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Allies’ Intelligence on Syria All Points to Assad Forces Allies’ Intelligence Differs on Details, but Still Points to Assad Forces
(about 7 hours later)
The British say there have been 14 Syrian chemical attacks since 2012 and the last, the most horrific, killed “at least 350” civilians. The Americans count fewer attacks, but put a stunningly higher, quite precise number on the casualties from the attack two weeks ago: 1,429. WASHINGTON — The British say that there have been 14 Syrian chemical attacks since 2012 and that the last, the most horrific, killed “at least 350” Syrian civilians. The Americans count fewer attacks, but put a stunningly higher, quite precise number on the casualties: 1,429.
The French argue that only President Bashar al-Assad and the closest members of his clan can order chemical attacks; the Americans say that, at least when it comes to the Aug. 21 attack that has triggered the Congressional debate over an American armed strike, it is unclear where the orders came from. The French argue that only President Bashar al-Assad of Syria and the closest members of his clan can order chemical attacks; publicly, the Americans say that, at least in the Aug. 21 attack that led President Obama to call for military action, it is unclear where the orders came from. In classified briefings they are far more specific in saying that the commander of Syria’s infamous Unit 450, which controls its chemical weapons, gave the order.
In short, the differences in intelligence estimates among the United States and its closest allies are considerable but, in the end, perhaps not that meaningful. All come to the same basic conclusions: the attacks involved sarin gas, only the Assad government had control over the chemical agents, and whether it was premeditated or the result of “sloppiness,” as one senior American official put it, the results were devastating. In short, the differences in intelligence estimates among the United States and its closest allies are considerable but, in their view, not very significant. All come to the same bottom line: all the attacks involved sarin gas, only the Assad government had control over the chemical agents, and, whether they were premeditated or the result of “sloppiness,” as one senior American official put it, the results were devastating.
Members of Congress, emerging from unclassified and classified briefings, say they have little doubt that Mr. Assad’s government was responsible for the attacks; even those who cite the example of the huge intelligence errors made about the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq concede this case is different. Iraq was about assessing whether weapons existed; Syria is all about who used them, and whether a strike would prevent — or encourage — their use again. As they emerge from unclassified and classified briefings, members of Congress say the Obama administration’s case against the Assad government is convincing and leaves them with little doubt that it was responsible for the attacks. Even those most conscious of the intelligence errors that preceded the invasion of Iraq concede that this case is different. Iraq was about assessing whether weapons existed, they say, while Syria is all about who used them, and whether a military strike would prevent — or encourage — their use again.
But the very public way that the Americans, French, British and Israelis have published their evidence underscores the huge sensitivities around the intelligence itself, as well as the questions it prompts. “More and more members of Congress are finding the evidence that Assad used chemical weapons compelling,” said Representative Adam B. Schiff, a California Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, who has been briefed on the administration’s evidence and is skeptical about whether the United States should intervene without the help of traditional allies. “The question now is, what should our response be?”
The issues are made more difficult by the fact that chemical weapons can be delivered in many ways, from small rockets to helicopters (the intelligence reports argue both have been used at different times), and the effects are sometimes hard to detect. Still, the very public way that the Americans, French, British and Israelis have felt it necessary to publish their evidence — even where it differs — underscores the huge post-Iraq sensitivities involved in justifying the need for new military involvement in the Mideast. And until the most recent gas attack in Syria, reliable assessments of the use of chemical weapons proved particularly difficult.
There was no mistaking the effects, though, in the Aug. 21 attack, in which there were so many dead, and so much forensic evidence, that there is little credible argument that sarin gas was not used. The question is whether the Obama administration reacted too slowly to earlier attacks, and whether Congress will decide that, no matter how horrendous the effects, it is not a problem for America to solve. The Americans say their assessment is based on “multiple streams of information, including reporting of Syrian officials planning and executing chemical weapons attacks,” code words for intercepts of conversations. It also refers to “human, signals and geospatial intelligence that reveal regime activities” connected to attack preparations.
A look at the intelligence judgments made public by France, Britain and the United States is generally consistent, if still laden with caveats about how and how surely the governments came to their conclusions. But a look at the intelligence judgment made public by the United States, Britain, France and Israel suggests that the United States was reluctant — and slow — to conclude that small-scale chemical weapon attacks began in Syria last year. And even today, Washington cannot agree with its allies on exactly how those attacks began.
On Aug. 29, the British government released a declassified assessment from the chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, Jon Day, addressed to Prime Minister David Cameron, saying that it was “highly likely” that the Syrian government carried out the chemical warfare attacks of Aug. 21. The Israelis were the first to press the case, declaring in an April 23 presentation at a security conference that it had clear evidence that Syrian forces had used chemical weapons on a small scale. But no sooner had a senior official of Israel’s military intelligence unit laid out his case than Secretary of State John Kerry, seeing the reports, called Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, apparently out of concern that such a declaration would force Mr. Obama’s hand.
The letter noted that Britain had previously judged that the Syrian government had “used lethal C.W. on 14 occasions from 2012,” adding that “this judgment was made with the highest possible level of certainty following an exhaustive review.” Mr. Kerry told reporters that the Israeli leader “was not in a position to confirm” the intelligence assessment. American officials said later that they had concerns about the chain of custody on hair, blood and urine samples from some of those attacks, and feared the evidence might have been tinkered with by the opposition.
“A clear pattern of regime use has therefore been established.” Now the British say that in their judgment, the Syrian government “used lethal C.W. on 14 occasions from 2012,” adding that “this judgment was made with the highest possible level of certainty following an exhaustive review.” They added, “A clear pattern of regime use has therefore been established.”
As for the attack on Aug. 21, Mr. Day wrote, there was a lot of “open source reporting of C.W. use,” including videos, photographs and testimonials. “As a result, there is little serious dispute that chemical attacks causing mass casualties on a larger scale than hitherto (including, we judge, at least 350 fatalities), took place.” While the United States eventually came to a similar conclusion, it was with only a moderate level of confidence — meaning that some of the nation’s 16 intelligence agencies disagreed. Those internal debates did not get resolved until the Aug. 21 attack, on which all the different agencies agreed.
For Washington, the total was considerably higher, saying that “a preliminary U.S. government assessment determined that 1,429 people were killed in the chemical weapons attack, including at least 426 children.” But it is the French who have been the most specific. They argued in their Monday assessment that the Aug. 21 attack involved “massive use of chemical agents” against civilian populations in several suburbs of Damascus. It was followed by “significant ground and aerial strikes” with conventional munitions that were aimed at the “destruction of evidence” in those areas.
The British judged that “there is no credible intelligence or other evidence” to substantiate claims that the Syrian opposition either used chemical weapons or even has them.
Unreleased intelligence provided to Mr. Cameron described “limited but growing” reports, Mr. Day’s letter said, “that the regime was responsible for the attacks and that they were conducted to help clear the opposition from strategic parts of Damascus.”
On Monday, France released its own intelligence summary of nine pages, including photographs, charts and proprietary French sourcing as well as open sourcing and information from allies.
It asserts that Mr. Assad’s forces conducted attacks involving the “massive use of chemical agents” against civilian populations in several suburbs of Damascus on Aug. 21, and later mounted “significant ground and aerial strikes” with conventional munitions that were aimed at the “destruction of evidence” in those areas.
The French said that none of the rebel groups fighting the Syrian government now possessed the “capacity to stock and use” such chemical agents.
The government possesses more than 1,000 tons of chemical agents, one of the largest such stockpiles in the world, the French say, including several hundred tons of sarin gas and “several dozen tons” of VX, which it called the most toxic known chemical warfare agent, and the report described the varying delivery methods.
The French also warned that “our services possess information, from a national source, that leave one to think that other actions of this nature could again be conducted.”The French also warned that “our services possess information, from a national source, that leave one to think that other actions of this nature could again be conducted.”
The French report mentions two previous chemical weapons attacks, one on April 29, at Saraqeb, in northern Syria, that poisoned approximately 20 people, as well as medical personnel, with sarin dropped from a helicopter; and the other in mid-April in Jobar, in the eastern neighborhoods of Damascus, where 40 people were poisoned with sarin. French services collected blood, urine, ground and munition samples from both sites, which confirmed sarin use. Chemical weapons can be delivered many ways, from helicopters (which the French say were used in April, in small attacks) to small rockets (which the Americans say delivered the deadliest attacks.). The effects are sometimes hard to detect, and American officials admit they were caught off guard by a string of smaller attacks starting in March, with no established way of gathering evidence of chemical weapons use.
On the night of Aug. 21, the French say, there was a “massive and coordinated attack” using chemical weapons. Based on the analysis of 47 original videos of the events, the report tallies 281 deaths in the Ghouta East and West neighborhoods. The report also says that the higher death tolls reported by other sources (up to 1,500) are consistent with expert models of the impact of a chemical attack in that area. But in the Aug. 21 attack, there were so many dead and so much forensic evidence that only Russia has argued that it was the rebels themselves who launched the attack — and they have offered no details to back that claim. “We are certain that none of the opposition has the weapons or capacity to effect a strike of this scale, particularly from the heart of regime territory,” Mr. Kerry told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday. The British say they have come to the same conclusion.
The French said it was “very unlikely” that the attack was actually a manipulation or a setup by the rebels, based on the number of videos and testimonies, and many young children were seen suffering from violent convulsions at eight different sites. In their briefings for lawmakers, administration officials typically begin with a primer on Syria’s chemical weapons stockpiles, assessed to be among the largest in the world. Only the French have offered a detailed accounting, including “several hundreds of tons of sulfur mustard” and “tens of tons of VX,” among the most toxic chemical agents. The French also speak of “several hundreds of tons of sarin,” and in the closed-door sessions American intelligence officials tell lawmakers that they believe the Syrian forces are using sarin exclusively in their attacks.
So, the French concluded, “the attack on Aug. 21 can only have been ordered and conducted by the regime.” The report says the attack followed a classic tactical plan that was prepared for days in advance, with conventional bombing and artillery attacks on East Ghouta before dawn. The report also said there was evidence that the government tried to cover up the attack by shelling and bombing the area afterward, and that military forces had started fires to purify the air. Those actions delayed the inspectors’ arrival, the report said. Unit 450, the secretive Syrian Air Force organization that controls the country’s chemical weapon stockpiles, is a highly vetted outfit that is deemed one of the most loyal to the Assad government, given the importance of the weapons in its custody, according to American intelligence officials. “If you are rising through the top ranks of military loyalists to Assad,” said Joseph Holliday, a fellow with the Institute for the Study of War in Washington, “you are likely to have found yourself high up in the 450 hierarchy.”
According to the French report, the government was afraid of a major rebel offensive on Damascus at the time, and the attack, therefore, was aimed at loosening the rebels’ grip around the capital and securing strategic areas. According to a French intelligence assessment of Syria’s chemical weapons program, Unit 450 “is in charge of the filling of chemical ammunitions, as well as the security of chemical sites and stockpiles.” The Israelis bombed missiles in a convoy just outside one of the center’s crucial sites in January.
Only Mr. Assad and senior members of his Alawite clan are authorized to employ the deadly arsenal, according to the French assessment issued on Monday. The order is then forwarded to commanding officers within Unit 450 as well as to military planners in Damascus who decide the target, the choice of weapon and which toxic agent to use, the report said.
But no one can agree on a motive for Mr. Assad in the Aug. 21 attack. Some American officials believe that the intent was to continue low-level chemical attacks that would be hard for the West to prove, and the American assessment said that “regime officials were witting of and directed the attack.” The British are more circumspect: “There is no obvious political or military trigger for regime use of C.W. on an apparently larger scale now.”
During a classified briefing for about 30 lawmakers on Tuesday, American officials said that while there was no evidence that the Syrian president himself had given the orders for the most recent deadly attacks, they believe the directives came from generals close to Mr. Assad, including the commander of Unit 450. “It rose to a very, very high level,” said one Democratic lawmaker who was in the briefing.
In the past year, American officials have used back channels to warn the unit’s commanders that they would be held personally responsible if the government used its chemical weapons. But the history of the past few months suggests that effort yielded little or no results — perhaps because the members of that unit, almost all from Mr. Assad’s Alawite sect, view the weapons stockpiles as one of the last guarantees of their survival.

Steven Erlanger contributed reporting from London.