"Today WikiLeaks releases more documents showing internal disagreement within the OPCW about how facts were misrepresented in a redacted version of a report on an alleged chemical attack in Douma, Syria in April 2018."
wikileaks.org/opcw-douma/#OP…
wikileaks.org/opcw-douma/#OP…
"The aforementioned memo states that around 20 inspectors have expressed concerns over the final FFM report, which they feel 'did not reflect the views of the team members that deployed to Douma'."
"A member of the FFM team has been suspended from his post and escorted from the OPCW building in a less than dignified manner."
wikileaks.org/opcw-douma/doc…
wikileaks.org/opcw-douma/doc…
"After more than 12 year, I believe, serving the OPCW with dedication and professionalism, Ian Henderson's personal and professional integrity have taken a knock in the most public of fora, the internet."
"A falsehood issued by the OPCW, that Ian did not take part in the Douma FFM team, has been pivotal in discrediting him and his work."
Yes indeed. Syria narrative managers made extensive use of this bogus claim.
Yes indeed. Syria narrative managers made extensive use of this bogus claim.
"The denial is patently untrue. Ian Henderson WAS part of the FFM and there is an abundance of official documentation, as well as other supporting proof, that testifies to that."
Henderson was the ballistics expert who said Douma scene didn't evidence an air attack, i.e Assad.
Henderson was the ballistics expert who said Douma scene didn't evidence an air attack, i.e Assad.
"We are not insisting on being right in our assertions, but we are demanding to be heard.... However, we have been stonewalled throughout by obfuscation, exclusion, and even thuggish and bullying behavior."
Email sender cites Edmund Burke in explaining why they're pushing so hard to be heard: "All that is required for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." There's a whistleblower's creed for you right there, if ever there was one.
Here's the memo referenced by the Daily Mail article saying some 20 different OPCW inspectors have expressed concern about the way the report was developed (this was March 2019, *AFTER* the OPCW's Final Report on Douma was published).
wikileaks.org/opcw-douma/doc…
wikileaks.org/opcw-douma/doc…
The "FFM" report was written almost exclusively by investigators who never actually went to Douma; the ones who did were excluded. "Country X" may be Turkey, per @wikileaks.
@wikileaks This would be the Ian Henderson memo referred to in the Daily Mail article.
dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7…
dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7…
@wikileaks This would be the Documents Registry Archive (DRA) that per Hitchens an OPCW official was referring to when he sent out an email saying "Please get this document out of DRA … And please remove all traces, if any, of its delivery/storage/whatever in DRA".
@wikileaks From Hitchens/Daily Mail:
@wikileaks So to recap, Ian Henderson is an OPCW inspector who went to Douma, ran some experiments, and concluded that the cylinders alleged to have been dropped by Assad helicopters were rather manually placed, i.e. staged. An OPCW official actively had his report purged from the registry.
@wikileaks OPCW inspector tries to argue to FFM team leader Sami Barrek that the low levels of chlorinated organic chemicals need to be reported to avoid misrepresentation and confusion. Barrek says he'll unilaterally overrule the inspectors and omit the information.
wikileaks.org/opcw-douma/doc…
wikileaks.org/opcw-douma/doc…
@wikileaks Inspectors were saying concentrations of chemicals found need to be included to keep people from reading the Interim Report as concluding that a chlorine gas attack occurred. Those concentrations were never once included in either the 2018 Interim Report or the 2019 Final Report.
@wikileaks This is all coming out on the same day an ex-Newsweek journo revealed that multiple editors (one of whom had CFR ties) shut down his attempts to report on previous OPCW revelations, citing the assertions of a debunked Bellingcat article as their reason.
@wikileaks This extremely important bit of information from the first draft of the 2018 Interim Report was excluded from the official publications of both the Interim Report and the Final Report.
wikileaks.org/opcw-douma/doc…
wikileaks.org/opcw-douma/doc…
@wikileaks Would've been nice to know this information too. Excluded from both the 2018 Interim Report and the 2019 Final Report.
@wikileaks This lack of a satisfactory explanation was accounted for by the aforementioned Engineering Assessment by Ian Henderson, which concluded the cylinders were manually placed. None of this in either Interim or Final Reports.
@wikileaks Either they were killed by some means the FFM couldn't discern, or it was "a non-chemical-related incident." This hugely important section gets not a whisper in either the OPCW's Interim Report or Final Report.
