The Illogical Douma Airdrop Clue that Might Show How it Was Faked

Douma Chemical Massacre:
The Illogical "Airdrop Clue" that Might Show How it Was Faked
Adam Larson (aka Caustic Logic)
February 2, 2020
(rough, incomplete with expansion hoped for)
last edits Feb. 11

Some parties questioned the investigation of the 2018 Douma incident carried out by the OPCW's Syria Fact-Finding Mission (FFM) from the start. But doubts only reached the level of widespread and sustained crisis last May with the leak of an engineering assessment we were never meant to see. That was written by the veteran OPCW inspector Ian Henderson, with an "engineering sub-team" and consulting several independent experts, and concluded it far more likely that the gas cylinders blamed for killing at least 43 people were manually placed rather than airdropped.

Henderson has since added to his story and recently spoke by video to an aria-formula meeting of the UN Security Council recently (my review), and he's been joined by other dissidents from within the organization speaking of others yet, and backing up their claims with repeated leaks of damning documents, all of which seem genuine to observers on both sides of the raging debate.

For starting off and adding to this problem, Mr. Henderson has been attacked and smeared by certain parties, including by the open source investigator-activists at Bellingcat, who variously spin him as:
- incompetent (flawed assumptions, disagreement with the FFM's consulted experts who won after a trustworthy filtration process),
- irrelevant (not in the part of the FFM at all, or not part it's "core team" that wound up shaping the final report), and
- via numerous deniable hints - they also suggest he might be a Russian asset or tool. (They point to his findings and phrasing being similar to that of Russian investigators, suggesting the latter copied his report, and then he appeared "on behalf of" the Russians at the UN Security Council, and they borrowed the format of an anti-Putin book to raise doubts about Henderson, whistleblower "Alex," and another article that burns down a strawman version of the false-flag theories (manual placement would qualify) that have drawn strength from the leaks).

( Notice credit and red underlines: Malinka1102 https://twitter.com/Malinka1102/status/1220444449727184898 )

To some minds, that seems beyond accident, putting Bellingcat in the act of smearing these people, facts, and notions to weaken their credibility. But they suggest it's Henderson, "Alex" who spoke in Brussels, and the rest - along with "conspiracy theorist" amplifiers like myself and other members of the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media - who are helping the Russians smear the OPCW for no valid reason (so perhaps in trade for cash, or anything else one might imagine).

Most of those details become quite ironic by the end of this article.
- Bellingcat smears Henderson "on behalf of" other powers who use the contested findings for their own geopolitical goals (they benefit from the problems with the FFM),
- Among the dubious points embraced by the FFM one is so similar to one originated by Bellingcat it's quite likely the same exact idea copied from them, used as an airdrop clue and thus one against manual placement.
- Bellingcat is obviously not part of the FFM in any sense - deployed in Douma or in country X, core team or otherwise. Nor were they called on as experts. Nor were the other parties who amplified the point in question: primarily the activists at Forensic Architecture and the New York Times.
- Bellingcat is funded by US NED, UK foreign office projects, other Western state-linked sources and like-minded institutions and private donors. They are not "independent" as branded. They're still capable of independent work, depending. But odds are always high they're working "on behalf" of people with an interest in just the findings they produce.
- The idea in question made little to no physical sense, yet was heavily promoted before and after the FFM used it.
- The FFM rejected their own employee Henderson's correct view on this point.
- It might actually be another clue for the manual placement Ian Henderson and the engineering sub-team had noted as probable.

Just this point alone makes the FFM final report partly disinformation. Of course, it's far from the only point that would do this, and they all combine in shaping the false "facts" to be used by the Western powers (US, UK, France) in its ongoing harassment of the Syrian Arab Republic. Being so useful might be exactly why these "facts" are so fiercely defended; anything challenging them is loudly called-out as "disinformation" or "lies" when it comes via some channels. But when the same challenges come via the suppressed work of qualified experts employed by the OPCW after a careful analysis ... the powers and their proxies just drop deniable hints to that effect, and work on other ways to discredit the sources and limit the damage.

Does that read to you like over-the-top propaganda? The following relates one example of what you're missing, what's been hidden from you. This might open your mind about just why the OPCW is currently bleeding credibility.

The Illogical Airdrop Clue
This point, idea, or notion I've already said so much about without explaining yet ... It regards a pattern of linear marks observed on one of the chlorine gas cylinders, which the OPCW's FFM included in their final report as evidence for its falling from above before it impacted a balcony at "location 2," where some 35 corpses of children, women and men were observed. FFM final report, Annex 6, paragraph 4:

"The mangled ironwork present on the patio indicated that there would have been a metallic frame and mesh covering it at one stage, though it was not clear whether this would have been present at the time of the alleged incident or had been demolished prior to that. The visual damage on the body of the cylinder indicates that the lateral aspect of the cylinder did not slide on the mesh but it hit perpendicularly."
https://www.opcw.org/sites/default/files/documents/2019/03/s-1731-2019%28e%29.pdf

They even show a picture to drive the point home. Better views are below, but see some parallel and crisscrossing lines on the cylinder, and a bit of that mesh visible along the bottom edge. The line spacing does seem to match. Not that they're allowed to apportion blame, but to hit straight on with force, this really suggests it was falling roughly straight down, as if from a helicopter, NOT THAT THEY EVER SAY HELICOPTER. But we know which side exclusively operates them... (FFM's mysterious mandate considered)

But this never did make physical sense. This is what would be required:

Here the cylinder first impacted the balcony/terrace upper corner (as accepted by FFM, to slow its speed from 50 m/s to 30 m/s), nose-first as you'd expect, leaving a dent there. Then before hitting the balcony floor nose-first, it flips about 90 degrees so it's briefly sideways and pressing firmly against a stationary grid (no sliding) so its pattern is somehow tattooed clearly into the side of the cylinder. The mesh breaks away and crumples up, and the cylinder resumes falling. Implausibly, it re-flips 90 degrees to be nose down and still at a decent speed. It violently punches a hole or crater in the reinforced concrete, then instantly loses all its velocity at the same moment. In that absurd scenario, naturally it would tip sideways a second time and come to rest where we'd later see it.

It's also speculated the mesh canopy had been removed earlier and was set aside in an unknown way, or perhaps "demolished" and already crumpled. This has too many possible arrangements to cover with an image, but mentally try any re-arrangement in the image above and note how a cylinder falling nose first should never move or flip sideways enough to smack cleanly against this grid.

The only place it makes sense is laid on the floor of the balcony, with the contact made at the end as the cylinder came to rest. It would have to flip over forcefully enough to mimic the effect the FFM proposes. And then someone would have to lift the cylinder up and move the mesh to where it was later seen off to the side.

And importantly, even my image there neglects a crucial detail: the complex aerial harness the FFM believes was wrapped with thick metal bands around the cylinder and wide fins at the back. This would interrupt or maybe prevent surface contact with the wires, especially at the tail end where the "grid" is most visible. The presumption is apparently that the harness was scraped off in the first impact and fell away crumpled, but this too stretches the imagination and likely defies the laws of physics.

To me this seems absurd. And I can't think, and no one has offered, a better way to make sense of this finding of the OPCW's Fact-Finding Mission. But apparently it sounds plausible to many people even without an explanation. So ...

Open call: people who get how to be sure, to apply irrefutable numbers, have a relevant PhD in physics, ballistics, etc. that would help convince those people out there who can't or won't see the absurdity here? Such people seem to be common or a majority. At least they seem to prevail in the social circles where this idea grew from a sapling.

I made this crude graphic in 2018 to explain why how it had to be sideways, never mind the flips to get there and back. Note: the lines from a rotating entry wouldn't curve, just angle. We'll come back to this.

Only later did I get to see the way it was explained by Ian Henderson in the suppressed engineering sub-team report.

Tracing the Idea's Origin
We understand the FFM rejects these findings, excluded Henderson among some half of their team in July, 2018, and consulted three engineering experts who provided or allowed for dubious findings that appear in the final report. It seems the last part of that scenario, with the sudden stop outside the crater, was approved by at least one of their three experts, and at least one endorsed the upper corner impact. But the intervening sideways mesh impact might be too stupid for a biased professional to have offered.

The FFM also used open-source evidence, as explained, in a limited sense. The final report states:

7.5 Open-source materials including, but not limited to, videos and photos were used primarily for planning activities, but also for comparative purposes with material directly collected by the FFM team during the course of the investigation. However, the conclusion of the investigation does not rely on data and information gathered from open sources.

So they would deny basing a conclusion like this on "open-source" engineering-ballistics analysis. Yet this idea is nearly identical to and likely copied from the Bellingcat investigative team, ultimately if not directly. And if they didn't rely on the "weight" put on the idea by those non-professional source, then where did they even get the idea, and whose rather poor reasoning did they rely on to include it as a valid clue? 

If this notion came from open sources, it was presumably scraped off the biggest waves it made, back in June, 2018. The New York Times would later win a news Emmy award for its video report "One Building, one bomb: how Assad gassed his own people." (links and details below). Right away I called it one really stupid attempt to demonize Assad. Perhaps the least logical point is the one in question, but it was presented "most importantly" as proof for an air drop. Of it, I said  "I've seen others claim this and ignored it in pity. I forget what idiot claimed this. But now a whole team of people at the paper of record put their names on it..."

Now that I checked and trace it back to Dutch researcher Marcel Vandenberg, a member of the general Bellingcat network, I'll re-phrase that now; this idiotic notion originated in his mind, and perhaps no others during its climb to the top. It clearly passed though a lot of minds with limited understanding, and it's possible the idea also originated independently along the fairly short way. But this is quite likely his exclusive - and idiotic -  mark on history.·

May 7, 2018 tweet: Grid marks on Douma cylinder resembling those of a fence  is another indication cylinder was dropped by helicopter

… linking to his article at FeitofFake, using that same image and calling on a few more.

"The grid marks on the side of the cylinder which hit a horizontal positioned fence is another strong indication a helicopter dropped the cylinder." He notes the side with the scratches was invisible at first, being on the underside, which is also the side that was partly coated with soot (at the nose end that was suspended above the crater, beneath which a mysterious fire had been lit). Only after the FFM's inspection in later April did subsequent images show it rolled aside so the pattern is visible.

A composite image of all sides in rotation by Michael Kobs (fellow independent researcher with WGSPM) is shown and credited to him, but the article doesn't note that the red arrows image right above it is also from Kobs, who was apparently the first to note the scratches-mesh correlation, but in a much different way, just one month after the incident. May 7 tweet: "I think the best explanation for the diagonal scratches is not some kind of corset or heli-drop but some kind of pulling it over the fence." It seems that no one had mentioned this yet - he was predicting they might and preempting it. That would prove ironically prophetic.

Both uses of the red arrows image are given as May 7, but Kobs tells me he made the image first and Vandenberg re-used it at Feit of Fake "one day later with a twisted message." Considering time zone differences, etc. that fits, and Marcel didn't refute that he copied it. They both use the unusual term "fence" to describe the grid-lattice-mesh-canopy. That could be a regional thing (Kobs: German, Vandenberg: Netherlands), or mean that Marcel copied it. He'd see the red arrows matching, "heli-drop" mentioned, and flip it so maybe the helicopter drop made it drag over/past/onto that mesh/lattice/fence/canopy, then run off excitedly to share this poorly-formed brain-fart.

As Kobs continued the above-linked tweet: "Next was Forensic Architecture ... and so on." Forensic Architecture (FA) is a research group based at University of London, that uses visual-spatial analysis "to investigate cases of state violence and violations of human rights around the world." In 2011, FA was awarded funding for four years by the European Research Council. (Wikipedia) Archinect.com reports that the group is led by Eyal Weizman, a London-based Israeli architect and Professor of "Spatial and Visual Cultures" at Goldsmiths whose "work focuses on architecture as a form of political intervention and the discipline's role in modern urban warfare." (but not psychological warfare, via constructing rationales for intervention?)

By a quick review, FA make a show of criticizing Israeli occupation policies, use of White Phosphorous and other actions in Gaza, campaigning against the use of tear gas anywhere, tracking down white supremacist serial killers, and going after corporations, besides states. As far as I know, any and all of that work is fine, or might be variously biased - I can't say at all at this point. But in their investigation of this alleged crime of the Syrian state, Forensic Architecture would not just be following the prevalent bias to find the "regime" criminal. They would have to produce or endorse some new evidence to help lead the trend, and the trick - as a growing number of people understand - is there was no chemical bomb attack, so any proof you find for it will have to be fake.

They found some, and their work first appeared in this New York Times visual investigation report:
One Building, One Bomb: How Assad Gassed His Own People
By Malachy Browne, Christoph Koettl, Anjali Singkvi, Natalie Reneau, Barbara Marcolini, Yousur Al-Hlou and Drew Jordan
New York Times June 25, 2018
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/06/25/world/middleeast/syria-chemical-attack-douma.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2X84JZINcI
and again my initial review of it.

At 5:50 in the video report, narrator Malachy Browne mentions "most importantly" the grid pattern "seared" into the yellow paint, which matches "exactly" the square pattern of a section of latticework it apparently crashed through. Right after relating this, with dramatic musical intonations, is where they drop the bomb; "Our conclusion is it HAD to drop from the sky."

But in place of animating this, they use a bizarre fast montage of blurry close-ups of the cylinder and the lattice as if to say "it was all chaotic, so who knows exactly how" or perhaps "our efforts to model this were too ridiculous to show even to the readership of the New York Times."

Browne and his small team worked with Forensic Architecture on this, and also credit Bellingcat, I believe. If not, they do so indirectly; FA only published the study themselves on July 20th: their presentation with extras. A promo tweet noted "The project was a collaboration with @malachybrowne 's @nytvideo team, with support as ever from @bellingcat"

Marcel Vandenberg is a regular contributor to Bellingcat discussions and research, and so his eureka moment in May is quite likely where Bellingcat got the idea, passing it to FA, and thence to amplification in this widely-seen video report.

MicaelNo2War on Twitter: "Eyal Weizman director of Forensic Architecture, Eliot Higgins and James Harkin all Soros funded. None have chemistry qualifications, none have visited the alleged attack sites, none have even attempted to be objective about the Syrian govt & all stick to the same NATO narrative."

I'm not usually big on the who's-who level of the events I study, but Harkin at least (above, right) went to Douma, and filed a report with somewhat mixed clues and value, including some good points from an unnamed OPCW employee/inspector (I forget exactly - worth revisiting) and some utter nonsense from MIT professor Ted Postol. (included here). Harkin also hosted Postol to refute another CW narrative, but sadly his analysis was deeply flawed, he was paired with and to me seemed to lose the contest to Bellingcat founder Eliot Higgins (above, middle), so the only clear winner was ongoing confusion. Otherwise, as far as I know, the vague doubts raised by MichaelNo2War are totally valid, and enforcing narratives that seem to be untrue is the gist of what they do regarding Syria. Weizman (above, left) led the most thorough spatial modeling of the supposed Assad regime attack, that curiously excluded this mesh impact, replacing it with a confusing flash of images.

On the World Stage: Silent but Potentially Deadly
Then Vandenberg's brain-fart made it to the big time - citation in a report of the OPCW's Fact-Finding Mission. If they found it, it must be a fact, right? After that was published in March, 2019, Bellingcat weighed in with a comparison to existing open-source analysis. This shows FA's modeling with the grid match-up and explains:

"The New York Times and Forensic Architecture investigation confirmed Bellingcat’s earlier analysis, adding additional key details, such as … Most notably, it identified markings on the chlorine cylinder documented at one site, which were consistent with it having hit a metal mesh structure as it fell onto the balcony... It was possible to then compare the model of the mesh to the markings on the model of the cylinder, and demonstrate they matched in size and shape."

They don't specifically claim this point, even suggesting it's among what FA added. But either way they agreed on its prime importance and were happy to see this existing notion elevated by the OPCW's fact-finders:

"The OPCW FFM report adds more weight to the argument that this was a result of the cylinder being dropped onto the balcony."

I highly doubt any decent engineering or ballistics expert would propose such an idea, although it's possible the FFM got the idea from one of those they consulted. If so, chances are good they brought it up after seeing it from the New York Times report or any other reflection before or after that, rather than from independently having the same illogical thought. So it probably is Vandenberg's notion, undergoing another of several rounds of non-verification.  The News Emmy NYT won for their logic-impaired reporting adds some weight to the weight NYT themselves added. FA already added to it, and the FFM report would add more some month on. How much weight can a brain-fart hold before it pops? Maybe the OPCW can get another Nobel peace prize based on its Douma probe and especially that grid thing. If that prize-awarding were lauded by Henry Kissinger as the bravest move in the prize's history, wow, we're at historical weights... they could surely add to it with a pat on the back at that point.

If this Donald Trump character occupying our White House found that grid extra-convincing on some random review, and he needed to counteract new impeachment effort by nuking Syria over that old case and thus triggered World War III and the effective end of civilization ... it would be partly based on (what might be) Marcel Vandenberg's un-popped brain-fart of May 7th, 2018.

Of course that's a ridiculous exaggeration, but not as ridiculous as it should be, given where this idea got to and the times we live in. And to the extent it is at this level and things are this way - clearly that's not on those guys. They just contribute somewhat to the river of sewage that pulls all of us along and has drowned so many in needless wars and interventions based on inventions. And Mr. Trump, wow. … I don't think anyone named here is a U.S. citizen, let alone one of those who voted him into office.

So not to outsize it greatly, this bad cartoon of an idea primarily is one of the "facts, full stop" to "ambassador" Cherith Norman Chalet (who replaces Nikki Haley representing the United States at the UN), in her remarks at the 20 January UN session on the subject (my review). She didn't specify this "fact" but still, it got to basically this level of Nikki Haley holding up photos of dead and dying children to shame Syria over the alleged sarin attack at Khan Sheikhoun. It seemed worth this visualization. Imagine her saying "Ladies and gentlemen, what further proof do you need? It is only the Assad regime, aided and abetted by Russia, that operates helicopters in Syria."

Do the marks actually show manual placement?

First we need to establish what the lines are. they could be:
- scratches reveling metal,
- rust darkening the paint,
- burns darkening the paint,
- maybe passive streaks of soot applied in movement, or
- other (applied pigment or dye, and I can't think of another example offhand)

Full or partial pattern? Rust or burn with stationary contact would seem to produce a full-grid pattern rather than paired lines one way. But then it seems the bars are welded so the different directions are at a different level. Near the nose end especially are possible cross lines at the middle only, which could also fit with this (if pressed, both directions will touch, but one only where it can bow a little ways in from the weld). A similar line appears in the blue box and one in the green, but both look different and likely coincidental. There are many marks running all directions here.

(an image would be good here - forthcoming)

However that wouldn't explain the gap between the paired marks at the nose end, nor the sudden appearance of lines both ways at the tail end. There seems to be definite wiggle room on this point, but I still think these are mainly just paired parallels with one or maybe two sets of the same making their own scratches on an opposite slant.

Rust appearance: it would follow liquid accumulation, have a thin rust color atop the yellow paint, might have faint parts, fuzzy edges, etc. That doesn't fit the image very well, aside from the full-grid issue.

Burns would look the same across the field, being dark to black, maybe with lighter, browned edges, maybe cracked paint from the heat, which was caused by …?? That doesn't fit the image very well, aside from the full-grid issue.

Scratches: I always thought they looked like or would be scratches, caused by the same nearby mesh/fence, but only the sharp, broken ends of two wires or bars of it - perhaps three wires in spots. Going back to Michael Kob's red arrows image, I think he meant about the same: the short but sharp segents each tiny red arrow points directly at. The rest of the grid would never touch it. This would  form parallel lines just that close, if the cylinder were moved past them in one or a few certain ways, which I'll try to explain below. The "grid" pattern would be an illusion from repeated parallels, and one area (tail end) where the same parallels cross at about 90 degrees, perhaps due to a scraping movement of the cylinder against the same two bars, but in an opposite direction.

Soot smudges has been suggested: I guess they'd be formed the same way as the scratches, but by two loose wires of the mesh that were coated in soot? That might look about like the lines at the tail end as they appear, blending with copious white powder (green box), but the pattern is still that of the mesh, which isn't soot-covered or, if the tips were, it wouldn't rub off steadily like a crayon. And most likely the mesh left all its marks in the same way, and the other marks we can see more clearly are not soot smudges.

What I see in close-up, with enhanced color saturation and contrast: in the middle (blue box) it looks like a faintly bluish gray of freshly exposed steel beneath the paint, with perhaps minute touches of rust (if chlorine was present, even fresh scratches will rust some, and the nozzle and surrounding metal fragments appears heavily rusted). In the white box it looks like something that causes extra soot to accumulate compared to the surrounding surface. That suggests the paint or even the metal there is roughed up a bit, as if scratched. In the green box (tail end) it looks kind of metal gray, perhaps, but so mixed with powder white that could be black or even extra-dark rust.

Lines over or under dust (tail end)? Not clear enough to call; there are spots were dust is clearly atop a dark line, and others where the dark line corresponds with a gap in the dust (but some gaps are wider, including adjacent paint, like perhaps a curious fingertip tracing the line and wiping off the dust). Also, by run-off and/or by optics they would likely blur together in spots as they seem to. So this area and what its lines would mean remains less clear, so let's allow the tail end to just follow the rest, as it would in flight.

Side-note: the dust may be weird. It looks quite fine and plentiful, like the apparent plaster dust that coated the scene at location 4 perhaps too thickly. If the same stuff appears here … where is the plaster? It would only hit concrete, and it's hard to imagine it busting enough of that into a fine enough powder to explain this coating. But a possible imagination shortcoming on my part doesn't prove anything, so we move on.

Lines over or under the soot: looks like under to me, and the soot gathered in the scratches during first deposition and/or during later run-off. If it happened after, we'd see soot scraped away and either yellow paint or the same bare metal look seen a ways over.

Lines made when: perhaps different times, but primarily before the fire was set.  So this could not be explained by the known movements after the incident. IF this shows manual movement, it's the movement postulated as happening instead of an aerial impact.

This 'pattern reading for dummies' went with my crude sausage graphic from 2018. Apparently it's important, as some people can't visualize this clearly.

I hope we can all see why a move lengthwise would cause scratches running the same way - if the two wires were positioned a bit one above the other (and they mainly aren't). It shouldn't be hard to see how a cylinder rolled in place with no pushing or pulling would lead to a scratch running straight around the body, if the bars were mainly side-by-side (which most are). Now if you do both of those at once, the lines would run down the length and around, and the only way a continuous line can do that is by forming a spiral. If you can't see that yet, try and reason it out slowly.

From there, if the spiraling lines aren't continuous, any segment we do see will be an angled line. The exact angle might depends on how much horizontal movement (push or pull) there is vs. rotation - the ratio of the two. If they're evenly matched and the cylinder is level, the angle will be about 45 degrees like the ones we see.

Otherwise it could result from the cylinder moving non-level, with the tail end considerably lower than the nose/valve end, and the scratches would be from its being lifted straight up relative to the wires? Lifting it straight up at an angle every 40-47 cm - and a bit higher each time - has no logical purpose, and I think it's impossible to explain all the marks that way unless they were raising the mesh along with it. So I favor moving forward or backward with some rotation, and maybe a slanted position plays in as well.

Here's my initial explanation and image copied from response to NYT report:
https://libyancivilwar.blogspot.com/2018/06/nyt-one-really-stupid-attempt-to.html
Now there is a similarity in line widths/grid proportions here, and I suspect that lattice is involved - or about three bars of it anyway. If you look, you'll see this grid pattern is sort of fragmentary: there are exactly two lines angling one way near the front, then 2 lines the same length angling the same way, then another 2 the same way with one bending and a third appearing now, at the back of the canister. Then crossing those, two lines about the same distance apart, running perpendicular to the third set. There only does it look like a grid. But what if that's an illusion, and we just see two sets of angled marks, from two different episodes of manual pulling and rotation, maybe separated by days? Here's what I specifically propose:

As I revive and improve this case, I don't want to specify what heaves in what direction, and the full sequence, the role of slanted orientation vs. rotation, etc. - especially for the tail end marks. This is to be considered or even modeled separately. But directions and order aside, I'm fairly sure the marks and their spacing are caused by a mix of these factors:
- lateral movement (pushing or pulling) of roughly the cylinder's full length (or more),
- rotation (lateral move vs. rotation ratio creates the slant of the lines), about 1/4 - 1/3 of a full rotation,
- steps or heaves forward or backward with some wiggling and/or arms swinging side-to-side (into then away from the scratching wires) ,in cycles of ~40-47 cm or 15-18 inches. That's a short step for most, maybe 2 shuffles for these laden guys. That's compared to a cylinder height minus neck of 140-148 cm (measures vary). The next set at the tail end comes closer, consistent with a shorter step or heave.

- a bar bent out of parallel during one cycle (base end, green box), and
- probably another lateral move plus rotation the opposite way (base end)
- the last might involve coincidentally-spaced prior marks, but otherwise odds are all consistent marks were made by contact with wires of that mesh.
- possibly a slight variance in ratio between lateral movement and rotation. This would cause a slight curve of the angled lines, and they do appear curved (see white lines). This might be due to the cylinder's curve, but they may not conform to that and require another explanation, which would be a variance in rotation ratio. And that's a better fit with people working slowly and variably than it is with a cylinder spiraling evenly during its fall.

Marcel Vandenberg noted the side touching the concrete was scratched. That also means - as he also noted - the underside, or side that was initially hidden from view and was only visible after the FFM inspectors had rolled it over. If those are scratches from its movement into position next to the crater, the guys who just scratched it would know that it was a sign of their work, which had to be denied. So the final move might be to roll it so those embarrassing marks are hidden (if that's the correct order - some review is still needed). They know they're rarely called out over such blunders, but still they probably would not think ahead to presume someone would USE those scratches to prove a helicopter crash.

Follow-Up 
(hopefully incomplete and to be expanded soon.)

I asked Marcel Vandenberg if he was happy that his idea had achieved such status without review.  He was skeptical that his idea "inspired" the FFM's conclusions.
https://twitter.com/CL4Syr/status/1222978528544575488
https://twitter.com/marcelvandenber/status/1223215190243717121
He didn't answer if he still stands by this bizarre scenario. It's a tough call; he really shouldn't, and then he really should, considering how many influential people have glommed onto it, and elevated it to this level. Do you want to admit you've already let them down, by giving them this chance to let themselves down? You might, if you cared about your reputation and remembered this is just one point in the case.

Bellingcat has been asked about this repeatedly and never answered. I may have never asked Higgins, as he seems to have me on mute; he hasn't answered me once in years.

I asked Forensic Arhitecture here: https://twitter.com/CL4Syr/status/1223589876446027776

FA founder Eyal Weizman here: https://twitter.com/CL4Syr/status/1223871621749821441
https://twitter.com/CL4Syr/status/1223872071358279680

All of them and others alerted to this article's publication, possibly spurring comments I would add:
https://twitter.com/CL4Syr/status/1224056252499550208

But as of February 11, still no responses. And why bother? It already became one of the reasonable grounds to prove this thing was falling rather than manually placed. What possible benefit could there be to re-considering or backing it up now? That could only serve to discredit the FFM's fragile process of special magic.
...