Syria scandal: New whistleblower claims chemical weapons watchdog OPCW suppressed Douma evidence
Pushback with Aaron Mate
Pushback with Aaron Maté
4.7 • 594 Ratings
🗓️ 17 November 2019
⏱️ 34 minutes
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Summary
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to pushback. I'm Aaron Mate. |
| 0:05.0 | A second whistleblower is raising new doubts about an alleged chemical weapons attack in Syria, |
| 0:11.3 | and with it, new concerns that a top UN watchdog is compromised. |
| 0:16.6 | Just like the first whistleblower, the new whistleblower is an official with the Organization |
| 0:21.6 | for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, or OPCW. |
| 0:25.9 | This person, a senior scientist, was on the ground when the OPCW investigated allegations |
| 0:32.6 | that the Syrian government killed dozens of people in the city of Duma in April 2018. |
| 0:39.1 | This allegation prompted the U.S., France, and Britain to bomb three sites in Syria one week later. |
| 0:46.4 | The OPCW later pinned blame on the Syrian government, lending justification to the U.S.-led |
| 0:51.3 | strikes. |
| 0:52.5 | But earlier this year, a member of the OPCW team leaked a suppressed engineering assessment |
| 0:58.0 | that challenged the OPCW's conclusions. |
| 1:01.0 | The leaked report found that the gas cylinders at the scene in Duma were likely, quote, manually placed. |
| 1:08.0 | This suggested the attack was staged. And now another member of the OPCW |
| 1:13.6 | team, the second whistleblower, has come forward. This whistleblower recently delivered |
| 1:19.9 | testimony in front of a panel convened by the Courage Foundation, a journalist and whistleblower |
| 1:26.3 | protection organization founded by Wikileaks. |
| 1:30.5 | In a statement, the panel said this, quote, we are unanimous in expressing our alarm over |
| 1:36.9 | unacceptable practices in the investigation. |
| 1:40.7 | We became convinced by the testimony that key information about chemical analyses, toxicology |
| 1:47.5 | consultations, ballistic studies, and witness testimonies was suppressed, ostensibly to favor |
| 1:53.9 | a preordained conclusion." |
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