OPCW Report (Predictably) Smears Whistleblowers
Despite leaking credibility like a sieve, chemical weapons watchdog doubles down on Douma narrative
Kit Knightly
Image source – here
The OPCW has released a briefing note summarising the recent “independent investigation” into their recent Titanic-sized leaks. (You can read the summary at the link above, or the full “independent” report here).
It’s a fairly narrow statement, focusing entirely on the two unnamed inspectors (Inspector A and Inspector B) who worked with the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media to leak the censored reports. (There is not a word about the e-mails later released by WikiLeaks).
You won’t be surprised to know that the report finds the two leakers, Ian Henderson and “Alex”, were wrong to leak the confidential information.
In that sense, it’s entirely self-contradictory. Attempting to tell us the information is at once “sensitive”, and also incomplete, incorrect and easily refuted.
Of course, none of that refutation is present here, because that wasn’t the remit of this report. This is just an investigation into the “Possible Breaches of Confidentiality” and not the veracity of the leaks, or the pertinence of the information therein.
Sometimes an incredibly narrow purview is a sound defence against an undesirable reality.
There’s really no new information here, just six pages of waffle telling us very little we didn’t already know. It’s not a report that really means anything at all. It’s just something that the OPCW literally had to say. Institutions have immune responses, they simply must attack their critics. It’s automatic.
If a CIA whistleblower were to announce the sky was blue, the CIA would release a memo claiming to have no official records concerning the visual appearance of our atmosphere and detailing the leaker’s history of alcohol abuse.
Attacking whistleblowers is just a reflex of self-defence, the most base instinct of every lifeform.
In its content and tone, this report is a clear example of that behaviour. Far more a smear and hit piece than a refutation or investigation (at one point it even straight-up lies about Ian Henderson’s career at the OPCW).
Essentially, it’s just a series of attacks on the competence and motivations of the whistleblowers, even to the point of attempting to deny them that status:
Inspectors A and B are not whistle-blowers.”
The head of OPCW bafflingly declares, before going on to explain:
They are individuals who could not accept that their views were not backed by evidence. When their views could not gain traction, they took matters into their own hands and breached their obligations to the Organisation. Their behaviour is even more egregious as they had manifestly incomplete information about the Douma investigation.”
See – they’re not “whistleblowers”, they’re just individuals who believed that some documents being kept secret should be made public, and “took matters into their own hands”.
Apparently, that’s different from being a whistleblower. Somehow.
As with so much else in the current political sphere, it’s not so much an argument as an exercise in semantics.
Just as Julian Assange’s arrest became a debate over whether or not he was “really a journalist”, and “antisemitism” is redefined to increasingly ludicrous vagueness, here we are confronted by a memo essentially saying “ignore these leaks, these people are not real whistleblowers”.
It’s really not a report designed to make a case or prove a point. It won’t convert anybody or change a single mind. It’s just there to be at the other end of a link. To supply gate-keeping “journalists” with soundbites to bounce back and forth across twitter and blockquote in their articles.
A final redoubt to provide mainstream attack-dogs like Chris York or Scott Lucas some cover as they make a hasty retreat.
In that sense, it’s already doing its job:
NEW – @OPCW statement demolishes the #Douma CW conspiracy theory pushed, amongst others by @ClarkeMicah.
This definitively puts the matter to rest & removes any shred of credibility "Ian Henderson" (& "Alex") might've claimed to have. https://t.co/UxnYmUVAdp pic.twitter.com/HkfohIaQdV
— Charles Lister (@Charles_Lister) February 6, 2020
Damming putdown of the supposed OPCW whistleblowers championed by various British academics who claim Syria wasn’t behind Douma chemical attack. This comes from the OPCW itself: pic.twitter.com/EFsGrSzULz
— Alistair Bunkall (@AliBunkallSKY) February 6, 2020
A more obvious example of papering over the cracks, you will not see.
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Right on cue, The Guardian publishes an article on “the independent inquiry commissioned by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons” (an oxymoron). Among its many lies and misrepresentations, the article features a misleading map. The map makes the reader think that the white-colored areas are government-controlled and the yellow-colored areas are opposition-controlled. It doesn’t say that outright, but that’s the impression it creates. So the reader might think that the entire Eastern Ghouta was controlled by the opposition at the time. In reality, as of April 4, the situation looked like this. Why is that important? Because the opposition-controlled area was tiny, completely surrounded and overwhelmed by government forces, and too far from Damascus to pose any mortar or artillery threat to government buildings and densely populated areas—meaning there was no pressing reason, no high-stakes life-or-death situation for the government to deploy chemical weapons. On April 2, 1065… Read more »
This last OPCW bunch of BS shows beyond any reasonable doubt that Ian Henderson was wrong on at least one count: as it is right now the organization is broken indeed, at least at the management level. Henderson tried to engage with the OPCW for more than a year and the only thing he got was to be uncerimoniously fired and smeared by the OPCW itself and by a bunch of regime change proxies. At this point, I’d say the time is running out for any professional in the OPCW employement. They have to talk now or they will be legitimately considered as accomplices. I know my words might appear as an expression of arrogant entitlement, but this topic and the role of the OPCW in establishing facts that might lead to military intervention is too important to prioritize career over the truth or the illusion that the OPCW can… Read more »
The OPCW scandal is quite literally the biggest scandal since Iraq WMD.
Check out Peter Hitchens on Twitter. Yes he is behind the curve a bit of Syria and his recent views on the merits of privately owned media surprised me for the benefit of doubt he gives to mainstream hacks . That attitude looks to be changing as each establishment toadie lines up to attack him over OPCW.
He deserves our support as the almost lone mainstream figure on the case. And unlike some I have come across, he has no intention of given up.
I won’t recommend readers here buy the Sunday Mail but Hitchens will crack this case.
There are also two free speech initiatives on going. Tareq Haddad formally of Newsweek. Looks impressive. Toby Young also from the mainstream. Might be worth a look.
“Inspectors A and B did not cooperate with the investigation, despite their duty to do so. Additionally, I sent letters of invitation to the two of them to come to The Hague, at the Organisation’s expense, to review the draft investigation report prepared by the independent investigators and to provide comments thereon. One of them acknowledged receipt, but did not respond.” In fact, as Eliot Higgins has pointed out, substantial elements of the two men were incorporated in the final report. So why did they ignore an invitation to come to the Hague? Afraid of being tortured or kidnapped and taken to Guantanamo? I imagine that the only support for Henderson and “Alex” will continue to come from hard-core apologists for Bashar al-Assad. There’s also something rather grotesque about all these efforts on his behalf as if this was 2002 and Colin Powell had just given a speech to the… Read more »
Lookout …. Louis has been sniffing the chlorine again .
Ankara is still sending weapons to the terrorists and KSA etc are still finding them. Turkey is in for economic calamity because SAA will retake Idlib and drive all the foreign terrorists and their wives and children into Turkey…..and the Turks won’t be able to send them all to Libya.
You’re an idiot by the way and you watch too much CH4 news propaganda.
Proyectile Vomitus quoting Bellingcat!! The most ludicrous comedy team since Abbott and Costello. All in the service of the salafist butchers and their Western controllers. Quite Evil, really, but there’s a lot of it about these days.
And even here in Aussie, there’s quite a few Louis Proyect clones proclaiming how ‘socialist’ they are while cheering on the salafist headchoppers as…. ‘revolutionaries’.
Bizarre how they could get it so wrong.
Like Proyectile…
What’s really sad is the inverted reality of Bell End Fan Boys and Head Chopper Groupies like yourself.
He is not the first marxist that ideologically support extreme islamist groups in the name of a revolt that in his opinion “aims to overhtrow a dictator”. My hypothesis is that some marxists out there are more in love with the idea of “revolution” than with people. As a person who squarely sits on the far left side of the political spectrum, I feel totally disgusted with these marxists. They are nothing more than narcissists that prioritize their fantasies and narratives with respect to the reality on the ground. They don’t care about the pain that the Syrian revolt has caused and they don’t care about the consequences of an extreme far-right islamist faction victory in Syria. They are content to believe the delusion that the Syrian revolt is a revolt to bring democracy, even if the empirical reality is far different. We are talking about one of the worst,… Read more »
Anyone taken in by the colour revolutions or the Arab spring is the strangest “Marxist” I have ever come across.
I agree… but I called him like that because that’s how he seems to define his political views. I don’t know if it’s the same in the rest of the world, but here in Italy we have part of what can be politcally considered the extreme left that feels entitled to separate the “good leftists” by the “bad ones” whom they call “rossobruni” (which can be literally translated with “redbrowns”, a word meant to reference a sort of left leaning fascism, linking the nazi brownshirts to the red color of Communism). This self-entitled, arrogant and narcissistic self-styled “good leftists” invariably buy all the BS that the western propaganda employed since the very beginning to demonize the Syrian State. They are a bunch of political and cultural dinosaurs that can’t read the current geopolitical situation and can’t accept that the “Syrian Spring” was born since the very beginning as an islamist… Read more »
This is quite a common phenomenon, former extreme Trotskyists turned Neocons. You see it with people like Aaronovitch and the Jewish Neocons behind the Middle East wars. Two sides of the same authoritarian coin.
Yes, Louis is quite right. The opinion of amateur blogger and ex underwear salesman Higgins clearly far outweighs the investigation by Henderson and 20 of his colleagues.
I don’t know why the OPCW went to all the trouble and expense of sending Henderson and his team to Syria. They could have just asked Higgins to solve it all for them from the comfort of his Atlantic Council armchair.
“This is just an investigation into the “Possible Breaches of Confidentiality” and not the veracity of the leaks, or the pertinence of the information therein.”
Whether the OPCW data is accurate is not of importance to the CIA. In fact, when needed fudged data gives the security state a pretext to promote regime. The first concern of the intelligence agencies is preventing further leaks and eliminating potential whistleblowers.
Splendid stuff! Shame it’s too long to put on a t-shirt.
I’m only surprised they didn’t fit him up for rape as well like Julian Assange.
The west seems to be entering an interregnum moving from an ‘Age of Reason’ an epoch involving a belief in: 1: the time of life when one begins to be able to distinguish right from wrong and, 2: a period characterized by a prevailing belief in the use of reason especially in England, France and the early United States. but the new epoch, which could be termed an ‘Age of Schizophrenia’ This would be (is?) a society which succeeds in perpetuating itself whereby the rules of common sense which generally hold good in everyday life, and certain exact sciences, could be and are routinely disregarded by politicians, journalists and historians and various other defenders of the faith. This takes a good deal of intellectual dexterity involving double-think – holding two contradictory notions in the brain at the same time – and the hive mind, a type of all-encompassing bubble, where… Read more »
Welcome to the age of dumbass. See nothing, know nothing, think nothing. If you have a conscience, get it surgically removed. The Empire of Stupid.
‘Alistair Bunkall is known for his access into some of the UK’s most secretive establishment, including the…..intelligence agencies’. So blatant that it is quite funny.
Like the 9/11 Commission Report. Fantasy masquerading as “facts”. “Science” now prostitutes itself for the almighty dollar. Compared to them Aspasia is a Paragon of Virtue and Moral Probity.
Excellent point – the scientific community is generally quite ferocious when practitioners fail to conform to expected standards (see the treatement of Andrew Wakefield, for example). Yet scientists telling lies (because this is what they are doing) to reinforce certain geopolitical narratives are given a free pass. One wonders, for example why Shyam Sunder was not given the Wakefield treatment. Unlike Wakefield, who at least believed in the potential value of his research (even if it was subsequently refuted) Sunder must have known that he was a patsy trying to justify scientific phenomena that could not withstand even the most cursory form of analysis. The guy was literally either just making stuff up as he went along or ignoring glaring questions such as the possible use of explosives to bring down the towers. Once the spectre of national scurity is invoked basic levels of scientific compentence in some circumstances are… Read more »
Andrew Wakefield has not been discredited, Harry. Only slagged out of polite discussion by crooks. Look a little deeper – taking a strong dose of **open-minded** scepticism every time you touch the subject of vaccination…
Innoculated against the truth Rhisiart?
Inoculated WITH the truth W! Dr. Andrew Wakefield was demonised because he told some uncomfortable (aka profit-threatening) truths about the sub-lethal MMR vaccines; truths to which the Big Pharma racketeers objected. So they set attack-mediawhores like Brian Deer onto him to trash his reputation. Meanwhile, there’s **still** a big issue with vaccinations; sometime useful and – on balance – helpful; other times emphatically not – but still hyper-profitable. And it’s the commercial impetus that’s driving the gross over- and mis-use of vaccines now; and also the formulation of vaccines which are positively harmful – but still profitable…
Wakefield showed that no matter how eminent one might be, and how valuable one’s research, if it imperils the capitalists’ various gravy-trains in any way, you will be destroyed by a campaign of lies and vilification, with the MSM presstitute wolverine pack leading the way.
That’s true but also another major factor is that much of the funding they receive is from the state. Perfect examples are NIST and FEMA’s ridiculous hypothesis on what caused the “collapse”(used advisedly since they both exploded before collapsing as can easily be seen in the videos) of the WTC Towers should have won Hugo Awards for fantasy or at best speculative fiction yet are ludicrously accepted as “scientific” theory.
In other words its an effort to explain the impossible that two commercial aircraft could 1) penetrate the World Trade Center Towers and 2) that burning jet fuel and collateral fires caused the “collapse”. In this case “science” has become myth and anyone who accepts their explanation has taken the great leap backwards into the dark ages.
But every MSM presstitute would swear allegiance to ‘The Laugh’ on its mother’s grave, or test-tube, one supposes. They all ritually intone the Lee Oswald as lone gunman hilarity with practised idiocy, too.
Yes despite the fact the House Select Committee on Assassination concluded that JFK was probably killed by a conspiracy. Yet never mind. They’re sticking to the story that is the Warren Commission fable.
These people who made this report really must be proud of themselves. I guess their mothers are too. It really does justify murder on a grand scale, and demolishes reputations and careers of those who stand against that. But since we all know that corporations should be treated as humans too, we must be thankful that the writers of this report, courageously defended the OPCW. It is not more than fair that the OPCW should have an opinion too, like all humans do. And associating an organization like OPCW with mass murder is thought crime. So good that the writers of the report stood against that! And since the OPCW is a much larger entity than these two persons who were not in agreement with what was told about Douma, it is also only fair that they are smeared, because size matters. The really disgusting part is that these individuals… Read more »
Silly me. Pigs are only more equal, not more right in Orwell’s novel. More right was the Spanish Inquisition, that BTW, was the organ of the Spanish King and justified to murder for instance the Dutch (where the OPCW resides) because that was in the interest of the Spanish Kingdom.
Funny how these things always turn out to be standing on their heads…
EVERY regime institute and every MSM sewer in the West is riddled with lying psychopaths, whose jobs depend on their being moral imbeciles.
Yes every time a cash register rings a N”G”O gets its wings.
Yes the OPCW has achieved corporate sainthood like the Atlantic Council and the National Endowment for “Democracy” they’d never lie and anyone who says so shall be maligned and character assassinated.
That is a brilliant observation, the truth of which is not to be underestimated.
https://friendsforsyria.com/2020/02/07/syrian-arab-army-turkish-military-convoy-entered-syria-with-israeli-cover/ sugget to look at the link for information about
friends of syria had an article that new Assad gases his own people movie.. seems they have taken off Twitter and the article has disappeared. anyone else see that article
They originally said the the leaked paper was an internal document. Now they’re claiming it’s not an official document and just personal to the inspector. How is an internal OPCW document not official?
They keep changing their tune.
Sing it to me, baby
Most of the media is there to generate noise or, to be more precise, a vibration that is meant to induce the desired state of mind. Logic, consistency, truthfulness (!) are irrelevant. Tautologies and non-sequiturs can abound. Repetition, irrelevances, all manner of arbitrary associations etc. – it all blends into a kind of impressionistic goo to mould the “right” response. Hence this briefing note – to be followed by a briefing note on the briefing note. And various commentaries on the notes. And public debates on the commentaries etc.
Not forgetting the media’s lying-by-omission.
It’s all Karl Rove
‘ We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality – judiciously, as you will – we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.’
Pleas note that this ‘reality’ only works as long as ‘we’ believe that ‘they’ are an empire.
That makes ‘us’ associates with Karl Rove’s prophecy
(Please don’t ask me who is meant by ‘we’, ‘they’ and ‘us’, since I don’t know, but I surely know that is not ‘me’)
The Mockingbird-media kept absolutely shtum about Ian Henderson and the whistleblowing. I don’t believe I’ve seen a single mention of it the last few months, a strong achievement, even for the MSM. But I am sure this OPCW report will get widespread press coverage.
The MSM is just like the Soviet press (or at a least my perception of it , shaped by the MSM); soviet citizens had to read between the lines. Not a word in the press about what the enemy of the state actually said and did. Instead one would have to piece together an impression of it by reading between the lines in the denunciations.
It reminds one of the story regarding the TASS correspondent who toured the USA in the 50s, during a thaw. He was asked his impression of the Free Press. He replied that, under Stalin, nasty coercion was needed, at times, to gain the proper uniformity of opinion among journalists, and he wondered how they did it in the USA, because the presstitutes all practised similar Groupthink. In the decades since the situation has worsened, and long passed the point of descent into self-parody.
I thought you were referring to the Russian joke describing a similar scenario. When asked what he thought of the Free Press, the Soviet delegate compliments his host, saying “Your propaganda must be a lot better than ours because your people actually believe it.”
Or something like that.
Good luck trying to Google that. Any joke that might be construed as painting Russia in a good light or America in a bad one doesn’t come up in the searches at all. Dark Ages 2.0 here we come.
Yes-I know from trying to track down the Zionist Abe Foxman’s observation from many years ago (as reported in a newspaper)that Hitler’s crime was not genocide but attempted ‘deicide’ because the Jews are God, which has definitely been ‘Memory Holed’ that the process proceeds apace.
A famous story, Rich. I got it from John Pilger. The Soviet journalists were genuinely bewildered: how was that uniformity done? (They hadn’t seen ‘Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media’ I suppose…)
The MSM of thirty, forty, years ago was a cornucopia of diversity compared to the moronic monoculture of rank agit-prop that it is today.
You’re quite right that your MSM has shaped your perception of the Soviet press. The Soviet Union, now modern Russia, has been the gift that keeps on giving. The West, we’ve been brought up to believe, is free, open, democratic, principled and so on. Unlike Russia, Putin, RT etc etc. I don’t think I need to describe the mechanisms of demonisation and projection. We’re all aware of them or we wouldn’t be here. The Soviet Press was indeed censored, but here’s why comparisons with western MSM don’t work. Unlike the vast majority of shit-for-brains Brits and Americans, who are specifically taught to leave thinking to their media or to the authorities, who are being gaslighted on a daily basis by their establishment and its vassal media and who absorb every prevailing narrative through the pores in their skin (the main one being their own moral superiority as people)… unlike westerners,… Read more »
The system is purely totalitarian, and its proclamation of its ‘freedom’ and ‘diversity’ are no longer merely lies, but very sick jokes. Here in Australia, the MSM is united in a decades long, thoroughly racist, xenophobic and culturally contemptuous, campaign of hatred against China. Quite literally NO positive stories regarding China ever appear, despite the country’s manifest achievements. No, no-it is the New Nazi Germany, billions of Uighurs are imprisoned in concentration camps, being brainwashed out of their ‘Moslem’ faith, the Chinese people yearn to be ‘Free’ and ‘Western’, which they MUST do else they will never be ‘fully human’, etc, etc. Any voices defending China, say like former Foreign Minister Bob Carr, are allowed to appear, for a while, then are disappeared from public discourse. The most ferociously racist American intellectual thugs are fawned over, and our ‘correspondents’ in China are quite unhinged in their bias and bigotry. Consequently… Read more »
You have the Australian MSM bang-to-rights, Richard. And that includes the state broadcasters. Another topic where lying is routine: the ‘troubles’ in Northern Ireland. Apparently, all the violence was perpetrated by the nationalists, none of it by ‘loyalist’ paramilitaries or the British army.
This is really quite sinister if you reflect for a few moments. This an organisation whose findings can influence decisions to go to war. After months and months of silence – is this it?
I’m sorry – Ian Henderson was far too generous in his statement to the UN. The OPCW is clearly broken when it departs from obvious truths and fails to answer any questions. If they were correct they would have put any concerns to bed months back.
This will only hasten the inevitable outcome for OPCW obstructing justice for war crimes. The careers of Higgins, Lucas , York Lister, Ensor also don’t look hopeful.
Hope your last paragraph turns out to be right. My fear is that obstructing justice for war crimes is now so fashionable that the OPCW may flourish for decades to come…
You’re dead right Loverat – and this exercise by the OPCW “management” (in Langley or Cheltenham or Tel Aviv) is anything but innocuous, particularly because of what is happening in the White Helmets’ theatre of operations at this moment. Not only was “For Sama” released yesterday in the UK and US, but Channel 4 has put out a mind-numbing video of the rescue of a baby from an incubator in a allegedly bombed hospital in Urm al Kubra, where the BBC staged its infamous Napalm bombing incident.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlENlRYnaKs&feature=emb_logo
You couldn’t make it up.. but they did!
But we shouldn’t forget either that it’s not just Douma and Syria in this game, but Salisbury and Whitehall; exposing that hoax is far more threatening to the UK establishment, and the Bellingcat co-op than suspected collusion in war crimes in Syria.
you do know GCHQ is in Fiddlers Green Cheltenham, don’t you – says it all ;0)
David
Respect your opinion and sentiments over other scandals. I’ve not looked enough into the Salisbury episode – but having worked in an investigative capacity in the finance sector, given the long track record of government deceit, my default position would always be to ask the government for proof Salisbury happened as they said it did. They assert, they prove.
But my firm belief is we should concentrate on the totally obvious fabrications – like Douma. For once that goes, the less investigated ones will likely collapse in a heap.
Keep chipping away folks – it won’t be long before Eliot Higgins is back selling ladies underwear again.
He has to do a few years hard for propagandising for aggression, first, surely.
The USA and its Atlanticist stooges control ALL multilateral institutions. None of them can be trusted to be honest anymore.