The US Intelligence Assessment on Syria.

Today the United States published its intelligence assessment on the events of August 21st (21/8/13) in Syria which can be read here; http://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2013/08/world/syria-documents/index.html or in a more useful format here; http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/08/30/us-government-assessment-syria-use-chemical-weapons/

I should probably start by apologising to the reports authors for my earlier Twitter comments because this is clearly a much more carefully constructed document than my initial skim read revealed. It does though fall far short of an intelligence assessment. An intelligence assessment would not only reveal the sources of the intelligence but also include some discussion of the credibility of those sources. I fully appreciate that the US intelligence community would not want to publish that sort of information in the public domain for very obvious reasons. However I hope that the version of report that has been sent to members of the US Congress contains a far greater level of detail as would befit their security clearance.

My main concern about this four page summary is that it appears to have taken thousands if not millions of separate pieces of information and then cherry-picked the pieces that best fit the pre-determined narrative that the Syrian government was responsible for any chemical weapons attack. Take for example the 7th paragraph which states that members of Syria's chemical weapons program are carefully vetted to ensure security and loyalty. Although it is undoubtedly a fact that members of the program are carefully vetted this detail seems to have been included specifically to tie any chemical weapons activity directly to the Syrian President by giving the impression that there is no possibility that rogue elements within the military could have been responsible. This is simply not the case because in July 2012 the head of Syria's chemical weapons program Adnan Silu defected to the Saudi and Qatari Irregular Army (SQIA) where he now holds the rank of General. If the Syrian's vetting program has failed to secure the loyalty of the head of the chemical weapons program it is clearly far from foolproof.

Then there is the 12th paragraph which talks about the Syrian government attacking the affected suburbs with conventional weapons for days prior to August 21st but becoming frustrated and resorting to chemical weapons. The obvious alternative conclusion to that evidence is that the Syrian government had been attacking with conventional weapons to the point that the SQIA were close to defeat prompting them to launch a false flag chemical weapons attack in order to relieve the pressure on them. I would like to know on what grounds that alternative scenario has been discarded.

The 4th paragraph is equally problematic because it puts the death toll at 1,429 and takes special care to point out that 426 of them were children. The most credible assessment puts the death toll at just 355 while the least credible SQIA estimate puts the death toll at 1,300. Therefore US intelligence appears to have made 129 extra bodies appear out of thin air. This could be a simple case of over/double-counting while collating information from various sources. However it could also be someone simply making up a very large number in order to inflame public outrage in order to fuel support for military action. It goes without saying that immediately after the release of the summary the hashtag #1429Syrians leaped straight to the top of the worldwide Twitter trends. US intelligence also have a strong motivation to inflate the death toll because it prompts discussions at the United Nations about at what point an incident becomes "widespread" as required to be described as a "Crime Against Humanity" as defined by the 1998 Rome Statutes which would justify military intervention under a Chapter 7 UN Security Council (UNSC). This is never an easy discussion to have because for example was the horror of Srebrenica that some 8000 people were killed or that the Serbs spent 7 consecutive days systematically killing people?

This theory of the intelligence being chosen to fit the conclusion appears to be supported by the tone of yesterday's debate in the UK House of Commons. Throughout that debate MP's from the governing Conservative Party spoke not of the UK taking military action against Syria by the UK joining in with US military action against Syria that was definitely going to take place. To me that sounds like Conservative MP's being informed by members of the cabinet that MI6 had been assured by their US counterparts that they had prepared an intelligence dossier that would make it impossible for the US President to avoid military action.

There are two things in the report that give me some confidence there is at least a hint of objectivity going into the US assessment of events. The first is that in the 5th paragraph and 9th paragraph it talks about it being unlikely that the SQIA carried out the attack or used chemical weapons. This differs from the UK's Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) report which states that the SQIA lacks the capability to mount a chemical weapons attack. This is simply untrue because back in May 2013 the Turkish authorities who are virulent opponents of the Syrian government arrested two members of the SQIA in the Turkish city of Adna in possession of 2kg of Sarin. Similarly the Syrian government recently captured Sarin gas from the SQIA in a tunnel network in the Damascus suburbs. Obviously the Syrian government have great incentive to lie about the SQIA having stockpiles of Sarin gas but it is not enough to simply dismiss the claim out of hand for no other reason then it is the Syrian government making the claim.

The second thing that hints at at least some objectivity is the 19th paragraph which talking about the social media reports of the incidents states that the SQIA does not have the capability to fabricate all of the videos. The implication is that a number of the videos and photographs most certainly were faked for propaganda purposes. A specific example would be the video of a pubescent girl with her burgeoning breasts exposed demanding that a doctor tells her she's alive. Apart from being an emotive attempt to convey the horror of the situation this was deliberately staged in order to play into the global discussion about at what age it becomes acceptable to marry/have sex with girls that is particularly prevalent in the Middle-East at the moment.

As for the intelligence itself apart from the stuff on the Internet it seems to have come from three main sources; Satellite imagery, communications intercepts (phone taps basically) and human intelligence sources who are Syrians on the ground who the CIA have recruited.

The satellite imagery should be easiest to declassify because provided the images are smudged up prior to release they are unlikely to reveal much about the US' intelligence gathering capabilities. There should be a lot of pressure on the US to release at least part of this satellite imagery because it makes up the bulk of the intelligence that this assessment is based on. For example all the stuff in the 10th to 15th paragraphs which talk about the attack itself and what the authors term the "preparation" has clearly come from spy satellites. The problem is that as far as I know the US has yet to develop a satellite that can detect the presence of Sarin gas in a fast moving object thousands of miles away. Therefore all the references to a conventional artillery and rocket attack is far from conclusive proof of a chemical weapons attack because the use of artillery and grad style rockets is an accepted and widely used lawful military tactic. The 13th and 14th paragraphs talk about satellite information showing Syrian troops preparing chemical weapons. I actually heard rumours of these images much earlier in the week. However the rumour I heard was that they merely showed Syrian troops moving and transporting chemical weapons. This is something that Syrian troops have been doing almost constantly for the last 12-15 months primarily to stop the SQIA get their hands on them, to deter foreign attempts to seize the weapons and just to annoy the US spy satellites. Therefore I would be very interested to know how the interpretation of these satellite images has changed from mere transportation to active preparation.

The communications intercept information is even more problematic. In the 20th paragraph reference is made to information the US itself has itself intercepted but goes on to refer to information that has been provided to them by a third party. What I've heard is that the US has little or no capability to intercept Syrian communications beyond satellite phones. As a result they are relying on Israel for the majority of their communication intercepts. Due mainly to the situation in Syria and to a lesser extent the Rihanna operation I would say that the relationship between the US and Israel has deteriorated to the point that Israel would provide the US with false intelligence in order to screw with them. The reports refusal to confirm what information has come from the US and what information has come from Israel seems to me to be a US attempt to question the quality of the information being provided by Israel. This is continued by the reports repeated reference to a "High Confidence" which could be a reference to the confidence the US has in its conclusion on Syria or a reference to the confidence (or lack thereof) it has in its Rihanna operation. After all if there's one thing we know about Rihanna it's that she likes to get 'high.'

The human intelligence is of course the most sensitive of all the intelligence because if some satellite pictures get released the worst that can happen is that China will confirm something it already knows about the US satellite capability. However if the identity of an agent on the ground in Syria is released they will be killed. If they're lucky. As a result this assessment makes very limited reference to human intelligence which also reflects the fact that the US' network of agents in Syria is limited at best. However the important thing to remember about human sources in this type of situation is that they were most likely recruited on the promise that the CIA will help them achieve their ideological goal of overthrowing the Syrian government. Therefore any assessment of their credibility will have to give serious consideration as to whether they are simply telling the CIA what it needs to hear in order to allow the US to take military action to overthrow the Syrian government.

22:10 on 30/8/13.