title: Hersh: Trump Knew ‘Assad Sarin Attack’ Story Was Fairy Tale – But Launched Cruise Missile Strike Anyway
text: Consortium News Exclusive: The mainstream media is so hostile to challenges to its groupthinks that famed journalist Seymour Hersh had to take his take-down of President Trump s April 6 attack on Syria to Germany, says ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern By Ray McGovernLegendary investigative reporter Seymour Hersh is challenging the Trump administration s version of events surrounding the April 4  chemical weapons attack  on the northern Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun   though Hersh had to find a publisher in Germany to get his information out.In the Sunday edition of Die Welt, Hersh reports that his national security sources offered a distinctly different account, revealing President Trump rashly deciding to launch 59 Tomahawk missiles against a Syrian airbase on April 6 despite the absence of intelligence supporting his conclusion that the Syrian military was guilty.Hersh draws on the kind of inside sources from whom he has earned longstanding trust to dispute that there ever was a  chemical weapons attack  and to assert that Trump was told that no evidence existed against the Syrian government but ordered  his generals  to  retaliate  anyway.Marine General Joseph Dunford, Chairman of the, Joint Chiefs of Staff, and former Marine General, now Defense Secretary James  Mad-Dog  Mattis ordered the attacks apparently knowing that the reason given was what one of Hersh s sources called a  fairy tale. They then left it to Trump s national security adviser Army General H. R. McMaster to further the deceit with the help of a compliant mainstream media, which broke from its current tradition of distrusting whatever Trump says in favor of its older tradition of favoring  regime change  in Syria and trusting pretty much whatever the  rebels  claim.According to Hersh s sources, the normal  deconfliction  process was followed before the April 4 strike. In such procedures, U.S. and Russian officers supply one another with advance details of airstrikes, such as target coordinates, to avoid accidental confrontations among the warplanes crisscrossing Syria.Russia and Syrian Air Force officers gave details of the flight path to and from Khan Sheikhoun in English, Hersh reported. The target was a two-story cinderblock building in which senior leaders    high-value targets    of the two jihadist groups controlling the town were about to hold a meeting. Because of the perceived importance of the mission, the Russians took the unusual step of giving the Syrian air force a GPS-guided bomb to do the job, but the explosives were conventional, not chemical, Hersh reported.The meeting place was on the floor above the basement of the building, where a source whom Hersh described as  a senior adviser to the U.S. intelligence community,  told Hersh: The basement was used as storage for rockets, weapons, and ammunition   and also chlorine-based decontaminates for cleansing the bodies of the dead before burial. A Bomb Damage AssessmentHersh describes what happened when the building was struck on the morning of April 4:  A Bomb Damage Assessment by the U.S. military later determined that the heat and force of the 500-pound Syrian bomb triggered a series of secondary explosions that could have generated a huge toxic cloud that began to spread over the town, formed by the release of fertilizers, disinfectants, and other goods stored in the basement, its effect magnified by the dense morning air, which trapped the fumes close to the ground. According to intelligence estimates, the strike itself killed up to four jihadist leaders and an unknown number of drivers and security aides. There is no confirmed count of the number of civilians killed by the poisonous gases that were released by the secondary explosions, although opposition activists reported that there were more than 80 dead, and outlets such as CNN have put the figure as high as 92. Due to the fog of war, which is made denser by the fact that jihadists associated with Al Qaeda control the area, many of the details of the incident were unclear on that day and remain so still. No independent on-the-ground investigation has taken place.But there were other reasons to doubt Syrian guilt, including the implausibility of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad choosing that time   while his forces were making dramatic strides in finally defeating the jihadists and immediately after the Trump administration had indicated it had reversed President Obama s  regime change  policy in Syria   to launch a sarin attack, which was sure to outrage the world and likely draw U.S. retaliation.However, logic was brushed aside after local  activists,  including some closely tied to the jihadists, quickly uploaded all manner of images onto social media, showing dead and dying children and other victims said to be suffering from sarin nerve gas. Inconsistencies were brushed aside   such as the  eyewitness  who insisted,  We could smell it from 500 meters away when sarin is odorless.Potent ImagesStill, whether credible or not, these social-media images had a potent propaganda effect. Hersh writes that within hours of watching the gruesome photos on TV   and before he had received any U.S. intelligence corroboration   Trump told his national security aides to plan retaliation against Syria. According to Hersh, it was an evidence-free decision, except for what Trump had seen on the TV shows.Hersh quotes one U.S. officer who, upon learning of the White House decision to  retaliate  against Syria, remarked:  We KNOW that there was no chemical attack   the Russians are furious   claiming we have the real intel and know the truth Continue this story at Consortium NewsREAD MORE WHITE HELMETS NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire WHITE HELMETS FilesSUPPORT OUR WORK BY SUBSCRIBING & BECOMING A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV