Militants carried out 2013 sarin attack in Syria: Ex-CIA analyst

Former CIA officer and analyst Ray McGovern says foreign-sponsored militants carried out the 2013 false-flag operation near Damascus with the help of the Turkish intelligence.

McGovern, who was a CIA analyst from 1963 to 1990, made the comments in an interview with Press TV on Saturday, after US President Barrack Obama told The Atlantic that he is “proud” that he stood up to intense pressure in 2013 and refused to order airstrikes against Syria on allegations that the Syrian government used chemical weapons near Damascus.

The war rhetoric against Syria intensified after foreign-backed militants accused the President Bashar al-Assad government of launching a chemical attack on militant strongholds in the suburbs of Damascus on August 21, 2013.

Damascus had denied the accusations, saying the Ghouta attack was carried out by the militants themselves as a false-flag operation.

“This is a very, very interesting set of circumstances, where a sitting president is telling the equivalent of his biographer, that he is very, very proud of resisting pressure  from virtually all his national security advisers to make a war – that war was to be made on Syria in the late summer of 2013,” McGovern said.

“The president resisted pressure from his White House advisers, from his secretary of defense, and secretary of state, and decided that he was his own man, and that he was being mouse-trapped by a false-flag attack,” he added.

“His advisers had advised him to set a redline against Syria in the sense he would say, ‘if Syria used or even moved its chemical weapons, that he would seriously consider military intervention,’” he stated.

“Now that the redline had been laid down, it was very easy for someone.  It’s very clear that the Turks facilitated this false-flag attack, which happened on August 21, 2013 outside of Damascus where sarin was used, and killed a lot of people,” the analyst observed.

“Secretary of State John Kerry and others accused Bashar al-Assad’s government of being responsible. However, it was known, that even before the president changed his mind on attacking Syria, that it was not Bashar al-Assad’s government [that was responsible].”

Sarin was shipped from Western Europe

McGovern said, “We knew that the sarin was homemade, and was made in the rebel areas. Now we know that it was made with precursors, shipped from Western Europe through Turkey. The Turkish intelligence service is responsible for getting it in the hands of rebels.”

“So what’s the president to do? He decided that this is not a good idea to start a war just because of his advisers, just because of Turkey, just because of Israel, or just because the CIA operatives wanted him to. He resisted that pressure,” he added.

“Now Obama is very open by saying ‘that was the most important decision I made, and I am very proud of having resisted the pressure to do a war,’” he stated.

Clinton was extremely disappointed

McGovern said, “Now what is the other point of this Goldberg’s article? It shows that Hillary Clinton was very, very disappointed that the president would, ‘show himself a coward’ in not doing this war. She said, "You know you have to have organizing principles here, and, ‘Don’t do stupid things’ is not an organizing principle.'”

“Well, I will just finish by saying ‘in foreign affairs, ‘Don’t do stupid things’ is exactly the kind of principle one should have, and indeed we’re talking in 2013. This is two years after Hillary Clinton was persuaded to do stupid things, and I have in mind of course the attack on Libya, which has left that country just as much a basket case as Iraq, and now Syria,” he concluded.

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