Patrick Hilsman's Pro-War Syria Conspiracy Theories at Counterpunch

December 26, 2021

Apologies for being incredibly slow with blog posts (and everything else) lately. I still have some amazing information to develop and share, but it seems like a lull where I'm waiting for something, maybe internal or external, to say it's finally time. But it seems I have now avoided zero posts in all December, after just 2 in November. 

In that vein, I may be saying more later about "journalist" Patrick Hilsman and his background. For now - carpe diem - I'll focus just on what he says, now at the long-esteemed progressive, anti-war site Counterpunch. Conspiracy Theories and Tragedy in Douma, Syria, Part One was published December 5, initially behind a paywall but now freely viewable. Someone may have noticed it's not fit to be premium content one pays to read. 

Hilsman has previously been published at the Intercept, Vice News, The Daily Beast, Vocativ, Syria Deeply, BBC, etc.. At this blog, I've covered his appearance on The Young Turks questioning the reporting of Aaron Maté on the April, 2018 Douma alleged chemical attack, and the related findings of OPCW veteran inspector Ian Henderson, who led the Fact-Finding Mission's initial engineering study regarding that incident. That had found the terrace damage associated with the attack was most likely caused by explosive weaponry rather than the impact of a gas cylinder, which in turn seemed to be manually placed next to that mismatching damage. That's not the one shown in the inset image, but Henderson had serious points against that one as well. Of course his findings were excluded from public OPCW reports, a decision Hilsman endorses. 

At that link, I show Henderson's view to be correct, in great detail; all 4 inner walls of the terrace and at least 3 walls of the room below are marked with obvious, if oddly-spaced, primary and secondary fragmentation marks that can only emanate from about where that cylinder was shown, and the corner it would have impacted first. Cratering at the impact site, spalling across the ceiling below, and some reinforcing bar broken and bent in past 90 degrees, with other bars left intact and passed around, further suggest a blast wave with shrapnel, not a falling gas cylinder that was barely even dented (while its aerial harness was inexplicably stripped off and separately flattened), and then couldn't even fall through the hole it allegedly made.  

Part 2 may revisit Hilsman's dispute with Henderson and reality but will surely cover how he also disagrees with the OPCW's first-consulted toxicology experts; he's certain the chlorine in that cylinder caused the 35 seemingly sudden deaths we were shown, whereas the experts were almost as sure that could not be the case. That might improve on the points he's raised on TYT and elsewhere, but is bound to be absurd. If it ever appears, I should and might cover it here as well. 

For now I'll address part 1, which focuses on the 2018 Russian press conference with Douma locals, including the boy Hassan Diab, where it was claimed there was no chemical attack, on the staged hospital scene Diab as seen in, and its relation to the alleged chlorine attack and fatalities at what the OPCW calls "Location 2." 

Exposing Russian-Syrian Conspiracy to Manipulate Witnesses 

Hilsman decided the witnesses at the "surreal" Russian press conference at the OPCW headquarters in The Hague were "held" - and not just hosted - at a Russian military base, in "frightening" circumstances and almost surely compelled to lie. As reader Andrew put it in a recent comment. the gist is "they used a "military facility" to coerce a boy who by Hilsman's own admission hadn't been a victim of a chemical attack to say... he wasn't in a chemical attack." AFP photo via BBC: note in video footage the total lack of redness in the boy's eyes. This detail has always agreed with his testimony on that point.

Hilsman worries other Russian-held witnesses may have been murdered, maybe when they refused to lie on command; "Russia had promised to produce a far greater number of witnesses to back up claims that were ultimately never substantiated, raising further questions about the location and safety of the witnesses who never showed up. " He theorizes conspiracies that don't even make sense, in the service of dismissing eyewitness evidence and sticking it to "conspiracy theorists" who, by and large, do make sense.

Exposing Lies About What Riam Dalati Said

Hilsman's major thrust involves the findings of BBC Middle East producer/editor Riam Dalati - on seeing two dead children arranged for a photo published as a "last hug" staged photo "expressed disgust on Twitter." "Dalati felt that opposition activists were manipulating the optics of a real tragedy for more emotive images." In a similar vein, Hilsman suggests, Dalati "would eventually come out on record that despite the reality of the Douma chlorine attack, there was evidence that Jaysh Al Islam had staged the hospital chaos to create a more evocative scene for international media." Dalati announced this in February 2019, following on 6 months of investigation. "Dr. Abu Bakr Hanan, a “brute and shifty” doctor affiliated with Jaysh al-Islam" was one of those filming the hospital scene rather than helping, he revealed. "Will keep the rest for later," he said, but these findings still haven't been published, going on 3 years later (via Brandon Tuberville). 

It all caused some sensation, with many skeptics and knee-jerk critics eager to hear a trusted BBC editor admitting something in Douma was staged. Many suggested and some sloppily claimed Dalati had found the whole event was a fraud. Hilsman decries how those tweets "have been endlessly misread and misquoted by conspiracy theorists who, unlike Dalati, claim the attack itself was staged." He notes Dalati's "public rebukes and explicit insistence that the attack indeed took place," and was presumably the sole cause of the 43 reported deaths. But it should be noted he's a BBC news employee, not a chemical weapons investigator who actually understands what makes sense and what doesn't. 

Hilsman shows the Gray Zone's Max Blumenthal for an example (tweet), but I've seen clearer ones (e.g. ZeroHedge via MintPress, and see my take; what Dalati found is "evidence" for the whole attack being staged, to Max, myself, and others). And he suggests Blumenthal's cohort Aaron Maté  - who has read and reported extensively on the subject - did the same, but without bothering to name him: "a Canadian reporter would repeat the bewildered lie that the attack itself had been staged." 

But "repeating" the "lie" he just explained is not what Aaron did. The linked tweet is a short video he made IN Douma: "the site of a major atrocity & pro-war deception: the massacre of civilians by insurgents to frame Syria’s government — a crime covered up the OPCW along w/ US-UK-France." He mentions Dalati's finding in its proper context along with other reasons, and adds now, at my request "I’ve always stressed that Dalati only says the hospital was staged (while sitting on his findings [Thinking face]). Me staying the scene at the apartment is staged is based on the suppressed OPCW findings & open source material showing zero evidence of a CW attack & ample evidence of staging." And he explained at the time, in a second tweet: "I believe, but don't know for sure, that the insurgents killed these victims. It's remotely possible that they died some other way & that the insurgents then used their bodies to stage the scene. Key point is that OPCW's probe into what actually happened was censored." Unless he's lying about his beliefs, that means he didn't issue any lie, repeated, bewildered, or otherwise.

Refuting Lies About the Attack Timeline 

Maybe not a crucial point but well worth including was how "Conspiracy theorists have additionally claimed the hospital footage was filmed before the attack itself," while the bodies at Location 2 "had been filmed hours earlier" than the hospital scene. He allows that some on video may have been victims of the chlorine attack "which had killed civilians at a block of flats earlier," but they would be rather slow cases, and "many" of those seen, if not all of them, were instead "sheltering from conventional bombing in the chaos following" the alleged attack. It's unclear why people would be shouting chlorine and hosing down kids on video "hours" after that incident, but he cites "chaos," and that can explain just about anything to a mind like Hilsman's.

I don't recall seeing this claim that "the hospital footage was filmed before the attack itself" from any "conspiracy theorists," but it's likely someone has argued that, come to think of it. I'm a bit hazy on such claims, and unsure about the details, and so far, I haven't seen reason to question the FFM's final report S/1731 on this point; "Shortly after 19:00, 10 to 20 patients, including children and adults, arrived in groups at the emergency department of Douma Hospital covered in dust and with blackened faces." This refers to the same scene and probably means just after the attack around 7:30 PM, or also put as "shortly after 19:00." That's not before the attack, but it's not hours after it either.

And according to the FFM, the first "images depicting decedents" at Location 2 "were taken between 22:00 and 23:00 on 7 April." NYT had a time stamp of 10:06 PM on what seems to be the first video at location 2, and it seems all other imagery is contemporaneous or later. The signs suggest the victims died around 7:30 or not much earlier, but they were never seen until some 2.5 hours after the hospital scene, not hours before it. 

It's during this time, I suspect, the 35-43 corpses were transported from the gas chamber(s) where they were killed, probably via Jaysh al-Islam's tunnel system that opened less than two blocks away from to Location 2. This time span does not even exist in Hilsman's mind. 

It's not clear where he picked up this confusion. Most likely he just learned thetwo events were hours apart and then forgot which came first. By way of explanation, he says the FFM and all of us "can be contradicted by following a simple timeline of the available evidence," linking to an article about the 2013 Ghouta attack. Yeah, he's confused.

Exposing Russian-Led Incident Conflation 

OK, so the conspiracy theorists messed up the timeline to push their lies, Hilsman said while doing that himself, conflating incidents year apart. Another thing he says they did, with the Russians and Syrians leading, is to conflate that fake hospital scene and the real chlorine attack just a few hours apart to suggest both had been staged. 

"Subsequent international coverage of the incident gave the impression that the panicked civilians filmed at the underground hospital were all victims of the chlorine attack, which had killed civilians at a block of flats earlier when in reality many were sheltering from conventional bombing in the chaos following the chlorine strike. This confusion has been at the center of Russian and Assad regime attempts to obfuscate guilt for the crime."

"...conspiracy theorists have since taken the surreal moment as evidence that witnesses testified that the White Helmets had staged the attack, a notion which clearly originates with the Syrian and Russian diplomats, and not the witnesses, many of whom had been spotted at the hospital as opposed to the block of flats where the attack actually occurred. As an aforementioned BBC producer mentioned, this is why Russia chose to focus on the hospital and not the block of flats where the attack actually occurred."

So Hilsman would urge you not to confuse the two, as the Russians and Syrians want you to do. He echoes the BBC's Riam Dalati, who said "no one knew what really happened at the flats apart from activists manipulating the scene there. This is why Russia focused solely on discrediting the hospital scene." It's the only part they knew much about. 

It's curious then how the little girl Masa is one of those seen at the hospital. She and her mother Amani claim to have been next door to the chlorine release (along with sister Malaz, father Diaa, and an uncle), where just 3 people out of 75 sheltering died. As reported, they suffered instant foaming, paralysis, and unconsciousness that chlorine doesn't actually cause, but were lucky enough to hear the sound from the neighboring roof (Masa grinningly recalls hearing the gas cylinder's valve open with "feeesh" sound), allowing them to break the paralysis or something. The neighbors - she thinks - could only smell it killing them horribly for probably over an hour, so had no choice but to stay inexplicably frozen and endure it (aside from at least Naser Hanan who says he heard it pop from the basement, and also managed to escape. It remains unclear what the dead did or didn't hear). 

And so Masa and kin survived while "everyone" next door died (except of course the 5+ miracle survivors on record, none of whom they bumped into?) and then, we're to believe, they sought treatment amid that staged scene Hilsman thinks happened hours later. Just as with Hassan Diab who was in no gas attack, little Masa is all wet but has no hint of redness in her eyes, even if her backpack really did reek of bleach etc. a week later.

And so these folks at least were at both scenes, allegedly - the staged one, and the disputed one - adding to the confusion the Syrians and Russians supposedly invented as the linchpin of their denials. 

On the Masa/Amani story, see a prior post on that which centered on "shelter confusion" that has been mostly resolved (it doesn't seem they claimed their own building was impacted, as it had initially read), but the post still needs updated to reflect that. The story is still highly implausible.

Side-note: Masa et al blamed falling barrel in one day's worth of interviews on April 16, then went quiet as others spoke up; clean-shaven young men claiming to have survived from Location 2 itself, after losing close family. These later witnesses did not, as far as I know, appear at that hospital scene, though one was named Naser Hanan (any relation to Dr Abu Bakr Hanan?). These would variously blame no one or even blame Jaysh al-Islam and the White Helmets for a different but implausible scenario where people lived there and died from the gas with the same instant foam, paralysis, and loss of consciousness, among other shifting, dubious or impossible details (see here). 

Ignoring all eyewitness accounts - even those at the Russian press conference, those interviewed by Robert Fisk, etc., and focusing on the physical evidence as available, I still propose a third option put well enough by a certain Canadian journalist as "the massacre of civilians by insurgents to frame Syria’s government." 

Covering for the Possible Perps 1: JaI, Narrative Kidnappers 

Jaysh al-Islam (hereafter JaI, meaning "Army of Islam," and formerly Liwa (banner of) al-Islam), a Saudi-backed extremist militia that for years dominated the Damascus suburbs, are the prime alternate suspects for the Douma massacre, as well as for the 2013 Ghouta chemical massacre. They come in for some criticism and something Hilsman seems to couch as balance.

"Zahran Alloush’s gangs, who terrorized the population, paraded Allawi hostages in cages, kidnapped opposition activists, dismantled revolutionary organizations, and used civilian hostages as slave labor to dig tunnel fortifications. ... The ruthlessness with which Jaysh al Islam had tried to seize control of narratives, even those which painted the regime in a terrible light, is hardly surprising"

Their legendary brutality and seizing of civilians on sectarian grounds and freely abusing them makes JaI prime suspects for ... staging a hospital scene "hours later," to kidnap just a narrative. To Hilsman, it doesn't make them suspects for anything worse, because he's already decided the Syrian government is to blame for dropping that chlorine cylinder on people no one held prisoner. 

Explaining further, Hilsman noted how JaI "had kidnapped activists involved with the very organizations that had documented the 2013 East Ghouta Sarin attack after all." And they presumably killed the "Douma four," as threatened by JaI founder Alloush long before the December, 2013 kidnapping JaI denied but never investigated, and considering the activists never re-appeared except as traces within JaI prisons. 

And the "Violations Documentation Center" (VDC) they ran from Douma didn't even find the truth of the Ghouta incident (or didn't report it). It was some researchers including myself who earlier this year found - by a unique combination of rocket ballistics and video evidence - Jaysh al-Islam or allies carried out that sarin rocket attack from a spot only they could access. This adds to prior findings for a managed massacre; for example, the hundreds of victims seen don't appear to have died from sarin as alleged, and at least one who survived a gassing, probably with Carbon Monoxide, had his throat cut in between videos at an insurgent-run "clinic" in Kafr Batna, with clear signs the site's basement was used as a gas chamber to kill some 85+ people there. 

Hilsman, among others, has tried weakly to deny this latest evidence, without finding any significant errors or alternate explanations. (his bit: I was a "ghoul" collaborating with an "Israeli tech firm" and we were wrong, obviously)

Consider also how days after Douma, as part of the surrender deal, Jaysh al-Islam released their civilian captives who remained alive, and it was only about 200 of them; some 3,000 were just unaccounted for, quite possibly killed to stage events like the Ghouta and Douma chemical massacres. And note that some 1/3 or more of the identified victims in Douma are probably related by blood or marriage to a prominent opponent of JaI, Mohammad Dyab Bakryieh, founder of the Douma Martyr's Brigade that would launch a failed rebellion against JaI in 2015. 

Two extremist, sectarian "civil society leaders" in Douma - Abu Omar Burkhush and "Abu Azzoun" - helped manage the largest collection of bodies in the 2013 massacre (top images below), using dead babies to damn the "Nusayri (Alawite) regime." It seems they did the same in 2018; the two still swore in a 2019 interview with Turkish TRT World that the attack used sarin and actually killed 187 people, whom they personally helped recover from "bunkers." Oddly, early reports had running totals that stopped about the same - 180-200 killed by the sarin attack, before reverting with poor explanation to "more than" a confirmed 42, later decided as 43. These two guys seem to know what they're talking about. But where were the other 144 people killed, and where was that "sarin" released and how? They probably know this as well, but don't say.  

So why in 2018 would these monsters with Jaysh al-Islam stage a scene relating to the Douma chemical massacre but NOT arrange the whole false-flag massacre (if there were one)? They were perhaps the only party capable of that, and there's much evidence suggesting it happened; the apparent staging of bodies at Location 2, the concealment of their true manner and place of death, peripheral staging like the hospital scene, etc. And finally, note that JaI-affiliated activists reportedly controlled the scene of Location 2, preventing anyone else from accessing it or witnessing their manipulations. The mentioned VDC reported on April 9 "Jaish Al-Islam also made it difficult to hold independent investigation and documentation of the site yesterday and tried to bar witnesses from documenting and photographing any evidence." 

Dalati: "I can tell you that Jaysh al-Islam ruled Douma with an iron fist. They coopted activists, doctors and humanitarians with fear and intimidation." They also used the more enduring method of actual ideological sympathy - maybe that's why so few have spoken up even after JaI's threats grew less credible.

Covering for the Perps 2: Exposing the Lie of Body Planting

"Over 40 bodies were found in a single block of flats" as Hilsman puts it. It was reported as 35, with 34 seen and one pregnant, and for an accepted 43 deaths, some 8-9 died in another location no one has ever specified. Otherwise, so far so good.

Some have noted the various clues of staging here besides the hospital, including: several victims are seen to have no dust on their feet from walking to these spots - those outside include one on a stretcher, one seemingly set to be carried in when the work was halted, 2 others laid as if ready (or do you read all that backwards, with bodies carried out dustless feet first?) - those inside are often piled or strangely posed near entrances or the stairs only to the second floor, as if they were too heavy to carry further - a door had to be taken off its hinges for the victims to gain desperate access to a room just inches above the street-level gas they had just run BACK inside to escape (and they're educated to get above such gas, as Hilsman has emphasized, not to stay level with it and just lay there) ... and around the corner from that door, bodies piled on a single rug someone had dragged to the shower, where the corpses all had their faces and hair washed, long after death and shortly before images were allowed. Someone left wet dingy rags and a removed respirator, as if to protect from fumes the people put off. Etc. 

Hisman has a partial answer in "a detail which has been erroneously seized upon by conspiracy theorists who claim the moving of bodies was proof of the bodies having been planted outright." As he claims with no explanation, corpses were moved around some only because of "the first responders on the scene who checked the corpses for signs of life," and not for any nefarious reason. 

Their faces were and hair were washed to check for signs of life? This girl (below) was being checked for signs of life around 1 am by this White Helmets member, was incidentally photographed, striking a poignant note, and was then left atop the pile of bodies at that rescuer's feet? (victim code: G10 - see mapping and analysis)

This older girl was moved half a flight of stairs down to check for signs of life? This new position was seen in 2 new videos released just this year (see here), claiming to show the 2013 Ghouta attack, but showing later scenes of the 2018 one, in the early morning around dawn, it seems. 

Here she's next to another girl just above the second floor, matching better with Khaled Abu Jafaar's prior claim of carrying a girl under each arm when he collapsed on his third dash down the stairs (Al-Jazeera). But she was still on the landing at 10 PM, some 2.5 hours after the alleged attack. (victim codes: G1, G2)

This woman's wedding ring was stolen as they checked for signs of life? (deduced as W1, face left-side-down in brown fluid next to similar-looking W2, as seen earlier w/ring vs. flat, brown face seen later, moved from empty original spot onto a rug a feet away, posed in a near-hug with a relocated G5, and with no ring)

So there are the noted clues for planting, several bodies moved between videos, photo ops and some valuables taken, and ... The head of a team of German toxicology experts consulted by the OPCW's FFM in June, 2018, was more circumspect than the non-expert Mr. Hilsman. As the meeting summary put it, upon seeing imagery of those killed, the chief expert felt they COULD have died in a real chemical attack OR, seeing how that made little sense with just the chlorine found, the body array could be a "propaganda exercise." In the opinion of one employee who had been at the meeting and heard the fuller explanation, that suspicion was "fueled by" by how the deaths "do not match chlorine rather than corpses arranged for propaganda purposes." This chief expert theorized a possible conspiracy, citing the visual evidence and his own expert analysis, as sought by the OPCW. This isn't some Russian-inspired internet troll twisting Dalati's words. 

https://wikileaks.org/opcw-douma/document/actual_toxicology_meeting_redacted/

https://wikileaks.org/opcw-douma/document/correctly_redacted_emails_re_toxicology_minutes/

OPCW response: the FFM leadership erased that expert consultation from their process and replaced it with another one months later, which also failed to link chlorine to the deaths, but probably did so differently, with less conspiracy theorizing, and maybe with strategically narrow lines of questioning, etc. No details have been clarified. Hilsman ignorantly endorses all this, and supports that with a baseless assumption; the insurgents and thair allies didn't stage any corpse propaganda... except a little bit. Mainly, they were just hoping there was still someone they could save. They didn't kill anyone, or help to launder such.

Side-note: Having found no one alive, Hilsman writes, the would-be rescuers "left the cameras rolling as they opened the eyes of some of the victims to record the burning of their corneas," which would result from chlorine exposure. But this scene was filmed the next morning outside the underground hospital, FWIW, alongside that "last hug" image. And they failed to show any corneal burning, which always involves redness (as was noted above as lacking at the staged hospital scene). These people just show postmortem clouding of the sclera and zero redness, which is odd considering the other signs of caustic gas exposure and resultant pulmonary edema. It doesn't seem the German experts brought this up, but it's true, maybe too obvious to see. This oddity seems related to the very unusual pattern of yellow-brown staining and/or irritation seen on the faces of most or all the visible fatalities (and on none of the alleged survivors) that excludes the eyes in a perfectly goggle-shaped zone. This weird discoloration in turn probably explains the unusual - and failed - efforts to wash those stains off their faces before the video propaganda commenced. For a long time now I've had more to say on this aspect, and that remains so now. Don't stay tuned, but be ready to tune back in for that.

Monitor on Massacre Marketing: Douma's Mask of Death, part 1 (libyancivilwar.blogspot.com)

Conclusion: No Rogue Precog 

So Hilsman ... disagrees with the German toxicologists consulted by the FFM, with the FFM's original engineering sub-team, and the FFM's timeline of events, though he'll be correcting the last point. And feels the conspiracy theorists should defer as he does to the FFM investigation only as it came out in the end - he agrees with OPCW leadership and the governments corrupting it, including France and the US (the two he identifies most with), the UK, Israel and Saudi Arabia, and also with Jaysh al-Islam - if not on every detail each has offered. 

He poses as "rogue precog" - I think - for defying early US calls for an Assad chlorine-sarin attack, with an early guess that it was an Assad chlorine attack with no sarin, rather than an insurgent massacre covered by a staged/fabricated sarin-then-chlorine attack. He issued that call April 11, just a week after the incident - even before the sarin claims had completely fallen apart (link, and see below). As a recent tweet to me shows, he's still proud of being "right when the US government was lying to the press" - along with the White Helmets and others Hilsman would never accuse of lying - and he's still a bit too eager to prove that he "doesn’t give a shit what the US gov thinks." The fairly random reasoning behind his lucky guess was explained on TYT (something about hardened bunkers etc. made it obvious to him, tactically - I'd have to review to clarify that). Others like former US Secret Service man Dan Kaszeta already had some cause to back off sarin claims, and may have informed Patrick's views (see below). April 12 Hilsman said the same to HRW's Ken Roth, adding "I'm not qualified to make that determination but this is what independent exerts [sic] are hinting at." 

Coincidentally, the sarin claims were falling apart for everyone, and soon unspecified US officials came to the Hague, on the 4th of July, and told OPCW they were investigating an Assad chlorine attack (see below), against much of the evidence they had gathered up to then. Soon the OPCW reformed its probe and more easily found what US officials suggested, "confirming" Hilsman and his bit of supposed anti-establishment psychic inference.

A real rogue precog might, for example, see Obama issue his "red line" threat/offer on August 20, 2012, or miss that and notice him repeating it on December 3, and then start watching for false flag allegations of Assad CW use, and see them appear starting 3 days later. That would be me, over here. But Pat came up with the phrase. It's neat.

Here as before, Patrick Hilsman promotes hostile propaganda to underpin unjust war, sanctions, etc. while posing as pro-truth and anti-war. He claims to be pro-science while failing to get it - on this front anyway - and second-guessing everyone who does get it. He claims to be anti-authority while constantly appealing to authority and generally conforming to it. He signals liberal virtues while assisting the world's most powerful bloc of nations and interests to weaken or eliminate opposition, crush dissent and impose their global profit and control agenda as uniformly as possible. He's a type we know all too well, and one worth knowing a bit better.