On April 7, 2018, images and video footage purporting to show the victims of a chemical attack in Douma, Syria were released by ‘opposition activists’ and began to spread like wildfire across social media, along with accusations coming from the same sources claiming that Syrian President Bashar al Assad was responsible for the alleged attack(s) in Eastern Ghouta.
The western media narrative was immediately set in stone, parroting the ‘opposition’ claims, and leaders were from both sides of the political aisle all across the establishment began pushing for regime change in Syria.
Fox News talk show host Tucker Carlson accurately summarized the official story of the event as follows:
“Assad is an evil man, they tell us, his latest crime is a chlorine gas attack carried out over the weekend by his forces against a rebel-held suburb of Damascus. Assad’s poison gas suffocated children. Pictures of the aftermath of that are all over the internet, and they are horrifying. Assad is a monster. That’s the official story. Almost everyone in power claims to believe it. But do they really know that? Of course they don’t know that, they’re making it up! They have no real idea what happened.”
Answers and evidence would eventually come, but not enough would arrive in time to stop the inevitable western strikes on Damascus.
One week later, on April 14, the US, UK and France launched over 100 cruise missiles at Damascus in response, reportedly killing three civilians and injuring several others.
But had Assad actually carried out the attack, and what evidence had the US obtained to support this theory before launching an attack on a sovereign nation which could have easily led to all-out war? These questions were at the heart of an ongoing debate, and they would persist for many months before a clear picture of what had actually happened began to fully emerge. But evidence casting doubt on the official story began to surface almost immediately, and there were plenty of red flags visible from the get-go to anyone who was simply willing to look beyond the mainstream reporting and smear campaigns.
Officially, Syria doesn’t even have the ability to employ chemical weapons, as they were all given up and destroyed years ago. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) which oversaw the months-long process announced in early 2016
that the destruction of all Syria’s declared chemical weapons had finally been completed.
And while there is certainly the possibility that Assad kept some stores of undeclared chemical agents hidden from the OPCW inspectors for future use, there is no evidence to suggest this is the case, apart from the ‘opposition’ accusations that Syrian forces continue to utilize chemical weapons in frequent attacks against Syrian civilians.
The ‘opposition’ on the other hand, not only has access to its own chemical weapons stockpiles, but is more than willing to use them; having carried out a number of chemical attacks, both before and after the Douma event, a reality which has been independently confirmed but widely ignored by the corporate media.
“We know they’ve used chlorine in the past. We know they’ve done that in the past,” Lord West, former Chief of the Naval Staff and UK Chief of Defense Intelligence explained in a BBC interview shortly after the Douma event.
In fact, “the American and British intelligence communities had been aware since the spring of 2013 that some rebel units in Syria were developing chemical weapons.”
As award-winning American journalist Seymour Hersh revealed in a 2014 expose, The Red Line and the Rat Line, US intelligence was well aware that al-Nusra (al-Qaeda in Syria) was actively producing sarin and working towards developing a large network of chemical weapon stockpiles for widespread use throughout the country, and they did nothing to prevent the terrorists from achieving this goal, preferring to focus deterrent efforts on the regime instead.
On 20 June analysts for the US Defense Intelligence Agency issued a highly classified five-page ‘talking points’ briefing for the DIA’s deputy director, David Shedd, which stated that al-Nusra maintained a sarin production cell: its programme, the paper said, was ‘the most advanced sarin plot since al-Qaida’s pre-9/11 effort’.
“Al-Nusrah Front’s relative freedom of operation within Syria leads us to assess the group’s CW aspirations will be difficult to disrupt in the future,” it warned.
In the days leading up to the Douma event, the Russian military had also repeatedly warned they had intelligence suggesting opposition forces in southern Syria, trained by US instructors at the al-Tanf military base for this purpose, were planning to stage a series of false flag chemical weapons “provocations” to be used as the pretext for western strikes on Damascus. These Russian warnings coincided with the deployment of a US naval strike group to the region, which appeared to substantiate the Russian claims and would coincidentally be used to strike Damascus following the alleged Douma attack, just as the Russians had warned.
Such claims, however – and any speculation that the alleged attack had in fact been a false flag event of some kind, staged to some degree by the ‘opposition’ forces and their affiliates in Douma – were brushed off by the mainstream media as outrageous conspiracies fueled by Russian propaganda, and Tucker Carlson. President Assad maintained Syria's innocence and pressed the international community to provide evidence of the alleged attack, while the Russians immediately pronounced that the entire “provocation” had been a staged hoax, maintaining that no chemical attack had even taken place.
A massive propaganda war ensued, and an intense media campaign to silence and discredit anyone who challenged the official narrative in any way was launched. Anyone who so much as questioned the obvious lack of a clear motive on the part of Assad was immediately labeled a 'conspiracist' peddling outrageous conspiracy theories or accused of being a Russian or Assad apologist complicit in covering up Syrian war crimes. The defamation and character assassination were vicious, and willingness to actually consider the legitimate concerns being raised was almost nonexistent.
And so it was that, without congressional approval, despite a number of serious doubts and concerns being raised, in the face of a reasonable alternative theory proposed by Russia, without waiting for the anticipated UN investigation to be launched, and despite the Russians clearly warning that if the US attacked Syria they would “target the launch platform” of any strike, Donald Trump went ahead and authorized a large military strike on a sovereign foreign nation which had neither attacked nor threatened to attack America.
Trump called Russia’s bluff, and risked starting a world war based upon unverified claims, and to top it all off, “Among the American cruise missile targets was a scientific centre in Damascus which the OPCW had itself cleared of any involvement in chemical warfare in the autumn of 2018.”
According to journalist Vanessa Beeley, who was in Damascus at the time of the US strikes, this building was actually a cancer research center.
When Donald Trump announced the US strikes on Syria on the evening of the attack, he addressed the reason why the US had taken this bold action, telling the American people that:
“One year ago, Assad launched a savage chemical weapons attack against his own innocent people,” the script read.
After blaming Assad for once again deploying “chemical weapons to slaughter innocent civilians,” Trump reiterated his first point.
“This massacre was a significant escalation in a pattern of chemical weapons use by that very terrible regime,” the President declared.
Much of the mainstream narrative depends upon these claims, and little depends upon any actual evidence implicating Assad in the Douma ‘attack’ itself.
The entire official story stands or falls on this “pattern of chemical weapons use” narrative, because without it, the entire western Douma narrative falls apart. Take away the previous attacks, and you lose 90% of the official ‘why’ behind Trump’s April airstrikes on Syria.
It wasn’t the first time that such a scenario had played out, and it seemed likely that it wouldn’t be the last. But it might just be the first time that such a large body of convincing evidence would eventually emerge to reveal the lies and propaganda used to fuel the chemical weapons narrative and to demonize Assad and the Syrian Arab Army (SAA); exposing a criminal conspiracy to pin the blame for an attack that may never have happened on Assad, without one shred of evidence he was responsible, to create the pretext for ongoing western military intervention, in a country President Donald Trump had just weeks before announced he was planning to withdraw all US troops from.
What will eventually emerge is a conspiracy of vast proportions, that spans continents, a conspiracy to suppress the truth at all costs. This is the story of the Douma conspiracy, the real one; and how sometimes the truth does eventually come out - revealing that sometimes real conspiracies do exist - and vindicating everyone who dared to question those who claim they don’t.
Doubts & Motive
There was no shortage of doubt cast upon the mainstream Douma narrative from the very outset, even among a few prominent western officials.
“The debate that seems to missing from this [discussion],” British General Jonathon Shaw pointed out in an interview on Sky News before being abruptly cut off, “is what possible motive might have triggered Syria to launch an attack at this time, in this place?“
It’s a good question, and nobody peddling the official narrative had a believable answer.
“Either Assad is the dumbest dictator on the planet earth,” US Senator Rand Paul said in a TV interview,
“or he didn’t do it.”
“Because you think about it, they’ve been winning the war for over a year, the only thing that galvanizes world opposition to the regime, the only thing that gets us involved at all is the use of chemical weapons, and when you compare them to other weapons, there are many other weapons much more lethal,” the KY senator argued on Fox News in the wake of the Douma event. “What I am saying is that it doesn’t make any sense for Assad to have done this.”
It doesn’t make any sense at all for Assad, on the verge of a military victory, to gas his own people, but what would make a lot more sense is for the terrorists to stage a false flag to blame on Assad. Even top military brass in the western world recognized the obvious strategic advantage to the terrorists gained by staging such an attack to be blamed on Assad, and the ease with which they could have done so.
“I could set up a situation where I would wait until a Syrian helicopter was overhead, dropping a barrel bomb, and then set off some chlorine agent. I know I could do that. And that’s what I would do if I was one of the Islamic terrorists, because they know they’re losing at the moment,” Lord West explained. “I am concerned, and as we move forward, I wouldn’t be in the least surprised if there was another gas attack, because it’s in their interest to make us respond.”
And respond we did. It isn’t the first time the western world was fed this very same unlikely story, with the very same results.
Twice in one year, you had Donald Trump announce a policy shift away from foreign intervention in Syria, and in both cases, in a matter of days you have allegations of a chemical weapons attack carried out by Assad which draws the US back into the Syrian conflict. While there was there no clear motive for Assad to order such an attack, there was a very clear motive for the warhawks in the US establishment hellbent on regime change in Syria to orchestrate such a false flag attack.
Only one man in American mainstream media was asking the relevant questions and pointing out the obvious, however, and that was Tucker Carlson.
“How would it benefit Assad using chlorine gas last weekend? Well, it wouldn’t. Assad’s forces had been winning the war in Syria. The administration just announced its plans to pull American troops out of Syria, having vanquished ISIS. That’s good new for Assad, and about the only thing he could do to reverse it and to hurt himself, would be to use poison gas against children. Well he did it anyway, they tell us. He’s that evil! Please.
“Keep in mind this is the same story they told us last April, do you remember that? It was almost exactly a year ago, the administration had announced it was no longer seeking to depose Assad from power. Regime change was no longer a policy, so the usual war chorus in Washington started yelping, went berserk, and days later Assad supposedly used sarin gas against civilians in Syria - there was video. We bombed a Syrian airbase in response to that. At the time, this show asked what seemed like the obvious question - Are we really sure Assad did that? It seems weirdly timed, and counterproductive to him. Shut up, they explained, of course we’re sure, what an unpatriotic question.
“But of course they were lying. Two months ago, the Secretary of Defense admitted that actually we still have no proof Assad used sarin gas last year. The story, it turns out, was propaganda, it was designed to manipulate Americans, just like so much of what they say.”
It is well known that two of the most important keys to making a solid case in a court of law is establishing means and motive. In this case, Assad had zero motive, and according to the available information he did not have the means, while the terrorists and their western backers demonstrably had both the motive and the means.
Who Benefits?
Cui Bueno? Who Benefits? It’s an important question which must be asked by any serious investigator. And the answer isn't difficult to see, if we are just willing to look.
Timeline for Alleged Chemical Weapons Attack in Douma, Syria
July 7, 2017: U.S., Russia Reach Deal on Cease-Fire in Syria
July 25, 2017: Donald Trump Orders End to Covert CIA Ops in Syria, Democrat Tulsi Gabbard Defends Trump’s Decision
April 4, 2018: White House Announces U.S. Military Mission in Syria “Coming to a Rapid End”
April 7, 2018: Alleged Chemical Attack in Douma, Russia Blames Israel for Missile Strikes in Syria Post-Chemical Weapons Attack
April 13, 2018: Trump Approves U.S. Military Strikes in Syria Against Assad Regime
April 14, 2018: U.S., Allies “Significantly Crippled” Syrian Chemical Weapons Program
In this case, both the ‘opposition’ and various Zionist actors behind the regime change efforts in Syria benefited. For the terrorists, despite losing Douma, it was a big political win and brought about a small military ‘victory’. The weapons manufacturers whose missiles were fired at Damascus benefited. Those opposing Trump’s plan to withdraw forces from Syria and seeking regime change in Syria benefited. About the only party involved in the event who didn’t benefit from the alleged chemical attack was President Assad himself and the Syrian state.
While determining motive and benefit alone doesn’t solve our case, it does provide substantial evidence suggesting that Assad was not the most likely culprit; and that alone should have necessitated that western officials pointing their fingers at him provide concrete evidence for their claims before carrying out an attack on a sovereign nation. But that is not how things went down; instead they went down just like they had gone down one year before, and this rush to ‘punish’ Assad before any real investigation was carried out looks to be all by design.
History Repeating?
Indeed, one year before, in the heat of very much the same media frenzy following almost identical allegations of a gas attack on April 4 in Khan Shaykhun in the Idlib province of northern Syria, there were much the same doubts, much the same questions being asked, and much the same rush to judgment without as much as a single piece of credible evidence being produced to support the official narrative.
US Representative Thomas Massey raised serious doubts about the official narrative in a CNN interview, immediately following the alleged chemical attack of April 4, 2017.
“Frankly I don’t think Assad would have done that, it does not serve his interests, it would tend to draw us into that civil war even further,” the congressman explained.
“Donald Trump’s decision to launch cruise missile strikes on a Syrian Air Force Base was based on a lie,” former DIA Col. Patrick LANG said on April 7, 2018, exactly one year prior to the alleged Douma attack. “In the coming days the American people will learn that the Intelligence Community knew that Syria did not drop a military chemical weapon on innocent civilians in Idlib.”
The official narrative was that there had been a sarin gas attack carried out by Assad, but that was realistically impossible, considering numerous ‘first responders’ (White Helmets) handled the ‘victims’, and survived. Skin contact with sarin gas, on the other hand, would be deadly.
According to the Russian side, the event had been caused by a Syrian airstrike targeting a terrorist ammo depot which apparently housed some of their poison gas stores, and ended up releasing the chemicals (not sarin) into the air and causing the deaths and injuries among those said to be victims of a sarin attack.
“Apparently the intelligence on this is very clear,” former CIA officer Philip Giraldi said, citing sources on the ground “intimately familiar with the intelligence,” who described the official narrative as a “sham.”
And as for the White House report alleging proof of Syria as the perpetrator of the alleged sarin gas attack on April 4, 2017, a scathing “Assessment of the White House Intelligence Report” was issued just days later on April 11, 2017 by Theodore A. Postol, Professor Emeritus of Science, Technology, and National Security Policy; in which it was found that the evidence provided in the White House report did not in fact support the conclusion of the report itself, but instead pointed to either an attack carried out by the ‘opposition’ or a staged ‘attack site’. Postol’s analysis had been key in deconstructing the similarly ‘fabricated’ 2013 Obama White House report.
I have reviewed the document carefully, and I believe it can be shown, without doubt, that the document does not provide any evidence whatsoever that the US government has concrete knowledge that the government of Syria was the source of the chemical attack in Khan Shaykhun, Syria at roughly 6 to 7 a.m. on April 4, 2017.
In fact, a main piece of evidence that is cited in the document points to an attack that was executed by individuals on the ground, not from an aircraft, on the morning of April 4.
Not only did the evidence point to a ground attack, but a ground attack that could not have been launched from a distance great enough to have originated from Syrian-controlled territory!
Furthermore, he notes that the source of attack appears to have been “tampered with or staged,” that “the only indisputable facts stated in the White House report is the claim that a chemical attack using nerve agent occurred,” and boldly suggests the report appears at least in part to have been “fabricated” and “not vetted by competent intelligence experts,” much like Obama’s White House intelligence report on the August 21, 2013 chemical attack, now known by the intelligence community to have been a Turkish-backed false flag attack carried out by the 'rebels'.
“US has no evidence of Syrian use of Sarin gas, Mattis says,” an AP news headline on February 2, 2018 reads - 10 full months after the US rushed to launch a massive strike against Damascus based upon claims of certainty Assad was behind the alleged attack without waiting for proof (that it will never find). There is ample reason to suspect a similar rush to judgment and fabrication of evidence to implicate Assad and create the pretext for an attack and prolonged Syrian intervention also took place a year later in 2018. And if Assad and the Syrian Arab Army weren’t responsible, there’s really only one other possibility - the 'rebels' in control of Douma at the time.
Evidence of a Gas Attack
The most widely circulated video being used to support the claims of an alleged chemical attack in Douma depicted a number of ‘victims’ in the local Douma hospital being hosed down, and what appeared to be a generally frantic scene. The other major pieces of photo and video evidence include images of about three dozen dead bodies, alleged victims of the attack which did appear to have suffered from symptoms consistent with some type of chemical poisoning, along with two yellow canisters photographed at separate locations near the alleged attack site, said to have been responsible for delivering the chlorine suspected to have been used in the ‘attack’. Apart from these photos and videos, the only other evidence initially referenced by the media in support of the official narrative were a variety of claims by the White Helmets and their supporters. This formed the core of the body of evidence being used to support the mainstream narrative, and as will be shown, western governments were not able to produce any additional evidence.
Shortly after the April 14 US strikes on Syria, Senator Rand Paul, a member of the foreign affairs committee, told a Fox News anchor he had not been shown any evidence “either way,” concerning any chemical attack taking place in Douma.
Secretary Mattis announced on April 12, two days prior to the strikes, that he had no solid intelligence that Assad was behind the alleged chemical attack, but he believed Assad was responsible and was still looking for the proof. He was, it should be noted, also still looking for the proof that Assad was responsible for the alleged chemical attack one year before.
Likewise, the only evidence the State Department could point to was from social media posts put out by ‘opposition activists’ - pictures and video released by the White Helmets and their affiliates – but still claimed confidence in Assad’s guilt.
On April 9,, the White House Press Secretary announced that the US was “very confident” Syria had carried out the ‘attack’.
And, the White House report released on April 14 on the evening of the strikes declared that: “The United States assesses with confidence that the Syrian regime used chemical weapons,” without producing any solid evidence in support of its assessment.
The White House assessment concluded:
“A significant body of evidence points to the regime using chlorine in its bombardment of Duma, while some additional information points to the regime also using the nerve agent sarin.”
That this “significant body of evidence” refers to nothing more than the widely circulated social media content and claims released by the White Helmets and their supporters, can be pretty clearly ascertained from the report itself, which makes sure to note that “the Syrian regime has a clear history of using chemical weapons even after pledging that it had given up its chemical weapons program,” a demonstrably dishonest interpretation of the historical reality.
The nature of the undefined “information” regarding sarin use remained a relative mystery, but US officials also said at the time that “blood and urine samples” from the site had “tested positive for both chlorine and a nerve agent.”
Both of these claims align with the conclusion of France’s UN Representative who, speaking at the UN Security Council, said the videos and pictures circulating on social media showed victims with “symptoms of a potent nerve agent combined with chlorine gas.”
All three of these western claims regarding sarin appear to have been primarily based upon White Helmet claims and speculations, and turned out to be entirely false: there were no traces of any nerve agents found in any of the environmental samples taken by the OPCW investigators from the ‘attack site’ in Douma or in biological samples taken from alleged casualties (who had fled to Turkey), as revealed in the interim report released in July.
The US had apparently not actually obtained any blood samples that tested positive for a nerve agent, casting serious doubt on the claim that there were any blood or urine samples obtained at all. The White House “information” indicating sarin was used was also faulty, casting serious doubt upon the reliability of the “significant body of evidence” pointing to the regime using chlorine. Both the “information” and “body of evidence” likely refers to nothing more than the photo and video evidence widely circulating on social media, including analysis of the alleged victims pictured in these circulating photos and videos.
This was enough ‘evidence’ to satisfy France and the mainstream media, despite a complete lack of any actual physical samples to analyze that would have constituted real proof, so it was surely good enough for the USA as well.
The French intelligence report also released on the 14th was a little more forthcoming about this total lack of physical samples constituting actual proof:
"On the basis of this overall assessment and on the intelligence collected by our services, and in the absence to date of chemical samples analysed by our own laboratories, France therefore considers (i) that, beyond possible doubt, a chemical attack was carried out against civilians at Douma on 7 April 2018; and (ii) that there is no plausible scenario other than that of an attack by Syrian armed forces as part of a wider offensive in the Eastern Ghouta enclave."
A truly “significant body of evidence” emerging in the coming weeks would quickly prove that there was in fact very much another equally, if not far more plausible scenario, but even then the western establishment would stick with their original story.
Because, as would be made crystal clear by US Ambassador Nikki Haley later the same year, the US always has high confidence on this matter, indeed even certainty, even without any evidence at all - that Assad is responsible for absolutely any chemical weapon attack carried out in Syria - even the ones that haven’t taken place yet!
“If there are chemical weapons that are used, we know exactly who is going to use them,” she said, referring to “Assad, Russia and Iran.” This is the sort of logic that doesn’t need evidence; it only needs claims, and the all-important narrative.
Unlike the US and France, however, Russian military police were able to secure the scene of the Douma ‘attack site’ within days of the event, and military specialists immediately took soil samples, and reportedly found no traces of chlorine.
“Our military specialists have visited this place, along with representatives of the Syrian Red Crescent… and they did not find any trace of chlorine or any other chemical substance used against civilians.”- Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov
This could be a false Russian claim, but it would serve only as the first in a long line of various pieces of evidence, almost all of which would eventually be independently verified, that would cast serious doubt upon almost every aspect of the western mainstream narrative.
Witnesses, White Helmets and a Staged Scene
The media content being widely circulated on social media and hailed as proof of a Syrian attack on civilians came from extremely questionable sources, as did the claims that accompanied them. The most viral video making its rounds purporting to show victims of the ‘attack’ being treated at the local hospital, would later be proven beyond any shadow of a doubt to be footage of a staged scene, as will be documented below.
This and some of the other footage circulating on social media had been released by the ‘opposition activist’ group, “Douma Revolution,” which had close ties to the White Helmets and ‘opposition forces’ in control of the town, with much of the rest being disseminated directly by the White Helmets.
This ‘opposition’ in Douma was the Saudi-backed and al-Qaeda linked terrorist group operating under the name of Jaish al Islam, a battle-hardened army of brutal Jihadi terrorists who had been occupying the town and terrorizing its residents for years. These so-called ‘rebels’ had over the past week been carting around cages full of kidnapped civilians being used as human shields, placing them in locations of strategic significance in an attempt to deter the Syrian Arab Army’s airstrikes on their positions and slow the Syrian advance. This is a war crime, but although publicized it was ignored by the media who favored coverage of the alleged Syrian war crime of using chemical weapons.
These terrorists had survived the relentless Syrian and Russian bombings for so long by operating out of a large network of underground tunnels which had been built by the slave-labor of the Syrian people - a combination of captured Syrian soldiers and kidnapped civilians, mostly ethnic and religious minorities and those suspected of ‘aiding the regime.’ Witness testimony from countless dozens of the surviving residents obtained in the months after the Syrian Army’s liberation of Douma reveals the horrific oppression of life under terrorist occupation and White Helmet collusion with Jaish al-Islam; the Jihadists regularly executed civilians in the street, tortured countless people, occupied their homes, often throwing families out on the street and in many cases stole their food, driving civilians to starvation.
These are the ‘rebels’ with whom the White Helmets and affiliated ‘opposition activists’ were intimately involved and closely allied with in Douma. In fact, when the Jihadists surrendered and Syrians in Douma were given the option to take the bus to the al-Qaeda capital of Syria in Idlib with the terrorists or stay in Douma, the White Helmets chose not to stay. Most every White Helmet in Douma opted to accompany the terrorists to Idlib, where they to this day continue to work side by side with the large smattering of al-Qaeda and ISIS-linked terrorists in the last Jihadist stronghold of the country. These were the ‘valiant rescuers’ upon which the western media was relying almost exclusively for all of their ‘evidence’ of an Assad-backed gas attack.
The White Helmets are as a matter of fact a western-created terrorist propaganda construct, founded by a former member of the British Special Forces, and funded to the tune of $100 million by the US, UK, Europe and other states, at least $23 million of that coming from the US State Department alone.
Though posing for cameras as impartial rescuers, they have been filmed standing over the dead bodies of Syrian soldiers, waving al-Qaeda flags at Islamist rallies, and can be seen on numerous occasions functioning as armed Jihadist fighters during battle, while at least one even participated in a brutal child beheading carried out by Nour al-de Zinki terrorists.
In Douma, multiple residents attested to the fact that the White Helmets and Jaish al-Islam fighters were indistinguishable apart from their uniforms, actively working together, and that White Helmets were often seen carrying rifles on the streets of the occupied city.
There is extensive evidence exposing the White Helmets, a few examples linked below, but simply put, they are in no way a neutral or credible source of evidence, whatsoever.
Who Are the Syria White Helmets? - 21st Century Wire
Massive White Helmets Photo Cache Proves Hollywood Gave Oscar to Terrorist Group by @clarityofsignal
WHITE HELMETS: Channel 4, BBC, The Guardian – Architects of ‘Humanitarian’ War by Vanessa Beeley
They are probably most famous for their propaganda stunts, and have been caught on numerous occasions staging rescue scenes and recycling old footage in new propaganda stunts. With that being said, some of the very first evidence to surface casting doubt on the validity of the alleged scenes of a gas attack in Douma, was evidence that the bodies of the alleged victims had been moved in between photo-shoots, indicating some (or all) of the bodies may have been intentionally placed at the location (alleged attack site) as part of a staged scene.
(Source: Blackstone Intelligence)
The Russian military quickly released interviews conducted with two of the Douma hospital workers who were on duty at at the time the viral hospital scene was filmed, who explained there had been no patients suffering from chemical poisoning that day, but only oxygen loss. A number of people came in that day due to heavy bombing which had created particularly dusty conditions in the basements and tunnels where residents took shelter from the airstrikes. The video was filmed, they said, when an unknown party rushed into the hospital, screaming ‘gas attack,’ and then began spraying people down with water, prompting the ensuing panic seen in the footage depicting ‘gas attack victims’.
None of these ‘victims’ seen being ‘treated’ in the hospital were even hurt, it turns out, let alone suffering from a recent exposure to toxic chemicals from any sort of gas attack.
The young boy Hasan Diab, one of the featured ‘victims’ in this footage, accompanied by his father, told his story in a Sputnik interview, explaining how he had been told to go to the hospital with a few others, where they (White Helmets) immediately began spraying him and several others children down with water upon their arrival.
Neither the local doctors at the Douma field hospital, nor the Syrian Red Crecent (the Syrian equivalent of the Red Cross), had treated any patients exhibiting signs of chemical weapons exposure.
Foreign reporters began to trickle into Douma in the days and weeks following the alleged attack, all confirming this series of events.
Pearson Sharpe, the first western journalist to report from Douma - on April 16, just two days after the western strikes - interviewed dozens of locals, “about 10” who lived in the nearby neighborhood just a block away from the alleged attack site, and “about 30-40” more he randomly approached on the streets of Douma, as well as doctors at the hospital of the staged scene and Syrian soldiers. He wasn’t able to find a single person who had heard anything about any chemical attack taking place that day, and not one of the people he spoke to had seen a single shred of evidence any such attack had even taken place.
"When I asked what they thought the chemical attack was, they told me --all of them told me-- that it was staged by the rebels who are occupying the town at the time. They said it was a fabrication and a hoax, and when I asked them why, they told me it was because the rebels were desperate, and they needed a ploy to get the Syrian army off their backs so they could escape," Sharp reported.
The next day, award-winning journalist Robert Fisk would report hearing much the same story among the locals he spoke with in Douma.
There are the many people I talked to amid the ruins of the town who said they had “never believed in” gas stories – which were usually put about, they claimed, by the armed Islamist groups.
According to Sharp, one man who had been just 50 meters away from the alleged attack site at the time of the alleged attack said he hadn’t seen or heard anything out of the ordinary, and hadn’t smelled any chlorine either.
When he asked one Syrian local what he made of the chemical attack stories in the news, the older man’s response was simple: “This is how the West plays their game.”
The local doctor Robert Fisk talked to explained what had actually taken place in the hospital that day, the same story being reported by all the medical workers there, detailed in Fisk’s report published by The Independent on April 17.
“People began to arrive here suffering from hypoxia, oxygen loss. Then someone at the door, a “White Helmet”, shouted “Gas!”, and a panic began. People started throwing water over each other. Yes, the video was filmed here, it is genuine, but what you see are people suffering from hypoxia – not gas poisoning.”
“I did not dismiss the possibility that gas had been used,” Fisk wrote a year later, “but eyewitnesses and the head of the field hospital where the victims had been treated insisted they knew nothing of gas.”
RT Arabic reporters were being told the very same version of events by the locals they interviewed. The hospital scene had been staged by the White Helmets; a few locals had been instructed to go there before being doused with water when they arrived. Nobody who was interviewed had seen or heard or smelled anything indicating a chemical attack had actually taken place that day.
Two weeks after the alleged attack, Uli Gack, a reporter with the German ZDF broadcasting network, speaking on German TV, similarly shared how: “People told us in a very convincing manner that this whole story was staged.”
Gack had visited a refugee camp outside Damascus housing 20,000 people from Eastern Ghouta, “particularly Douma,” and found two prevailing stories of events. There were those who believed the terrorists had carried out an false flag chlorine attack in precisely the manner detailed by Lord West on BBC, and those who said there had been no attack and that it was a completely staged hoax, which aligned with the Russian claims. Those in the former camp claimed the building was a ‘rebel’ headquarters.
According to the locals, the militants brought canisters containing chlorine to the area and “actually waited for the Syrian Air Force to bomb the place, which was of particular interest for them.”
As the Syrian forces eventually struck the place, which was apparently a high-priority military target, the chlorine canisters exploded. The locals also told Gack that it is not the first such provocation in Douma that was staged by the militants.
According to other witness accounts, the militants deliberately exposed people to chemical agents during what they called “training exercises” then filmed it and later presented as an “evidence” of the alleged chemical attack in Douma.
Reporters continued to visit Douma, and more Douma locals who had since the alleged attack been re-located to the refugee camp outside Damascus would share their stories, and not one local Syrian witness would be found to corroborate the version of the story being peddled by the western establishment.
Every independent journalist to visit Douma would verify that the viral hospital footage so foundational to the mainstream narrative had been a staged scene - a White Helmets propaganda stunt. Among those reporting on this story directly from Syria were independent Canadian journalist Eva Bartlett,, award-winning independent British journalist Vanessa Beeley, and David Macilwain.
Two mainstream reporters also visited Douma several weeks after the alleged ‘attack’, and even their own star witness - the only eyewitness to the ‘attack’ that could be found - accused the terrorists of carrying out the attack, a point which was simply omitted from the censored interview as broadcast to western audiences. The result was an interview portraying one of the few surviving eyewitnesses to the event confirming a deadly chlorine attack, and thus putting to rest those pesky Russian-backed conspiracy theories rapidly spreading all across the world.
“Suddenly we heard a sound like the valve of a gas cylinder being opened,” the survivor [Hassan] Hanan told Borg, the Swedish journalist.
“What was not included in either Borg’s TV4 package or the CBS broadcast was that Hanan was, at least publicly, blaming the Islamist rebels for the attack — and the White Helmets for not coming to the victims’ aid sooner,” James Harkin, who visited Syria several weeks later, wrote in his detailed report published by the Intercept in February, 2019.
Harkin - one of the corporate media's 'independent' journalists - despite his clear anti-Assad bias and ultimate conclusion that Syrian forces were somehow responsible for an alleged attack that day, was nonetheless forced to admit that the hospital scene was most certainly staged - a leap most mainstream journalists are still not willing to make.
Twenty days after the alleged attack, Russia assembled a panel of 17 Douma witnesses who testified to the OPCW at The Hague. Six of witnesses were then individually interviewed by the OPCW. The message of the witness panel was clear:
‘No Attack, No Victims, No Chemical Weapons’
Among the witnesses was 11 year old Hasan Diab and hospital workers who were present during the filming of the staged scene. Since the star witness (Diab) was clearly the same boy in the film, and clearly hadn’t suffered from any effects of a chemical attack, and the video purported to show victims of the alleged attack, then the video was clearly staged and not proof of an attack at all. There is no other possible conclusion.
So how else would the media establishment respond, but by engaging in a coordinated smear campaign to discredit the witnesses, labeling the eyewitness testimonies variously as a “stunt,” an “obscene masquerade,” “bizarre” and “nothing more than a crude propaganda exercise,” which provided an “underwhelming case.” Somehow I’m not sure they realized just how perfectly their own accusations of the Syrian witnesses described the staging of the hospital scene footage they were so desperately clinging to as credible evidence of an attaack. If convincing evidence that challenged the mainstream narrative qualified as “bizarre,” then things were about to get a lot more bizarre than this.
A BBC producer, Riam Dalati, also shocked followers by stating on Twitter in February (before quickly making his account private) that:
After almost 6 months of investigations, I can prove without a doubt that the Douma Hospital scene was staged. No fatalities occurred in the hospital.
According to him, Jaish al-Islam “ruled Douma with an iron fist,” and “no one knew what really happened at the flats apart from activists manipulating the scene there,” referencing the location of the alleged attack where dead bodies had been filmed, apparently known to him to have been manipulated by the White Helmets.
Meanwhile Harkin informs us that the one cameraman he spoke with in Douma who had arrived at that scene of the 'attack' and filmed the bodies, admits the White Helmets were at the scene before any of the cameramen arrived. Thus the White Helmets could easily have moved the bodies from the original place of death and indeed could have brought them to the location for the very purpose of staging an attack scene there. The one 'eyewitness' of the 'attack' said the dead had fled from the basement they had been hiding in, and then ran back into the building in the room above which was full of chlorine, having, according to the White Helmets, been hit with a chlorine bomb dropped by Syrian helicopters. But the testimony of Fadi Abdullah, who told Harkin he was the first media activist on the scene, doesn't match this scenario. “The people he’d seen, he maintained, hadn’t seemed like they’d ever been in any basement; they hadn’t seemed to be running anywhere,” Harkin writes. “It was as if they’d been killed on the spot.” This would be consistent with dead bodies brought from elsewhere to the site and manually placed in the locations where they were found. There is more evidence that these victims were first killed and then brought to the alleged attack site to stage the scene of the attack, which will be discussed below.
In any event, “Not everyone, even those with opposition sympathies, agreed that this had been a chlorine attack,” Harkin explains. One “opposition reporter” speaking to Harkin two months after the event, said “his best guess was that the deaths at the apartment building had been the result of smoke inhalation — the tragic consequence of cloying war-zone dust and several dozen people who’d unwittingly found themselves trapped in a basement.”
His thinking, he told me, was shaped by suspicions about the agenda of the White Helmets and their Western backers, as well as both their and Douma Revolution’s close relationship with Islamists on the ground. Noting the giant gas masks worn by activists days after the attacks, which didn’t always feel necessary, he complained that “this is all a huge game.”
Amazingly, Harkin would also cite a former OPCW investigator who concluded, “This was a setup rather than an actual aerial attack,” admit that when asking Douma locals about any chemical attack as he looked for the alleged attack site, “No one seemed to know what I was talking about,” and detail his conversation with one of the many residents who had been taken captive by Jaish al-Islam over the years and was a prisoner at the time of the Douma battle, who strongly disagreed with the assessment that the Syrian Arab Army had carried out any chemical that day. The Syrian man believes that if the Syrians had actually employed chemical weapons, there is no way the terrorists he knew his captors to be would have released the prisoners, “yet the hostages were duly set free in two groups over the next two days.” Besides, “Dropping chemicals didn’t seem to make military sense either... it would have been stupid for the government to land chemicals near its own troops.”
Despite citing an immense amount of convincing evidence running contrary to his assessment, Harkin states towards the beginning of his piece, in typical propagandist fashion with complete certainty, that: “At least one chemical attack did take place in Douma on April 7, and people died as a result. There could have been no other culprit but a Syrian army helicopter.”
Yet as far as I was able to ascertain, the only actual evidence Harkin was relying upon to support his conclusion (apart from the inconclusive interim OPCW report), was one anonymous witness who said he had smelled chlorine in the street and that “about 50” people had died, along with the professional opinion of Theodore Postel, the analyst who had discredited the White House reports on Syria chemical attacks in 2013 and 2017, who felt certain upon analyzing the photographs of the two yellow canisters that they had been canisters filled with chlorine, dropped by an aircraft. These two canisters are central pieces of evidence – Douma's “smoking gun” as Harkin put it – and the entire western narrative hangs on them having been dropped by an aircraft.
One thing is certain, the White Helmets staged at least one of the major propaganda videos used to sell the chemical weapons attack narrative. And Evidence against the official narrative would continue to pile up...
Part 2 to follow, as size limit wouldn't allow my full piece - the story continues...
Thanks for this deep dive @jasonliberty!
There's plenty of instances where false flags are used as a pretext for intervention, invasion and war. The Douma gas attacks follow this pattern.
The evidence supporting the prevailing western narrative is flimsy at best. Unfortunately, the news cycle moves so fast and the agenda is set so that evidence refuting the official narrative is simply ignored by institutional media outlets.
The origins of the White Helmets and their activity within Syria is very shady as reporters Eva Bartlett and Vanessa Beeley have covered extensively - on the ground. The White Helmets are a western created propaganda construct with the goal of producing western intervention and regime change in Syria.
Thanks and we're looking forward to the second part of your article!
It’s up, I left the link on the deepdives challenge announcement post... all the juicy stuff, leaks and hard evidence and such proving at the least an orchestrated conspiracy to knowingly suppress all valid evidence that didn’t support the western narrative is in part 2.
I felt addressing the full context was really necessary to show repeat pattern of US jumping the gun in favor of acts of war without proof, especially with Syria gas attack narrative, and to document the full extent of the evidence and counter evidence...
Are you saying the news about hundreds and thousands killed are fake?
About tanks bombing citizens so Assad can keep his position given to him by his father?
Didn't the Syrian people suffered enough?
Tldr
But I did start reading and this reminds me a kid breaking 4 windows and saying the fifth was already broken.
Assad is a dictator.
If there was real freedom in Syria he would not be elected. He inhereted the power from his father.
He let millions suffer for his desire to stay in power.
This way of governance is primitive and leads to decline of nations.
You can take a look at Turkey and Russia. Places that had elections but the president don't let go.
Nations that are kidnapped by grandomans.
Syrria could thrive if Assad would care about the nation more than his own power.
Everybody knows that.
Assad is a killer.