Only days after the White House suggested it was all but certain Syrian President Bashar al-Assad used chemical weapons to gas hundreds of civilians, United States intelligence officials briefed on the situation say the evidence isn’t all there.
Despite recent remarks from US President Barack Obama, Secretary
of State John Kerry and other top administration officials,
sources within the intelligence community are disputing the
certainty that Assad ordered the use of chemical gas last week on
innocent civilians outside of Damascus, Syria.
Four US officials – including one senior member of the
intelligence community – told the Associated Press this week that
there’s confusion over where the reported chemical warheads are
currently being held and who exactly possesses them. Citing a
lapse in both signals and human intelligence reports, the
officials all told the AP on condition of anonymity that US and
allied spies “have lost track of who controls some of the
country’s chemical weapons supplies,” according to reporters
Kimberly Dozier and Matt Apuzzo.
Multiple officials, the AP reported Thursday morning, used the
phrase “not a slam dunk” to discuss the credibility of
intelligence linking chemical weapon use directly to Pres. Assad.
In 2002, then-Central Intelligence Agency Director George Tenet
infamously said Washington scored a “slam dunk” with
regards to confirming Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein possessed
weapons of mass destruction. Now more than a decade down the
road, US officials hesitant to rush off to war are again
questioning the credibility of the White House’s own report.
According to an Office of the Director for National Intelligence
report cited by the AP, the evidence against Syria “is thick
with caveats” and contains gaps that are getting in the way
of putting the chemical weapon use directly in the hands of
Assad.
But Carney, the administration’s press secretary, said earlier
this week that the White House “established with a high degree
of confidence that the Syria regime has used chemical weapons
already in this conflict.”
“It is our firm conviction that the Assad regime is
responsible” for gassing civilians on August 21, Carney
added. “Logic dictates that conclusion, as well as the hard
facts. And the president is working with his national security
team to evaluate the options available to him to respond, as well
as consulting with international allies and consulting with
members of Congress.”
Those remarks echoed a statement made by Sec. Kerry this week as well in
which he said the White House was certain Assad’s regime
maintains custody of the chemical weapons used, and that the
regime “has been determined to clear the opposition from those
very places where the attacks took place.”
Kerry fell short of directly saying Assad ordered the attack, but
Pres. Obama made that allegation during an interview with PBS’
NewsHour on Wednesday.
“We have concluded that the Syrian government in fact carried
these out,” Obama said of the assault. “And if that’s so,
then there need to be international consequences.”
Earlier this week, Foreign Policy reporter Noah Shachtman wrote
that the US intelligence community recently intercepted
conversations in Syria that suggested the Aug. 21 assault could
have been not necessarily ordered by Assad, but perhaps “the
work of a Syrian officer overstepping his bounds.”
“It’s unclear where control lies,” one US intelligence
official told Foreign Policy. “Is there just some sort of general
blessing to use these things? Or are there explicit orders for
each attack?”
“We don’t know exactly why it happened,” the official
added. “We just know it was pretty fucking stupid.”
Pres. Obama is briefing members of Congress on the Syrian
situation on Thursday using conclusions made by US intelligence,
after which a declassified report is expected to be released to
the public.
Republished from: RT