{UAH} Intercepted panic calls confirm Syrian chemical attacks

Unnamed US and Israeli Officials Say Intercepted Syrian Communications Prove Chemical Attack — UK Officials Draft UN Strike Resolution

Michael Kelley Aug. 28, 2013, 8:34 AM 6,458 65

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REUTERS/Jason Reed

U.S. President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tour a technology expo at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem March 21, 2013.

 

Unnamed officals from U.S. and Israeli intelligence agencies reportedly claim that intercepted communications involving top Syrian officials prove that the Syrian government was responsible.

Noah Shachtman of Foreign Policy reports that U.S. intelligence services overheard an official at the Syrian Ministry of Defense exchanging "panicked phone calls with a leader of a chemical weapons unit, demanding answers for a nerve agent strike that killed more than 1,000 people" and caused "neurotoxic symptoms" in thousands.

On Saturday the German magazine Focus, citing a former Mossad officer, reported that Israel's electronic intelligence Unit 8200 intercepted the communication of the Syrian army during the attack.

"The analysis has clearly shown that the bombardment with poison gas missiles was made by Syrian government forces," according to the officer.

Shachtman also reports that it was unclear who ordered the attack, citing a U.S. intelligence official who wondered if there was a "sort of general blessing to use these things" or if each attack requires specific orders from the top.

"We don't know exactly why it happened," the official told FP. "We just know it was pretty fucking stupid."

Other reported evidence

Arab diplomats told The Wall Street Journal that Israeli spy services provided the CIA with "intelligence from inside an elite special Syrian unit that oversees Mr. Assad's chemical weapons" indicating that certain types of chemical weapons were moved near the Eastern Ghouta region of the capital in advance of the attack. The U.S. spy agency reportedly verified the intel.

U.S. officials told WSJ that Mr. Obama's aides reviewed satellite images that officials said showed how continued shelling by the Syrian army — which was launching "Operation City Shield" against rebel positions in the area — destroyed evidence of chemical-weapon use.

Syrian weapons expert and blogger Eliot Higgins has done extensive analysis on intact rocket shells found at the site of the apparent attack and noted that "a high explosive warhead ... would serious damage the rocket on impact."

FP's intelligence source and his colleagues reportedly came to the conclusion that the weapon was filled with nerve agent as opposed to a conventional explosive.

"Why is there so much rocket left? There shouldn't be so much rocket left," the intelligence official told FP.

Higgins concluded that the evidence seems to "strongly indicate the munition was fired from the north, where 6-8km away you'll find a number of military installations, connected