"We have interviewed ... 40 members of the White Helmets, including those from Douma, who provided a detailed description of their methods commonly used by their organization to fake scenes," Grigoriev said.
The foundation conducted a fact-finding mission in Syria and located both White Helmets members and dozens of other people who participated in the staged attacks, Grigoriev said.
"Those people told us in detail how they had to participate in the staging for few dollars to buy some food for their families," he said.
One woman recounted how she was given white burial shroud to wrap herself up in and then told to lay on the ground and smear her mouth with toothpaste, Grigoriev said.
Another recalled being told to "close his eyes" as he was filmed being taken to a medical center by members of the White Helmets.
"Amar Al Mustafa Ibn Mohammad from Aleppo saw with his own eyes how they simulated a chemical attack, they brought children, laid them down, put civilians away and filmed children as if they died in the chemical attack," Grigoriev said.
A White Helmets member in Douma told the investigators that local children were given candies as rewards for their participation in the staged videos.
Grigoriev pointed out that the investigation cast considerable doubt on the findings of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which blamed Assad for chemical attacks in Syria's Douma in 2018.
The OPCW's conclusions relied on falsified facts and untrustworthy or unidentified sources, he noted.
In March, the OPCW issued its final report on the investigation regarding the incident of alleged use of toxic chemicals as a weapon in Duma, Syria, in April 2018, which identified chlorine as "most likely" chemical agent used in the attack.
The facts presented in the foundation's investigation "confirm that the OPCW has deliberately failed to conduct an impartial assessment of the incident in Douma and raise doubts as to what else the organization is capable of making... in the future," Grigoriev said.
The Foundation for the Study of Democracy interviewed 15 witnesses at the site of the Douma attack, 40 members of the White Helmets who admitted faking attacks, and more than 25 others who saw the White Helmets stage the attacks. It also analyzed photographs and videos of the incident.
The White Helmets, also known as Syria Civil Defence (SCD), operates in parts of rebel-controlled Syria and Turkey and claims to be a group of volunteer rescue workers.
The Syrian and Russian governments have accused the White Helmets of staging several provocations involving chemical weapons to justify potential foreign interventions and the presence of foreign forces in Syria, as well as carry arms and support terrorist groups.
The OPCW investigation was launched after the White Helmets group published a video of the reported attack in Douma, which is located in the Damascus neighborhood of Eastern Ghouta. The video showed local residents, both adults and children, being treated in the hospital after the alleged attack.
The reports about the attack and the publication of the footage by the White Helmets prompted missile strikes by France, the United Kingdom and the United States on alleged chemical weapons production facilities in Damascus.
The Russian Foreign Ministry has said that the claims about the alleged use of toxic chemicals by the Syrian government were aimed at justifying external military action.
Comment: Like so many of the wars the US wages under utterly deceitful pretenses, one is reminded of the slew of stories rammed down our throats in order to serve Washington's Big Lie narratives in the service of achieving world hegemony.
See also:
- Russian UN rep in Geneva: 'Truth about White Helmets is gradually emerging'
- Ominous casting call: Russian MOD says White Helmets hiring locals for staged chemical attacks, paying in food
- Russian UN envoy: White Helmets working on a new false-flag chemical attack in Idlib province, Syria
- The White Helmets, alleged organ traders & child kidnappers who should be condemned, instead receive praise from mainstream media
- Russian military: White Helmets have shot at least nine chemical weapons videos & are staging rehearsals of alleged chemical attack
- Syrian Foreign Minister warns White Helmets kidnapped 44 children to stage chemical attack in Idlib
- Showing their true colors: Remaining Syrian White Helmets want evacuation to Al-Qaeda-held Idlib province
- Ben Swann's Reality Check: Who's funding the White Helmets?
Reader Comments
If they cut you off as 'friends'; well, they weren't friends worth having; as any worthwhile soul expects their friends to revere truth, not run from it!
R.C.
P.s., Look for this on the front page of the NYT, et al...(NOT!)
RC
It’s hell for all the rest of us, always and ever. Until people wake the fuck up it will be more of the same.
War is big business for all corporations involved, funded by bankers, propagandized by media, stage managed by Hollywood, and weapons manufacturers make a killing.Well said. Read War is a racket, by Major General Smedley D Butler. Nothing has changed.
It’s hell for all the rest of us, always and ever. Until people wake the fuck up it will be more of the same.
This may seem mad because of course it is mad - but the mind in the mask (persona - and indeed in personae) is needful of diversion from the simple or naked truth unmasked.
War on Life can only seem to make sense when a separate 'life' is gotten from the denial and blocking of wholeness. In such a 'mind' everything is then reversed. Life is feared as 'death' of the separate 'life' in loss of possession, control and face - or identity. And so a mind made upon the idea of denial and death 'walks the Earth' with terror stalking at its heart - but cannot inherit and share in its Earth's blessing while convicted of its own set of mind.
Fear of love is really fear of what a mind in darkness has made of love. There is no fear in the true of love - and that is the undoing of what never truly was - by the grace to use what was made by separation and denial, for healing and awakening to shared being .
Recognising a protection racket is the basis from which to question what exactly is being protected and why. In the world, many are seeing the pattern of this - for war and sickness in fear and division is being protected by masking guile. But are we waking to notice the same pattern in the 'narrative control' of our mind? - Or what we have accepted and protected as our mind by the nature of suggestion.
Notional Security depends on what notion is being masked over or hidden in order to protect it from open awareness. Levels of knowledge according to the setting of permission privileges operates a hierarchy of insiders at conflicting levels of narrative identity - but the core 'survival' drive is narrative continuity - of identity management and defence Inc.
The true nature of identification is of a giving and receiving as one, and not an assertion seeking validity and reinforcement from the validation of others. What we are receiving is the measure of our giving, but masked so as to justify a separate and self-special one set against 'other' and wholeness. This need not be.
What I do not understand is how all of you clowns
1. Read an article by Sputnik(news controlled by the Russian government).
2. Written by a Russian who supports Bashir al Assad and against western intervention.
3. Interviewed a bunch of “witnesses” with no proof and some of whom they admitted were terrorists(because that’s credible).
4. And then claim that all of the sheeple should wake up and open their eyes to see the truth.
You are not intelligent!
If you’re not an American sheep, then you’re a Russian sheep.
I understand the reason for the white helmets to fake these attacks and I have no doubt that some of the footage was faked. I believe it was in the late 90’s that the Palestinians under the control of Hamas were doing the same things(with actual proof).It doesn't simply boil down to you're either an abc sheep or a xyz sheep, that's the hegelian dialect that has been created and pushed in every facet of interaction of the masses, a control tactic don't forget.
What I do not understand is how all of you clowns
1. Read an article by Sputnik(news controlled by the Russian government).
2. Written by a Russian who supports Bashir al Assad and against western intervention.
3. Interviewed a bunch of “witnesses” with no proof and some of whom they admitted were terrorists(because that’s credible).
4. And then claim that all of the sheeple should wake up and open their eyes to see the truth.
You are not intelligent!
If you’re not an American sheep, then you’re a Russian sheep.
Yes, with source there is an element of filtration required, but when information is corroborated by other independent sources such as Eva Bartlett and Vanessa Beeley to name but two that gives credence.
You may understand the reason for them to fake the attacks, but do you know the backstory of the WH? If you do, then I find it hard to understand your name calling and going on the offensive simply because of the source if you know and understand what the history, mission, funding and support of the WH means to this conflict/proxy war.
It is also true that neither this or the Sputnik article gives links to sources - but in the era of astroturfing - this becomes harder to validate.
Taken just as a story - and parsed for manipulative design and intent - I find the 'western' media to be operating aggressive and destructive deceit or 'narrative control'.
The patterns of propaganda are recognisable in stirring fear, hatred and willingness to align in support of life-destructive acts.
When a would be unipolar dominance is targeting regions of non compliance to an ever tightening system of broad spectrum controls, it is appropriate for such regions to resist or not comply - while seeking for multipolar recognition. But all the Russian state has to do as propaganda is hold a narrative for Russia - they do not need to actively undermine the 'West' - for it is already undermined and operating a self-destructive or self-contradictory agenda - that is effectively capitalised and targeted to prepare the way for an acceptance of a global government - but... according to who's plan?
Russia's english news only need give a platform and a voice to those who are denied or walled out by their own Media - or rather by corporate media assets.
But your point regarding automatic acceptance is valid - even if your judgement casts you as the one calling everyone else sheep - as if you have never followed or responded to a suggestion without first checking in.
It may be that there are no real sides in any of the wars - soft or hard. Global finance has no allegiance to anything but temporary usefulness for ownership and control. What does it profit a man to gain a world at cost of Soul? A harvest of denial.
In a world of lies - how to know?
In a mind of lies - what seems to be an asset turns out to be a complex instrument of toxic debt.
That COULD be the way to wake up - because self-honesty is the grace of noticing.
It is easier to deceive a man than convince him he is already deceived (Twain).
How can a mind given to (accepting) deceit, lead to any other outcome than a world of lies?
But having made such a world (of denial) can it serve any other purpose than that which made it?
Purpose is not IN the world. Purpose is accepted in and as the mind. Whatever anyone else chooses - you are the determiner of the purpose you accept for you.
By investing personal identity in private possession and control - is power given to conditions and interpretations of feared, wished or imagined meanings as if to protect and extend our self-investment - and thus become subject to a world set outside ourselves - and then seek to adapt to, escape, or overcome by opposing.
But still within the original 'error' of the belief in possession and control - which reveals itself as a false possession that dispossesses us of whole Souled awareness, set under a tyrannous substitution for the true and free will - or the grace of noticing and aligning in a true recognition.
I believe that both sides are biased and pushing an agenda. I do not care about that. What I do care about is a naive people who believe that they are set apart from the majority of “blinded” people who have a false sense of reality because of the MSM. They read an article (such as this one)from the other side, believe that it is the truth and that everyone else is wrong.
If Clowns was offensive to you then you must be that person that I was referring to. Here are two examples. 1. Your bring up Eva Bartlett and Vanessa Beeley who you claim to be “independent journalists”. One who writes for Russian news and both who are pro Assad. 2. You bring up the WH as to prove a point that they are dishonest. Who cares? I don’t. Had nothing to do with my original point.
Doesn’t that just drive you mad? Story is absolutely correct. There is no proof. Just a he said she said. The problem is that whichever side you’re on you’ll believe anything you see or hear or read if it aligns with your agenda. I do agree with everything you stated.
“If you’re not an American sheep, then you are a Russian sheep” was not intended to mean exactly that or a judgement of anyone. It was meant to be facetious.
The Program of Disclosing and Counteracting Terrorist Propaganda [Link]
published by the United Nations