Rocket Man: Just Blindly Trust the "UN Azimuth"

What the "Rocket Man" Wants us to See in Ghouta: 

Nothing, Just Blindly Trust the "UN Azimuth"

August 14, 2021

(rough, incomplete as usual)

North? West? Northwest?

Just five days after the Ghouta sarin attack blamed for over 1,400 deaths, Eliot Higgins posted a first visual estimate as to where the rockets were fired. From the geolocated impact of rocket #197 in a field ("field" in the image below), he estimated it came from 6-8km NORTH (yellow line), where he found bases and roads of the Syrian Arab Army's 155th Brigade. (Brown Moses blog, 26/08/13) No exact compass heading was given, but the sites in question are almost due north, though an angle as small as 335° could reach an edge of this area. 

For what it's worth, most observers made a similar call, but the magenta Kobs 2020 reflects a better analysis (see 2021 reports); it came from the northwest after all, and the tube buckled both forward and a bit to the right.

Then a report on the findings of UN-OPCW joint mission was released a few weeks later, on 16 September (PDF). This provided a single trajectory reading for a nearby rocket at "impact, site 4," also in a field but right at a wall or concrete fence. Both sites were visually located early on, as shown at right. 

The UN-OPCW mission had this unbent rocket tube pointing "precisely in a bearing of 285 degrees" so it came in at an opposite trajectory of 105° or from the WEST. This is 50-75 degrees different from what Higgins had just estimated (inset: white line vs. yellow line shows a full 75°). These angles are almost halfway to opposite of each other.

To be clear, as it has been to many observers from the start, this "precisely" measured 105/285° is grossly wrong. In facts it's some 30 DEGREES off from the visual reality we've now established. Before that, the white line had appeared even further off from reality, as shown in non-magenta colors. 

This can be made visually clear comparing the tube with the east-west wall it impacted. The engine points straight as an arrow in a reverse azimuth back to its launcher, and they say that runs 285°. The wall can be measured from satellite images over the years as running to 277° west on the compass. IS THIS a near-parallel eight degree angle? I've asked around and nobody wants to say "yes that is 8 degrees." But they defer to the inspectors who were there and measured it, and doubt our qualifications to measure such a thing. so ... that's what they wind up accepting. It's what Higgins would want to defer to as well, but he's supposedly held to higher standards than usual. And from the start, he was clashing badly.  (see also: how the UN-OPCW falsely fingered Syria)

Also note that was the only trajectory estimate the UN or OPCW offered for any Eastern Ghouta rocket impact. Any mention of a UN angle, azimuth, measurement or trajectory will refer to this grossly incorrect number.

In the compared estimates image, site 4 had a wide range of readings. These were largely pulled north relative to the magenta best (again Kobs 2020), maybe because it looked closer to perpendicular in most views (the shadow was tricky), and maybe to assist in converging with "field" off to the north (and it looked unlikely even then). Kobs got around such illusions with a view straight down the tube (bottom center image in the plate above), or right along the flight path, correlated to distance features that were then measured from the impact spot. That yielded 316° NW. My own take argues for a tiny bit lower, like 315 due NW. So we get a very good reading and it's 30-31° clockwise from what was measured "precisely." (For all other details, see as needed 2021 report(s) - the well-known "Rootclaim" report explains with 3D models, and my own mapping report with fuller explanation and slight revisions). 

In contrast, Eliot Higgins ... well, he's had a few ways of looking at it. 

He had that white line he should defer to, but couldn't possibly support. That line takes 9-10km to really implicate government forces at Mt. Qasioun, like it once seemed to. The yellow line takes 6-8km to find its blame nest. By late 2013, however, it had become clear these Volcano rockets could only fly 2-2.5 or maybe 3km at most. Run only that far out, both north and UN-west point to opposition territory. This would make north an unfavorable angle for Higgins, albeit one with some visual reason, and west would lose its appeal besides being unsupportable. As such, he would come to focus on a wide arc of northwest angles pointing towards a newly-won strip of government control perhaps close enough to have hosted the rocket launches (explained at this post). 

He also noted at points there may have been multiple angles fire from two or more locations, though he usually seems to think of a singular direction, and mainly just remained confused what direction it would be. 

Getting an Idea  

Brown Moses blog 30 November, 2013: while we already "had an idea of the direction the rockets came from" via the UN report, Higgins still couldn't show that idea and instead tested 2 new angles from an Al-Jazeera on-site investigation. He swapped in the closest match - 290° - run from the same impact site 4, that would be just 5 degrees different. But then he used a 299 degree line instead. I repair this here with a new green line, adding everything but the drawn red lines and provided distances:

That's the closest he could get to replicating the "UN" angle, but he knew these new al-Jazeera measures related to different impacts. The other one correlates with the geolocated "pool" impact at a spot mapped by HRW and LCC, where 307° runs almost exactly to the firing spot seen in the infamous Liwa Islam Volcano videos, at a range of 1.99km. This 290° angle, run from unverified mapped impact "HRW 9" does about the same, and the area there looks consistent with the video footage. 

In other words, those Al-Jazeera angles wound up confirming our 2021 findings once they were properly arranged, not the finding Eliot most needed help with at the time. 

He did struggle with it some. A month later, on 31 December, Higgins asked Chris Kabusk about his just-updated 3D model of this site 4: "For the wall one could you get a view directly above the munition?" He specified "directly above it, facing down, so we can see the angle of the munition" Getting n early start on a New Year's resolution? Chris soon showed that - an orthogonal elevated view as shown here, and a ground-level one to compare with photos. 

This kind of modeling is user-defined to approximate a visual match. As such, it doesn't necessarily prove the true angle, although this looks fairly close. As modeled, the rocket is at something like a 45-degree angle relative to the wall. In fact I quickly measured a 50 degree difference here (see right, rotated to true north), so the tube points to an origin 328° to the NW - some 43° off from what was reported and about 12° different from our later readings.

This model was also used in collaboration with Tesla Labs' Richard Lloyd, and used to show a range of 55-65 degrees from parallel (per labels on this other view at right). In retrospect, how Chris first modeled it seems better than this spread. This 55-65 is the Lloyd-Kabusk wedge of angles in the top image. Again, everyone was estimating too far north at first, for both of these sites. 

Anyway, that clearly is NOT the near-parallel 8-degree angle required by the UN-OPCW reported trajectory. And it seems that Higgins saw this and absorbed the lesson. 

A few days later - 3 January - he would tweet "PT Interesting to note the UN azimuth for one of the rockets doesn't match the 3D model on those maps, seems 50 degrees off to the north." That must be the only impact WITH a measure to compare, and presumably to the same 3D model he'd just seen. I get +42°, or 50 from the wall itself, but yes, it's an issue ... with the model? or with the actual evidence? or with the reported trajectory? 

Surprisingly, he seemed to have had the right idea at the time. Two weeks later, 17 January, he would tweet at now-defunct propaganda compilers @geopoliticalhome @Lopforum "Based off the geolocated munitions the point of origin is from the north (even the UN one they said was from the NW)" In other words, they said NW (better put as west), but nonetheless, the facts said it came (more) from the north.  

Keeping it Quiet

Here's Eliot Higgins publicly noting the "UN" reading was wrong. How would he resolve that? Quietly, it seems for a while. 

Between launching Bellingcat in June, unwrapping endless present for their inaugural MH-17 investigation over the summer, and other activities, mid-2014 was a very busy time for Higgins. When he had time for Ghouta forensics - and it wasn't often - he looked for government-controlled areas with range, and kept the range quite flexible. There arguably were some of workable spots, but none on a bearing remotely close to 285. 

In March he proposed launches from a checkpoint well to the NNW. Then the glorious Bellingcat came to be, and his first article there likely to address the issue: "Locating the Rockets Used During the August 21st Sarin Attacks in Damascus" (August 10, 2014) didn't focus on trajectories, and ignored impact site 4 entirely. As I explained here, just two correctly located impacts were actually included in this article. The plural form was barely even accurate.

Then at the end of August, Chris Kabusk shared a new trajectory estimate for another impact a ways to the northeast ("wall 2" = LCC10, HRW12), proposing it was launched from the northwest. Higgins noted "the other rocket east of that points roughly nw too" and "based on that," Higgins traced a red arc of likely firing areas 2-2.5km out to the northwest. This started roughly where he had pointed in March, but expanded a ways to the southwest. None of it is remotely similar to the 285° official azimuth.

They seemed to be in basic agreement until Chris noted this new estimate added to his emerging picture of NW origins, in fact near the site of an August 24 sarin attack on SAA troops. This had to be sitting poorly with Higgins et al. The overall angle, as Chris put it, is "like UN's presumed flight path but off a bit and 1.5-2.5km ranges." Higgins replied incredulously: "You still think the wall Volcano was measured wrong by the UN?" 

He's perplexed, if not appalled, to hear the real angles described as "off a bit" from what the trusted "UN" had reported. It's as if it had been shown correct somewhere, but that can hardly be. No reply. What can you say to that? 

They had just been agreeing on quite different angles, but as soon as Chris even mildly points out the obvious - these remain inconsistent with the "UN's presumed flight path" - Eliot shames Chris doing what he had been doing himself, briefly, in January. And when he said it, it wasn't just "a bit off," but by 50 degrees!

In the 2014 interim, for no reason likely to be wholesome, Higgins had switched to disagreeing with the official measure quietly. He would speak up only to insist, with no provided reason, that others in his team should be quiet about it too. It seems he at least held to this approach from then on, always dancing around that impact. He's pointed different ways in general, but never explicitly using this clearest impact. In fact see my plotting for site 4, broad and most-likely estimates layered. Of EIGHT located impacts, this was the best indicator of the field we now identify, straight across the frontline from the bus station ...

...compared with the areas Eliot has implicated (red areas) and the video field (green star), right across from the long, white bus station he never indicated. As it happens, he's looked just to the left and to the right just to the right of this field, besides a little behind it. But he never along that clear, best measured line for any distance. Maybe its capacity for precision frightened him.

I didn't find any sign of him or Bellingcat referencing this Ghouta rocket analysis at all between mid-2014 and 2020. For some six years it seems there was nothing more to say. But when Bellingcat advised researchers at UC Berkeley's Human Rights Center in or before October, 2020, they should have given a pretty current or comprehensive view. The Human Rights Center's presentation via Storymaps included the UN west AND Higgins' original full north plus all angles in between for likely attack origin, in a wide arc covering some 1/4 of the compass (roughly mapped in above: green arc). Impact site 4 is mapped with others, but no specific rocket trajectories were cited. 

"Replicating" a Fabrication

This Berkeley-Bellincat analysis was used for a SCM/OSJI lawsuit against Syria, including admittedly impossible claims of rockets fired from Mt. Qasioun alongside Bellingcat-oriented possible NW firing spots. (mapping report, p.64)

Then a final, bizarre, double twist - as explained here - upon Higgins' Feb. 2021 book We Are Bellingcat. This boasted of tracing ONE rocket trajectory to a Syrian army base using shadows, no further details. The footnote 96 links to the 26/08/2013 blog post explaining that was 6-8km to the north from the field impact. That's still 50-75 deg. off from what the UN-OPCW reported, but to logic-impaired ally  Mohammed Idrees Ahmad at "Newlines Magazine", that was Higgins "confirming the trajectory of the rockets." By identifying an army base, he had "replicated the U.N. mission’s most significant finding" of an attack from "the Republican Guard base on Mount Qasioun" 10km to the west. 

Maybe that leap was because Ahmad was also reviewing the brand new (same day, 23 Feb.) book Red Line, by Washington Post national security writer Joby Warrick. This says (per a Newsweek excerpt) the sarin rockets were fired "a few miles to the east" from hills northwest of Damascus, as proven by impact site 4's "azimuth of 105 degrees, in an East/Southeast trajectory." Ahmad took the passages of Warrick and Higgins together as 100% proving that impossible story was true after all, and Samantha Power's touted plans to bomb Syria immediately were fully justified. 

From then on, Ahmad presented his ridiculous article as the only thing anyone needs to see about the Ghouta attack. All that stuff about NW angles and 2km range is "recycled disinformation." In this article, Ahmad takes years of Eliot's quiet disagreement with the UN azimuth and tosses it under a poorly-driven bus. Higgins seems to quietly approve of  this, and the chance to be on the same page with a rising star of pro-war propaganda like Joby Warrick. 

Conclusion: Not Seeing is Believing

Open-Source Intelligence - OSNT - is what Higgins likes to call what we do, seemingly proud of the CIA-MI6 connotations. Whatever, it's the "open" part that's supposed to set it apart; anyone can see and show if you're wrong, so Bellingcat must be right. Like this impact site 4 the UN measured just fine. Back in March I issued an "OSINT challenge" they just didn't acknowledge: https://twitter.com/CL4Syr/status/1402719252629524480

@EliotHiggins ,brains  @bellingcat or allies: knowing HRW's 9.6km 285 is impossible, Sellstrom said this, 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.

Ghouta 2013 OSINT challenge @EliotHiggins ,brains @bellingcat or allies: knowing HRW's 9.6km 285 is impossible, Sellstrom said this, 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. pic.twitter.com/wFLNpKOUSl

— Adam Larson #EndtheOPCWCoverup #FreeAssange (@CL4Syr) March 24, 2021

https://twitter.com/CL4Syr/status/1374691627789209608

Bumped 9 June: "They've left it at no so far. Maybe they've all put me on mute? I'd like to know they saw this AND had nothing to say. Can someone help w/retweets  @EliotHiggins @bellingcat" There never was a response to that challenge until the day we appeared on Push Back, or became too big to ignore, when Higgins too felt the sudden need to block me.

In the 3D visual world he can only disagree with this important fake finding. Yet he defers to a fake 2D version wherein north replicates west and all that. His ability to exist in multiple dimensions at once is ... maybe not admirable, but interesting. It's also been useful in lending some veneer to the dirty war and regime change campaign against Syria.

In that light, let's reconsider how this guy was once heralded by Bianca Bosker for Huffington Post,  Inside The One-Man Intelligence Unit That Exposed The Secrets And Atrocities Of Syria’s War (18 November, 2013 - Updated somehow Dec 06, 2017):

Higgins ... says he has little patience for political leaders and their tendency to offer vague assurances that they have proof of weapons of mass destruction — in Iraq, in Syria, wherever — while refusing to make the goods public. “The U.S., U.K. and France produce a one-page report saying, ‘We have this evidence, we can’t show you it,’ ... People don’t just want reassurances that the evidence is there. They want to see it." Higgins sees his one-man intelligence unit as a vital source of information for the general public — more in depth than any newspaper article, but more open than any think tank or government agency. 

"They want to see" what? The truth, or the WMD lies in fancy visual form? Well, let's test that by  Higgins' approach to this official disinformation. The trusted agencies seemingly controlled by said governments had assured us the rockets pointed west - this one 8° from that wall's orientation. But again they didn't explain that carefully and people might wonder if it's true. And rightly so, of course! It should be an easy enough issue to settle, but Higgins finds he can only refute this using his vaunted open-source methods, and that's apparently not what he wanted. 

Eliot Higgins doesn't really want you to see 8° here, because that wouldn't work. He realizes that faith in this reading can only be BLIND faith, and he pretty much insists on blind faith. He tries to leave his followers seeing nothing here, and trusting this "UN" measurement at a safe distance from the evidence. 

Postscript: my use of "UN-OPCW" and scare-quoting of "UN" might be annoying or wrong. But those were the two agencies - along with the WHO - making of the mission investigating in Ghouta, and the OPCW part did the chemical weapons analysis, including the chemistry and ballistics. It's presumably them who gave us this fake trajectory. 

We would learn in 2019 how corrupt the OPCW had become by the time of their 2018 Douma probe. The time up to then and including Ghouta 2013, the organization was headed by Ahmet Uzumcu of Turkey, Ankara's former ambassador to Israel and to NATO. As always the Chief of Cabinet was from  Western nation hostile to Syria (Fairweather: UK. Braha: France.). We know of pro-war pressures in 2002, when the OPCW's first director-general was ousted under US pressure, and again in mid-2018, with a US team advising the investigators what to find, and those who followed the facts were frozen out of the process.

It is therefore interesting how Higgins et al. insist on downplaying the OPCW's role and calling this a "UN" mission filing a "UN" report, with a "UN" azimuth. It's as if it was all vetted by myriad voices and proven to be clear science, something credible enough to override lingering skepticism about WMD wars and related hostility against Ba'ath party governments in the Middle East.