Konflikten i Syrien

KK: You think the White Helmets serve a sort of propaganda function for the rebels?

SH: I don’t think there’s any question they do. There’s a video about—it’s just comical, it’s out of Monty Python. There’s two guys in hazmat suits, they’re carrying something. They’re asked by somebody speaking Russian, “What do you have there, brother?”

“Oh, we’ve got some samples of sarin we’re taking to the hospital in Turkey for the UN.”

“Show us.”

So he opens it up and there’s a bird wrapped up in cellophane. So he unwraps the cellophane—because that presumably is going to keep the sarin from getting you—and he shows it to the onlooker. They’re putting up skull-and-crossbones placards into the ground, pounding them in to warn people. Meanwhile cars are going driving back and forth. It’s the most funny—as I said it’s beyond belief. If you look at one [of the guys] in slow motion and very closely apparently you see he isn’t even wearing gloves.

This is the bird that’s later used in a UN report to show there were sarin and sarin-like [substances]. We didn’t make a big deal of it in the story I wrote.

KK: Could you respond to the criticism of your article by Eliot Higgins, who alleged that open-source satellite material supposedly shows the site of the bombing was not the structure you described? [Higgins in a self-styled weapons analyst whose Bellingcat open source investigative site is funded by entities including the National Endowment for Democracy, a U.S. government-backed NGO that has promoted regime change around the globe.]

SH: He offers no facts, just insults and a lot of certitude about things about which he just does not know, or seems not to, e.g., that the U.S. and other foreign military [have] the most sophisticated satellite data to do bomb damage assessments, and would never think of relying on commercial satellites. They fly over Khan Shaykhun, so I have been told, something like every five days, and their images actually provide very little reliable data about bomb damage. Buildings that look intact from on high with intact roofs may have no living space in them… the difference between post-strike damage photos from a military satellite or drone and the available commercial stuff is day and night.

Legitimate questions have been raised about the U.S. claims about what happened in Khan Sheikhoun, including about the crater that American authorities say mark the spot where a chemical munition landed. That location seems difficult to square with the reported death toll, which I’m told by one expert would likely be lower, given the wind direction and other issues.