Welcome to Pushback. I'm Aaron Mate. It's been two years since the OPCW's cover-up of a Syria

chemical weapons investigation was exposed. This was when leaked documents showed that the

OPCW's own investigators found no evidence of a chemical weapons attack in the Syrian town of

Duma in April 2018. But their findings were censored and the OPCW put out a final report

that erased what these inspectors actually found on the ground and falsely suggested that there

was evidence of a chemical attack in Duma.

So since this has emerged, the OPCW's Director General Fernando Arias has refused all efforts at accountability.

He's refused to meet with the dissenting inspectors and instead has disparaged them in public.

He's refused to explain

the documented manipulation of the OPCW's own reports and their findings. And he's ignored calls

for accountability, refusing to even open up a letter that was recently sent to him by a group

of distinguished signatories,

including five former OPCW officials.

So the latest phase of this came in early June when Arias came before the UN Security Council,

and for the first time he answered questions in open session,

gave the public a chance to hear him respond to

critical questions about the OPCW's handling of the Duma scandal. And this session from Arias,

these answers that he gave were very revealing, amounting to really his most extensive efforts

to date to mislead the public about the OPCW scandal.

So joining me now to discuss this is Pierce Robinson.

He is the co-director of the Organization for Propaganda Studies,

and the convener of the working group on Syria, propaganda, and media,

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