5 former OPCW officials join prominent voices to call out Syria cover-up

Pushback with Aaron Mate

Pushback with Aaron Maté

News

4.7 • 594 Ratings

🗓️ 14 March 2021

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Support Pushback at Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/aaronmate Five former officials from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons have joined a group of prominent signatories to urge the OPCW to address the controversy surrounding its investigation of an alleged chemical weapons attack in Douma, Syria in April 2018. Leaks from inside the OPCW show that key scientific findings that cast doubt on claims of Syrian government guilt were censored, and that the original investigators were removed from the probe. Since the cover-up became public, the OPCW has shunned accountability and publicly attacked the two whistleblowers who challenged it from inside. The "Statement of Concern" is signed by five former OPCW officials, including the organization's founding leader, José Bustani, and others including Noam Chomsky, Daniel Ellsberg, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, Tulsi Gabbard, John Pilger, Lord West of Spithead, as well two former senior UN officials, Denis Halliday and Hans von Sponeck. "The issue at hand threatens to severely damage the reputation and credibility of the OPCW and undermine its vital role in the pursuit of international peace and security," the statement says. "It is simply not tenable for a scientific organization such as the OPCW to refuse to respond openly to the criticisms and concerns of its own scientists whilst being associated with attempts to discredit and smear those scientists." Pushback host Aaron Maté details the letter and airs clips of his and Tulsi Gabbard's recent "Tucker Carlson Tonight" appearance discussing the OPCW controversy.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome to Pushback. I'm Aaron Matte. There is an important update in the Syria OPCW cover-up scandal that I wanted to share with you.
0:13.0	And that is a letter that has just come out signed by a number of distinguished singatories, calling on the OPCW to stop suppressing the evidence
0:25.7	that was gathered in the Duma investigation and to listen to the dissenting inspectors
0:32.6	whose findings were censored. This is very important because this letter does not just have
0:39.5	eminent people like Noam Chomsky, Daniel Ellsberg, Lawrence Wilkerson, two former senior
0:46.6	UN officials, Dennis Holliday and Hans von Sponeck, Tulsi Gabbard, the former U.S.
0:52.0	Congress member. But also, and I think most importantly here,
0:55.8	this letter is signed by five former OPCW officials. So these are five former OPCW officials,
1:04.5	including the former director, Jose Bustani, going on the record to call out their former organization
1:10.4	and to demand that they weigh the evidence
1:13.3	that was suppressed in Duma. And for those who don't know what the story is, I'll summarize it
1:17.7	briefly, and then we'll get to this letter and talk about what it says. So basically, in April 2018,
1:24.0	the Syrian government was accused of committing a chemical weapons attack in the town of Duma.
1:30.3	There was a video released showing dozens of bodies inside a building, and immediately
1:36.4	this was blamed on the Syrian government, and within a week, the U.S., Britain, and France
1:42.1	bombed Syria based on this allegation.
1:44.8	Shortly after that, the OPCW, the world's top chemical weapons watchdog, sent a team
1:50.5	into Duma.
1:51.6	They conducted an investigation.
1:53.9	And to make a long story short, they came out with a report a year later that
1:58.8	comported essentially with the U.S. narrative that the Syrian government was
2:04.1	guilty of a chemical attack with chlorine in Duma. They didn't directly accuse Syria of this,
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Pushback with Aaron Maté, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Pushback with Aaron Maté and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.