July 25, 2021
rough, incomplete
Hilsman "Decoding" the OPCW's "Absence" of Blast Signs
The FFM analysed the damage on the rooftop terrace and below the crater in order to determine if it had been created by an explosive device. However, this hypothesis is unlikely given the absence of primary and secondary fragmentation characteristic of an explosion that may have created the crater and the damage surrounding it.
Official-Series Document (opcw.org) (Annex 6, point 8)
Primary fragmentation (direct "shrapnel") and secondary fragmentation (pieces of concrete, etc. hurled by the blast wave) were totally lacking from the terrace and the crater. That's what they say, and we're supposed to believe it. But the visuals were never clear in agreeing, as I argued in some detail here back in 2019: Douma Location 2 Explosives Damage? (the question mark is barely warranted, but there for good form). As Scott Lucas and Robert Campbell have had to admit (see that post), there IS primary fragmentation at least. No one disputes this: they're fragments or figments, depending who you ask, and they ain't figments. The backup position offered so far (Lucas, Campbell) is that they're from some other blast, not the one some us suspect occurred right here.
Aaron Maté for one saw the marks as relevant, but when he rebutted Hilsman on Jimmy Dore's show, he forgot to address it, as noted later: "This is a very important point that I forgot to make in my rebuttal. This false claim re: no fragmentation was made in the TYT interview, but I don't think we played that clip on Jimmy's show, so I didn't get a chance to respond."
Hilsman likewise sees an actual presence of marks but takes the prevailing view that they don't matter. His specific issue remains that the pattern of holes is too far away from that crater, and that's what the FFM must have meant; an "absence" of such marks could be better put as an "excessive distance" or a "presumed irrelevance."
FWIW he didn't adopt this view recently - he was saying this since 2019; He saw the images then and had that answer. Again in June 2021 Spy Macaque showed him the secondary frag marks and bent rebar just below the crater, and the heavily marked west wall which was "the wrong wall" and so SM showed him the other 3 walls marked (see below for best detail yet). Hilsman replied to that with the same OPCW quote and an image of the lower south and west walls being unmarked, as if the visuals were self-evident: "This is the crater in question and the wall they were referring to in the OPCW response to Russian questions. That’s embarrassing stupid of you?"
As I'll explain, Hilsman is too stupid to be embarrassed at his own ignorance here. The common person doesn't get it either, but the wise ones know not to claim expertise and belittle others from that uncertain platform.
He said the OPCW denied these marks in response to some meddlesome Russian questions. But more to the point, they're disputing their own better process and the findings of their original engineering sub-team. Ian Henderson, at least one other dedicated person comprising the FFM's Engineering Sub-Team, and consulted engineering experts reportedly agreed in seeing "an (unusually elevated, but possible) fragmentation pattern on the upper walls." It's not clear really if this refers to the upper terrace wall or to the upper wall of the room below or to both of them - "walls" is plural, while "pattern" is singular.
WikiLeaks - 20190227-Engineering-assessment-of-two-cylinders-observed-at-the-Douma-incident
Getting the Joke
Here's a side-view diagram relating the frag patterns only at the top of the south walls, right below the corner impact and below the crater. As we'll see below, the elevation difference isn't so great across that whole wall or on the other walls - this here is the worst it gets.
Specifically the FFM looked for a possible blast "that may have created the crater." The primary marks are some distance away and were apparently discounted on those grounds, but the secondary-looking marks just below the crater ... also don't exist for some reason I've never seen even Hilsman address.
Notice they don't say an explosion is unlikely given the selective 90-130-degree bending of rebar or the spalling (ceiling cracks caused by shockwaves in the rebar grid) - both noted by Henderson/EST/experts, and impossible to refute. The "absence" or presumed irrelevance of the frag marks was their go-to issue on this point. It's Hilsman's choice as well when it's time to divorce the evidence. And on the strength of that divorce, he set out a clever trap:
PH: "Can’t wait for @aaronjmate to upload a photo of the upper wall of Location 2. in Douma which is nowhere near the area the OPCW was referring to in the source documents I used."
He had these images side-by-side (with another showing undamaged low wall, and the OPCW's un-decoded "absence" quote again). I couldn't wait either. When Aaron didn't bother, I tried to spring his trap myself to see what happened.
Me: "AGAIN. OPCW SAID no frag marks. Photos prove a) cropping the damage off a photo makes it not exist, OR b) the upper wall w/super-obvious frag marks is "nowhere near" the terrace crater. Pat? I don't get the joke yet." At the time, I really didn't. Aaron went with option a, the funnier joke - but the wrong one. As we would establish, it was a video frame, not cropped, and was meant to SHOW something not hide something. But it was a stupid thing he wanted to show - option b, "nowhere near." I say it's stupid because of things I know, but decided to brush up on. See below.
He's said before "The blast damage would be immediately next to the hole" and Later: the marks should be "near the bottom." Kostja Marschke came in to agree: "I mean, the damage to the wall is 2 meters above the hole. At ground level, there is none. That's the entire point."
Starting assumption: if these fragmentation marks are relevant, they should come from the crater in the terrace floor. That's not an insane start point; Henderson's report somehow didn't CLEARLY consider these primary marks, and did suggest a detonation right at the terrace floor (scorching inside seemed connected). And Hilsman thinks the shell also would "have blasted the room below with fragmentation" besides marking the bottom the wall above. It might do one, the other, or both, depending on impact angle. And we can see it did hurl fragments in that room, but the secondary type ... almost as if the primary fragments were already released a bit before that. Hm...
He had apparently never tried to see it how I always did, and finally showed more clearly in this image:
Disputed:
PH: "Ah the blast damage in the area that isn’t being referenced by the OPCW. It could be any large explosive being dropped in the area."
PH: "It could easily come from any number of explosives being set off in the immediate vicinity, but it clearly didn’t come from the hole Henderson incorrectly identified as a high explosive crater."
PH: "I think the patterns are clearly from explosives and clearly not originating from either hole."
Now that he had a chance to consider this corner impact, it also "clearly" didn't fit - because there were no frag marks right next to it, at the top of the wall where they should be? No, because there are. In this case, his issue was a new one:
"That wall would be marked all the way up if it was a mortar blast, it wouldn’t be pristine at the bottom. Also that would have blasted the room below with fragmentation... it’s insane that anyone would use this as counter-evidence."
Non-adjusted thinking clues: "all the way UP" means he's still thinking up from the crater, not down from where we are. And how is he still so sure it would keep spraying fragments past the roof penetration into room below? That becomes much less likely.
This seems like a laughable flip-flop, but maybe just the final sentence qualifies as truly clown-grade. In fact, if we take BOTH impacts as related, there is a spatial separation between the key signs - primary fragmentation right off at corner impact, no more marks or scorching evident lower down on the terrace walls or floor - which makes sense in itself, as we'll see - but then a fresh-seeming blast wave right at that crater, passing around some upper rebar but splaying out the lower layers up to 130 degrees and causing the secondary fragmentation evidenced on the south and west walls there (see below).
Scorching: if this damage were weeks-years old, the initial soot could have all rinsed down in the rain. Its absence is not a clue either way.
Henderson/EST/consulted experts took these marks as a relevant pattern would be "unusual" but still "possible." The distance does seem to be an issue as it did to them. Maybe a 2-stage weapon was used, if that's even possible (I think so?), or perhaps this is the result of 2 strikes somehow blending, or maybe it's all explicable within the known behavior of terrace-contained blast waves centering on the line of travel, etc. The last one seems plausible to me, and is my best guess.
Hilsman cannot offer a plausible explanation. He's offered this vicinity blast but, as I'll show, that fails on 3 principles:
P1: the main radial disc of fragments or resultant band or arc of frag marks is usually perpendicular to the weapon's angle of impact,
P2: the fragments will spread laterally and vertically from the weapon so closer surfaces are marked more densely than distant ones,
P3: considering P1 and P2, fragmentation marks aren't always low, or always dense, and will only mark a wall top-to-bottom given enough distance from it.
I suspect this could all be explained more efficiently, but this is what I've got. To clarify how Patrick Hilsman doesn't know what he's talking about, and to clarify an otherwise crucial issue, let us labor the point.
Exploring Core Principles via Images
Starting with a photo Hilsman says he's used, from Sarajevo, and featuring what they call there a "rose." I say sunburst, but it's red here, as if painted, or as if the underlayer is red ... on the concrete and the lower wall ... I guess they painted it. The radial lines are oblique fragment impacts with hard pavement. The rocket or shell must have just cleared that shed's roof. Aimed at the center of that red circle and apparently detonating a bit before impact with the ground, the downward-pointing fragments would hit the ground in a pattern like this.
I learned about these things from images in Ukraine, mainly Mariupol Jan. 2015 - a twisted little episode. I got the reading the clues well enough to roughly agree with reading from pros at the OSCE and others.
https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/1059956.pdf
It's true no such rose or sunburst pattern is evident on that terrace in Douma, but the floor isn't that well seen, and it seems to be a different kind of impact anyway - either a more vertical one, or one that happened well before it even touched the terrace floor. So this aspect is not crucial ... it's the frags that didn't hit the ground that relate - the ones making shrapnel pockmarks in the wall, and the roughly horizontal or slightly angled band of heavier ones in the middle.
Visualize an explosive shell or bomb as drawn below, dropped straight down like that from a helicopter. See essentially a cylinder of explosives set on that vertical line, then metal bits packed around that, inside the outer casing. At detonation, the frags fly out radially in all directions (see a fat disc radiating out), with some spread up and down as well (disc with fat edges sloping to a thinner center). Whatever's in that zone gets hit. Details will vary with weapon design and impact particulars, and no complete grasp will be gotten here, but ...
Principle P1: the main fragment ejection is perpendicular to the weapon's central axis / direction of travel. Here the bomb is going off before impact (proximity fuze).
And principle P2 is clarified here: generally closer surfaces will get a narrower band of marks, compared to a distant wall, where the vertical spread has increased. So denser marks = closer to detonation, and an entire wall won't be coated with marks top-to-bottom without adequate space for vertical spread. And there will be more spread than shown here. Next pictured adds some rays, mainly forward (see next point).
There's no angle shown there, but turn that bomb and its disc clockwise some degrees an you'll see more fragments hitting the ground to the right, and the upper wall might go totally unmarked, while the left wall will be marked higher up. Here it comes in about 45 degrees, underside frags hitting the ground only, forward-facing ones marking a wall lightly from halfway up, heavily at the top, and mainly overshooting the wall. The ones radiating in all other directions of that disc would fill the arcs between these positions, hitting whatever filled that space.
In a straight-down impact in the middle of a 4-walled courtyard - or scaled down, a terrace like in Douma - this radial spray means the walls will be most heavily marked in a horizontal band all around, and at the same level (near the bottom usually, depending on trigger type and mainly on distance to the walls).
In an angled impact set in the same space, the fragments in the down-angled half of the disc marks the pavement with that sunburst pattern, (maybe entirely in the middle fragments will mark the direction TO the launcher), more oblique and less fully at the edges where some heavier frags will pass low, maybe hitting peoples' legs, while the up-angled half sprays in an arc from left & low to straight ahead & high to right & low (like the sun's track across the sky) - to the extent it's clear at all.
Here that can be seen in Mariupol, 2015: asunburst points us forward, and not so far ahead on both sides we can see dense marks visible in the mid-near upslope, to higher up and too dispersed to make out well in the distance ahead. (sources: video, still)
So principle P3: the fragment band won't be simply "low" even in a ground impact. Forward-facing fragments may hit quite high in a shallow-angle impact. Michael Kobs had another great view, also from post-freedom Ukraine of a house marked with a clear arc across 2 planes. Basically the spot with the highest consistent frag marks is forward on this rocket's trajectory.
In each of these examples, the walls are variously "pristine" or lightly marked at the top over here, the bottom over there, etc. depending where the arc of damage falls. If these aren't rocket/mortar attacks because the walls aren't completely marked, then what are they? Some other rocket attack in the "immediate vicinity," by Hilsman's reasoning. But that makes no sense where the marks are close and defined (see P2)
Applying P3 to Douma, those upper marks could be from the forward arc in being high (with side angle on the west even agreeing) but P2 suggests those are too dense to fit even the vertical distance involved. And the marks are seen clustered near the top of that wall, and more so the closer they get to THE OTHER damage (red, just past impacted corner). P2: frag marks will be densest nearest detonation, and here we have them narrowing to the spot where something hit forcefully.
The implication seems pretty clear. Now what again did PH propose?
Scenarios Considered
For each proposed impact point (crater, corner), I sketch in profile 3 spread patterns to test: 1) marks cover the entire wall, 2 the bottom only (and/or the room below) 3) the top only. Vicinity impact below only tests top of wall as seen.
What I deem a correct scenario is boxed in blue. This means I agree with Hilsman that IF this shell initially hit the terrace floor - from the left at a steep vertical angle - we'd see low marks. Otherwise we'd see slightly higher marks or none at all, depending on angle and such. (Not shown for upper corner, scenario 3 - blast wave might continue into the room below, as seems likely.)
Vicinity impact: Principle P2 says this great distance with roughly zero vertical spread makes no sense; there's a narrow band only, and a bit over the roof. As the 3D view below shows, the only remotely close surfaces are lower, so an upward angle is needed. Thusly, the north wall might provide shielding for half or more of the south wall. But then for the impacting fragments to be so closely packed this far out makes little sense.
As for "immediate vicinity" - according to Forensic Architecture's modeling, there's not much for surfaces nearby. Some shells can go off in the open air at any point, as far as I know. But usually, we think of them hitting something, then detonating. Gold star at what seemed a best fit for vicinity blast to mark both the south and west walls (never mind east and north). Compare to red-marked area where it probably had to happen, circled corner it probably happened right next to.
This will be his best bet, and still not a very good one: a mid-air blast a bit inside this terrace space at the right angle (any that can be shown?) to leave the seen marks and no other sign (so the chlorine cylinder can illogically claim all those signs for its own impact).
Because again all 4 inner walls were marked. This blast location is boxed in pretty tight, and Hilsman is only denying the obvious here.
Douma Image Review: Frag Pattern 360
Using the best images I had or quickly found, I compiled the following 6 plates - one per terrace wall, another for the west wall, and one for the room below - comparing different views and establish definite and probably frag marks and overall patterns - noting some possible marks, leaving some unmarked when there are so many ... clearly at least 2 sizes of fragment: maybe a couple thousand very tiny ones, and just several dozen heavier ones are evident.
Note: perhaps zero sign of the original impact fireball remains - age of impact unknown, likely long ago. Scorch marks would have long ago rinsed down in the rain.
Smoke has coated the room below and the cylinder's then-underside, as we know, from a fire deliberately set below for disputed reasons centering around the cylinder and efforts to toxify or detoxify the site. The smoke seen on the west wall below seems to be from that same fire, venting up through a ventilation tube - circular opening visible inside the cracked-away facade in the corner.
East wall: very small marks predominate, some large ones lower down, maybe shell casing w/greater weight - some larger marks right above what was the cloth-covered wire canopy, which is now shredded above and tangled below (some odd cleanup that was done immediately, with debris buckets and such). That seems to have weakened the imprints below. Larger fragments lacking, plus so high-centers, plus other wall patterns suggest the bulk and biggest fragments overshot this wall. Some unusual effect of the fragment composition? (heavier ones mainly in the back? Seems to fit with the other walls)
that corner hit corresponds with some missing fragments - besides over the east wall, maybe some peppered these impacted rooms - but not recently, that we heard about.
South wall: the sharply defined part seems to have less high-resolution views than the other walls - light marks app. absent at far left, then present down to mid-window, heavy marks well above, to and even past the roofline - and on the right side of the window (in which just one impact is roughly locatable), they continue less clearly but seeming lower, with heavy marks now down to upper-window level. Dark blue and purple boxes for reference. Light blue: one mark that's worsened by Dec. 2019.
West wall: from the "pristine" bottom at the SW corner, the point gets less clear as we enhance and then expand our view. I didn't dot general marks here, but we can see the lighter forward ones run about halfway down the west wall from its start. Bottom is a quick composite of a composite w/discontinuous bits. But these are all correlated overall. These color-coded feature matches might allow a precise full-wall rendering for 3D modeling purposes.
Upper and outer west wall ... heavy marks start at the very top, and at the north end line up roughly with the railing at the north wall. Lighter marks spread almost to the floor.
North wall: picks up from west wall with denser low marks (maybe a less oblique angle here?) - some odd marks and lack of marks here at the middle and east. If the target were a sniper or other local at that low wall with a great view to the north, can we see where his body absorbed the fragments instead of the wall? Yeah, maybe.
Secondary Frag Marks: ... clear and sharp marks in red, possible, as visible in pink. I used plasma screen tilting to see a few in the too-dark and too-light areas, up to a point. Hence they fall off where it's too light or dark - that's not the full pattern. South wall is the one well-marked. West wall is too oblique to read well, east wall too far, and not clearly marked at all (a few holes appear, but they seem manmade, to mount things, etc. Some of these look sharp enough they might be the primary marks Hilsman expected from a crater impact. Could it be? I don't think so. There are no corresponding marks right above - except at the north wall (hmmm...) - and this alone is too few. Possibly extra-sharp, well-propelled secondary fragments, or perhaps a second detonation (? I think there are shells that do this) or possibly somehow all this comes from two different events somehow blending together.
Cratering/Spalling
forthcoming...
Side-stuff on getting there:
Helping out Aaron after I set him up to laugh too soon, I finally added June 26: "Sorry, the answer, I think He didn't mean to deny any damages, just to show a big span with no frag marks. The discussion now is showing how he doesn't grasp this stuff, and can't offer a rational alternate. Evolving: a redux of Lucas, Campbell here https://libyancivilwar.blogspot.com/2019/05/douma-location-2-explosives-damage.html - Or basically "Yeah those are explosive fragmentation marks ... But it's DEFINITELY not from the shell Henderson, the Russians or anyone else meant." Now I think we can laugh again.
It took a bit to clarify that, including some prodding from Michael Kobs as well, like this: "You have to ignore ALL OF IT to assume the cylinder caused it. Try Occam's razor! If you find two bodies 5m next to each other with knife wounds but next to one of them lies a straw on the street, you wouldn't assume that this one was killed by a straw, would you?" (me: "clearly, it depends on details like whose straw and LOOK FASCISM!")
Again Hilsman cites OPCW no marks, shows wall bottom: "Actually the OPCW says so too."
Me: "They didn't say so at first, but some people were removed from the probe, some things got deleted, etc. There was some controversy about that. But in the end, text says no frag marks. I guess you win. Or getting close yet, hopefully? Whaddya think?"
No reply there. Somewhere else: Me: "So what were you trying to get at with that thing about stuff being nowhere near stuff? You couldn't wait to see that pic, from Aaron you hoped. What next?" Then I got "That wall would be marked all the way up" and it was insane to think otherwise, etc. Ok, decoding decoded.
Further reference: Hilsman's oft-promoted thread proudly based on just what OPCW wrote (if decoded a bit): https://twitter.com/PatrickHilsman/status/1407030283585658886
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