Secret Intel Source of Ray McGovern & VIPS Revealed!

UPDATE 18 Sept 2013: Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is now citing the VIPS letter as part of its proof that the Assad regime didn't do it. According to RT he said in an interview:

"Besides, experts in Europe and the US, including twelve retired employees of the Pentagon and the CIA, as you know sent, an open letter to President Obama, explaining how it was all fabricated,”

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On 6 September 2013 former CIA agent turned activist, Ray McGovern, speaking for Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), posted a memo to his blog that absolved the Assad Regime of responsibility for the chemical weapons attack that took place in the Damascus area on 21 August 2013. Not only does this group claim that the Syrian government did not carry out the attack, they claim it was done by the opposition with the support of agents from Qatar, Turkey and the US. I addressed their theory and challenged them to name names in My dare to Ray McGovern & VIPS on Syria CW attack, now I want to look at the source of their information. In the memo, VIPS says "that some of our former co-workers are telling us" what is really happening and then they go on to say:

Our sources confirm that a chemical incident of some sort did cause fatalities and injuries on August 21 in a suburb of Damascus. They insist, however, that the incident was not the result of an attack by the Syrian Army using military-grade chemical weapons from its arsenal. That is the most salient fact, according to CIA officers working on the Syria issue. They tell us...

Clearly, they are implying that their sources are CIA officers currently working the Syria desk. Now, jumping ahead to the meat of their intelligence on what they say was a false-flag operation designed to precipitate military intervention in Syria, they tell us:

we have learned that on August 13-14, 2013, Western-sponsored opposition forces in Turkey started advance preparations for a major, irregular military surge. Initial meetings between senior opposition military commanders and Qatari, Turkish and U.S. intelligence officials took place at the converted Turkish military garrison in Antakya, Hatay Province, now used as the command center and headquarters of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and their foreign sponsors. Senior opposition commanders who came from Istanbul pre-briefed the regional commanders on an imminent escalation in the fighting due to “a war-changing development,” which, in turn, would lead to a U.S.-led bombing of Syria. At operations coordinating meetings at Antakya, attended by senior Turkish, Qatari and U.S. intelligence officials as well as senior commanders of the Syrian opposition, the Syrians were told that the bombing would start in a few days. Opposition leaders were ordered to prepare their forces quickly to exploit the U.S. bombing, march into Damascus, and remove the Bashar al-Assad government The Qatari and Turkish intelligence officials assured the Syrian regional commanders that they would be provided with plenty of weapons for the coming offensive. And they were. A weapons distribution operation unprecedented in scope began in all opposition camps on August 21-23. The weapons were distributed from storehouses controlled by Qatari and Turkish intelligence under the tight supervision of U.S. intelligence officers.

Now, here's where it gets weird. This same thesis and intelligence, in fact, almost the exact same words were published 5 days earlier in an article on Global Research by Yossef Bodansky, titled "Did the White House Help Plan the Syrian Chemical Attack?":

On August 13-14, 2013, Western-sponsored opposition forces in Turkey started advance preparations for a major and irregular military surge. Initial meetings between senior opposition military commanders and representatives of Qatari, Turkish, and US Intelligence [“Mukhabarat Amriki”] took place at the converted Turkish military garrison in Antakya, Hatay Province, used as the command center and headquarters of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and their foreign sponsors. Very senior opposition commanders who had arrived from Istanbul briefed the regional commanders of an imminent escalation in the fighting due to “a war-changing development” which would, in turn, lead to a US-led bombing of Syria. The opposition forces had to quickly prepare their forces for exploiting the US-led bombing in order to march on Damascus and topple the Bashar al-Assad Government, the senior commanders explained. The Qatari and Turkish intelligence officials assured the Syrian regional commanders that they would be provided with plenty of weapons for the coming offensive. Indeed, unprecedented weapons distribution started in all opposition camps in Hatay Province on August 21-23, 2013. In the Reyhanli area alone, opposition forces received well in excess of 400 tons of weapons, mainly anti-aircraft weaponry from shoulder-fired missiles to ammunition for light-guns and machine guns. The weapons were distributed from store-houses controlled by Qatari and Turkish Intelligence under the tight supervision of US Intelligence.

As anyone can easily see, this isn't just the same story told from different intelligence sources. This is the same story slightly rewritten five days later. Rewritten in part, to remove obvious source give-aways, like “Mukhabarat Amriki,” the Syrian term for US intelligence. So it would appear that the source of VIPS intelligence is not active CIA case officers speaking to old colleges like Ray McGovern, Philip Giraldi, Larry Johnson and Ann Wright on the q-t, it is Yossef Bodansky writing for the pro-Assad, pro-Qaddafi, pro-Russian website Global Research. So who is Yossef Bodansky? David Kenner has done some interesting research there. What he's come up with was published this week on Foreign Policy:

Bodansky is an ally of Bashar's uncle, Rifaat al-Assad -- he pushed him as a potential leader of Syria in 2005. Rifaat is the black sheep of the Assad family: He spearheaded the Syrian regime's brutal crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood in the early 1980s, but then was forced into exile after he tried to seize power from his brother, President Hafez al-Assad, in 1983. Despite his ouster, however, Rifaat is just as hostile to a Sunni Islamist takeover as other members of the Assad family -- a position Bodansky appears to share. Ending Alawite rule in Syria, Bodansky wrote on another pro-Assad website, "will cause cataclysmic upheaval throughout the greater Middle East."

The implication is that the real source of VIPS's intelligence is not CIA operatives chatting it up with old pals. That is just their cover story. The real source of their information on how the opposition gassed over a thousand of its own people with Obama's help is the Assad Mukhabarat, the Syrian Security Services. Guess who else likes this Bodansky/VIPS conspiracy theory that blames the rebels and lets the Assad dictatorship off the hook? Conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh! On 3 September 2013, Limbaugh told his audience:

"There is evidence -- mounting evidence -- that the rebels in Syria did indeed frame Assad for the chemical attack, but not only that, but Obama, the regime, may have been complicit in it. Mounting evidence that the White House knew and possibly helped plan the Syrian chemical weapon attack by the opposition!"

He then goes on to cite Global Research and Bodansky as his source, which actually shows more integrity than Ray McGovern & VIPS! It is a very sad day for the Left when we see Ann Wright and Rush Limbaugh united in supporting a fascist dictatorship against a popular revolution, and promoting the same lying Assad Regime propaganda to do it. The Assad Regime did kill over a thousand Syrian civilians, a third of them children, in the Damascus area on the morning of 21 August 2013. The Free Syrian Army, the Syrian National Coalition, the Arab League, the governments of Turkey, US, France, UK and many other countries have found the Assad Regime responsible, as now has Human Rights Watch. The evidence is incontrovertible and overwhelming. I will show in another post, in case its not already clear, that even if Assad were somehow not responsible for the chemical deaths, he is still a brutal mass murderer that has killed thousands of civilians with his air force, artillery and ballistic missiles. He bombed hospitals with his jet planes and since the chemical attacks, he has killed hundreds in the very same areas that VIPS says he didn't use the chemicals to kill in. This is the type of mass murderer, torturer and rapist these people are trying to defend on the chemical weapons charge. In my earlier post, challenging Ray McGovern et al, I showed how they were wrong, now I think we can see that they aren't even honest. They are attempting to promote the Assad Regime with false intelligence coming from that regime and they are attempting to trade on their history as activists and their break with US intelligence to give the story more creditability than Yossef Bodansky and Global Research ever could. These people, and here I will name them, because I believe it now constitutes a roll call of shame. Below that is a reminder of what they are trying to cover up. From Consortium News, which first published the memo on 6 September 2013:

For the Steering Group, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity Thomas Drake, Senior Executive, NSA (former), Philip Giraldi, CIA, Operations Officer (ret.), Matthew Hoh, former Capt., USMC, Iraq & Foreign Service Officer, Afghanistan, Larry Johnson, CIA & State Department (ret.), W. Patrick Lang, Senior Executive and Defense Intelligence Officer, DIA (ret.), David MacMichael, National Intelligence Council (ret.), Ray McGovern, former US Army infantry/intelligence officer & CIA analyst (ret.), Elizabeth Murray, Deputy National Intelligence Officer for Middle East (ret.), Todd Pierce, US Army Judge Advocate General (ret.), Sam Provance, former Sgt., US Army, Iraq, Coleen Rowley, Division Council & Special Agent, FBI (ret.), Ann Wright, Col., US Army (ret); Foreign Service Officer (ret.)

Click here for a list of my other blogs on Syria

My dare to Ray McGovern & VIPS on Syria CW attack

Ray McGovern, yesterday you presented a memo on your blog from Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) asking "Is Syria a Trap?" In it you absolve the Assad Regime of responsibility for the chemical weapons attacks that took place in the Damascus area on 21 August without ever referencing the vast amount of carnage caused by aircraft, Scud missiles and heavy artillery that the Assad regime is solely responsible for. That alone, makes your chemical weapons memo a depraved defense of a mass murderer!

Instead, you blame this CW attack, which killed over a thousand in opposition communities, on "senior opposition military commanders and Qatari, Turkish and U.S. intelligence officials" According to VIPS:

At operations coordinating meetings at Antakya, attended by senior Turkish, Qatari and U.S. intelligence officials as well as senior commanders of the Syrian opposition, the Syrians were told that the bombing would start in a few days. Opposition leaders were ordered to prepare their forces quickly to exploit the U.S. bombing, march into Damascus, and remove the Bashar al-Assad government

That is a pretty vast conspiracy, involving spies from three countries and rebel commanders. Hard to believe, actually. So why were the Saudis left out? Is that where the MintPress story comes in? The Saudis were so peeved at being left out of the main sarin gas conspiracy that Prince Bandar gave some of his sarin gas to the incompetents in the tunnel. It all makes so much sense now! Not! The main complaint, and it is a good one, with the US, British and French intelligence reports that say the Assad regime did the dirty deed, is that we don't have access to the raw intel data to see for ourselves. So what are VIPS sources? They cite "some of our former co-workers" which would be the juicy stuff only they would have, and "a growing body of evidence from numerous sources in the Middle East — mostly affiliated with the Syrian opposition and its supporters" what the intel business calls "open source," stuff that we all have access to. From the closed source stuff they don't really give us any facts we can check. For example, they give us almost no information about this series of planning meetings they say took place in Antakya, Turkey 13-14 August 2013. They don't name any names. [guess it won't be publish in counterpunch] Now what could be the harm in that? So my challenge to Ray McGovern & VIPS is to, at a minimum, name "the senior opposition military commanders" who were present at these meetings. If VIPS believes they were involved in a plot that took over a thousand lives, surely they aren't interested in protecting their identities. So call them out publicly. Let us judge how senior they are and know who is collaborating with these western spies. Once you have named them, we will be able find out why they were in Antakya and asked them to respond to these charges. Without the names from you, we have only your word, and I'm sorry, but that just isn't enough anymore. Click here for a list of my other blogs on Syria

Syria: It's Still a Revolution, My Friends

Republished from Fellowship of Reconciliation by Mohja Kahf
Thursday, September 5, 2013, 10:52am

No matter what your position on the potential U.S. strikes on Syria (I’m against), all I ask is, DON’T be a hater who denies the existence of the grassroots youth who began the Syrian revolution out of hope for real freedom and out of their rising expectation for real change, hope that had nearly died in the fifty-year police state that has ruled Syria. Try to remember to have some compassion for a Syrian who might be in the vicinity, before you mouth off in the abstract on the issue; we face news every day of our friends and our relatives being killed and imprisoned. Take time to get to know about a few of them, the Syrian rev youth activists who started it all, in hundreds of towns across Syria, before you speak about Syria based on what happened in Iraq or Lebanon or Country X.

In SYRIA, this is a REVOLUTION (and yes I understand it meets the technical definition of a civil war, yes it does, AND, yet, still: This is a Revolution). In SYRIA, a Revolution has been happening, and the will to freedom that began it will not simply be erased; it is a bell that cannot be unrung in the hearts of young Syrians. It is a consciousness change. That is why Syria is not now and will not become, despite all the [chaos] that has ensued inside the revolution, “like Iraq” (and by the way, I marched in the United States against the Iraq War, and over the years have written and published pages of poems based on the unimaginable sufferings narrated to me by Iraqis).

In SYRIA, a broad spectrum of twenty-somethings across every province were inspired by Bouazizi’s self-immolation, by 26-year-old Asma Mahfouz’ call to Tahrir, by the movement for Khaled Said, a young activist murdered by Egyptian police in 2010, NOT by some U.S. president’s call for regime change as in Iraq. By the will to “live like human beings,” as one after another has told me when I have met them and asked for their stories. ASK for their stories, please. They will TELL you what motivated them to risk their lives as they did. Syria’s revolution youth hit the streets out of grievances they have EXPERIENCED, in their own bodies, in their own lives; this revolution was not begun by some Syrian version of Iraq’s Chelebi, nor by established oppositionists, but by geographically widespread rural and small-town women and men of ALL sects, young people whom the CIA never even heard of, coming together in a new spirit. They are nobody’s proxies, no matter how much outside agendas want to make them somebody’s proxies.

And please, do not create a callous denial narrative that erases the masses of mainstream Syrians in this revolution, as if they don’t count, in favor of the Salafist extremists who are trying to take it over from its fringes as, thousands of miles away, you run screaming “Taliban! Al Qaeda!” wringing your hands but not knowing in the slightest the measure of their (nasty) influence. Do not abandon those revolution youth — whether they are still in the civil resistance or have joined the secular, mainline armed resistance — who are now themselves beset by the Salafists even while still fending off the brutal regime. For example, I just Facebook-chatted with a friend inside, one of the original protesters, who refuses to flee Syria, and incidentally he is Alawite, who has received death threats by name from the regime, and from the Nusra front on the other hand.

Above all, do not become so ethically ugly as to deny the massacres the regime has committed against civilians, or become a dictator-defender. Bashar is a Butcher; let’s establish that as a common fact between us, no matter your other views. I have spoken out against atrocities committed by the rebel sides; they ARE heinous, AND they in no way come close to the horrors committed by the regime, which vastly outguns all the rebel sides. So the “symmetry” thing, where you say “oh, they’re all about as bad as each other” is ethically reprehensible. If you don’t have time to educate yourself, at least refrain from that moral repulsiveness, please. Do not commit the inhumanity at this time of getting on a devastated Syrian’s last nerve, by denying our bloodied dead, or our desperate need for justice.

Here are some links for further reading:

• The Syrian Revolution, Then and Now (PDF download)
• International Crisis Group’s analysis of the potential U.S. strikes
• The Syrian Nonviolence Movement (English and Arabic pages)
• Kamishlo House (secular, nonsectarian, democracy activism)

Please write for the release of nonviolent Syrian prisoners of conscience HELD OVER A YEAR, many over two years, by cutting and pasting the text under each picture in this album, on a Revolution page that ALSO reports prisoners held by extremist groups on the rebel side.

(Photo: Rukn Eldeen, Damascus, Syria, November 20, 2012. Rallying around the nonsectarian, secular democratic values of the Syrian Revolution.)

• Mohja Kahf's blog