Chemical watchdog confirms suppressed report but justifies the suppression

Director-General of OPCW Fernando Arias Gonzales admits Douma engineers report was legit and he was part of the FFM – but attempts to justify suppression of the report.

France 24 reports that the head of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) “has ordered a probe into the leak of an internal paper which queried the body’s findings into a 2018 attack in the Syrian town of Douma” (see Chemical weapons body probes leaked document on Syrian attack). This is yet another confirmation of the authenticity of the leaked document I discussed in Does international chemical watchdog cherry-pick evidence to confirm a bias? Recent documents form the OPCW also confirm that Ian Henderson, the head of the engineering subteam that prepared the suppressed document, was employed by the OPCW (see Remarks of the Director-General at the Briefing for States Parties on Syrian Arab Republic: Update on IIT-FFM-SSRC-DAT).

This should put to rest claims made by some corporate media journalists that the leaked document was fake and manufactured to discredit OPCW findings. Even so, these same journalists are not exactly rushing to repor the issue.

I guess no one who has worked for a large organisation, whether corporate or state owned, can be surprised at the way the OPCW is reacting to the leaked document. Or surprised that an important analysis was supressed leading to questions about the reliability of the final reports.

But the fact this is an international organisation bearing responsibility for monitory and eliminating a whole class of dangerous weapons makes the behaviour very serious. Even worse, the apparent bias in the final report about an incident which supposedly lead to the deaths of so many civilians raises questions about the ethical behaviour of the OPCW. It is very likely a war crime was committed and the OPCW has not only failed in its role to objectively elucidate the evidence of this crime but actively worked to prevent attributing blame to the likely instigators of the crime. Instead the OPCW appears to have succumbed to political pressure from NATO-aligned countries to blame an innocent party.

Alleged victims of chemcial attack in Douma, Syria. Who was responsible for these deaths? Image credit: New York Times – Most Chemical Attacks in Syria Get Little Attention. Here Are 34 Confirmed Cases.

Given the seriousness of this matter, it is pleasing to see that the media is starting to provide some coverage of the document suppression – although very belatedly and in a very limited matter in the case of the corporate mainstream media. I hope the truth comes out and I hope, as a result, steps are taken to reform OPCW procedures to limit this sort of political interference.

However, in this post, I will just deal with an attitude expressed by the OPCW which displays a very unscientific attitude to their work. The idea that evidence should be selected to support a conclusion – rather than the conclusion be based on all the evidence.

Director-General of OPCW admits the legitimacy of engineers’ report

The video above shows Fernando Arias Gonzales, the Director-General of OPCW, admitting to the legitimacy of the engineers’ report and attempting to justify the fact its findings were excluded from the final report. I described the findings of the suppressed report in Does international chemical watchdog cherry-pick evidence to confirm a bias?

Briefly, whereas the final OPCW report provided evidence for the finding that the chlorine cylinders had been dropped from the air, the suppressed engineers’ report found it far more probable that the cylinders had been placed manually.  Considerations of the sizes of the ceiling holes, the possible velocities of the cylinders and damage to them, and surrounding damage were considered in the suppressed report.

Whereas other external engineers were later consulted by the OPCW and provided arguments justifying air-delivery I would expect an objective report would include all the analyses and information available. On those grounds alone the Director-General’s arguments for suppression are very suspect and do nothing to alleviate the subsequent loss of credibility of his organisation.

But to me it is worse – his comments are scientifically unethical.

“But sometimes it does not fit to the conclusion”

How can a report be considered credible if evidence contradicting its conclusion is omitted? Fernando Arias Gonzales does nothing to preserve the integrity of his organisation when he says of evidence – “But sometimes it does not fit to the conclusion.”

His statement implies that in this case the writers of the report started with a conclusion and then selected only that evidence which could support their pet conclusion.

That is scientifically unethical and displays probable political pressure.

Hiding behind possible attribution

In a formal statement from the OPCW the Director-General provides yet another justification for the report’s suppression:

“The document produced by this staff member pointed at possible attribution, which is outside of the mandate of the FFM with regard to the formulation of its findings. Therefore, I instructed that, beyond the copy that would exclusively be kept by the FFM, the staff member be advised to submit his assessment to the IIT*, which he did, so that this document could later be used by the IIT.”

But this is just incredulous. The final report presented only the evidence supporting air delivery of the two chlorine cylinders. The suppressed report presented evidence which did not support air delivery but was consistent with the cylinders being placed manually.

Neither the engineer’s report nor the final report mentioned any attribution – although of course attribution could be inferred. By arguing for air-delivery the final report can be seen as possible laying the blame on the Syrian state forces which used helicopters in the area.  Manual placement provides for possible attribution to the jihadist forces and a staged event. But neither of these are stated directly and it is disingenuous for the Director-General to claim, the suppressed report “pointed at possible attribution” but the final report didn’t.

Really, the Director-General’s statement has only dug a deeper hole and further reduced the credibility of the origination and its past and future reports.

*IIT –Investigation and Identification Team. This has been set up by the OPCW Secretariat to identify “the perpetrators of the use of chemical weapons in the Syrian Arab Republic.” However, it does not have full support from OPCW members and its establishment is controversial.

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