{"id":65900,"date":"2015-11-02T12:00:08","date_gmt":"2015-11-02T12:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=65900"},"modified":"2015-11-02T09:58:11","modified_gmt":"2015-11-02T09:58:11","slug":"seymour-hershs-news-report-banned-in-u-s-is-finally-confirmed-in-turkey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2015\/11\/seymour-hershs-news-report-banned-in-u-s-is-finally-confirmed-in-turkey\/","title":{"rendered":"Seymour Hersh\u2019s News Report Banned in U.S. Is Finally Confirmed in Turkey"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"seymour<\/a>

Seymour Hersh<\/p><\/div>\n

30 Oct 2015 – <\/em>The news-report that the famed investigative journalist Seymour Hersh could not find an American publisher for, and that was consequently published only in Britain, has now been publicly confirmed by a research study into the matter, a study whose findings were made public on October 21st by a committee of Turkey\u2019s parliament and published that day in\u00a0Turkey\u2019s leading newspaper, Zaman<\/em>.<\/a><\/p>\n

The question being investigated here was who caused the sarin gas attack in Ghouta, Syria, on 21 August 2013, that killed over a thousand victims, and that U.S. President Barack Obama has used as his basis for going to war to bring down Syrian President Bashar al-Assad?<\/p>\n

Hersh\u2019s article, in the London Review of Books<\/em>, on 7 April 2014, was titled\u00a0\u201cThe Red Line and the Rat Line: Expos\u00e9: Obama, Erdo\u011fan and the Syrian Rebels \u2013 Turkey Staged Gas Attack to Provoke US War on Syria.<\/em><\/a>\u201d<\/u>\u00a0Hersh found that (quoting here the key parts, and providing [in brackets], from me, the necessary clarifications so that the reader can more easily understand what Hersh was saying):<\/p>\n

A US\u00a0intelligence consultant told me that a few weeks before\u00a021 August he saw\u00a0a highly classified briefing prepared for\u00a0<\/em>[Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Martin]\u00a0Dempsey and the defense\u00a0secretary, Chuck Hagel, which\u00a0described \u2018the acute\u00a0anxiety\u2019 of the <\/em>[Turkish President Recep Tayyip]\u00a0Erdo\u011fan administration\u00a0about the<\/em>\u00a0[U.S.-Turkey-Saudi-Qatari-backed]\u00a0rebels\u2019 dwindling prospects. The\u00a0analysis warned\u00a0that the Turkish leadership had expressed \u2018the need to\u00a0do\u00a0something that would precipitate a US military\u00a0response\u2019.<\/em>\u00a0[In other words: Turkey\u2019s leader, Erdo\u011fan, \u2018expressed\u2019 to the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, that they needed to do something that would \u2018precipitate a US military response\u2019 against the man Erdo\u011fan wanted to bring down, Assad. He was advising what\u2019s called by the intelligence-services a \u2018false-flag attack.\u2019 Erdo\u011fan wanted a false-flag attack, so as to enable U.S. President Barack Obama to have a publicly believable excuse for invading Syria and doing what Erdo\u011fan wanted done.] \u2026 In the aftermath of the 21 August attack\u00a0Obama ordered the\u00a0Pentagon to draw up targets for bombing. Early in the\u00a0process,\u00a0the former intelligence official said, \u2018the White House\u00a0rejected\u00a035 target sets\u00a0provided by the joint chiefs of staff as being\u00a0insufficiently \u201cpainful\u201d to the Assad regime.\u2019<\/em> \u00a0[I.e.: The Joint Chiefs had underestimated the President\u2019s determination to bring down Assad.] \u2026 Obama\u2019s change of mind <\/em>[weakening his ardor against Assad] had its origins at Porton Down, the\u00a0defence\u00a0laboratory in Wiltshire. British intelligence had\u00a0obtained a sample of\u00a0the sarin used in the 21 August attack\u00a0and analysis demonstrated\u00a0that\u00a0the gas used didn\u2019t match the\u00a0batches known to exist in the Syrian\u00a0army\u2019s chemical weapons\u00a0arsenal. The message that the case against Syria\u00a0wouldn\u2019t hold\u00a0up was quickly relayed to the US joint\u00a0chiefs of staff.\u00a0The\u00a0British report heightened doubts inside the Pentagon; the joint\u00a0chiefs were already preparing to warn Obama that his plans for\u00a0a\u00a0far-reaching bomb and missile attack on Syria\u2019s\u00a0infrastructure\u00a0could\u00a0lead to a wider war in the Middle East. As a consequence\u00a0the American\u00a0officers delivered a last-minute caution to the\u00a0president, which, in\u00a0their view, eventually led to his cancelling the attack. \u2026 Obama\u2019s premise <\/em>[\u2018premise\u2019 here might instead have been just the tactful way for Hersh to say \u2018excuse,\u2019 which would have been even more unpublishable to apply to the President inside the U.S.; Hersh here avoids saying that the President was simply lying] \u2013\u00a0that only the Syrian army\u00a0was capable of deploying sarin \u2013 was\u00a0unravelling. Within a few\u00a0days of the 21 August attack, the former\u00a0intelligence official told\u00a0me, Russian military\u00a0intelligence operatives\u00a0had recovered\u00a0samples of the chemical agent from Ghouta. They analysed\u00a0it\u00a0and passed it on to British military intelligence; this was the\u00a0material sent to Porton Down<\/em>\u00a0[the testing lab for Britain\u2019s CIA-equivalent, MI6].\u00a0\u2026 \u00a0The Porton Down report\u00a0caused the joint chiefs to go to the president with a \u2026 serious\u00a0worry: that the attack sought by the White House would\u00a0be an unjustified\u00a0act of aggression. <\/em>[In other words: if he were to invade on that basis, the fakery of his excuse might become publicly known.] It was the joint chiefs\u00a0who\u00a0led Obama to change\u00a0course. The official White House\u00a0explanation for the turnabout \u2013 the\u00a0story the press corps told <\/em>[and Hersh is here pouring contempt upon America\u2019s \u2018press corps,\u2019 as being nothing but stenographers for the White House] \u2013\u00a0was that the president, during a walk in\u00a0the Rose Garden with\u00a0Denis\u00a0McDonough, his chief of staff, suddenly\u00a0decided to seek\u00a0approval for the strike from a bitterly divided Congress with which he\u2019d been in conflict for years.\u00a0\u2026\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\"syria<\/a><\/p>\n

Here is an excerpt from the\u00a0Today\u2019s Zaman news report<\/a>, which confirmed Hersh\u2019s findings that this had been a false-flag attack, by people on Obama\u2019s side, to \u2018justify\u2019 a U.S. attack in order to bring down Assad:<\/p>\n

CHP <\/em>[Turkey\u2019s leading secularist Party, in opposition to Turkey\u2019s Sunni Islamist leader, President Erdo\u011fan]\u00a0deputy \u015eeker spoke after <\/em>[his CHP colleague]\u00a0Erdem, pointing out that the\u00a0government\u00a0misled the public on the issue <\/em>[of who caused the 21 August 2013 sarin gas attack in Syria]\u00a0by asserting that\u00a0sarin was provided by\u00a0Russia<\/em> [which is a country that both Erdo\u011fan and Obama want to defeat]. The purpose <\/em>[of the government\u2019s lie]\u00a0was to create the\u00a0perception that, according to\u00a0\u015eeker, \u201cAssad killed his people\u00a0with sarin and that requires a US\u00a0military intervention in Syria.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

He also underlined that all of the files and evidence from the\u00a0investigation show a war crime was committed within the\u00a0borders of the\u00a0Turkish Republic.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThe investigation clearly indicates that those people who\u00a0smuggled\u00a0the chemicals required to procure sarin faced no\u00a0difficulties, proving\u00a0that Turkish intelligence was aware of their\u00a0activities. While these\u00a0people had to be in prison for their illegal\u00a0acts, not a single person\u00a0is in jail. Former prime ministers and\u00a0the interior minister should be\u00a0held accountable for their\u00a0negligence in the incident,\u201d \u015eeker further\u00a0commented.<\/em><\/p>\n

Erdem also added that he will launch a criminal complaint\u00a0against\u00a0those responsible, including those who issued a verdict\u00a0of\u00a0non-prosecution in the case, those who did not prevent the\u00a0transfer of\u00a0chemicals, and those who first ordered the arrest of\u00a0the suspects who\u00a0were later released.<\/em><\/p>\n

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced in late August\u00a0that an\u00a0inquiry had been launched into the gas attacks\u00a0allegedly perpetuated by\u00a0both Assad\u2019s Syrian regime and rebel\u00a0groups fighting in Syria since the\u00a0civil war erupted in 2011.<\/em><\/p>\n

However, Erdem is not the only figure who has accused Turkey\u00a0of\u00a0possible involvement in the gas attack. Pulitzer Prize winner\u00a0and\u00a0journalist, Seymour M. Hersh, argued in an article\u00a0published in 2014\u00a0that M\u0130T <\/em>[Turkey\u2019s version of America\u2019s CIA]\u00a0was involved with extremist Syrian\u00a0groups fighting against the\u00a0Assad regime.<\/em><\/p>\n

In his article, Hersh said Assad was not behind the attack, as\u00a0claimed by the US and Europe, but that Turkish-Syrian\u00a0opposition\u00a0collaboration was trying to provoke a US\u00a0intervention in Syria in order\u00a0to bring down the Assad regime.<\/em><\/p>\n

That news story in Zaman<\/em>\u00a0 was titled,\u00a0\u201cGov\u2019t rejects probe into Turkey\u2019s role in Syrian chemical attack.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0In other words: Erdo\u011fan is refusing to cooperate with the CHP Party\u2019s investigation into the matter.<\/p>\n

Even prior to Hersh\u2019s report, a detailed (and better-written) presentation of the case against Obama, which likewise reported that this was a \u201cfalse flag\u201d operation and that the anti-Russian forces (headed by Obama) were behind it, had been presented by the great investigative journalist Christof Lehmann. He had headlined on 7 October 2013 at his nsnbc news site, \u201cTop US and Saudi Officials responsible for Chemical Weapons in Syria,\u201d<\/a> and he opened: \u201cEvidence leads directly to the White House, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey, CIA Director John Brennan, Saudi Intelligence Chief Prince Bandar, and Saudi Arabia\u00b4s Interior Ministry.\u201d (The U.S. has been allied with the Saudi royal family against Russia since 1945.) Lehmann went on to note that: \u201cThe CIA maintains a station, US Special Forces (JSOC) train insurgents, and several other US institutions are present in al-Mafraq. The point is of particular importance with regards to the visit of the U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to Jordan, which will be detailed below. Al-Mafraq has been the major transit point for Saudi and U.S. arms shipments since 2012, and the delivery of advanced Saudi and U.S. weapons to the insurgents since early August 2013.\u201d So: The U.S. President had been up to his eyeballs in the scheming to \u201cprecipitate a US military response,\u201d as Hersh phrased the matter five months later. Obama desperately wanted to have a publicly-citable reason to invade Syria in 2013, just as Bush had desperately wanted to have a publicly-citable reason to invade Iraq in 2003. (And, in both instances, the U.S. \u2018news\u2019 media cooperated with the President\u2019s scam. A detailed 14 January 2014 MIT analysis of the evidence<\/a>, which proved that \u201cthe government\u2019s interpretation of the technical intelligence it gathered prior to and after the August 21 attack cannot possibly be correct\u201d<\/em> was simply ignored by the U.S. \u2018news\u2019 media.)<\/p>\n

All of the evidence indicates that U.S. President Obama and Turkey\u2019s President Erdo\u011fan were working together to create a case for America to bomb Syria until Syria\u2019s President Bashar al-Assad would be gone, so that Assad\u2019s government could then be replaced by a Sunni Islamist regime (like Erdo\u011fan wants), which would be hostile to Russia and which would thus enable in Syria the construction of pipelines so that gas from U.S.-allied Sunni Qatar and oil from U.S.-allied Sunni Saudi Arabia might take the place of Russia\u2019s oil and gas in the world\u2019s biggest energy-market: Europe. It\u2019s a joint operation both of the U.S. aristocracy, and of the Sunni Arabic royal families, basically a U.S.-Wahhabist operation.<\/p>\n

Obama, Erdogan, Saudi King Abdullah, and Qatar\u2019s Emir\u00a0Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, worked together in their joint effort to grab Europe\u2019s oil-and-gas markets from Russia. For the Sunni Islamists it would be directly an economic benefit to the Sunni aristocrats who would be raking in extra billions, some of which would then fund yet more Sunni jihadists and clerics, to spread the Wahhabist Sunni faith yet further and thus satisfy the Sunni clerics and not only the national Sunni aristocracy; but, to Obama, this would mainly be just another way to cripple the Russian economy, to bring it down, which America\u2019s aristocrats want to do. Syria\u2019s overthrow would be a fitting sequel to Obama\u2019s February 2014 overthrow of Ukraine\u2019s President Viktor Yanukovych<\/a>, who, like Bashar al-Assad, refused to cooperate with U.S. plans to force Russia\u2019s President Vladimir Putin out of office.<\/p>\n

On 11 May 2015, Gabriel Sherman in the throw-away New York<\/em> magazine, headlined, \u201cWhy Seymour Hersh\u2019s \u2018Alternative\u2019 bin Laden History Did Not Appear in The New Yorker,\u201d<\/a> and he interviewed Hersh about (the anti-Russia propagandist and Obama-supporter) David Remnick, who is the editor of the New Yorker<\/em>\u00a0 and who rejected Hersh\u2019s article when it was presented to him. This time, Remnick had rejected an article by Hersh exposing Obama\u2019s lies about the killing of bin Laden: Remnick\u2019s earlier rejections of Hersh\u2019s articles about Obama\u2019s lies regarding Libya, and then regarding Syria (our topic here), had been totally ignored in U.S. \u2018news\u2019 media; but this Sherman article might as well have been about those, too. As a throw-away journalist, Mr. Sherman quotes nothing in response from Mr. Remnick. He only quotes more of Hersh, quoting Remnick\u2019s response to Hersh\u2019s findings: \u201cDavid said, \u2018Do a blog,\u2019 Hersh recalled.\u201d (Imagine: \u201cDo a blog,\u201d to tell the public a news story bigger and more important than almost any that the magazine publishes. What an insult that was to Hersh.)<\/p>\n

Truths like Hersh\u2019s recent articles report don\u2019t seem to fit in a \u2018news\u2019 medium such as the New Yorker<\/em>. Even if some readers of the New Yorker<\/em>\u00a0 might want to know truths such as this, the owners of the magazine (who hire its editors) don\u2019t want them to know such truths (which is why they hire such editors). Hersh apparently pretends not to understand that. He was quoted by Sherman as saying, \u201cIt\u2019s about money,\u201d meaning that Remnick just didn\u2019t want to spend the money for such an article. Hersh isn\u2019t that stupid. He knows that in America, journalists aren\u2019t paid to expose political rot at the top of the nation\u2019s aristocracy. Instead, the Russia-bashing must go on, truth-be-damned. If Putin doesn\u2019t want to play ball with America\u2019s aristocracy, this is the price he\u2019ll have to pay, for holding out. The positions of Russia and its allies won\u2019t be published in America. And being turned down by America\u2019s press-lords is the price that independent journalists in America must pay, if they want to report the truth about international matters. Journalists know that, too. And a very few of them are willing to pay this price, in order to report the truth, regardless. Unlike what libertarians say, merit doesn\u2019t get rewarded by the market, unless that \u2018merit\u2019 is in service to the aristocracy, rather than challenging its lies<\/em>. So much for America\u2019s \u2018free press.\u2019<\/p>\n

______________________________<\/p>\n

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of\u00a0 <\/em>They\u2019re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<\/a>,<\/em> of\u00a0<\/em>Christ\u2019s Ventriloquists: The Event that Created Christianity<\/a>, and\u00a0of<\/em>\u00a0Feudalism, Fascism, Libertarianism and Economics<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 strategic-culture.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

30 Oct 2015 – The news-report that the famed investigative journalist Seymour Hersh could not find an American publisher for, and was published only in Britain, has now been publicly confirmed by a research study into the matter and published in Turkey\u2019s leading newspaper, Zaman.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65900","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-middle-east-north-africa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65900","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65900"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65900\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}