on April 4. The illustration below of the sun-angle geometry shows the Day/Night Sun Terminator at the location of Khan Sheikhoun on April 4. The angle of the sun relative to local horizontal is summarized in the table that follows the image of the planetary geometry along with the temperature during the day between 6:30 AM and 6 PM.

The next set of two side-by-side images shows the shadows at a location where a large number of poison victims are being treated in what appears to be the aftermath of a poisoning event. The shadows indicate that this event occurred at about 7:30 AM. This is consistent with the possibility of a nerve agent attack at 7 AM on the morning of April 4 and it is also consistent with the allegation in the WHR that an attack occurred at 6:55 AM on that day.

The timing sequence of the attack is important for determining the consistency of the timelines with the allegations of a sarin release at the crater identified in the WHR.

Assuming there was an enough sarin released from the crater identified by the WHR to cause mass casualties at significant downwind distances, the sarin would have drifted downwind at a speed of 1 to 2 m/s and for several minutes before encountering the only location where mass casualties could have occurred from this particular release. The location where these mass casualties would have had to occur will be identified and described in the next section. If there was a sarin release elsewhere, mass casualties would have not occurred at this location but would have occurred somewhere else in the city.

Assuming the victims of the attack were exposed to the plume, the symptoms of sarin poisoning would have express themselves almost immediately. As such, the scene at 7:30 AM on April 4 is absolutely consistent with the possibility of a mass poisoning downwind of the sarin-release crater.

The next figure shows the earliest photograph we have been able to find of an individual standing by the sarin-release crater where the alleged release occurred. The photo was posted on April 4 and the shadow indicates the time of day was around 10:50 AM. Thus the individual was standing by the crater roughly 4 hours after the dispersal event.

If the dispersal event was from this crater, the area where this unprotected individual is standing would be toxic and this individual would be subjected to the severe and possibly fatal effects of sarin poisoning. As a result, this throws substantial suspicion on the possibility that the crater identified by WHR would be the source of the sarin release.

At the time of the sarin release, the temperature of the air was about 60°F and the sun was at an angle of only 8° relative to local horizontal. This means that liquid sarin left on the ground from the dispersal event would remain mostly unevaporated. By 11 AM, the temperature of the air had risen to 75° and the angle of the sun relative to horizontal was at 66°. Thus, one would expect that the combination of the rise in air temperature and the sun on the crater would lead to significant evaporation of liquid sarin left behind from the initial dispersal event. The air temperature and sun angle are such that the area around the crater should have been quite dangerous for anybody without protection to operate.

This is therefore an important indication that the crater was probably not a dispersal site of the sarin.

The final set of three photographs shows arriving victims seeking treatment at a hospital at some location in Khan Sheikhoun. The arrivals at the hospital are at between 9 and 10:30 AM on the day of the attack. This is perhaps late since victims were seriously exposed by 7:30 AM, but victims could have been trailing in after the initial arrival of severely affected victims. This time is considerably earlier than the time at which WHR alleges that a hospital was attacked while treating victims of the poisoning attack.

In the next section we discuss the location where mass casualties should have occurred if the sarin release occurred at the location alleged by the WHR.

[In the images below, the yellow angles indicate the length of shadows, which are then used to calculate the angle of the sun when the image was taken. The angle of the sun is used to determine the time of day. The overlaid messages ("Media is hiding...") are part of the original videos and not something Dr. Postol added.]

Identification of the Location of the Mass Casualties

The figure on the next page shows the direction of the toxic sarin plume based on the assumption that the alleged release point was the crater identified by WHR. The wind conditions at the time of the release, which would have been at about 7 AM on April 4, would have carried the plume across an empty field to an isolated Hamlet roughly 300 m downwind from the crater.

Although there were some walls and structures that would have somewhat attenuated and inhibited the movement of the aerosol cloud from the release point, the open field would be an ideal stable wind environment to transmit the remaining sarin cloud with minimal distortion and dispersal. As such, it is plausible that the sarin cloud could with the weather conditions at that time have led to mass casualties at the Hamlet.

The sarin dosage level that results in 50% of exposed victims dying is known as the LD50. The LD50 for sarin is about 100 mglmin/m³.

The dose quantity mglmin/m³ can be understood simply.

An exposure of about 100 mglmin/m³ simply means that a victim is within an environment for one full minute when there is 100 mg/m³ of sarin in the air. If the victim is instead in an environment for 10 minutes where there is a density of sarin of 10 mg/m³, they will also receive a lethal dose of 100 mglmin/m³.

Assuming 5 to 10 liters were aerosolized at the crater as alleged by the WHR, this would have resulted in an average sarin exposure at the Hamlet at 300 m range of about 10 to 20 mglmin/m³, assuming wind and temperature conditions that are near ideal for lethal exposures downwind. This estimate assumes that an individual would be outside and exposed to the sarin as the gas cloud passes by.

Since a cloud of sarin would not be uniformly mixed, there will be regions in the cloud that have much higher and lower doses than the average. In addition, as the cloud passes, sarin entering into open windows of aboveground and basement rooms would tend to become trapped inside these rooms creating a significantly longer exposure to the nerve agent, certainly leading to lethal levels if residents did not evacuate the rooms immediately. Also, since the nerve agent cloud would be passing through an area that has buildings, it will tend to flow around, over buildings, and down into open basement windows, resulting in buildups of sarin in some locations and diminished levels of sarin at other locations.

As such, the Hamlet could well have been within lethal range of the sarin exposure. However, areas further downwind from the Hamlet would be sufficiently far away that the sarin will have dispersed sufficiently that it would not be capable of causing deaths.

Thus, the Hamlet area 300 m downwind of the crater is the only area where mass casualties could occur if there had been a sarin release at the crater as alleged by the WHR! [emphasis in original]


The selected video frames collected on the next two pages show three important sets of data that indicate the following:

1. Unprotected civilians with clothing that have logos of the Idlib Health Directorate are tampering with the contents of the crater crater that the WHR alleges was the source of the sarin release. All of the indicators point to a ruptured tube that could have contained no more than 8 to 10 liters of sarin. This is the only container shown in any videos from this scene.
    
2. The next collection of video frames shows panoramic views of the target area taken from a drone equipped with a video camera. As can be seen in the video frames, a goat that was allegedly killed from the sarin dispersal is close to downwind of the alleged dispersal site.
   
   However, the Hamlet that should have experienced major casualties if the alleged dispersal site had been correctly identified is only 300 m down range, and easily reachable by simply walking over to the site.
   
   Yet none of the video journalists refer in any way to a mass casualty site nearby. They simply focus on a dead goat and present out of context images of a few dead birds. It is remarkable that no video journalists of the many who reported from this crater area referred in any way to the mass casualties that could only have occurred 300 m away if the attack had been executed from this crater.
    
3. The last collection of 18 video frames is from the area where mass casualties were piled on the ground haphazardly dead or dying. Among these casualties were infants as well as men and women. This scene clearly could not have been at the location of the Hamlet as one can see that the walls surrounding the area are carved out of rock. Thus, this scene could not possibly have been at the Hamlet.
   
   These video frames were generated by reviewing hundreds of videos posted on YouTube plus additional videos and video frames found on Twitter.
   
   Among the hundreds of videos reviewed there seems to be no more than 50 to 60 seconds of actual original scenes like those laid out in the collection of 18 videos below. The vast majority of time in the videos contains the same repeated sequences of the same dead and injured infants and adults that could all be collected into less than a couple of minutes of independent scenes.
   
   The overwhelming evidence is that these videos repeat nothing more than redundant scenes that suggest one terrible event might have occurred. Almost none of the scenes contain any different information from the others. This raises a serious question about how much real data has been supplied that would indicate an actual significant nerve agent attack.
   
   What is absolutely clear from the videos is that the location of the sarin dispersal site alleged by WHR and the mass casualty site that would have had to be generated if the sarin dispersal actually occurred, are not in any way related to the scenes of victims shown in the other videos. The conclusion is obvious, the alleged attack described in WHR never occurred.

Final Comments

This abbreviated summary of the facts has been constructed entirely from basic physics, video evidence, and absolutely solid analytical methods. It demonstrates without doubt that the sarin dispersal site alleged as the source of the April 4, 2017 sarin attack in Khan Sheikhoun was not a nerve agent attack site.

It also shows beyond a shadow of a doubt that the only mass casualty site that could have resulted from this mass attack is not in any way related to the sites that are shown in video following a poisoning event of some kind at Khan Sheikhoun.

This means that the allegedly “high confidence” White House intelligence assessment ssued on April 11 that led to the conclusion that the Syrian government was responsible for the attack is not correct. For such a report to be so egregiously in error, it could not possibly have followed the most simple and proven intelligence methodologies to determine the veracity of its findings.

Since the United States justified attacking a Syrian airfield on April 7, four days before the flawed National Security Council intelligence report was released to the Congress and the public, the conclusion that follows is that the United States took military actions without the intelligence to support its decision.

Furthermore, it is clear that the WHR was not an intelligence report.

No competent intelligence professional would have made so many false claims that are totally inconsistent with the evidence. No competent intelligence professional would have accepted the findings in the WHR analysis after reviewing the data presented herein. No competent intelligence professionals would have evaluated the crater that was tampered with in terms described in the WHR.

Although it is impossible to know from a technical assessment to determine the reasons for such an egregiously amateurish report, it cannot be ruled out that the WHR was fabricated to conceal critical information from the Congress and the public.

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Appendix

Resource Materials Used To Determine Local Weather Conditions and Sun Angles Needed to Verify the above Analysis

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New Evidence that Syrian Gas Story Was Fabricated by the White House

A man breathes through an oxygen mask as another one receives treatments, after what rescue workers described as a suspected gas attack in the town of Khan Sheikhoun in rebel-held Idlib, Syria April 4, 2017 (Ammar Abdullah / Reuters; source). Notice the bare hands of the doctor.

by Gaius Publius

(This piece is organized in two parts, the story to this point and the new evidence. To go directly to the new evidence, click here.)

Since our last report on the Syrian "gas attack" story (see "Another Intelligence Group Makes the Case: Assad's Responsibility Is Not Proved"), events have moved along. Nothing, though, has dismissed the doubts of those willing to entertain doubts that the story as told by the White House — and repeated by Democrats and Republicans alike — is baseless, a fabrication.

First, British scientists were given samples from the alleged gas attack that contained traces of sarin. The presence of sarin had previously been doubted, since first-responders were videoed handling victims with their bare hands (see image at the top), actions that would have killed them if sarin were present on the victims' bodies. On this evidence — the discovery of sarin in samples given to analysts — British UN Ambassador Matthew Rycroft concurs with the U.S. that Assad's responsibility for a gas attack is "highly likely." In other words, an estimation.

Second, a small crater that was said to have been made by a sarin-containing munitions blast has been studied by Dr. Theodore Postol, professor emeritis at MIT, and he showed that the blast dispersal pattern is "more consistent with the possibility that the munition was placed on the ground rather than dropped from a plane." Postol continues, "Analysis of the debris as shown in the photographs cited by the White House clearly indicates that the munition was almost certainly placed on the ground with an external detonating explosive on top of it that crushed the container so as to disperse the alleged load of sarin [downward]."

Dr. Postol's report has been referenced in such pieces as this, by Robert Borosage writing at The Nation. Postol's original document is available here.

The Story to This Point

Gareth Porter, an investigative reporter who writes on national security policy, summarizes events to that point as follows (my emphasis):

The Trump administration officials dismissed the Russian claim that the Syrian airstrike had targeted a munitions warehouse controlled by Islamic extremists as an afterthought to cover up the Syrian government's culpability for the chemical attack. Moreover, the Trump officials claimed that US intelligence had located the site where the Syrian regime had dropped the chemical weapon.

However, two new revelations contradict the Trump administration's line on the April 4 attack. A former US official knowledgeable about the episode told Truthout that the Russians had actually informed their US counterparts in Syria of the Syrian military's plan to strike the warehouse in Khan Sheikhoun 24 hours before the strike. And a leading analyst on military technology, Dr. Theodore Postol of MIT, has concluded that the alleged device for a sarin attack could not have been delivered from the air but only from the ground, meaning that the chemical attack may not have been the result of the Syrian airstrike.

[...]

[T]he US military allegedly knew in advance that the strike was coming: Russian military officers informed their American counterparts of the Syrian military's plan to strike the warehouse in Khan Sheikhoun city 24 hours before the planned airstrike, according to the former US official who spoke with Truthout. The official is in direct contact with a US military intelligence officer with access to information about the US-Russian communications. The military intelligence officer reported to his associate that the Russians provided the information about the strike to the Americans through the normal US-Russian Syria deconfliction telephone line, which was established after the Russian intervention in 2015 to prevent any accidental clash between the two powers. The officer said that Russia communicated to the US the fact that the Syrians believed that the warehouse held toxic chemicals.

That information was considered so politically sensitive that after its initial dissemination, it was available only to a few officials, the US military intelligence officer told his associate.

[...]

The senior US officials briefing the press insisted that a Syrian air strike delivering sarin was the only credible explanation for the dozens of deaths in Khan Sheikhoun. One of the officials cited a video showing a crater in the middle of a main road, which the Trump administration's key officials have determined was the site of the chemical weapon that reportedly killed 50 to 100 people. He implied that this was evidence that a Syrian airstrike had released what was believed to be sarin.

But Dr. Theodore Postol of MIT, who debunked the original official claims of the location of rockets that hit Syria's Ghouta area with what appeared to be sarin on August 21, 2013, has come to a different conclusion. Postol says that the carcass of the delivery vehicle -- shown in last week's video and in still photos of the small crater -- indicates that the chemical attack was not delivered via airstrike but from the spot on the road where it was found.

For more, see the rest of Mr. Porter's clear write-up here. To that point, sarin had been suspected, but not proved. As Porter notes: "Exposure to smoke munitions that create phosphine gas when in contact with moisture can cause neurological symptoms that mimic those of sarin, because they both damage the body's ability to produce the enzyme cholinesterase."

Postol's piece showing that the suspected sarin device "could not have been delivered from the air" is linked both in Borosage's piece and in my fifth paragraph, above.

Finally, if Gareth Porter and his sources are right, the U.S. military knew everything they needed to know to understand that the reason they gave for launching the Tomahawk strike was false. That they knowingly lied, in other words.

New Evidence that the Trump Administration Lied about Assad's Role

And now the new evidence. I'd like to print the follow-up report from Dr. Postol. It contains video evidence that indicates tampering with the "bomb site" by men wearing "Health Directorate" uniforms in rebel-held Idlib in the two or three days after the so-called "gas attack.

Theodore Postol is the former Chair of the MIT Security Studies Department and was called as an expert witness in a lawsuit against the National Missile Defense Program. This is his area of expertise. According to Dr. Postol, this clear evidence should have been available to any competent intelligence professional. The attack was reported on April 4. The U.S. intelligence report claiming that Assad was responsible for a sarin attack was published April 11.

In other words, Dr. Postol's piece below supports the conclusion in my headline — that it indeed contains "evidence that the Syrian gas story was fabricated by the White House." (Side comment: What does that make of claims by even well-meaning Democrats like this one?)

Note also, as you read, the role and responsibility in this deception of General McMaster, a member of Trump's National Security Council. According to one report (detailed here), McMaster may well have become, in my phrasing, the "tip of the spear for neocon control of Trump's foreign policy."

The rest of this piece is Dr. Postol's report, printed in full. Emphasis, where mine, is called out and attributed. Emphasis added by Dr. Postol is called out but not attributed. Remaining emphasis is in the original quoted document.

GP

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Evidence that the White House Intelligence Report
of April 11, 2017 Was Fabricated

April 14, 2017

Video Evidence of False Claims Made in the White House Intelligence Report of April 11, 2017

Theodore A. Postol

Professor Emeritus of Science, Technology, and National Security Policy

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

This is my third report assessing the White House intelligence Report of April 11, 2017. My first report was titled A Quick Turnaround Assessment of the White House Intelligence Report Issued on April 11, 2017 about the Nerve Agent Attack in Khan Shaykhun, Syria and my second report was an Addendum to the first report.

This report provides unambiguous evidence that the White House Intelligence Report (WHR) of April 11, 2017 contains false and misleading claims that could not possibly have been accepted in any professional review by impartial intelligence experts. The WHR was produced by the National Security Council under the oversight of the National Security Advisor, Lieutenant General H. R. McMaster [emphasis added (GP)].

This image was extracted from a video of a worker during midday (note shadows) on April 5, 2017 next to the crater where sarin was allegedly released according to the White House Intelligence Report (WHR) issued of April 11, 2017. The WHR asserts that it reviewed commercial video evidence and concluded that sarin came from the crater next to a man. Other video frames show unprotected workers in the crater showing no evidence of sarin poisoning at the same time the dead birds are being packaged. The URLs to this and a related video are contained in this report.

The evidence presented herein is from two selected videos which are part of a larger cache of videos that are available on YouTube. These videos were uploaded to YouTube in the time period between April 5, 2017 and April 7, 2017. Analysis of the videos shows that all of the scenes taken at the site where the WHR claims was the location of a sarin release indicate significant tampering with the site. Since these videos were available roughly one week before the White House report was issued on April 11, this indicates that the office of the WHR made no attempt to utilize the professional intelligence community to obtain accurate data in support of the findings in the report.

The video evidence shows workers at the site roughly 30 hours after the alleged attack that were wearing clothing with the logo “Idlib Health Directorate.” These individuals were photographed putting dead birds from a birdcage into plastic bags. The implication of these actions was that the birds had died after being placed in the alleged sarin crater. However, the video also shows the same workers inside and around the same crater with no protection of any kind against sarin poisoning [emphasis mine (GP)].

These individuals were wearing honeycomb face masks and medical exam gloves. They were otherwise dressed in normal streetwear and had no protective clothing of any kind.

The honeycomb face masks would provide absolutely no protection against either sarin vapors or sarin aerosols [emphasis mine (GP)]. The masks are only designed to filter small particles from the air. If there were sarin vapor, it would be inhaled without attenuation by these individuals. If the sarin were in an aerosol form, the aerosol would have condensed into the pours in the masks, and would have evaporated into a highly lethal gas as the individuals inhaled through the mask. It is difficult to believe that such health workers, if they were health workers, would be so ignorant of these basic facts.

In addition, other people dressed as health workers were standing around the crater without any protection at all.

As noted in my earlier reports, the assumption in WHR that the site of the alleged sarin release had not been tampered with was totally unjustified and no competent intelligence analyst would have agreed that this assumption was valid. The implication of this observation is clear – the WHR was not reviewed and released by any competent intelligence experts unless they were motivated by factors other than concerns about the accuracy of the report [emphasis mine (GP)].

The WHR also makes claims about “communications intercepts” which supposedly provide high confidence that the Syrian government was the source of the attack. There is no reason to believe that the veracity of this claim is any different from the now verified false claim that there was unambiguous evidence of a sarin release at the cited crater.

The relevant quotes from the WHR are collected below for purposes of reference:

The United States is confident that the Syrian regime conducted a chemical weapons attack, using the nerve agent sarin, against its own people in the town of Khan Shaykhun in southern Idlib Province on April 4, 2017.

We have confidence in our assessment because we have signals intelligence and geospatial intelligence, laboratory analysis of physiological samples collected from multiple victims, as well as a significant body of credible open source reporting.

We cannot publicly release all available intelligence on this attack due to the need to protect sources and methods, but the following includes an unclassified summary of the U.S. Intelligence Community's analysis of this attack.

By 12:15 PM [April4, 2017] local time, broadcasted local videos included images of dead children of varying ages.

… at 1:10 PM [April4, 2017] local … follow-on videos showing the bombing of a nearby hospital …

Commercial satellite imagery from April 6 showed impact craters around the hospital that are consistent with open source reports of a conventional attack on the hospital after the chemical attack.

Moscow has since claimed that the release of chemicals was caused by a regime airstrike on a terrorist ammunition depot in the eastern suburbs of Khan Shaykhun.

An open source video also shows where we believe the chemical munition landed [Emphasis Added]—not on a facility filled with weapons, but in the middle of a street in the northern section of Khan Shaykhun. Commercial satellite imagery of that site from April 6, [Emphasis Added] after the allegation, shows a crater in the road that corresponds to the open source video.

observed munition remnants at the crater and staining around the impact point are consistent with a munition that functioned, but structures nearest to the impact crater did not sustain damage that would be expected from a conventional high-explosive payload. Instead, the damage is more consistent with a chemical munition.

Russia's allegations fit with a pattern of deflecting blame from the regime and attempting to undermine the credibility of its opponents.

Summary and Conclusions

It is now clear from video evidence that the WHR report was fabricated without input from the professional intelligence community [emphasis mine (GP)].

The press reported on April 4 that a nerve agent attack had occurred in Khan Shaykhun, Syria during the early morning hours locally on that day. On April 7, The United States carried out a cruise missile attack on Syria ordered by President Trump. It now appears that the president ordered this cruise missile attack without any valid intelligence to support it [emphasis mine (GP)].

In order to cover up the lack of intelligence to supporting the president’s action, the National Security Council produced a fraudulent intelligence report on April 11 four days later [emphasis mine (GP)]. The individual responsible for this report was Lieutenant General H. R. McMaster, the National Security Advisor. The McMaster report is completely undermined by a significant body of video evidence taken after the alleged sarin attack and before the US cruise missile attack that unambiguously shows the claims in the WHR could not possibly be true. This cannot be explained as a simple error.

The National Security Council Intelligence Report clearly refers to evidence that it claims was obtained from commercial and open sources shortly after the alleged nerve agent attack (on April 5 and April 6). If such a collection of commercial evidence was done, it would have surely found the videos contained herein.

This unambiguously indicates a dedicated attempt to manufacture a false claim that intelligence actually supported the president’s decision to attack Syria, and of far more importance, to accuse Russia of being either complicit or a participant in an alleged atrocity [emphasis mine (GP)].

The attack on the Syrian government threatened to undermine the relationship between Russia and the United States. Cooperation between Russia and the United States is critical to the defeat of the Islamic State. In addition, the false accusation that Russia knowingly engaged in an atrocity raises the most serious questions about a willful attempt to do damage relations with Russia for domestic political purposes.

We repeat here a quote from the WHR:

An open source video also shows where we believe the chemical munition landed—not on a facility filled with weapons, but in the middle of a street in the northern section of Khan Shaykhun [Emphasis Added]. Commercial satellite imagery of that site from April 6, after the allegation, shows a crater in the road that corresponds to the open source video.

The data provided in these videos make it clear that the WHR made no good-faith attempt to collect data that could have supported its “confident assessment.” that the Syrian government executed a sarin attack as indicated by the location and characteristics of the crater.

This very disturbing event is not a unique situation. President George W. Bush argued that he was misinformed about unambiguous evidence that Iraq was hiding a substantial store of weapons of mass destruction. This false intelligence led to a US attack on Iraq that started a process that ultimately led to the political disintegration in the Middle East, which through a series of unpredicted events then led to the rise of the Islamic State [emphasis mine (GP)].

On August 30, 2013, the White House produced a similarly false report about the nerve agent attack on August 21, 2013 in Damascus [emphasis mine (GP)]. This report also contained numerous intelligence claims that could not be true. An interview with President Obama published in The Atlantic in April 2016 indicates that Obama was initially told that there was solid intelligence that the Syrian government was responsible for the nerve agent attack of August 21, 2013 in Ghouta, Syria. Obama reported that he was later told that the intelligence was not solid by the then Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper.

Equally serious questions are raised about the abuse of intelligence findings by the incident in 2013. Questions that have not been answered about that incident is how the White House produced a false intelligence report with false claims that could obviously be identified by experts outside the White House and without access to classified information. There also needs to be an explanation of why this 2013 false report was not corrected. Secretary of State John Kerry emphatically testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee repeating information in this so-called un-equivocating report.

On August 30, 2013 Secretary of State Kerry made the following statement from the Treaty Room in the State Department:

Our intelligence community has carefully reviewed and re-reviewed information regarding this attack [Emphasis added], and I will tell you it has done so more than mindful of the Iraq experience. We will not repeat that moment. Accordingly, we have taken unprecedented steps to declassify and make facts available to people who can judge for themselves.

It is now obvious that this incident produced by the WHR, while just as serious in terms of the dangers it created for US security, was a clumsy and outright fabrication of a report that was certainly not supported by the intelligence community [emphasis mine (GP)].

In this case, the president, supported by his staff, made a decision to launch 59 cruise missiles at a Syrian air base. This action was accompanied by serious risks of creating a confrontation with Russia, and also undermining cooperative efforts to win the war against the Islamic State.

I therefore conclude that there needs to be a comprehensive investigation of these events that have either misled people in the White House White House, or worse yet, been perpetrated by people to protect themselves from domestic political criticisms for uninformed and ill-considered actions.

Sincerely yours, Theodore A. Postol


Professor Emeritus of Science,
Technology, and National Security Policy
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Email: postol@mit.edu

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Video Evidence That Reveals the White House Intelligence Report Issued on April 11, 2017 Contains Demonstrably False Claims about a Sarin Dispersal Crater Allegedly Created in the April 4, 2017 Attack in Khan Sheikoun, Syria

VIDEO #1:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qeosawyrgyo
Dead Birds Video
[Embedded below (GP)]



[Stills from VIDEO #1, click to view (GP)]


VIDEO #2:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyFAl2gjZJQ
Idlib Health Directorate Tampering with Alleged Sarin Dispersal Site Video
[Embedded below (GP)]



[Stills 1–10 from VIDEO #2, click to view (GP)]


[Stills 11–13 from VIDEO #2 below (GP)]

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