The NYT and Chemical Weapons in Syria

By Michael McGehee | NYTX | June 7, 2013

Last month when UN investigator Carla Del Ponte came out publicly to say, “There are strong, concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible proof of the use of sarin gas, from the way the victims were treated,” and, “This was use on the part of the opposition, the rebels, not by the government authorities,” it was quickly met with suspicion and denial, from the UN and the White House.
Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, said as much to reporters.
“We are highly skeptical of the suggestion that the opposition could have or did use chemical weapons,” Mr. Carney said. “We find it highly likely that any chemical weapon use that has taken place in Syria was done by the Assad regime. And that remains our position.” (NYT, 05/07/2013)
In the previous month both the US and Israel came out with the claim that the Syrian government had used chemical weapons.
On Tuesday the UN issued a report on the war-torn country, and The New York Times reported that, “There are reasonable grounds to believe limited quantities of toxic chemicals were used.”
However, the “paper of record” conveniently failed to note that the report immediately goes on to say that “It has not been possible, on the evidence available, to determine the precise chemical agents used, their delivery systems or the perpetrator.”
But there are two very important developments to this story which have been met with total silence.
The first is the hacking of Britam, a British defense company. Four months ago it was reported by Yahoo! that:

The Obama administration gave green signal to a chemical weapons attack plan in Syria that could be blamed on President Bashar al Assad’s regime and in turn, spur international military action in the devastated country, leaked documents have shown.

One of the leaked documents was an email. The email:

Phil
We’ve got a new offer. It’s about Syria again. Qataris propose an attractive deal and swear that the idea is approved by Washington.
We’ll have to deliver a CW to Homs, a Soviet origin g-shell from Libya similar to those that Assad should have.
They want us to deploy our Ukrainian personnel that should speak Russian and make a video record.
Frankly, I don’t think it’s a good idea but the sums proposed are enormous. Your opinion?
Kind regards
David

One of the parties who continues to feed the UN information about the use of chemical weapons in Syria is the United Kingdom. The NYT reported on Wednesday, Britain “repeated an earlier assessment that ‘a growing body of limited but persuasive information’ pointed to the use of the same toxin.”
After the email was leaked, claims of chemical weapons usage were made and then President Obama was hounded to act swiftly. Syria’s President Assad allegedly crossed Washington’s “red line.”
The June 4th UN panel report claims that, “It is possible that anti-Government armed groups may access and use chemical weapons. This includes nerve agents, though there is no compelling evidence that these groups possess such weapons or their requisite delivery systems.”
The Turkish news agency, Zaman, reported on May 28, 2013—that is, a week before the UN report was published—that Syrian rebels were arrested in Turkey and had Sarin gas in their possession.
While Russia Today covered the development, as well as Voice of Russia and Iran’s PressTV, no Western source published the development.
In all the coverage provided on Syria and chemical weapons—in the last year the NYT has provided more than 1,100 news items—we should suppose that a hacked email showing Washington supports a plan to use chemical weapons in Syria and blame it on the regime, and that rebels have been caught with Sarin nerve gas in Turkey, simply is not “all the news fit to print.”

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