Postol-Higgins Debate Winner: Confusion

December 21, 2018
(slightly rough, edits likely)

I turn belatedly to the public debate regarding the 2017 Khan Sheikhoun incident, held earlier this year between MIT professor emeritus Theodore Postol and the Atlantic Council-backed open source investigator and Bellingcat founder Eliot Higgins. This happened back in October at the Centre For Investigative Journalism (a pro-Postol news story for some overview), but I've skipped a few chances to see it for time limits. 

Recently Kevork Almassian's Syriana Analysis posted a full video that I finally watched (here's Ted Postol's from November 28). Almassian's readers seem to take Higgins as clearly losing the debate to the credible professor of arms and security study. I wish that were so. But rather, it's something of a mess, from which I can call no clear winner except ongoing confusion.

Both men display a primarily unproductive, unprofessional tone, like accusing each other of abetting war crimes. Obviously one of them is, knowingly or not, but that's best left unsaid, or said more like that, as we focus on the details of who's right (has the better, more factual case). But even after some review, that's hard to call just from the debate's contents. It's mainly other information not mentioned that clarifies Dr. Postol is far more in tune with the truth of events.

I liked the host, James Harkin. He tried to make it more useful. And in the end, there is use to be made of it either way. In some spots, I'm just the one to settle the noise and get the clearer picture. Other points, noted - not so much to add. Other points (not mentioned) - hopefully not too important.

Dr. Postol
Postol is widely respected, if also now widely detested, for his contrary analysis of events in Syria. His authority and findings make him one of the most cited (by some) experts on any subject he weighs in on. I stand by his overall work with the late Richard Lloyd over the Ghouta incident in 2013. That work on rocket firing ranges and other details remains great and relevant. Eliot Higgins was eventually convinced of their findings on a range limit of app. 2km, despite early assurances by the White House and other parties assuring us they were fired from a government missile base about 10km from the impacts.

But professor Postol since, on his own... I don't know what all he's done. I just know mainly what he added for this 2017 incident, and that not completely. But from what I've seen, this is mixed, and the mix has a lot of bad. In fact, calling that out is one of the many things I'm behind on, and I'll take this chance to clarify my gripes once again.

Subject-by-subject:

Weapon remnants
I don't exactly agree or disagree here, with no real expertise or clear feel on the debris, I will cover this quickly.

The bend effect his computer modeling shows is right. I've seen this before (Ghouta, 2013, for one example); the forward bend shows the rocket's direction, more or less. This might explain what we see, and in fact is what I first though. But I'm not sure that rolled-up fragment was originally a tube, or that it's really jammed in there like that. In fact, the lack of other debris around might suggest a clean-up, so any pieces that happen to be right in the crater are suspect of being planted there in place of the real stuff. But any of it could be from a legitimate impact of some dropped bomb or fired rocket, depending. (I suspect a rocket, but...) 

Further, Postol's analysis doesn't identify the weapon by any details, just shows how basic rocket casing might react. And as Higgins noted, he's used another explanation for that before (the surface-laid pipe bomb theory), and backed that with appeal to authority, firmly claiming any expert should agree - even though Postol himself now doesn't. He shouldn't have done that. But his current take: maybe.

No Sarin Release at the crater?
Postol argues there may have been a release of sarin, but not at the famous crater investigators accept as the sole release point. This is based on that weapon NOT containing sarin, which seems to be deduced from it being a rocket, not a Syrian CW bomb. But what if it was a rocket with sarin? Or what if we was wrong about it being a rocket?

This decision seems to gloss over the important fact that the crater, debris in it, and surroundings have all tested positive for sarin. The could be planted, depending. But there's an odd black splash around the crater, looking impact-related (sugg. direction in magenta, from NNW). This black splash is also seen with some other alleged sarin attacks (see here). So that might suggest a release here, but limited; it would mostly splash on the ground to turn up in tests. Only a few droplets would disperse, and poorly so.

But then I'm not sure this is the case either.I would agree there's room for serious doubt about the widespread release of sarin. But I see no reason to doubt this spot in particular. Rather, it may be the only area sarin was released (other than inside at least some of the victims), in a limited special effects application of the stuff.

Dispersal of any released sarin
One point I didn't make before is how OPCW results for a spot right in the sarin kill zone revealed no sarin. Michael Kobs graphic places samples in context of the kill-zone (yellow area - OPCW graphic, agreeing with all other sources as the alleged area people were affected and died):
https://twitter.com/MichaKobs/status/1068884235921121280 "the "result" was the precondition."

note: "Syrian government sample" refers to one of several collected by a Damascus contact in town, including one showing sarin at the crater. OPCW accepted those samples as well-documented enough, like they did for samples supplied by the "White Helmets" and affiliates. They found this negative finding natural, since it was a conventional bomb blast. But it was a blast of that kind right in their sarin kill-zone, and it had no sarin. 

Any direction of spread this does support is unclear; the birds and a goat are kind of mobile. The puddle seems related to the site washdown apparently done early on, before the first videos. It seems to have been hosed from the north, so the area to the south is all wet on the edges, with small puddles seen. I think this counts as tampering with the scene, but might not mean anything except why a puddle to the south tested positive. (I don't think it had much effect on the shape of the black splash noted above.)

This is not very clearly at one sample from the kill zone - and seemingly zero from opposition sources - and that being at the site of a bombing that might potentially erase or prevent sarin traces from appearing right there. But to the extent this says anything, it suggests there was no wind to the southwest, nor any gravity-driven spread to the SW from that one accepted release spot near the grain silos. That might matter, if there's other reason to doubt this dispersal pattern.

In fact, all visual evidence is pretty clear in showing a wind to opposite of what the opposition's narrative needs. People died to the southwest, they all agree, but videos show the wind blew to the northeast - at upper and lower levels and, to a less certain extent, at the ground as well (see as needed Overview - wind explainer). The following graphic is slightly dated/incorrect, but not by much, and quite snazzy. The more refined reading is like this at upper levels, favoring the eastern half of this green range, and probably a bit more easterly (TO the east) at ground level, besides slower and more variable. See here for clarified findings, movement graphics, more explanation, AND the right space to lodge a challenge (none lodged there - nothing of value lodged anywhere).

The correct direction is close to - and probably is exactly - the opposite of the one reported by anti-government activists and alleged survivor-witnesses. That's likely because exactly opposite is an easy error to make, as Dr. Postol, for one, knows. Early on, he found a prediction of a SE wind (that is FROM the SE blowing TO the NW - stated in the proper but easy-to-misread format) and took it as a wind TO the SW. See first backwards readings here or here).

( As for where he got that SE-NW direction, I'm not clear at the moment, but the OPCW saw similar from one or another source of mixed or no reliability, "likely" from the south and east, and basically ignored it anyway - fudged it down to no-wind based on descriptions handed in by activists (who realized they had set up their wind story backwards?). As explained here)

Then Postol learned of the error (thanks to my research associate Charles Wood) and showed the unreliable prediction correctly (see here) - TO the NW (that part was AGAINST Charles' advice. He suggests what I did, with his help - use reliable airport METARS data if useful enough (debatable and varied) or - if possible, as it was here - analyze the video record. This actually shows the wind in question - as it happens, well enough to be read for a consistent answer.).  

That's one person's mistake, of course. In contrast, I think the Syrian activists the UNHRC and OPCW chose to believe started with the accurate reading of a SW (origin) wind. It could be one poorly-chosen person "pulled a Postol" - read it backwards in the same manner - as he sketched a map of where to say people died. Then others used that reading, without review, to set up their unusually detailed story of sarin dispersing TO the southwest, complete with tear-jerking returns to the wrongly-place sites where some men claim their own family members died.

I've been following Syria CW alegations since December, 2012. In all I've seen, they rarely, almost never, report this kind of detail, at least not this widely and clearly. It might come out in an OPCW report, but isn't spelled out acted out as the downwind kill-zone from the first news stories onward, as it was in 2017. It feels like a special trick, and according to the video record, they somehow set it up backwards. 

I guess this remains esoteric to most people, but to me it's a very powerful point. Postol is one of the many who doesn't get it. He took that SE-NW prediction, first backwards and then read properly, and he's stuck with that since, up to October anyway. In the debate video, at 8:50 he shows this slide, still claiming a wind to the northwest as something no one has noticed. 

But this isn't the real wind. If I had that vs. poisoned people to the SW to choose from, I'd be pressed. This from the UN-OPCW JIM might sound reasonable: "...the location of victims, as described in the report of the Fact-Finding Mission, serves as an indicator of prevailing air movements west to south-west of the location of the crater during the early morning of 4 April 2017." 
JIM report 7 - S/2017/904 26 October 2017
http://undocs.org/s/2017/904

But I'm not so pressed. I've seen the OPCW claim virtually no wind and mischaracterize the topography to explain the SW spread as driven by gravity (in fact it would roll west, not SW, IF there were no wind). I've seen activists claim a wind blew it that way. I've seen the JIM decide the dead people simply show the sarin spread that way somehow (that is, their presumption that the claims are true means it must all add up, but they don't want to specify how). And I've seen the video - the most reliable evidence there is - saying there was an active wind opposite of what the story required.

In fact, at 13:50 Postol himself notes (as he has in the past) the video shows wind partly to the east. Yes, and the other aspect you can adduce with more study is to the north. Why he disregards that in favor of a contrary prediction - that is thus proven inaccurate - I do not know. 

Wrong damage claims: totally wrong. 

Here Dr. Postol displays an embarrassing lack of thinking through, as I had to explain in some detail here back in June, 2017 (see first part, refuting Postol). I'll explain this below and then come back to it in another section. 

At 14:40, he explains how, basically, the video shows 3 blasts - somewhere on those 3 singular lines of sight - that are much bigger than the damage shown in satellite images. He decided these must be 500-1000 pound high explosives (HE) bombs, he thinks, which would have flattened entire buildings, in contrast to the seemingly minimal damage seen after (and from space). 

Higgins is correct to ask how Postol decided the bomb type and power, and to challenge the "calculations" behind that (40:08). The implications make no sense. The issue wasn't resolved there, but consider: we do see these plumes, so something must have been blown up on each line of sight moments before that video was taken (along with other videos). And also - as Postol should know by now - each plume is along at least one other line of sight, which puts them in exact spots where the lines meet. Or, those lines being estimates, we have 3 narrow areas to look for those flattened buildings he predicts. 

But they do not appear. As he notes, satellite images taken a couple days later show the triangulated locations are only lightly damaged compared to February images. Here's the tiny damage at plume 2 (second from left above), as seen from space (orange box on the right, compared to same area in February, via NYT).

To clarify:
* BY early on 4 April (video from no later, perhaps earlier) those huge plumes had happened.
* BY April 6, the above damage existed (and limited damage at the other 2 suggested spots). 

Imortant point; the damage seen from space is a bit misleading; up-close images show fairly serious damage at each spot. This tiny hole under plume 2, to be fair, is also the least clear of the 3 even up-close. Below, that damage from just inside that tiny hole. 

An outer brick wall had covered those old openings entirely, but this was mostly blown out. Nothing worse than this happened here; roof punched through, walls chipped, outer wall pushed out, room contents badly jumbled and damaged. If this is too little damage for a 500-1,000-pound bomb (I presume that's so), then something smaller was used here. And considering there's no other nearby damage to explain the smoke plume that morning, we could presume this smaller damage was incurred in the 4 April incident, and yielded that smoke in its mushroom cloud shape. Does that make sense? I suspect so. I'm no expert, but a smaller fuel-air explosive - coming in from the north, it seems to me - seems like a better explanation than a bigger HE bomb or rocket.

But Postol sees a mismatch and claims it's supported by calculations. The plumes say something bigger was used. So... What? I don't think he's ever clarified. It could be:

- fake plumes videos? This is possible but very unlikely. No one has clamed it yet, and I doubt Postol would. Multiple videos from different angle would have to be staged.
- fake satellite images? On-site videos show the same damage - these would also have to be faked.
- Or... did Postol just make a bad presumption, based in incomplete knowledge and a 'momentary lapse of reason' that somehow got etched in stone?

He seems confident in the calculations. I suspect the math was done right, but he did something wrong in the set-up, the presumptions. Because this doesn't play out very logically.

Learning from our mistakes?

In relation to that last we could ask if he's made other such errors, corrected or not. The wind thing is understandable enough, and was corrected. The error shown at right, I believe he corrected, but … what an error. He read details on a 2013 CW incident (mentioned in a 2017 French intel report for yielding the same kind of sarin as in the recent KS attack), then took it as a conflicting story for Khan Sheikhoun in 2017 and made this graphic to clarify the non-point. 

Oops.

I'm guilty of rushing ahead too sometimes, but it doesn't wind up confusing as many people, and I try to correct errors when I can (and/or note the corrections in all the right spots … time allowing, and energy …). So I reasoned maybe Dr. Postol just needed a tip, and so I also took these points to him directly in a private e-mail in June, 2017. 

It didn't go well. When he didn't respond after six days, I prodded him with a bit of provocation that backfired; he refused to look at the info, apparently because he didn't like my tone (before that he was just too busy for even a quick note of receipt). 

Then it seems he put up some kind of learning embargo in response to my impetuous attitude. Well, his followers will suffer for that. They'll be promoting an absurd argument without even realizing it, because they trusted someone who said something they like the sound of. (sound familiar?)

As a trusted expert with the right basic view on things, or appealing to and people with such a view, and as someone who should have the best readings on such weaponry-related issues, it's unfortunate Dr. Postol is promoting such flawed arguments.

This kind of disagreement isn't very helpful in promoting the cause of truth, but neither would be my ignoring these widely-disseminated errors. The other side can spot them, and take it as a sign there's no valid questioning of the status quo - even the "conspiracy theorists' top experts" issue easily debunked nonsense. And even if they couldn't spot it, getting things right still matter enough to … well, get things right.

If any reader gets what I'm saying and is in contact with Dr. Postol, feel free to pick up where I left off on a bad foot. It would be better if he didn't stay so wrong forever.

Eliot Higgins 
Of course Eliot Higgins is a promoted propagandist, taking every chance to make allegations against Russia, Syria, etc. appear to be supported by the evidence. Technically speaking, he and the Bellingcat collective he helped start produce some great and valuable findings, besides some proven crud - on the technical end. They also ignore a lot, fail to establish a lost of inconvenient facts, and make a lot of poor use of good findings toward politicized ends. It seems to me they simply launder fake evidence in some cases, and I wonder if they can do that so widely and be unaware of it.

If I were pressed to call a winner of this debate, I'd grudgingly give it to Eliot, on account of sharper on-topic debate skills, besides better (if ultimately dishonest) grasp of the broader evidence (partly: youth. More important: vaster resources and support network). And I'd note that with Postol wasting most of his time presenting the above erred points, the victory doesn't mean much.

Hexamine and Shady Sarin Findings
In the 3-way talk near the end (38:00) Higgins tries to name one of Postol's chemistry contacts
(it was Maram Susli, IIRC, aka (shifting combos of Syrian, Girl, and Partisan)). That might have been going somewhere valid, but it didn't feel that way. The hexamine aspect is involved; I'm not up to speed on that and can't add much.

Postol claims if hexamine is a regular ingredient in the regime's unique sarin formula - as Higgins and co. assert - it should turn up in every test, rather than just in some cases. Higgin seems to disagree or be unsure. I'm just unsure.

Higgins seemed most enamored of hexamine turning up alongside some sarin traces in samples from a 24 March attack (about 2 weeks before Khan Sheikhoun and not far away). But it seems from my limited review that's not a finding to be proud of.  If intact sarin was still present about ten months later (as I recall - I need to review this case), I think that means someone planted sarin on that material way after the fact.
But Eliot Higgins be like no, that must make sense.

That would go towards a later invention; another oddity of this case Eliot had to note is how no one reported a 24 March incident at the time for some reason. It's as if they decided to make it up later, or everyone just forgot, or it was silenced at the time... Hints from Dr. Shajul Islam suggest he knew of at least one unreported sarin event then, and/or thought sarin was involved in the 25 March attack that killed Dr. Ali Darwish, and was limited to dropping hints. (ACLOS)

It's all sort of strange. Shajul Islam is a terrorist insider, down with lying kidnappers and false-flaggers (good article at Alternet). Higgins be like hey, those hints might pan out - sarin was found from a day before… like, a year later. (to be fair, OPCW be like the same or … do they buy it? Unclear to me so far...)

M-4000 CW Bomb?

But Higgins liked how the same chemicals he thinks points to the Syrian government turned up in the specially-designed sarin bombs only they could have dropped from their jets. This odd event, the next day's reported chlorine attack, a 30 March attack involving sarin - all around the cave hospital south of Al-Latamnah - all have evidence, including weapon remnants, that play into his weapon identification saga for 4 April. 

Various pieces are shown de-crumpled by Forensic Architecture, re-assembling into what could be the back half and some other parts of the M-4000, a Soviet-made bomb, apparently designed for delivering sarin.

Postol claimed to see no value in anything Higgins presented, including this. But the computer forensic work (that he was given professional help with) seems impressive, finding a multi-part match. Just from this presentation, and aware it might have fatal flaws, I'd say it might be a M-4000. 

It's surely a better than the first Bellingcat match HRW and the UN's investigators seemingly cited - the Soviet-made KhAB-250. Bellingcat member Timmi Allen showing this, Michael Kobs showing it wrong:
https://twitter.com/MichaKobs/status/861244519068688384

This was promoted:
https://www.hrw.org/report/2017/05/01/death-chemicals/syrian-governments-widespread-and-systematic-use-chemical-weapons

The UN-OPCW JIM thought the scraps were "uniquely consistent" with a Soviet-made CW bomb they didn't identify by name, helping them assign blame to the Syrian government. Did they mean this one? (see here)

Now Higgins shows off only how they eventually ruled this out the KhAB by having the wrong size of cap (besides being beveled wrong or inside-out, which he doesn't mention). See 29:30 in the debate video.

There are details of the later M-4000 ID I didn't follow, but I don't feel like catching up now, or going into any of the visuals. So putting these aside, let's say maybe those remnants are from just such a weapon, at least in the central case in Khan Sheikhoun on 4 April. Let's take the idea for a serious spin anyway.

M-4000 cannot explain the crime anyway
If so, maybe this bomb was dropped by a Syrian jet. The motive and rationality of it remains debatable, but let's say they made that decision and followed through.

I say maybe because we have to presume there was at least one SAAF jet close enough - closer than 5km - that even the UN-OPCW's JIM missed, looking at radar records from two sources. The best they saw was one jet "depicted as flying in a circular loop pattern in the vicinity of Kafr Zayta and north-east of Khan Shaykhun. The map indicated that the closest to Khan Shaykhun that the aircraft had flown had been approximately 5 km away."
http://acloserlookonsyria.shoutwiki.com/wiki/File:OPCW-UN_JIM_7th_Report.pdf

The second of two jets witnesses claim flew right over the town - no mention how far away it was. Must be pretty far. one dropped conventional bombs, they say, one the sarin bomb. Which one was even further out than 5km is unclear...

An expert told the JIM a bomb dropped from that distance could hit the target, depending on unspecified variables. Based on that, they decided said variable were probably met and this happened. But as I reason it, to hit the sarin crater alone, it would have to fly towards it and release the bomb perhaps a few kilometers away, with enough speed the bomb would travel on that line (inertia) for the adequate distance before losing all forward velocity and going into its final dive straight down. Even if the jet turned away from the target at an early drop 5 km out, it would be going quite fast - and still straight at the target - to have the right bomb inertia to hit from an upper 'maybe' range like that.

Turns at speed are so wide the jet would still pass nearly right above the impact spot before the turn is complete - so it would pass much closer than that 5km release. So if 5 km is the closest it ever got, and it was on a line towards the crater at the time (unclear), it must have dropped the bomb further back yet, and it can hardly be close enough to have hit that spot.

But just what distances and directions remain unclear to most of us. To be more sure we'd need to have a credible expert analysis of the reliable radar data. I think even crunching the numbers on turn radius, etc. based on such limited info would be waste of time.

Unreliable radar data: seemed to show the jet passing about 3.5km south of KS at the closest, on a mostly east-west heading. I've shown this around as suggesting n o jet came close enough or on the right heading. However - correcting for an initial offset and presuming no other distortions or trickery, that path puts ONE jet passing right over the sarin crater, on a heading to the SE. (complications explained and addressed here - inviting help on this point).

But I'm not presuming no other trickery there, and the JIM's vague 2 record description seems a bit more reliable here. Not over the crater, never closer than 5km from (what part of?) town.

So maybe there was motive AND means: a jet close enough/on the right heading. If so, we could presume that jet dropped this bomb, with sarin, right on that spot. Still it would not spread sarin to the given areas. Rather, as I explained above, the wind would push it exactly away from those areas. It seems site sampling bears that out.

So something else must be wrong. But in this scenario where these are M-4000 remnants, Higgins has correctly identified the weapon ... that cannot explain the crime anyway.

Otherwise, this event serving opposition purposes, they might have engineered it by - for a grim but most likely example - gassing some hostages. There are numerous possible signs of this in KS and other cases, and foreign-backed Islamist forces regularly kidnap minority civilians, on a scale that isn't fully clear. That plus firing in some evidence of an airstrike, and sowing a story tying it all together, could do the trick.

Especially if they added a fancy victim pattern perfectly matching the wind direction at the time. Right?

They could use an M-4000 bomb (if that's what it is) - either captured from Syrian stocks or brought from somewhere else, or maybe it's a forged replica - modified as needed, filled with their own sarin precursors or pre-mixed sarin, and fired in next to the grain silos. (Or just fired in for effect with sarin planted later, whatever) Or the M-4000 scraps were twisted from some other use and planted here - or they aren't M-4000 scraps either, and were either part of the real weapon used, or were planted to sow a story no one has latched onto yet, or ....

Those are the logical possibilities remaining after Higgins' best efforts to uphold the Assad-blame narrative. He's a sharp chap, but ultimately, you can only go far without the support of actual truth. The clever tricks start to wear thin. This wasn't shown as clearly as it could have been in this debate, but it remains evident enough.

Conclusion

Accepting further thought, including on the points I didn't have much to add to, or didn't mention.

Update Dec. 22: I didn't notice this before, from Oct. 28, Higgins blowing some of that undeserved lead...

This gif plays over and over. That's his own summary.

https://twitter.com/EliotHiggins/status/1053718779295944706