Sy Hersh Reveals Potential Turkish Role in Syria Chemical Strike That Almost Sparked U.S. Bombing

[KoKo]

Sy Hersh Reveals Potential Turkish Role in Syria Chemical Strike That Almost Sparked U.S. Bombing

Was Turkey behind last year’s Syrian chemical weapons attack? That is the question raised in a new exposé by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh on the intelligence debate over the deaths of hundreds of Syrians in Ghouta last year. The United States, and much of the international community, blamed forces loyal to the Assad government, almost leading to a U.S. attack on Syria. But Hersh reveals the U.S. intelligence community feared Turkey was supplying sarin gas to Syrian rebels in the months before the attack took place — information never made public as President Obama made the case for launching a strike. Hersh joins us to discuss his findings.

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Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: As Syria continues to remove its chemical weapons arsenal under the monitoring of the United Nations, a new article by the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh questions what happened last year in the Syrian city of Ghouta, when hundreds of Syrians died in a chemical weapons attack. The United States and much of the international community blamed forces loyal to the Assad government, and the incident almost led the U.S. to attack Syria. But according to Hersh, while President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry were making the case for U.S. strikes, analysts inside the U.S. military and intelligence community were privately questioning the administration’s central claim about who was behind the chemical weapons attack.

According to Hersh, the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency issued a highly classified five-page "talking points" briefing on June 19th which stated the Syrian rebel group al-Nusra maintained a sarin production cell. According to the DIA, it was, quote, "the most advanced sarin plot since al-Qaida’s pre-9/11 effort." The DIA document went on to state, quote, "Turkey and Saudi-based chemical facilitators were attempting to obtain sarin precursors in bulk, tens of kilograms, likely for the anticipated large scale production effort in Syria." A month before the DIA briefing was written, more than ten members of al-Nusra were arrested in southern Turkey with what local police told the press were two kilograms of sarin.

Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh now joins us from Washington, D.C. His latest piece is headlined "The Red Line and the Rat Line." It was just published in the London Review of Books.

Sy Hersh, welcome back to Democracy Now! Lay out what you have found.

http://www.democracynow.org/2014/4/7/sy_hersh_reveals_potential_turkish_role

[BelgianMadCow]

1. Happy 5th

yes, I would have considered this forum as well. Sometimes things get the focused views they need here.

[truedelphi]

2. Happy 6th. I am always surprised

That Hersh is still alive.

Still among us, speaking truth to power. Unlike 99% of all Talking Heads, newscasters, reporters, editors at news magazines etc.

[iandhr]

3. Didn't he claim the Bin Laden raid was a hoax? Seems like he has become a bit of a clown.

Last edited Mon Apr 7, 2014, 07:43 PM - Edit history (1)

[11cents]

4. When his articles are in the LRB and not the New Yorker...

...it means they're very weak. Like this one.

[jakeXT]

5. Just look what the Washington Post did with the Turkey false flag story and what they did to Sy

It is somewhat astonishing how "western" media avoid the content of the leaked tape. An AP report on it makes a lot of the youtube blocking the Turkish government ordered in reaction to the tape. Of the recording itself the AP only mentions this:

The four are allegedly heard discussing a military intervention in neighboring Syria, a sensitive political issue in Turkey, although the context of the conversation is not clear.

The Washington Post filed that AP report under Technology. This is an incredible disservice to its readers.



http://www.moonofalabama.org/2014/03/media-neglect-turkish-false-attack-leak-and-its-implications.html

It's not like they want to inform their readers.

Hersh then took the story to The Washington Post. The Post intended to publish it, as BuzzFeed first reported.

Hersh told HuffPost that he went to the Post because of the paper’s reporting on documents provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

In the Syria article, Hersh mentioned the Post's Aug. 29 report on the U.S. government's secret "black budget" for intelligence programs. He wrote that the leaked document revealed that "the NSA no longer had access to the conversations of the top military leadership in Syria, which would have included crucial communications from Assad, such as orders for a nerve gas attack."

Hersh also cited the Post’s reporting on a “secret sensor system” that he wrote would have been expected to detect Assad's regime preparing for a chemical attack in the days leading up to it.

It's unclear exactly why the Post decided not to publish the story. Hersh wrote that he was told by email that Executive Editor Marty Baron decided “that the sourcing in the article did not meet the Post's standards.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/08/seymour-hersh-syria-report_n_4409674.html

[KoKo]

10. ..good info...

the times we live in. So different from what some of us remember...what used to be "news." And, even then it wasn't great...but we gone past that.

[KoKo]

6. There's a good read from him this past December:

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n24/seymour-m-hersh/whose-sarin

This article that I posted...seems to follow up on this post and continues.

See what you think..?

[another_liberal]

7. We almost fell for it . . .

Christ in a body cast! We almost fell for it and started another unnecessary goddamned war.

[KoKo]

8. We gotta hope that we don't start another one with Russia...over the same influences

pushing in Administration trying to do a CHENEY III... WHEN DOES IT END?

[another_liberal]

11. They will have to do it without the peoples' support.

The American people are not in a mood to blow another three trillion dollars on yet another unnecessary war without hope of victory.

[markpkessinger]

9. Exactly . . .

. . . That's why I think we ALWAYS need to proceed with extreme caution in these cases, no matter how morally compelling it may appear to be at first glance. Particularly in the Middle East, but really anywhere in the world, there can always be many other layers, many other forces, at work in a given situation -- and often, as in this case, our own, bumbling intelligence community is clueless.

[JDPriestly]

12. Hersh seems to have answered the question I had about the Benghazi situation.

Why were the Turkish and American ambassadors meeting in Benghazi?

Hersh seems to suggest that it was perhaps to discuss military action or intervention of some kind or something to do with military action or intervention of some kind in Syria.

[KoKo]

13. I thought he was talking about the "Rat Tunnel" where there were

CIA Agents monitoring which arms were allowed through from Libya into Syria. And when the Embassy area was stormed at Benghazi that put an end to the CIA Monitors...and that's when the heavy equipment like the Shoulder Fired Rockets and other weapons started showing up in Syria. Then the Turks started shipping their Sarin in.

What was fascinating was that CIA was monitoring transfer of weapons from Libya into Syria in the first place. Did we invade Libya so that we could use their weapons to arm insurgents in Syria? Would give more evidence that Arab Spring had much help from our CIA and that goes along with the "Project for New American Century Plan" that we had a list and we were going to make sure we took down each country on that list even if we F-ed up Iraq and Afghanistan and Libya...and the list goes on to Iran.

[JDPriestly]

15. Thanks. Good observations.

The only question I had about Benghazi was why the ambassadors met there. I have also wondered whether Turkey had any knowledge of the impending attack. I suspected arms deliveries from Turkey, but it would not surprise me if Libya was also somehow involved.

[bananas]

14. k&r nt