Welcome to Pushback. I'm Aaron Mate. My guest is Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, the former

Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, currently a distinguished professor at the

College of William and Mary. Colonel Wilkerson, we have been covering on Pushback the scandal at the

OPCW, the organization for the prohibition of chemical weapons,

where a series of leaks put out by WikiLeaks and released by whistleblowers from the OPCW

show that there were major internal doubts about the allegation that the Syrian government

committed a chemical weapons attack in the city of Duma in April 2018.

This allegation led to airstrikes by the US, France, and Britain.

And what the leaked documents and testimony shows so far is that OPCW officials, including scientists and people

who were deployed on the ground in Duma, complained that their findings were being excluded

from the OPCW's public reports and also distorted, and that the evidence that was collected

actually pointed to this attack

being staged on the ground rather than there being a chemical weapons attack by the Assad government.

And reportedly, according to one whistleblower, this was done, this manipulation at the OPCW,

this was done under direct US pressure.

What do you make of what we've heard so far?

I had heard this all along and had been following it off and on,

just to see if I could pick up some pieces that would confirm or deny this for me.

My initial assessment of the situation was when people were talking

about VX or Sarah and I, I know what VX and Sarin can do to you. And I know that people

standing beside a crater hours after the munition has struck that's supposed to spread this gas is preposterous.

They'd be dead.

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