Seymour Hersh Releases Leaked Pentagon/DIA Document - One More Nail In The Coffin Of Western Gov't Official Story Of Syria Chemical Weapons Claims

Brandon Turbeville

BrandonTurbeville.com

November 3, 2023

With absolutely no fanfare in either the alternative or mainstream media, veteran journalist Seymour Hersh has released a leaked Pentagon/DIA assessment of the chemical warfare capability of Jobhat al-Nusra/Al-Nusra Front (also known as Al-Qaeda), a fact that Western governments and Western media simply would not admit during their "chemical weapons" propaganda volley against the Syrian government. The document is from June 20, 2013.

The documents were released in Hersh's article entitled "When the Intelligence is Inconvenient" and can be found on his Substack page. The entire article can be read in full with a subscription. 

A brief excerpt from the article reads:

On Sunday Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Jonathan Karl of ABC’s This Week that he remained “very confident in Ukraine’s ultimate success” in the ongoing war with Russia. He depicted Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky’s decision to escalate its attacks inside Russia as “their decision, not ours.”

Blinken’s wrong-headed confidence and his acceptance of a significant escalation in the Ukraine war defies belief, given the reality on the ground today in the war. But it also could be based on insanely optimistic assessments supplied by the Defense Intelligence Agency. The DIA’s assessments, as I have reported, are now the intelligence of choice inside the White House.

As a journalist who has written about national security matters for many decades, how can I explain a process that is clearly contrary to the best interests of the people of the United States and its leadership?

More importantly than Hersh's quotes, however, are the quotes from the DIA assessment itself. 

Assad Chemical Weapons "Violation" A Propaganda Campaign Against Syria

Brandon Turbeville
Activist Post
May 11, 2015

With the recent attempts by the Western press and drumming up support for some type of military action against Syria, one could scarcely blame the casual observer for believing the narrative that Syria has lied about its chemical weapons stockpile and has been deploying the remnants of that stockpile on unsuspecting civilians.

Take, for instance, one sample of reporting about the “concerning” findings from the OPCW inspectors by Reuters, entitled “Exclusive: Weapons Inspectors Find Undeclared Sarin and VX Traces In Syria – Diplomats.” The article, while unable to match up to the hysterical article by The Times entitled “Assad goes back on pledge to destroy nerve gas,” reads:

International inspectors have found traces of sarin and VX nerve agent at a military research site in Syria that had not been declared to the global chemical weapons watchdog, diplomatic sources said on Friday. 

Samples taken by experts from the Organisation for the Prohibition and Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in December and January tested positive for chemical precursors needed to make the toxic agents, the sources told Reuters on the condition of anonymity because the information is confidential. 

"This is a pretty strong indication they have been lying about what they did with sarin," one diplomatic source said. "They have so far been unable to give a satisfactory explanation about this finding."

From the title and tone of the article, one would be led to believe that OPCW inspectors had actually found Sarin gas that was being hidden by the Syrian government. But, while the article presents the material in such a way as to suggest that this is the case, the truth is that the article is forced to cover over its easily debunked propaganda with enough truth so as to be more of a distortion than a complete lie. It is, however, a lie nonetheless.