US intelligence knew “rebels” in Syria could carry out chemical attack – investigation

US intelligence knew month before the chemical attack on Aug. 21 in Ghouta of Syrian “rebels” possibility to carry it out, writes Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh. The writer cites senior US military and intelligence sources, which couldn’t be revealed due to security reasons.

The author received the prize for his work and investigations during the Iraqi and Vietnam wars.

 “The American intelligence agencies produced a series of highly classified reports… citing evidence that the Al-Nusra Front, a jihadi group affiliated with Al-Qaeda, had mastered the mechanics of creating sarin and was capable of manufacturing it in quantity,” Hersh writes.

“Already by late May, the senior intelligence consultant told me, the CIA had briefed the Obama administration on Al-Nusra and its work with sarin,” Hersh wrote.

He believes this policy became similar to the ones used to justify the Iraqi war in 2003.

 “Any possibility of military action was definitively averted on 26 September when the administration joined Russia in approving a draft UN resolution calling on the Syrian    government to get rid of its chemical arsenal,” the report reads. “Obama’s retreat brought relief to many senior military officers. (One high-level special operations adviser told me that the ill-conceived American missile attack on Syrian military airfields and missile emplacements, as initially envisaged by the White House, would have been ‘like providing close air support for al-Nusra,”).

Source:FNA

R.S