At the center of the controversy over an alleged chemical attack in the Damascus suburb of Duma on April 7 are the White Helmets, a self-described rescue operation about whom an Oscar-winning documentary was made.
Reporter and author Max Blumenthal has
tracked the role of the White Helmets in the Syrian conflict. He reported that the White Helmets were created in Turkey by James Le Mesurier, a former British MI5 agent.
The group has received at least $55 million from the British Foreign Office and $23 million from the U.S. Agency for International Development as well as millions from the Kingdom of Qatar, which has backed a variety of extremist groups in Syria including Al Qaeda.
Blumenthal writes, "When Defense Secretary James Mattis
cited 'social media' in place of scientific evidence of a chemical attack in Duma, he was referring to video shot by members of the White Helmets. Similarly, when State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert sought to explain why the US bombed Syria before inspectors from the OPCW could produce a report from the ground, she
claimed, 'We have our own intelligence.' With little else to offer,
she was likely referring to social media material published by members of the White Helmets."
The reference to social media as evidence in the most serious decision a leader can make-to engage in an act of war-is part of a disturbing trend. Then Secretary of State John Kerry pointed to "social media" as evidence of the Syrian government's guilt in a 2013 chemical attack in the same Damascus suburb.
But as Robert Parry, the late founder and editor of this site, pointed out in numerous reports, Syrian government guilt was far from a sure thing.
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