Higgins and Me

September 3, 2021

I've been tempted to do a post like this before, but now is time, as it relates to the exposé What the Rocket Man Wants us to See in Ghouta (forthcoming), but needs its own post to breathe. 

For a long time now I have imagined Bellingcat founder & CEO Eliot Higgins as a sort of nemesis. It's kind of silly, but I only mean "in part." We do both use much of the same couch potato analysis, largely from video and visual evidence, to bring new insight to contentious events of geopolitical significance. But of course we do it to opposite effect; Higgins and co. generally labor to support official narratives while I and those I collaborate with challenge them. Bellingcat get to "re-invent journalism" by "pioneering" Open Source Investigation, have international criminal investigations launched over their findings, and so on, They have real budgets to pay and constantly hire new staff, somehow made available by some Western governments but mainly a lot of private donors whose agendas (and finances) aren't at all clear to me (to anyone?). In the meantime, our work... has been tolerated so far. 

What is now called "Open Source Investigation" or "Open Source Intelligence" (OSINT) wasn't called anything I knew of at first. But it is specifically what we focused on. Rather than just wait for secrets from Wikileaks, we could learn a lot from reports and visuals that are publicly available, properly weight and with an eye to correlation. In 2012 I co-founded a "group" based on this idea, called "Citizen's Investigation into War Crimes in Libya" (CIWCL) with a website and everything, which has since expired. The logo has a magnifying glass over text of the phrase "available evidence suggests," split into 2 lines. The focus is both on the text (the evidence) and especially considering the sources, on reading between those lines. 

This is one aspect where Higgins and his team differs most from me and mine. Bellingcat's visual work is largely correct, but doesn't usually prove that much; they can geolocate a video to say the events allegedly occurred HERE, but they still rely on trust in terrorist-activist claims as to what HAPPENED there, taking little to no effort at verifying the claims BY the video. At our best anyway, we employ a much more rigorous comparison of all sources, weighed properly. If we find the visual and the verbal disagree, the visual evidence is preferred. Bellingcat will try to avoid finding such conflicts.

Other differences: Higgins had wondered early on how you get paid analyzing videos and stuff. He's found his solutions to that, whereas I decided to not even try. I still squeeze in what I can on my own time, and just kept not having much of a life outside work and this. The others I think do similar, maybe some with less work and more life, etc.

As for similarities ... I know I've been inspired by some of Higgins' and Bellingcat's methods, and the opposite might also be true, though I've always had a lower profile. As I had put it once in December, 2014 "We're not following him/them, or vice-versa (that I know of), just riding two sides of the same geopolitical waves." Who copied who isn't certain or crucial - what I mean to show here is that Higgins' type of work is not that amazing or unique. But on review, it still seems he might be copying me at times. Below I'll explore some parallels regarding collaboration and format, investigative methods, and two important early investigations.

Collaboration and Format (last 10 years): 

During Libya's disastrous Arab Spring "revolution" in 2011, Higgins was posting comments at The Guardian as Brown Moses. He was famous for being the first commentator on topics of interest (Bosker, HuffPost). As I recall seeing (comments now all gone?), he would collect claims about African mercenaries and Gaddafi regime crimes, track feats of the multinational "freedom fighters," and put down pro-Gaddafi "conspiracy theories." 

In the meantime from April, I started this blog and began some detailed open-source work exposing those lies (like the sniped tykes of Misrata's fake-x-ray matching) and the real massacres (starting with Al-Baida) by the foreign-backed terrorists. These would tear Libya apart, ruining the best living standards in Africa, provide new havens and new armaments to Jihadists across Africa and the Middle East, and bring open Human slavery back to Africa. They were called "freedom fighters," and Eliot Higgins among many others cheered for them. (Libya masterlist and collected posts tagged Libya - incomplete - at first the whole site was about Libya and it wasn't tagged)

In 2012-2013 after seeing a job well done or a good cause destroyed, we both turned our attention to Syria - as did the thrust of global Jihad. Higgins started his Brown Moses blog in March 2012. Among other topics, he tracked insurgent weapon supplies - largely from Libya - in videos of their deeds. He would achieve the most recognition, however, for adding OSINT weight to the gravest alleged crimes of the "Assad regime," like the Houla Massacre of over 100 by Alawite death squads, and later the Ghouta chemical massacre of over 1,000. 

With Petri Krohn, I started CIWCL in February to formalize our Libya work, then swiftly turned to Syria in June. and later to Ukraine (and the "group" name became CIWCL-SUB for Syria, Ukraine, and beyond). Petri and especially "CE" (whom I knew from the JREF forum, now International Skeptics) helped start the wiki site A Closer Look On Syria (ACLOS), to formalize a collaborative process that emerged (others could add blog posts if they joined, as Petri and Felix did, but not add to or clean up mine - a wiki site opened all that up). With CE primarily managing the site, more great open source work followed - visual and otherwise - exposing Syria lies like the Houla Massacre and the Ghouta chemical attack. ACLOS was not highly praised. It was DDOS attacked so frequently we had to move sites early on to even keep it visible. Props to ShoutWiki. When people complained of attacks that seemed to appear when we did and suggested deleting ACLOS, they refused. The attackers eventually gave up and let the site be. (link f/c - it was way back, somewhere)

2014-forward: Higgins launches Bellingcat to formalize the collaborative process that emerged (Keefe: "concerned that he was getting too much of the credit for work that collaborators published on his blog") and does all kinds of other "visiting fellow" and receiving awards type stuff, as detailed at the Rocket Man post, besides hosting workshops, giving media interviews, etc. 

In this time I did some at ACLOS, which expanded to many other areas - mainly surrounding Russia - that Bellingcat also covered, and I was less interested in. I wrote some articles, collaborated with the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media, etc. But mostly I came back to this blog and renamed it Monitor on Massacre Marketing, as I neglected ACLOS and let the CIWCL site expire (but it's still active on Facebook). I got kind of lame last year, wasted most of it researching and debating little besides COVID-19 massacre and it anti-marketing (a depressing experience). 

Then a big new discovery this year led to the Ghouta sarin attack reports with Michael and Chris, making some small waves thanks to to Rootclaim founder Saar Wilf and to Aaron Maté (whom Higgins has also blocked as supposedly irrelevant), no thanks to an apparent boycott by some of the antivaxxers and virus apologists (who distrust Aaron and Max Blumenthal as much as they do 99+% of global health experts), and well-timed just ahead of the 8-year anniversary of the Ghouta event. (the big blurry face is mine, sorry) I cannot overstate how completely we own this subject now. And it's the biggest Syria story there is to own. Higgins denies it, but then he has a long history of denying Islamist atrocities just to score more points against - as it so happens - the West's latest geopolitical target (see below).

Methods: Visual Geolocation

Oliver Bullough at GQ recently explained "one of the specialties that Higgins developed was open-source geolocation—authenticating that posted footage did indeed capture the place that it purported to document," usually by matching scene details to satellite views. It sounds like he invented this "online wizardry," and perhaps so; many bright people have invented similar methods before and since, besides many who have copied it from others. The case is described: 

"In August 2011, Libya’s revolution had become a civil war and insurgents were boasting about having seized the coastal town of Brega. Higgins posted a video selfie purportedly taken by a rebel fighter walking through the town, but another commenter snapped back – it could have been filmed anywhere; it proved nothing." 

Higgins wanted to know, but it seemed impossible. "This is when he had his idea. He watched the video again," taking careful note of the scenery and the roads walked, looked up Brega on Google Maps, "and searched for roads that matched his sketch. It took a while, and he had to keep rotating his piece of paper" but he found the matching spot in the eastern residential district, and added other matching details to verify. Good work. Insurgents "had indeed entered Brega – or the eastern part of it anyway." Other evidence would prove that terrible fact of moderate short-term interest, but Higgins got to confirm it first, as he likes to do. Bullough comments on this: "If Higgins isn't the most innovative journalist anywhere, I don't know who is."

A later Bellingcat article explained this Brega geolocation, from a video posted on August 11. The video is not available now, but one still frame is shown with mid-afternoon sunlight. He could have done less map rotating if he knew how to read solar angles and set the basic directions. 

I had the impression I'd done this kind of work quite a bit by then. But on review all that clearly predates it is from July 17, with the small image at right to show one place protesters were being shot dead in Benghazi on Feb. 19 - near the area marked with a pale blue box. This is the entrance of a Tariq Bin Zeyad school as labeled, next to a park with distinct features. (BTW sunlight played no role here under clouds and smoke and/or it may be after sunset). Although I didn't show the video details that match, the video is still available and it seems worth showing it now, in a new image below (using a March, 2011 Google Earth view, as the February one is obscured by clouds). School entrance coordinates: 32°5'45.9"N, 20°5'1.58" E

At this spot: a man shot in the head is laid down, likely dead, as some climb the walls as if to unlock the school from inside and make it a clinic or base. Another wounded man bleeding heavily is carried by in the direction marked in red. There's a fire set a ways back, making a smokescreen, as protest-militants will do to avoid being shot. Further back that way is the "Katiba" military barracks the "protesters" attacked daily with molotov cocktails, grenades, guns, a bulldozer and even a stolen tank. They did this every day, with some killed in self-defense each day allowing the funeral march that would start the next day's battle, until  Feb. 20 (the day after this video). By then they had more weapons seized in other cities and a suicide bomber destroyed the gates, letting them in to massacre the soldiers, beheading some of them. This finalized the "liberation" of Benghazi the Libyan government was not allowed to correct. 

It was a month later "when [Higgins] had his idea" to similar effect. But he's the "most innovative" one anywhere.

With varying help (notably Petri, Peet 73, Felix, I forget), I did more of this in kind of mapping work, manly from late August on the hideous massacres in Tripoli and in Sirte and other incidents, and in review of earlier events in the "Arab Spring" phase. A few of the better examples: Al-Baida snipers Aug. 24 - another early video located on Nov. 5 - one of the Tripoli massacres explained Dec. 11, with some backstory - another with a pile of bodies actually visible in the satellite view - etc. 

(A contemporaneous effort: On August 9 I started trying to sort a "Qala'a massacre" including location - a forest or tree farm with dirt roads, which I tried to map considering angle of sunlight, with help mainly from a Peet 73 getting better clues by the 11th and 12th text-based location on August 15 - nothing relevant or timely enough to have inspired Higgins' map-spinning work in Brega. A locations post stayed unclear until October with a specific guess based on a new photo from the site - not definitive but good, in the middle southern edge of the spot we had identified west of al-Gawalish.) 

Higgins after that ...  quite a few hits, but then see below his geolocation work on two important investigations in Syria.

Investigations: Houla Massacre 

Higgins got wider attention past weapons buffs out of his coverage of the grisly massacre in Taldou, al-Houla on May 25, 2012. As Syria Deeply explained in April, 2013:

A turning point came when Higgins live-blogged the Houla massacre, which unfolded near Homs last summer. “There was a massive amount of info coming from Twitter and Facebook,” he says, “so I decided to live blog it. And that was reported on NPR, and then after that I got lots of followers on Twitter and people [began] reading the blog. I set targets to do stuff. I’m competitive, so I like to be able to build up an audience.”

He started at the Brown Moses blog with an impressive list of videos from the scene, of the supposed regime shelling that proved all to follow was by them, and the emotion-loaded scenes of hacked-up kids, all with little to no analysis. He didn't see the clue in how rebels so easily got the bodies - as they usually do. He geolocated nothing of relevance and correlated nothing. "Survivors" are cited blaming army shelling and "Shabiha" militants from the neighboring Alawite town. But it was never known these were genuine witnesses and speaking freely. In fact it can now be seen their stories clashes with the video evidence, and sometimes with themselves (consider star witness Ali in some of my open-source analysis of verbal nonsense). 

Higgins covered that story in two blog posts of May 25 and 27 collecting videos and claims, and then nothing else until he popped back on June 28 to in part dismiss "Mother Agnes Mariam claims about the Houla massacre." Those were only part of the body of evidence for insurgent guilt, and were based on some of the other witnesses who described a terrorist massacre, as Syrian state media had reported. But some pro-opposition clergy members had spoken up with their own opinions that mother Agnes was just spreading pro-Assad lies. On this basis, Higgins said John Rosenthall owed an apology for citing her, and the Brown Moses blog had nothing more to say on the Houla Massacre after this.

In posting that June 28 commentary, Higgins seems to be indirectly replying to the previous day's UN Human Rights Council report. Otherwise, he simply ignored it. That "oral update" was unable to decide the blame, noting a same-day rebel offensive that overran at least two army checkpoints. "With the available evidence, the CoI could not rule out ... [that] the perpetrators were anti-Government forces seeking to escalate the conflict while punishing those that failed to support – or who actively opposed - the rebellion." Even with some apparent effort to blame the government, several points kept suggesting the other view. A later report issued in August tried harder and ignored more, managing a fairly decisive indictment of the Syrian army and "Shabiha" militias (see here). But Higgins could rule out the alternative, somehow, even when the UN couldn't, and had already called it case closed. 

For me this massacre, with dozens of children murdered in such a shocking manner, was a turning point to finally start studying Syria. Early analysis at ACLOS went on for months, analyzing reports, videos, and accounts from "alleged witnesses/survivors" for the two main narratives, with an eye to correlation and consistency. By year's end we established that an insurgent force of several hundred descended on Taldou that day and almost certainly overran 2, 3, or even 4 of the five security posts there, while attacking the fifth. In this way it seems they gained control over the southern half of the town, where someone then engaged in a massacre targeting - per the most credible reports - an extended Abdulrazaq family of the Shia faith and 2 Sunni families seen as loyal to the government (both named Al-Sayed but supposedly unrelated). 112 civilians were killed, 63 of them children, all shown, some with horrified faces hacked open as if with hatchets. Among that 112, some Abdulrazaqs and some al-Sayeds were also killed in the rebel-controlled north of town, and some other intermarried with the Abdulrazaqs were even killed in the fractious village of Aqrab a ways to the north (noting all between Taldou and Aqrab was rebel-held Al-Houla, connecting to other rebel-held towns like Rastan, and with territory running to the Turkish border).

Two reports and some addenda explaining all this are offline until I find them a new home, but the "Battle for the Houla Massacre" evidence in the 2014 2nd report is important (see the decent 2017 review here). I got an idea to re-up that after Bellingcat was started, with and a new blog Taldou. Truth. It could never go far, and didn't even go all the way, but close - it's a great resource on the subject. I issued a challenge there: Brown Moses on the Hook to show if anything was wrong in our visual work, or to maybe admit he couldn't. Issued in December 2014, he of course never responded to the challenge. He meant case closed. 

Bellingcat were not the ones to map several videos to spots in town relative to overrun and circumvented security posts and massacre sites, as we did here. Because of laziness and lack of concern, Eliot Higgins never saw the smoke rising from the National Hospital after sunset, in line with the rebel attack witnesses he dismissed as Assadist liars. It was the ACLOS crew who correctly pinned one "regime shelling attack" on a rebel dude firing an RPG over and over just south of the central security post, around 6:15 PM (B.1 below) as activists tried awkwardly to ignore him. Higgins had found that shelling video extra-convincing, maybe because the explosions were just so loud. 

I realize this is pretty hardcore pro-Assad propaganda here and will set a lot of people off. That blood was clearly set on his hands, and those of the insane genocidal Alawites next door, and it was case closed based on who-cares-what details long ago. "Everybody" knows that. But sorry, I don't calculate my position based on how far it strays from the approved version, and I wouldn't keep it tighter just because the crime was so hideous. If it's completely f%$#ing upside-down, absolving the killers and blaming the victims, someone who is still FREE to say so should say so. It's depressing, but the implication here is we have a sick system. Higgins didn't invent this inversion of truth, but he did his part maintaining it.

Furthermore, I and we (varyingly) have found the same basic MO again and again in these early massacres of - mainly - late 2011 to late 2012. But Jabhat Al-Nusra kept getting implicated in these (Houla, Tremseh, Daraya) and especially at the end (Aqrab, Ma'an, Haswiyeh). And they did have access to things like rifles and hatchets. Seeing his "Shabiha massacres" advantage falter, "Assad" then turned - as of December 2012 - to attacks by SCUD missiles, aircraft only he could fly, and chemical attacks with sarin from his own unique recipe. He would try to blame the "terrorists" for these crimes, but Eliot Higgins would be on hand to help foil those plans.

Investigation: Ghouta and Other CW Incidents

Higgins has been noted for following Syria chemical attacks early on, even before a reported 1,429 were killed in Ghouta on August 21, 2013. But I've probably been following longer - since days before a single attack was even reported. The first attack report was noted at ACLOS on day 3 of my watch, following Obama repeating his tempting "red line" offer on Dec. 3. Early coverage into 2013 was pretty flawed but still valuable - eg I gave too much credit to chlorine claims in the Khan al-Assal attack of March 19 in one early article on Syria CW attacks run at the Center for Research on Globalization in early May: "Was the Syria Chemical Weapons Probe “Torpedoed” by the West?" - or better yet see an improved draft that just missed the deadline, posted here with later comments.

At the Brown Moses blog, Higgins showed some respect for this article. Despite the CRG website being "far to conspiratorial for my liking" my contribution was "a good round up of reports of chemical weapon use in Syria" and that's "not something I say lightly." He used it mainly as a start point to address the numerous claimed incidents up to then, and he was right about the chlorine claims in Khan al-Assal; chlorine is not that deadly, and eventually everyone seems to agree - sarin was used against Syrian troops and mostly-Shi'ite civilians at Khan al-Assal, described as "cottage industry" and also judging by impurities, it's said to be the same kind used in Ghouta. Also that launch spot cited - 47km away! - was some other error in Alex Thomson's early dispatch, with official claims being about 5km to the north, in Kafr Dael, and a small but powerful locally-made rocket called Bashair-3 used (see below). 

We didn't interact much, but some. In an Oct 2013 grenade discussion in comments at his blog, he acknowledged the helicopter-dropped 'cinderblock containing the sarin grenades' is smoking AND glowing just like white phosphorous does. That might be last time he responded to me. These grenades have been linked to Jabhat al-Nusra, thanks partly to Higgins (my post on them), and in at least one attack contained the same kind of sarin used in Khan al-Assal and Ghouta. The same also appeared in the weapons used for a sarin attack on SAA troops in Jobar, that occurred just 3 days after Ghouta and in the same area from which the sarin-filled Volcano rockets were fired.

Also of note: Higgins was apparently informed in May, 2013 that Jabhat al-Nusra had seized some of Syria's chemical weapons in the Aleppo area some time before, and although the type(s) weren't clear, they may have used them at Khan al-Assal (which, again, used sarin). He was asked to keep that off the record, and has accordingly deferred to Syrian claims that none of their CWs have been stolen. As it so happens, that's probably the right call; as I may explain in another post, this story from Matthew Van Dyke is rather dubious anyway. (they probably did have sarin, just not by the route he was told about.)

As for Higgins' investigation of the August 21 incident ... see What the Rocket Man Wants us to See in Ghouta for more detail, but in summary: He identified the government-improvised Volcano rockets from at least June and so recognized them right off in videos following the sarin attack. That's a plus. He also had linked them by videos to government use only, as if insurgents didn't have any Volcanos or managed to never show them off. He supposedly mapped their impacts and found the government-held firing spot; Oliver Bullough at GQ recently enthused at Higgins' work and a well-deserved "surge of interest that culminated in a profile in the New Yorker, headlined “Rocket Man”, after he proved the Syrian regime fired makeshift rockets packed with sarin at rebel-held parts of Ghouta, killing hundreds of people." Bianca Bosker at Huffington Post called Higgins a "one-man intelligence unit" whose "work unraveling the mystery of the rocket strikes of Aug. 21 played a key role in bringing much of the world" to blame Syria's government for the chemical attack. 

And this fame would be crucial to launching Bellingcat. But really he did a pretty crap job on that aspect. None of Higgins' Ghouta geolocations are his own work; he just verified them, and in one case didn't even do that. Two locations were visually identified by followers, two others were set by coordinates, and Bellingcat claimed a fifth location based absorbing an error by then-collaborator Chris Kabusk (who now works with Michael and I). While Chris corrected this error in 2017 based on new photos, Bellingcat retains the flawed deduction and passes it on to influential parties worldwide. 

For reference here: all impacts mapped by LCC & HRW (red and blue) vs. all correctly geolocated (green dots, 8 in total) and the ones among those that were first set by Higgins & co. boxed in yellow, or yellow-green for Higgins/Kabusk. We're not claiming to have placed all these green dots with out own work - just the ones that aren't wrapped in yellow. 

In other spots Higgins can be seen consciously twisting the evidence to the official conclusions, urging us to just blindly trust the "UN azimuth" from the west - which he knows is grossly erred (the reality being up to "50 degrees off to the north"). Then ignoring that anyway, he looked northwest at max. range or a bit past it (2.1 to 2.6km), and decided some government-held firing spot or other probably fits. In 2021 he decides the maximum range no longer applies, claims his early reading from the north way past range, lets it be read as pointing west way past range - confirming the key finding of the UN-OPCW probe: the government did it, from whatever invented angle at whatever impossible distance.

Finally he had added a backup shortcut early on, in case that all failed. With Dan Kaszeta and other allies, he would use various unfounded tricks to "prove" the field samples of used sarin were from Syria's stockpiles, and so only they could have used it, even if that flies in the face of all the other evidence. After this, it was "case closed" and faith in that closure demanded. 

In our reports this year, Michael, Chris and I use the ignored trajectory (read better as 30 deg. north from what the UN reported, not 50) as the clearest among 7 or 8 or 9 estimates (dep. on definition) from 7 or 8 geolocated impacts that converge almost exactly at a spot that matches the videos he had also dismissed. This footage shows Islamist insurgents in an area they would control, firing at least 3 of their own Volcano rockets, on what they say is the night of the attack, at the right angles to be some of those found 2km away the next day, full of that unique type of sarin. 

This pretty well disproves Higgins' exclusive ownership shortcuts and sloppy ballistic analysis, besides implicating the foreign-backed terrorists for this attack and the several hundreds of civilian deaths blamed on that sarin. Below: based on alt. analysis in my 2nd report. I think it's generally an improvement, but full team review will be part of any NEXT ROUND of Ghouta analysis. Who's open here, and who's so eager to keep cases CLOSED based on authority decisions?  

Open Sources, Open Debate?

One obvious appeal of Open Source investigation is how anyone can see and check the conclusions. As a rule of thumb a strictly visual geolocation from anyone credible is probably right; it's so easy to show wrong that someone likely will have already. But then maybe no one has - always worth verifying. In that sense at least, Bellingcat does produce findings that are largely correct, just very incomplete and not the proof they pretend it to be. This too is open enough to see - at least to the well-informed eye - as explained in part above.

As Higgins told Bianca Bosker “If you want someone to really question your work, just post it on the Internet. ... There are plenty of people who’ll want to tell you you’re an idiot and you’re wrong.” Implicitly, they'll fail when challenging his work because, as she wrote, "Higgins tries to imagine every disagreement from some ticked-off stranger online, and preemptively strengthen his argument’s weaknesses." In that case, they won't be able to SHOW anything truly wrong - they can raise confused questions and doubts, and even pretend they've proven you wrong, but otherwise ... they might resort to blocking you, etc. But that better describes our findings, strengthened so Eliot cannot cope with them directly.

Considering the points above, I long suspected Higgins never muted me, having too much intelligence to flat ignore my often insightful work, But he has ignored me or failed to respond since early-mid-2014 at latest - maybe in October 2013 - the entire time he's been this "OSINT" hot-shot thrust upon the world stage. He's smart enough to recognize a potential threat. Best defense would be to hope I remain obscure enough to barely matter, and definitely to avoid giving me any attention of his own. All-time twitter replies to my several questions: zero. IIRC all replies to a few comments at Bellingcat.com were fielded by others like "Servus" (here refusing to learn Syrian soldiers have been attacked with sarin until I was cut off from even trying). Bellingcat's Twitter account likewise has never replied (and just recently has blocked me, along with a lot of people - see replies here and check if you're blocked too - it was news to many). 

The other two current Bellingcat contributors I have ever encountered - Aric Toler and Nick Waters - have blocked me in the last year or two. I don't think that was for any rude behavior, and likely on a Bellingcat ignore policy. But Higgins, who would originate this policy, did not. Recently as I review better, it strikes me Eliot is more lazy and lame than I had realized, and most likely did mute me long ago, but let me see what he was up to, for what it's worth (generally it wasn't worth much to me). 

He blocked Ghouta reports co-author Michael Kobs back in 2014, as he was quite active against Bellingcat on the MH-17 issue all along. I disagreed with their direction, but the narrow visual work they had done seemed valid to me and I said so. It seemed a complex case where no one else got the complexity, and maybe that lonely road aspect led me to sort of drop out of that scene, and Ukraine/Donbass in general (I find I do better with picking my battles, and that was big one). That may be related.

As the Rocket Man articles explains (forthcoming), Higgins was aware of our new Ghouta findings since March, and casually engaged in efforts to minimize and discredit them. In time he got specific enough to offer a weak rebuttal of his own and commented in support of another, and falsely claimed we ignored key evidence about rocket and sarin ownership. Alongside this failure, he has been taking a harder line to skeptics and increasingly appeals to authority. He suggested in June that Twitter should ban statements that Syrian CW attacks were "false flags", pursuant to a policy against "denial" of "violent events" (the Holocaust, etc., with the etc. being really problematic) 

But he only now blocked me, on July 26, within hours of our Push Back appearance. That's just as I reason I/we might be too big to ignore. I'm not to see any of the attacks he might be launching, or I'm on hard mute like I don't exist until hopefully I don't. Turns out this intelligence unit isn't so open after all. But he is getting paid and praised. 

2021 Ghouta Sarin Attack Reports

 Adam Larson 

June 21-23, 2021

updates June 25, Aug. 16

It's been 7 years and 10 months since the infamous Ghouta sarin attack / chemical massacre of 21 August 2013 claimed several hundred lives, perhaps even the 1,429 "estimated" by US intelligence agencies. It's been nearly as long since a UN-OPCW investigation allowed the blaming of Syria's government and threats of US military action that was narrowly averted, and that long the blame on Damascus has continued to argue for ongoing sanctions, lawsuits and arrest warrants, theft of oil resources, denial of reconstruction funds, etc. - to the increasing detriment of Syria's people.   

Much neglected evidence suggests it's been nearly eight years with not even a start at true accountability, 7 years and 10 months in which the real perpetrators of a false-flag event and probably a hideous, genocidal mass murder have avoided punishment or even - in most circles - a hint of blame. In fact they're still widely seen as heroes standing up to the "butcher Assad."

Taking that as long enough, a small group of researchers including myself have completed a detailed visual explanation of an important new discovery, which ties together and amplifies that neglected evidence. As related in two new reports and in this summary image (not included in either report), the discovery is as follows: 

This is not likely to be simple coincidence; it seems we have video of that rocket attack being launched, and it's by Islamist opposition forces. Emphasis added. Here's Rootclaim adding more (from explanatory thread, see link below). 

Need that evidence explained more fully? Good. See the reports below. First, the introduction to those.

We've had the basic NW firing area identified for a few years, based on the first five or so trajectory estimates. Yet we (or I) failed to notice that video match earlier, even in the off-and-on review of 2017-2020, or in collaborator Michael Kobs' 2020 report summarizing that (PDF, ACLOS hosting). For my part anyway, most of 2020 was wasted on Covid-19 debates (learned: no one ever changes their mind on that) before, in early March, Michael drew my attention to that burned field's similarity to the scene in the videos. First word outside Twitter: firing spot post here. 

Ever since, we've been immersed in piecing together a report to explain this, but it wound up being two reports. Michael headed a discussion involving (among a few others) veteran geolocator Chris Kabusk and Rootclaim founder Saar Wilf, who took an immediate interest in the finding (Rootclaim had previously calculated opposition guilt for Ghouta at 87% probable (link) or updated to 92% and now, I guess, to 100% "resolved."). 

They made so many  cool 3D models... I was invited to collaborate but by a social media snafu never got the invitation and didn't even know if the discussion had started. So I was left working on a report myself, thinking it might be the basis of ours, once we got going. But by the time we all got connected, I'd developed mine too far to surrender much, and they had a different approach nearing completion (or so it kept seeming for some weeks...). When we couldn't quickly agree on a single form that seemed adequate to me, I decided it would all be presented in two reports and I would decide the remainder.

There were delays from there to absorb new findings, hash out details, wait on elements and correct errors, clarify points, tweak the formatting, etc. The collective report was finished and finally released on June 18. Mine is still pending final touches and publication as I write this 2 days later. The main idea of this blog post is to make sure there's one spot including both reports, and to give some preview or good overview for those not yet ready to dive into the PDFs, and also a space for comments, perhaps rebuttals or corrections, a bit of whatever is sparked here. 

Each report takes a slightly different approach, airing different points and varying in some readings, so both are worth some review. However, both start from the same text and images used in the 2020 report, differently changing and adding to them. So ... with the same stuff now partly repeated in three PDFs, there will be some redundancy in that area (filling some 1/3 or more of each report)

Ghouta sarin attack:  Review of Open-Source Evidence

Chris Kabusk, Michael Kobs, (Saar Wilf and barely) Adam Larson and many helpful citizen investigators

56pp - published June 18 

PDF at Rootclaim 

Rootclaim on Twitter

This is the report with the well-developed visual explanation, numerous 3D models and even stereoscopic 3D images (glasses required - valid method, from 2 diff. frames interpolated). I'm named but, as noted, was not as involved as the others. Just noticing Saar Wilf is not named, despite a pretty central part in pulling it all together.  

"Part 1: Locations and Trajectories" covers rocket impacts, damage analysis and carefully-derived trajectory estimates. It works from the 2020 report slightly revised with "pool" impact added, and the possibly unrelated "shutter door" impact removed. See below the 3D modeling for UN-OPCW "impact site 4" - 105° as published in their report, 136° as found by careful visual analysis. 

They said that 105° described the angle "precisely" and it would up pointing towards a government missile base. But that base was at a distance 5x further than the rockets could fly, and the angle seems to be some 30° off (we only call it approximate, with a deviation of +/- 2°). This would be quite a perplexing error, if it were truly an error. 

That site 4 reading winds up the clearest among 7 trajectory estimates considered. As Part 2 explains, these estimates converge about 2km out (or a bit further for some) near an island of government control in northern Jobar. Final combined areas and compass readings are shown below, with site 4's narrow estimate in red. Two trajectories per an Al-Jazeera report included: the "pool" one placed in solid dark blue, the other one in dotted light blue, running 110° (2 versions of that line are run from 2 reported impact locations - it wasn't visually placed like the rest). 

If our analysis is any good, the firing spot should be somewhere near the left-center of this image, between 2 and 2.5km out from the furthest impact. The closest few open areas of adequate size for rocket firing are shaded red. The bus station on the government side is probably out of range, but a larger L-shaped area on the opposition side fits nicely. 

Some smaller areas in the vicinity might also work, but it's only within that area (the L's lower left) is where we found the clearly consistent scorching. That alone wouldn't be so decisive, but it appears at a spot that looks just like the site in those videos. 

Comparing: my rough composite image of the scene from the SW* view: 

* At night, actual directions are unclear - all those mentioned "would be" east, etc. if the field were oriented the same as the one we found (and the odds of a field in this area  matching so well w/consistent burned spot - but all at some other rotation - is quite unlikely) 

Saar managed to produce some brand-new super-enhanced copies of the videos - next steps may include re-doing the composite view above based on this. Matching the characteristics of the site with this footage, the report establishes the D-30 cannon is in the same field's northeast corner. Below: some cropped frames to show that approached from the east (north of a pole, south of a row of small trees), then the launcher seen from the southwest (same pole, eastern trees clearly visible, northern ones faintly visible)

Overview of the scene, modeled as on the cover:

 

Modeling and analysis considers details like lighting that differs between videos, for example leaving the D-30 effectively invisible from the southwest view of the rocket launches. Some fairly advanced analysis yields findings like this: 

According to our analysis of the videos, the launcher in the Liwa al Islam videos has an azimuth of 30°. This means that the intended firing direction at deployment was 120 ° +/- 30°. In this position, it could reach all known impact locations of the sarin attack, all of which correspond to the Volcano range at an elevation angle close to 45°

The launcher can only rotate so far when fixed to such a vehicle, estimated at 30°. By that, they could fire 90-150° without moving the truck. The truck could be moved, but maybe wasn't; trajectory estimates to located impacts vary from 110° to 141° (or 109° to unverified "LCC9", 145° to "LCC1" - as I call them and as I measured it). 

At least one firing direction was analyzed for the report; the visual appearance of the rockets, with one nearly covering the other but not quite, could be explained by two launch directions. It seems 110° is the correct choice, suggesting this might be the unplaced rocket Al-Jazeera's investigation read at that trajectory. From this field, a 110° comes out near 2 spots reported to HRW and nearer to one reported to Syrian Archive, as plotted above. (Otherwise it could visually be about 136° as to impact site 4.)

From the conclusion: 

These new findings clearly indicate the 2013 sarin attack was carried out by an opposition faction from within opposition territory ... Until now, all Western authorities over-confidently placed blame on the Syrian government, often pushing for military escalation. This failure demonstrates that Intelligence agencies have not learned the lesson of the Iraq WMD fiasco, and NGOs and the media need to develop more reliable and independent investigation methods.

That may not be a very good review as I'm wrapping up my own report, the following almost copy-paste bulk review, other promotional materials and some other things too. But there's the link above - go have a look and form your own view. 

Mapping to Accountability for the 2013 Ghouta Chemical Massacre

Pretty much by me, based on Kobs and collective work, 74pp - Finally published on June 23 at ACLOS

It seemed worth sharing an alternate, expanded trajectory analysis I had worked up, and to convey the context and fuller explanation of the primary material and a range of secondary questions and supporting evidence. E.G. many potential readers will start off wondering why we shouldn't just trust the UN-OPCW investigation. So that's addressed right off with The introduction "A Short Story About Some Too-Long Lines and Wrong Angles." That and some reference maps comprise a section 1 before turning to  Impacts Analysis / Trajectory Estimates.

Section 2 is based on the 2020 report, with some impacts heavily revised and others left about the same but explained more. For each one I assign broad and narrow trajectory estimates and new analysis including deflection considerations. These additions have not been thoroughly tested, but that could happen now. Eight located impacts reported as relevant, including "Shutter Door" and "Impact Site 5" ("Apartment") not included in the parallel report, but excluding the unplaced Al-Jazeera 110° impact. 

Much of the report's 22,000 words are spent here. This can make for tedious reading, aside from being mostly redundant to some readers. But in both reports, its main point is just to be available to follow and check our analysis. Review as needed - let us know of any errors. It was all necessary to get to the truly interesting point...

Section 3: Trajectory Crossover Analysis - Combined areas for broad estimates and again for narrow estimates - the latter is shown below, 8 triangles traced back exactly 2km, with the tiny crossover area shaded white. That's too exact to read literally, considering the small imperfections in analysis and that 2km is not an absolute max. range. But again, it should be inside or pretty near that little wedge of land.

The report spends a moment assessing the government-held bus station for consistent scorching, but that's only found at likely firing spot, which is about 50m NW of that white triangle - here dubbed “PLI Field” (for Possible Liwa al-Islam, noting the ambiguity about just who those people were). Just what's expected or consistent is a bit speculative, but founded on available evidence (my own quick review). Some further consideration might be in order, to either challenge or solidify this finding.

Here's an image Michael whipped up at the last minute for my report, with the whole burned patch of the PLI Field rendered orange. Its center is ~10m x 10m or about the the size and placement of the ignition flash, plus an extra span to the left/north. As it happens, the wind observed in the videos is to the north/northeast (rough measures, at 2 points following cannon fire and a rocket launch). 

Noting slight line-up differences between trucks and trees (compare w/video views or composite above), the latest camera shift may be a bit too far to the west? 

Table: for each impact spot, this gives range/distance to this spot (to within a few meters), given in meters, the trajectory and then reverse azimuth of that line, and then the estimated reverse azimuth for that impact (most likely center, exact number and +/- deviation), and finally difference from the central predicted angle and the line to PLI Field. 

Every time, that difference is a small number less than 5°, just once coming out bigger than the estimate plus deviation, and that by less than one degree. In retrospect, 2 degrees was a pretty risky call; the barn impact in particular might benefit from a careful re-analysis that, I think, both 2021 reports pretty well skipped over. Others might still benefit as well, but we are on generally solid ground here.

Section 3.3 "Crossover Area: Further Context" tells of the dreaded (until Aug. 24) Tohme checkpoint and a little-known Jobar sarin attack (on the same day - against other Syrian troops - just 400m away from the PLI field). 

This emphasis-worthy point was squeezed into the parallel report, despite its general paucity of such context development. The exact 400m proximity may be a relative coincidence, but but it seems: 

- E. Ghouta militants had functional sarin loaded into weapons and used by 8/24; 

- sarin was in the rockets fired, almost certainly from areas they controlled, on 8/21; 

- or perhaps it was just planted at the sites later, which they also controlled. 

And still, nothing real has emerged to explain how the Syrian government could have a hand in any of that, even though they did also have sarin. 

My report then goes into other confirmed and likely sarin attacks on SAA troops, blamed on their own government by the hexamine link said to implicate Syria in making this sarin. But that doesn't seem to be the fact it was presented as, and in fact the hexamine might mean that Al-Qaeda was making the sarin right there in Eastern Ghouta (clues from secret US intelligence estimates related to Seymour Hersh - apparently not among the points of his that have been debunked or even contested).

Much of section 3.3 strays into general context and might have gone in section 4, "concluding material." This includes "CW Lawfare, Laid Bare"- excerpt below on the evidence collected by the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression (SCM), the Soros-funded Open Society Justice Initiative, and Syrian Archive, in furtherance of suing the Syrian government over this sarin attack, hopefully resulting in an arrest warrant for president Assad and others implicated. They mainly established chain-of-command (who to punish IF the government is guilty), but also evidence to show they are, including witnesses with impossible claims, and some comparable work on rocket impacts and trajectory analysis. Let's compare. 

(This part happens to line up with that nice sidebar.)

The report concludes with "What We Do Not Know" and how it should humble us a bit more. Opposition activist Razan Zaitouneh's sad legacy and Liwa al-Islam's crimes give some perspective leading into four possibilities as to how the victims died, including the controversial gassed prisoners theory. Finally it asks "what does Nema know?" LI/JI spokesman and core member Majdi Nema aka Islam Alloush was arrested in France some time ago. That was in connection with the Zaitoneh case and other general human rights abuses, NOT in connection with the Ghouta false-flag and mass murder suggested by the evidence. In fact the charges against him were brought by the same SCM suing Damascus over that. That opportunity for answers is noted, before this closing: 

If the world community had any ethical duty to those killed in Syria’s Eastern Ghouta on 21 August 2013, it would be to hold the true perpetrators to account. That would require careful consideration of all the evidence, in actual proportion and without political considerations. We could do this... regardless of which foreign powers backed the criminals. We could do this … despite the risk to the decade-long regime-change campaign (by eliminating an excuse for further hostility posing as justice). And obviously, we could keep failing to do this, for those and other reasons.  

Hopefully someone else can put this better, more succinctly, and get it to really resonate. Awkward closing and lack of concrete suggested actions aside ... it's another strong report, even beyond the core forensic findings. Any reasonably balanced reader should walk away convinced the official story is a massive fraud, or at least shaken to open-mindedness. 

Developments

Lated add, Aug. 16: Michael, Saar and I appeared on Push Back with Aaron Maté back on July 26 to explain our findings. 

Companion article at the GrayZone

Notable early discussion: Rootclaim on Twitter - Michael Kobs on Twitter - Aaron Maté on Twitter 

Challenges, Attacks, Attempted Debunks: first efforts - failed even worse than I had expected. Not a single real challenge to the core forensic findings, just attempted shortcuts.

July 13: Scott Lucas' derisive non-efforts fail even worse, on a number of levels.

August 16: What "the Rocket Man" Eliot Higgins want us to see in Ghouta (incomplete)

space for noting more ...

July 27: immediately after our Push Back appearance, anti-Semitism/Nazi accusations were leveled against co-author Chris Kabusk, and they were not completely unfounded.  - Aug. 6: slowly-crafter statement in response here: https://twitter.com/CL4Syr/status/1423620560152522752 

Ghouta 2013: Eliot Higgins Replicates UN-OPCW's Fake Findings

June 11, 2020 

edits 6/13

He did WHAT?

The "Open Source Intelligence" investigators at Bellingcat brag of being "particularly significant for advancing narratives of conflict, crime, and human rights abuses." In line with their funding and support, these are generally the same narratives pushed by the US and UK governments in Syria, Ukraine and beyond. As explored in some detail here, they have claimed and then denied "partnership" with OPCW (Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons), have likely been a source of some of the OPCW FFM's zaniest findings, and promote blind faith in those findings while eagerly helping their management to discredit internal dissenters.

Earlier this year Bellingcat founder and executive director Eliot Higgins released a self-authored book I Am Bellingcat (not exclusively, of course), which boasts of his (and others') adventures in narrative advancement. A fairly minor point but fit for inclusion was his work confirming their rocket trajectories in 2013 Ghouta sarin attack, by which the Syrian government was blamed for killing over 1,000 civilians.  

The findings, in review: in report A/67/997–S/2013/553, there was just one reading offered by the UN-OPCW joint mission for 3 visited sites in Eastern Ghouta, found at "Impact site number 4 (Ein Tarma)." Here the rocket engine with "no form of lateral bending" was found to point "precisely in a bearing of 285 degrees" or reversed, it was fired at "105 degrees, in an East/Southeast trajectory." But that's plainly, evidently very far off, as I first explained here a few years back, and better in a forthcoming report (see here (link f/c) for the TWO new reports). At 285 it would be just 8° from parallel with this wall running 277°, but to most eyes it's closer to perpendicular than parallel. What do your own eyes say?

At right: some early readings for the first 2 located impacts, site 4 and a nearby field impact we call "field." I give color codes for estimates from open sources, visually explained, verifiable or falsifiable (note some are lines, some ranges). The one never explained that we were just supposed to trust is shown in white. At site 4 colored estimates run up to 60° different from the UN-OPCW white line, but the best reading in magenta (see reports) is also the closest - about 30° different, give or take 2 degrees. "Precisely," they said.

Higgins' yellow line for "field" impact: apparently not trying for real precision, he called "north" but perhaps never drew this vertical line to exactly 360° (I thought I'd seen it drawn in red, but can't relocate). We'll come back to his method and sources below. That's reasonable, not far off from other readings, but magenta is again best, and quite different. This is an oddity of an irregular impact, as explained in the report analysis. In brief, the forward bend is also to one side, so misleading - the trench it dug right before stopping is a better measure and points more to the NW as shown.)

Most thinking has been geared towards a single firing spot, and we can see the yellow and white lines are not going to remotely converge - they're ~75° different, nearly perpendicular! And again, the white is not remotely close to any estimate that can explain itself. As far as I can see, Higgins has ventured no estimate for the crucial site 4 to compare. He'll want to agree with the official decree, but does so by silently deferring and adding no further detail. 

Higgincats' self-congratulation in his book earned some confused but enthusiastic praise from ally Muhammad Idrees Ahmad, pseudo-academic and regime change activist. The Day the World Stood Still: How Assad’s worst chemical weapon attack changed history was run Feb. 23 at "Newlines Magazine" where he's somehow a senior editor, and where the news ... it's on some lines all right.

Ahmad noted Higgins' identification of the "Volcano" rockets used in the Ghouta attack, which was important work at the time. But after reading the book, he learned that Eliot's "other major finding was confirming the trajectory of the rockets." Here's the full paragraph, to be broken down and digested below:

Confirming that nonsense sounds like something Eliot would try to do, but his original "north" estimate would be of little help. How did he also confirm the white line pointing almost perpendicular to that? What other important work did he do that I had missed? I had to dig in and find out.

The "UN" Found What?

Ahmad explains: 

"In Eastern Ghouta, [investigators] found rocket fragments that would help them profile the delivery mechanism. More importantly, by aligning two holes that a rocket had made as it pierced through a rooftop and hit a wall, they were able to establish its trajectory."

Joby Warrick mentions this in his Red Line book, which Ahmad also cites (included in online excerpt and check his commentary - and unresponsiveness). But at the time the investigators found "of the five impact sites investigated by the mission, three do not present physical characteristics allowing a successful study of the trajectories followed by the rockets involved, due to the configuration of the impact places." Actually both Moadamiya Impact sites 1 and 2 gave readings that were taken as one angle, and it was just two sites they didn't get readings for, both in E. Ghouta. Those were Impact Site 3 on a roof and site 5 at a vacant apartment. If they had a reading from the roof, it should be some kind of northwest as their photos show, and as Warrick heard. It's not clear why, but they denied that at the time.

We have located the roof site, a bit off the bottom left corner in the above image. Below it's pinned by Chris Kabusk from an image the photographer said was taken from that roof when he visited in 2013 (the man on crutches is not in the satellite view, obviously). It pans out: the scenery details at that site match w/a clear photo facing west taken in 2017, and w/videos from 2013 to the extent you can tell (see here, forthcoming reports). 

The hole in a west-facing wall and then the roof align to suggest an origin from the northwest. But it wasn't terribly amenable to precision; a very wide spread of angles seemed possible, with a moderate wedge north of center seeming more likely. This is the estimate from my own report, with site 4 noted with a 285° line, and for what it's worth, intersection between the two is barely possible at this level of open-mindedness. (again, it's not worth much - that's probably not site 3's trajectory and that 285 line is a fiction anyway)

So the UN-OPCW investigators reported just the one trajectory for E. Ghouta and it was grossly erred. But at the end of another error - a five-fold exaggeration of its operational range - that line intersected with the trajectories to the Western Ghouta impacts, inside a well-secured Syrian army base. As Human Rights Watch showed it in 2013 (right), it seems like a smoking gun discovery. As Ahmad put the point in his 2021 article: "the rocket trajectories from eastern and western Ghouta intersect over the Republican Guard base on Mount Qasioun," which he still considered "the U.N. mission’s most significant finding." 

First, that never was their finding. They did imply it to the point they may as well have said it, but they never really said intersection, or 10km. It was on observers like HRW, C.J. Chivers at the NYT, etc. to run that faulty line so far out and notice the intersection with the other line. 

Next, even the implication has been withdrawn. UN-OPCW mission leader Åke Sellström said in a December, 2013 press conference (after 16:00 in this video) that “we have consulted with experts and if you simulate the flight path, it seemed not to meet as may be indicated … from the report" (emphasis in original, gesturing 2 paths intersecting). Those experts could have been consulted sooner.

He was apparently referring to the "Volcano" rocket's range of about 2km, not the 10km needed for that theory. The shorter range was then nearing consensus, with former UN weapons inspector Richard Lloyd leading. Higgins had already accepted it (see below), and in that same press conference when Sellström was asked, he said 2km was a "fair guess." Lloyd and Postol's study would make news in January, 2014 and seal up the coffin on a 10km range. 

Perhaps Sellström  and those experts were aware they had also terribly messed up that trajectory reading, but that aspect remains unclear. Either way, the relevant people no longer support the claims of a Mt. Qasioun intersection. Yet to M.I.  Ahmad "Higgins’ other major finding" was to confirm it anyway and thus to clash with the current consensus. 

OK, How Does One "Replicate" That? 

Well, Mr. Ahmad isn't the best at following these things, but as he followed:

"To do this, he first established the precise location of the impact site by triangulating geographical features from five different images. Having determined the location, he used shadows in the photo to calculate the trajectory of the projectile. Tracing the rocket back on its flightpath, he established its likely launch site: a regime military installation."

Ahmad only gives "a regime military installation" as identified, but follows with "Indeed, the rocket trajectories from eastern and western Ghouta intersect over the Republican Guard base on Mount Qasioun." He must have meant that same base, and in this way, "Higgins had replicated the U.N. mission’s most significant finding without leaving his room." 

Ahmad seems totally unaware, or perhaps just unconcerned, that mission leader Sellström and Higgins himself had already denied this "most significant finding" over 7 years ago. Higgins was asked to clarify his amazing discovery. He chose not to respond, but he hasn't replied to me once anywhere since 2014. If he did answer, it would likely be to say Ahmad misunderstood but it's no big deal, an honest mistake in pursuit of truth and justice, and his excellent article should stay up as is just for having the right spirit.

HRI Mark helped answer my question with a book excerpt where Higgins explains "I used five separate images of the rocket site" - singular - to set the one location of the "field" impact. Then "using shadows in the photo, I determined the angle of the rocket." Tracing that azimuth back on Wikimapia (a useful tool indeed), he was able to make it to a label identifying what he calls "a Syrian military installation, largely surrounded by rebel-held territory." 

Citation 98 leads to an August 26 post at his Brown Moses blog, which is where he described the north firing spot as discussed above - not anything I had missed that actually agrees with the official angle.

It wasn't specific shadow angles but general field layout (rows running E-W) that led Higgins, like most, to miss the subtler clues and see a tube bent forward to point roughly south. "This would strongly indicate the munition was fired from the north," he explains with no more specific measure, but finds "6-8km away you'll find a number of military installations, connected by a 2km road to the 155th Brigade missile base. In one version of events, the Syrian National Coalition has claimed the rockets were launched from bases housing the 155th brigade." 

That base is some 3 times further than the rockets could fly, so this fails just on that count. As for angle, due north 360° is the single best reading of that, if not the only one, so I drew that in the image above. It's not so confirmatory of the UN-OPCW 285 - in fact at 75° different, it's nearly perpendicular, or almost halfway to opposite. Naturally it indicates a different brigade's base miles away from Mt. Qassioun so that it's not a very good replica, visually anyway.

Enter Al-Jazeera: Ahmad didn't mention this, but he could use some help here. Back in late 2013, the Qatari new channel wanted to help confirm the UN-OPCW work, and wound up agreeing - by deference - that Mt. Qassioun was used. But also sent a team who took measures that seem fairly good, but then they refused to map them out from the two actual spots (program on Youtube). The angles were similar to the UN-OPCW's 285 but different enough they were forced to propose a 2nd firing spot to make it seem to work, deciding SSRC Barzeh 5km to the northwest was it. That's a supposed sarin production facility, not a military base, but rockets could be launched from there. 

Here, they use a spot marked Zamalka, at or near the closest Volcano rocket impact. This is a real video frame, where I re-drew the lines carefully on a flat map and found nothing is what it says. They map 281 for the UN's 285, and run it just 7.2 km to a relocated Mt. Qassioun (red line), and map their own angles at a stand-in 317 (blue) to indicate SSRC. They actually found 290 and 307 - I drew those in green and 285 in white (again from a stand-in spot - it looks much different from the real spots). Also their 5km and 10km reference triangles don't seem quite even.

Now see how that all comes together: Al-Jazeera's two impacts placed (known, approximate guess), with their angles assigned convergently, plus OPCW site 4 corrected. With site 4 as reported and its confirmation at "field" by Higgins just shown, see where the other three actually point that's within range - almost exactly where 6 other placed impacts also point. And this pointing will be a bit inexact. "Burned field" - if you don't know, see forthcoming reports, or bottom of this post.

Later, in November, Higgins incorporated these Al-Jazeera angles as supporting the singular "direction the rockets came from" as given by the UN report. He didn't seem to get they were reporting different angles to a second firing spot. From the two located impacts at the time (site 4, field) as stand-ins for the two described but unplaced impacts, he traced those lines to a max range 2.6km and got pretty close to the right spot. 

If he had started those lines from the right spots a bit to the east and north, had set them to intersect rather than to diverge as shown here (to encompass more area, a bit of it government-controlled?), and if he didn't fudge the range so badly ... he would have pointed roughly to "our spot" as marked here in black. That's roughly the same burned field noted above, explanation below. 

In this November post Mr. Baggins concluded "So from all this information we can conclude that the Syrian military would have been capable of launching the August 21st Sarin attack, despite the short range of the Volcano rockets." Unstated but implied; the opposition would have been far more capable, or at least couldn't remotely be ruled out, as proponents of the fake Mt. Qassioun intersection theory insist on doing to the present day. 

See, at his best, Eliot Bagginscat can almost be pretty good, despite all the constraints of having to confirm politicized nonsense. That takes some Houdini-like flexibility. In November 2013 he was pointing almost to the actual firing spot. In 2021 he had wised up and was citing his earlier stuff instead for Mr. Ahmad to misread and amplify. Higgins silently approves, as he does of the OPCW's obvious original distortion. Sometimes a good partner just has to keep quiet 

* challenge tweet: @EliotHiggins, brains  @bellingcat or allies: knowing HRW's 9.6km 285 is impossible, Sellstrom said this [pic, 2km & no intersection], 285 was a typed number w/no exp., can you back it up, using visual OSINT as all these colored lines did? Starting at NO.

They left it at no until I bumped it a few days ago - and also since then.

Higgins' last word on range agreed with Sellstrom on a firing spot close to 2km out, not 10km. They should still confirm each other on that point and (silently) disagree with Ahmad. But his one trajectory estimate contradicted theirs by ~75°. And independently both single-trajectory estimates were wrong.

Did Higgins "replicate the U.N. mission’s most significant finding"? Probably not, but one of the more crucial finding - or lesson - that we can all draw from this is all the angles and distances and such details don't matter. They can be swapped at will and point  different ways at once, SO LONG AS the Ba'ath party "regime" gets blamed. And in that way, he did indeed show the same thing. 

The UN mission, OPCW's Scott Cairns, or whoever exactly picked an angle that pointed at Assad, or flashes he saw, so the rockets might originate there if their range was 5x greater. Bilbo Bellingscat imitated that with some reference to visual truth, but forced to a much different angle and fingering a different base just 3x out of range - same lesson, worth repeating even in 2021. And the Al-Jazeera people re-enacted the play on yet another line to another place just 2.5x out of range - same lesson: it's all about the regime blame, baby. 

That's a significant finding. And who knew it could be replicated so many different ways? Mr. Ahmad is to be praised for his praise of all this confirmatory flattery-by-imitation of such crucial finger-pointing. It can't all be true and most likely none of it is, but it's all in the right spirit.

Has Anyone Done it Right?

Yes. There's another and less constrained open-source investigation* effort that has finally paid off: Kabusk, Kobs, Wilf, myself, with some others. We agree with the experts on the basic 2km range, and we're closer to confirming OPCW reading - less than half as far off as Higgins was, or about 30°. Plus we have seven more visually located impacts and estimated trajectories from different NW angles, a 9th not exactly placed but surely close, all converging just over 2km out from the furthest one, well shy of the line of contact with government forces. 

And just a few meters from there we have a spot unusually burned on the scale expected, right next to all the same features seen in some videos ... claiming to show Liwa al-Islam jihadists launching volcano rockets in the Jobar area on August 21, to what would be the southeast. Same weapon, same area, same time and as we now learn, same site features and burned area as this field at the intersection of all those trajectories. Those videos almost surely depict the very launches linked to over 1,000 civilian deaths and confidently blamed on government forces. See also this post on initial spot identification, this one-image summary, forthcoming reports.

* Not OSINT: I don't want to call it "intelligence" until I start getting that Russian paycheck I was promised, or the Western government/establishment funding Bellingcat enjoys.