Terrorist-linked rebels ‘managed the news’ following Syrian gas attack – fmr CIA officer

The United States knows what happened in the Syrian gas attack, but won't admit it because they cannot go back on the narrative that they have already embraced, former CIA officer Philip Giraldi tells RT America.

Despite failing to produce any conclusive evidence or organizing an impartial investigation, the US media continues to blame President Bashar Assad’s forces for a chemical attack in Khan Sheikhoun on April 4.

RT:  We know that a Syrian plane fired at a target in the rebel-held province of Idlib after which a deadly chemical substance materialized in the air. We also know that the Russians had used a hotline prior to this attack to alert the US military that there was an impending strike on a suspected arms warehouse. Do you think it is possible that the US knew that the warehouse had chemical weapons and failed to prevent this incident?

Philip Giraldi: Yes, it is quite possible. I think the US intelligence agencies and the White House know exactly what happened on April 4. But because the events have moved forward, and the US has chosen to exercise a military option, they basically cannot go back on the narrative that they have already embraced.

RT:  What do you make of the fact that all the primary available physical evidence from that attack site is coming from anti-Assad sources actually linked to Al-Nusra, which is linked to Al-Qaeda themselves?

PG: Yes, this is again something that we have seen before. The 2013 attack on Ghouta, the suburb of Damascus, it was the same situation. The area on the ground was controlled by the so-called rebels, and these people naturally manage the news in terms of what gets out and how it’s explained. You can be sure now if there were an investigating team going into the site, they would find it much changed. I am sure that parts of it would’ve been cleaned up; other parts would have been contaminated to reflect the story that the rebels would like to have us believe that the Syrian government did this. 

The area on the ground was controlled by the so-called rebels, and these people naturally manage the news in terms of what gets out and how it’s explained. You can be sure now if there were an investigating team going into the site, they would find it much changed.

RT:  Even if they did permit an actual physical investigation, do you think at this point it is possible to have a legitimate one?

PG: I begin to doubt that. The US is obstructing this process, because again, if we actually had a true representation of what occurred, it could be very damaging to the story that Washington is putting out.

RT:  The head of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Department for Non-Proliferation and Arms Control said that the West, like you said, is trying to hinder an impartial investigation into this incident. What concrete evidence has been uncovered by the West so far regarding this attack?

PG: The claims so far, and so far as I can tell, are based on a series of photographs, which were commercially available. In other words there is something like Google photographs. Also claims being made by the rebels themselves about what occurred and what was seen. There is also obviously evidence of people who were injured, and some of the alleged chemical agent was tested in Turkey and they declared that it was sarin. But see, the problem with that is that Turkey is extremely hostile to the Assad regime. Its President Erdogan has repeatedly called for him to be removed. There is hardly an impartial source of what was discovered.