Scott talks to Aaron Maté about the latest developments in the apparent OPCW cover-up of their investigation into the alleged Douma chemical attack. It is now clear, based on recently leaked documents, that OPCW leadership lied about expert analyst Ian Henderson, who has since become the leading whistleblower in the story of their cover-up. They claim that he was a low-level team member without anything important to say; in reality, he was the leader of the Douma team and one of the organization’s most reliable experts. His findings contradicted what became the official narrative, upon which U.S. retaliation against the Assad government was based. He has been working tirelessly to correct these lies. Scott and Maté also discuss the crumbling “Russiagate” narrative, and the mainstream media’s near-total silence on the scandal.
Discussed on the show:
- “Exclusive: OPCW chief made false claims to denigrate Douma whistleblower, documents reveal” (The Grayzone)
- “5/1/20 Aaron Maté on the Latest OPCW Scandal | The Libertarian Institute” (The Libertarian Institute)
- “OPCW investigator testifies at UN that no chemical attack took place in Douma, Syria” (The Grayzone)
- “Crowdstrike Admits ‘No Evidence Russia Stole Emails From DNC Server” (Antiwar.com Blog)
Aaron Maté is a former host and producer at The Real News and writes regularly at The Nation. Follow him on Twitter @AaronJMate.
This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: NoDev NoOps NoIT, by Hussein Badakhchani; The War State, by Mike Swanson; WallStreetWindow.com; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; Listen and Think Audio; TheBumperSticker.com; and LibertyStickers.com.
Donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal, or Bitcoin: 1KGye7S3pk7XXJT6TzrbFephGDbdhYznTa.
The following is an automatically generated transcript.
Scott Horton 0:10
All right shall welcome Scott Horton show. I am the director of the libertarian Institute editorial director of antiwar.com dot com, author of the book fool’s errand, time to end the war in Afghanistan. And I’ve recorded more than 5000 interviews going back to 2003, all of which are available at scotthorton.org dot org. You can also sign up for the podcast feed. Full archive is also available@youtube.com slash Scott Horton show. All right, you guys on the line. I’ve got Aaron Mateo. He is the host of pushback at the grey zone.com. And of course rights there and it real clear investigations in the nation and other places. And this one is at the gray zone. It’s kind of an addendum and I guess it’s interviewed Isn’t it? Well, no, not really. It’s somewhat a different subject. But in a way it could be an addendum to our interview from last week or two weeks ago about the OPC W, and all the dissension within it. And this is really important. OPC w chief made false claims to denigrate Duma whistleblower documents reveal. Welcome back to the show. How you doing, Eric?
Eric Mate 1:31
Hi, Scott. Thanks for having me back.
Scott Horton 1:33
Very happy to have you here. So I’ve fumbled a little bit in that introduction, because, in fact, our last interview was about an entirely different alleged chemical attack, that there was dissent inside the OPC w over and you published an open letter from the actual whistleblowers on the site. But now back to Duma the ongoing saga of About a year on now, began about a year ago, where these whistleblowers started coming forward from it’s the organization for the prevention of chemical weapons. And the guys who investigated the attack in Duma in April of 2018. In Syria, which was blamed on the regime, of course. And so a big part of that is, is it the only named whistle blower Ian Henderson has been really dragged through the mud for the last year. And now you finally have the proof that the draggers were bluffing and we’re wrong about his position there. Is that right?
Eric Mate 2:41
That’s right, what we’ve seen is basically a cover up of the cover up so when Ian Henderson’s report was leaked, it totally destroyed the narrative that the OP CW had publicly signed on to because his engineering study concluded that the cylinders found at the scene of the alleged chemical attack and Duma were likely manually placed, not dropped from the sky by an aircraft. And the fact that this was kept out of the open CWA official reports, was a huge scandal because it showed that their own inspectors had had reached a completely different conclusion than what they put out publicly. And then we got even more leaks showing the censorship of even more evidence, including toxicology reports, the trace levels of chemical that were actually found at the scene, which showed that the level of chlorine at the scene and Duma was really no different than you would find in any normal household environment. And we saw that internal dissent from people like Henderson and the other whistleblower showing that complaining to top officials that their evidence was excluded and that they were being kept out of the process and that basically all the people who went to do my and collected the evidence or being excluded from the process that led to the OPC Ws final report, so In response to all this, the obvious UW leadership didn’t address any of the centered findings, what they did is convened an inquiry into the leak of Henderson’s report. When they released the results in February of this year. They didn’t even accuse Henderson or the other whistleblower of the leak because they couldn’t find any evidence for that. But what they did do with their so called inquiry is use it as an opportunity to paint them as rogue uninformed, low level inspectors, who were just stubborn that their that their findings weren’t accepted. And so with Henderson, they went so far as to basically lie about him as we can prove now, they said that he was not a member of the fact finding mission and Duma. And he was only there in quote, a minor supporting role. And the documents that we’ve been leaked show this to be false. First of all, when it comes to the claim that Henderson is not a member, well, we have contemporaneous documents from the opa CW mission in Duma. That’s you him listed under mission personnel. As a member of the fact finding mission, the ffm. We also got a notification document that was sent to the Syrian government informing them that Henderson was joining the team, as one of the inspectors going to Duma. And then when it comes to this claim from the OPC w that Henderson only played a minor supporting role. We got I think, what is the most damning leak, which shows that it’s a letter from the Office of the Director General, at the time instructing the team to let Ian Henderson lead the inspections at the hospital where the alleged victims were, were taken to and at the cylinders, the basically at the crime scene. And so how can you claim someone’s playing a minor supporting role when your own documents showed that the CCW leadership wanted him to lead the inspections of the crime scene the most critical inspection of the entire mission and when
Scott Horton 5:58
I say odg Happy if the visits to the cylinders and hospital are led by Ian Henderson. That does read very clearly as meaning that’s their suggestion that he leaves.
Eric Mate 6:10
Yeah. I that’s what it was that this was a communication back to the team leader in Syria. And it’s a document that is relaying all their instructions and our preferences. And yeah, so they’re not just happy but
Scott Horton 6:21
that’s a figure of speech meaning they recommend it.
Eric Mate 6:24
Yeah, yeah. And the reason why is obvious is because Ian Henderson is the only member of that team with his with a high level of experience and training in chemical engineering and ballistics. And that is why he personally took the measurements at of the cylinders in Duma. And when you have someone who personally took the measurements, who led the inspections and then writes a report that undermines your narrative, it’s an old trick. If you can’t fight someone on the facts, you have to try to smear their reputations, maybe their credibility, and that’s what they tried to do and they tried to do it by outright falsifications And then on top of the lies, then they try to give this phony narrative about why he was there to begin with, because they have to now explain how it is that this guy wrote this report and why he was a part of the mission. So what they said was, it was basically happenstance that since he was in Syria anyway, for to head the command post in Damascus, that it was customary that he assist the mission in Duma. And they try to play it off as basically incidental, when Meanwhile, we’ve got another document showing that he only took over the command post after the Duma mission was complete. So basically, they they used it, they both lied, and they use very disingenuous language to try to downplay his role for obvious reasons.
Scott Horton 7:40
Yeah. And, you know, we should be clear that this was effective, that without this, at least, there would have been whatever percent if you want to try to quantify greater probability that somebody at the post of the times of the BBC or somewhere where it can be heard would cover this story and instead This is all the cover they need the other kind of cover to pretend that oh yeah no I heard somewhere that that was debunked and that that guy was a fraud and then they don’t have to cover it and they probably weren’t gonna cover it anyway but this just makes it that much easier for them to ignore
Eric Mate 8:17
well yeah but the problem now is now that that’s been shown to be a lie. You still have no coverage from and
Scott Horton 8:23
yeah cuz now it’s too late right now the story is not hot anymore. It broke one hour ago right and you’ve been covering the hell out of it but they never get to pick that up. Even Fox News won’t pick it up even though in a way it would. Well yeah. Cuz Trump Leno bombing campaign over it. That’s right.
Eric Mate 8:41
You know, what’s ironic here is that fox news has actually done the best coverage of this scandal.
Scott Horton 8:47
Well, yeah, Tucker Carlson.
Eric Mate 8:49
Right. Tucker Carlson has done this but even you have reporters at the fox news website, who when the first leaks came out last year, in the fall, I believe of 2019 you had even Fox News. Who’s doing some stories about this? So even Fox News did more reporting than then the new york times did I wonder somebody got fired over that? I can’t figure out how that could be. But anyway, yeah, here. You know, it’s, Hey, I’ll take it, you know, it
Scott Horton 9:13
sometimes doesn’t get passed around to everybody who is supposed to read it.
Eric Mate 9:17
Yeah, but it’s striking. And you know, the only mention I’ve seen about it in the New York Times recently was it was sort of incidentally mentioned during a profile of Eliot Hagen’s, the founder of belling cat is, you know, group that purports to do independent investigations, but is funded by groups including the National Endowment for Democracy and the British government and it tends to push forward so called findings that advance, you know, Western government narratives. And in this profile, we learned that the co founder that the founder of belling cat Eliot Higgins said, He’s even said there’s this line where it says that he, he attributes his expertise, not to any special knowledge, but the playing field. Video games. So that is who that’s who Western media is relying on for two experts on things like this gas attack in this alleged gas attack and Duma. And it mentions that there was a letter about this, there was some rumblings of some dissent. So basically, the the times handled this by basically mentioning it in passing, and then giving it no other attention after that. So that’s how our propaganda system works. But look, when it comes to the facts of the matter here, it’s overwhelming. I mean, this was a cover up, and now they’re trying to cover up the cover up. Yeah,
Scott Horton 10:30
well, and this is the third big fake gas attack in a row you think they might have caught on by then too?
Eric Mate 10:38
Well, certainly there have been questions raised about the alleged attack and ghouta you know, sy Hersh did a whole bunch of reporting on this. Ted postal, the MIT professor did some studies showing that that was actually quite likely a staged attack. And then you have also doubts raised about concha akun. You know, sigh hurt, again, didn’t more reporting there. And there were others too. And even with Duma. You know, all these just before you even consider the evidence, from the point of view of logic, make no sense, this idea that Assad would do the one thing that he knows will trigger a US military response. And also do it while he’s about to take over these key air these key areas, for example, when when this alleged attack happened and Duma, the Assad government was about to retake Duma. So for the point of view of logic, it never made any sense. But we’ve never had the level of documentation and just smoking gun evidence that we’ve had when it comes to Duma because now you have the people who led the investigation into the alleged attack for the open CW people with you know, just who have veteran experience at the OPC W. These guys are not rookies, they’ve been there with the OPC w since its founding, basically, in 1997, saying that this was staged that this was a fraud. And it is a striking commentary on our media system that you know, it’s only Those of us that the relative margins who have been covering it,
Scott Horton 12:02
yeah. Hey, I’ll check it out the libertarian Institute. That’s me and my friends have published three great books this year. First is no quarter, the ravings of William Norman Greg. He was the best one of us. Now he’s gone. But this great collection is a truly fitting legacy for his fight for freedom. I know you’ll love it. Then there’s coming to Palestine by the great Sheldon Richmond. It’s a collection of 40 important essays. He’s written over the years about the truth behind the Israel Palestine conflict. You’ll learn so much and highly valued this definitive libertarian take on the dispossession of the Palestinians and the reality of their brutal occupation. And last but not least, is the great Ron Paul, the Scott Horton show, interviews 2004 through 2019, interview transcripts of all of my interviews of the good doctor over the years on all the wars, money taxes, the police state and more. So how do you like that? Pretty good, right? Find them all at libertarianism. institute.org slash books. Hey, you guys may know I’m involved in some libertarian party politics this year, but you can’t hear or read about that at the libertarian Institute due to 501 c three rules and such. So make sure to sign up for the interviews feed at Scott horton.org. And keep an eye on my blog at Scott Horton. org slash stress. Hey, y’all, Scott here. If you want to real education in history and economics, you should check out Tom Woods is Liberty classroom. Tom and a really great group of professors and experts have put together an entire education of everything they didn’t teach you in school, but should have follow through from the link in the margin at Scott Horton. org for Tom woods, his Liberty classroom. So I did see on Twitter, I was lurking. I’m trying to quit again. I did I quit again. Twitter, but I was lurking a little bit and I saw were you tangled with the guys from belling cat and they said Uh oh, come on this document. Aaron doesn’t say what you say it says it has him on the same list with the chauffeur and the refrigerator repairman or something. And so there’s nothing on there that would indicate that he was any kind of Team Leader there you disingenuous. Third rate reporter you?
Eric Mate 14:23
Yes. And I pointed out that, you know, given that these guys are literally funded by Western taxpayers that we’re really not getting are the sharpest knives in the drawer because what they missed on that document is that, you know, it says mission personnel. And then when someone is an interpreter, it says, interpreter, or when someone is a driver, it says, driver, and then when you get to Ian Henderson’s name, it says ffm fact finding mission, you know, which means that he was not you know, you know, he was a member of the mission. That’s what it says right there. So they actually ended up I think, deleting Yeah, they deleted those tweets. Yeah. And one of them even actually acknowledged that he was wrong, but you know, look, it’s
Scott Horton 14:59
Hey, That’s a lot of taking responsibility from those guys who never do. So
Eric Mate 15:04
call that a win. And you know, it is and you know, the real significance of them is that they work. I, you know, there are strong indications that they were a part of the fraud. So, for example, the leaked report from Ian Henderson, it references that there have been other voices weighing in on what happened in Duma. And Henderson writes a line about so quote, supposedly experts, and what he’s saying is that, you know, these supposedly experts have been consulted by the OPC W, in the effort to you know, find out what happened. And so what Ian Henderson is saying, I mean, it’s pretty harsh language for an experienced investigator to refer to someone else with the opposite W is using as a supposed expert, and we don’t know exactly who they are, and we don’t even know who ultimately the OPC w ended up relying on for its clinical expertise, after it excluded Henderson’s report, but there are reasons to suspect That belling cat might have been among those groups. So suppose it experts. One indication is that belling cat in a in its policy document that it uploaded in the fall of 2019. It listed a whole bunch of groups that it claims that it partners with and the OPC w was among those groups. Then you had months and months and months of leaks showing the Doom of cover up and what a fraud it was. And you had the OPC w being embarrassed. And all of a sudden in February so like five months later, all of a sudden Eliot Higgins of belling cat posts a tweet saying, Hey, everyone, our original policy document made him made a mistake. We have nothing to do with the OPC w or its investigation of doom. What happened was there that was a copy and paste error, where I copied a bunch of names from the wrong list. So I’m correcting it so they correct it, but the only name of but the only name of an organization that he takes off their list in the correction is the OPC W. So basically the only error And that copy and paste error, he says was the opposite. He still works with everybody else. But the only one who he’s now saying he does not work with happens to be the organization that is now mired in a massive cover up scandal.
Scott Horton 17:12
Well, and as you’re pointing out here, everybody who actually was on the team, in Duma, investigating the thing, everything that they contributed, was thrown out. And it was the other group, the bosses and the group in Turkey that later drum this up, so they might have needed the manpower since they’d gotten rid of all of their best guys.
Eric Mate 17:34
Well, you know, what’s funny is that both these inspectors came back to the OPC w after their initial tenure. And the what the reason they came back was because the OPC w had a real absence of people at their expertise level. I mean, these were people who were with the OPC w since its formation. So the obviously w hired them back because they needed them and these guys are very proud of their experience. You can tell that from from what they’ve from what we’ve heard from them. publicly. And we also published in this new report at the gray zone. some excerpts from appraisal letters that Henderson got from the OPC w basically saying one of them says these are the best inspection team leader that the OPC w has. He’s relied on for his expertise. So these people are, are people with high levels of integrity and also and expertise and also bravery. Because, you know, it’s not it’s not an easy gig, to go into Duma into a town that just been cleared of, you know, an occupation by militants to go and into a crime scene, you know, crawling your hands and knees measuring cylinders and a crater hole. I mean, this is dangerous work.
Scott Horton 18:40
Well, I talk a little bit about Henderson’s character. I mean, he has not talked to the media at all right? He just gave a deposition to the United Nations only right?
Eric Mate 18:51
Well, no, he’s someone who has respected the CCW process. And so the only capacity in which you spoken publicly has been Through testifying to the UN Security Council, or in responding to the OPC w inquiry that smeared him. So he wrote a response letter to the OPC w inspector general that just like rebuts, all of his points, and it’s, he wrote that along with the other inspector inspector Be
Scott Horton 19:20
it sounds like he’s very deliberately staying away from anyone’s partisan use or anything like that. He’s not even going on the BBC, for that matter, right.
Eric Mate 19:30
That’s right. Yeah, he’s not given a single interview. And that’s all just
Scott Horton 19:34
official channels only I guess what I’m trying to say.
Eric Mate 19:37
That’s exactly right. And because he respects he the opposite. You can sense that he he takes a lot of pride in the work that he did. And he actually cares about the OPC W’s reputation and its independence. In this case, it was totally abused. I mean, you can see it for example, you look at the first draft of the interim report that inspector be actually wrote, and then you compare that to what was what was published, and you see all the critical things that their superiors just censored. And you have leaked emails of complaints saying, you know, why did you censor this this critical evidence, it creates a totally misleading picture. So it’s, it’s amazing what’s happened to these guys, and to see that, you know, for trying to stand up for science and for their own investigation, and for the integrity of the organization, how the organization’s leadership has thrown them under the bus.
Scott Horton 20:29
Yeah. And by the way, audience, that deposition of Ian Henderson that videotaped testimony to the United Nations, it’s really highly recommended viewing to really get a sense for who he is. And then to hear it from the horse’s mouth is really a big deal there. And that’s available on YouTube. But now, so let me give you just a couple of minutes here at the very end. There’s been big developments in the Russia gate thing, and I don’t think we can cover all the different angles, but I guess especially I wanted to hear from you If I could Aaron, about the released testimony from the House of Representatives, and to me in order of importance would be the admissions by the high level members of Obama’s administration about what they knew and what they thought of it all. And then the CrowdStrike thing, if you can, you know, fit that in, but especially clapper and Lynch and the rest of the testimony revealed in these house transcripts. Oh, and I’m sorry, let me mention that. You have this other great article at the gray zone. That was all about this. That was the spotlight on antiwar.com yesterday.
Eric Mate 21:40
Go ahead. Well, I mean, to me the CrowdStrike admission is the most significant because look, before even this, you know, fraudulent thing about collusion came about you had the allegation that Russia stole emails from the DNC, that’s the Russia gates underlying crime. Now we learned from the cyber firm crowd Strike that generated the hacking allegation and whose findings and forensics were relied on by US intelligence officials. But they actually found no evidence that that these alleged Russian hackers actually exfiltrated anything from the server. And we’re only finding this out now. I mean, I, to me, that’s like, one of the biggest revelations yet because it calls into question the entire thing. The underlying crime upon which Russia gate is based that the firm that first accused Russia of stealing emails, actually has no evidence that these alleged Russian hackers took anything from the server. I mean, it’s a big admission. And it’s, to me, it’s quite stunning, but I guess we shouldn’t be surprised anymore, that we’re only finding it out now. And then you have Yeah, you know, you have Obama officials saying they never sign any evidence of a conspiracy, which, of course, is different than the picture that a lot of them gave to the public. And you have intelligence officials like Andy McCabe saying that he made the most amazing admission. So the entire Trump Russian investigation starts with this tip that the FBI gets from the Australian Government from this official Alexander downer, which says that he’s overheard George papadopolis, this low level volunteer, suggesting that Russia gave some kind of unclear suggestion about helping the Trump campaign. So they open up the entire investigation based on that. Now we hear from Andrew McCabe. He said, Oh, yeah, we never really thought it was Papadopoulos who was communicating with the Russians. So if you don’t think Papadopoulos isn’t communicating with the Russians, how can you justify opening up and continuing and extending a conspiracy investigation based on what Papadopoulos may have said, I mean, it’s just ridiculous. And it’s amazing that we get this now. It’s amazing the ad. It’s amazing that Adam Schiff went out and told the public that there was secret evidence of collusion that he couldn’t reveal. While Meanwhile, behind closed doors he was hiding Hearing again and again, that there were that there was no evidence of collusion. And it just speaks to look, this whole thing was based on a scam. And it’s a question of now with crowd strikes admission. How far did the scam go? Does the scam also include concocting this allegation about Russian hackers stealing the emails? I think it does. But, you know, we need to see more evidence, we need to see the reports that CrowdStrike submitted, which we still haven’t seen, and whatever other evidence, the you know, Muller used to accuse Russia of this hack, because you know, every single pillar continues to crumble, including, by the way the social media ads to when a Russian troll farm was indicted, that was compared to Pearl Harbor, these dumb ads that nobody saw that weren’t even about the election, Moller recently or Muller prosecutors recently dropped that case because and they made the laughable claim that through the discovery process, it could be a threat to national security, which is just a joke, a joke like everything else from Russia gate.
Scott Horton 24:55
Yeah. And isn’t it remarkable to that it did not leak it In a republican controlled Congress to that clapper testified today, the former Attorney General Lynch testified today that they know of no evidence of any conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Russians. That was in all of this is from December of 2017. Right.
Eric Mate 25:22
Yeah, I mean, you know, clapper did say publicly a couple of times in interviews that he never saw any evidence of collusion. But at the same time, then he went out and you know, with suggestive language and innuendo also fed the narrative as well. But I think the striking admissions are the CrowdStrike one, where, you know, we were told for three years that, you know, Russia destroyed our democracy by hacking some emails, and we were never told by anybody, including, including the Republicans, that actually their main source for this CrowdStrike didn’t have any evidence of it.
Scott Horton 25:53
And we knew that all along because they said that the reason they knew is because there was a reference to iron Felix There, and because they had some Cyrillic, you know, writing in the goose of for two version of some of these records or whatever, which was laughable at the time. And you know, I’m sure you probably are familiar with this guy, Jeffrey Carr, the computer security expert. But he said at the time that there, it’s impossible for anyone to say with 100% certainty who hacked a computer by examining that computer. It’s just intuitive, you know, it’s too easy to fake it. But there’s only one group in the world. And this is what, Benny, you know, William Binney said on my show a few months after that, but it’s still back in 2016, or maybe beginning of 2017. There’s one group of people in the world who can tell you with 100% certainty, who hacked what, and that would be the NSA because they can rewind and watch anything that ever happened on the internet. They own the whole thing with a capital P. And so but nobody else can. And so, you know, the fact that they’re not The ones vouching for all this, but they’re just not disputing what the FBI heard from CrowdStrike. Oh, and this is my favorite part actually of the transcript. And I’m sorry, I’m keeping you over time. My favorite part of the transcript is where the guy from CrowdStrike says, in response to Eric swallow wells as well. Do you know of any other information about when they might have exfiltrated it? And he goes, or that would that would shed any more light on what happened here? And the Walker from CrowdStrike says, well, essentially, I saw in the media that the government says the Russians did it. Yeah, of course, they heard it from him.
Eric Mate 27:39
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. They were the ones. I mean, when they first made that allegation, it was in the Washington Post, June 2016. And that set this whole thing off, and now they’re trying to use this circular thing. Well, really, it was the US government that reached that conclusion. It’s ridiculous. Another very funny thing from Sean Henry of CrowdStrike. And that testimony, and then I have to go.
Scott Horton 27:59
Walker. I’m sorry. It was anyway, go ahead.
Eric Mate 28:01
Yeah. So he’s asked. So Alright, so if you don’t have any evidence of that they actually exfiltrated the emails that actually took them off the server. How could they have then taken all these emails? and Shawn Henry literally says the Russians could have taken screenshots of every single email as democratic as DNC employees read them. So imagine Russian hackers in Moscow or whatever, taking screenshots of, like, 10s of thousands of emails, and how many how much time that would take and how ridiculous that is, especially since we know that all these emails had DNC metadata in them. So it’s just like, this guy, who the US government relied on and who the DNC use to remediate the breach of its server seems to be pretty clueless on things more than just the issue of whether or not there’s evidence of Russians stealing emails.
Scott Horton 28:56
Yeah. All right, you guys. I’m sorry. Gotta let him go. He’s gotta go. But it’s the great Aaron montay at the gray zone. pushback is the name of the show and all those great articles are there too. Thank you again for your time.
Eric Mate 29:10
Thanks Scott.
Scott Horton 29:12
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The following is an automatically generated transcript.
Scott Horton 0:10
All right, y’all welcome it’s Scott Horton Show. I am the director of the Libertarian Institute editorial director of antiwar.com, author of the book Fool’s Errand: Time to End the War in Afghanistan. And I’ve recorded more than 5000 interviews going back to 2003, all of which are available at ScottHorton.org. You can also sign up to the podcast feed. The full archive is also available at youtube.com/ScottHortonShow. All right, you guys introducing Aaron montay. He is a regular writer at the Gray Zone. That’s the grayzone.com and he hosts the podcast there, Push Back. Welcome back to the show. How you doing Aaron?
Aaron Mate 0:54
Hey, Scott, how are you?
Scott Horton 0:55
I’m doing great. appreciate you joining us here today. So the first thing I want to ask you about is something that you’re essentially the editor of. You didn’t write it. It’s OPC W. whistleblowers. OPC w insiders slam compromised in new Syria chemical weapons probe. And this is not about Duma. This is at a place called I’m not sure I’ll let you pronounce it a different attack from March of 2017. So just before the con shake Kuhn fake attack, which I don’t know if we got any whistleblowers on that one yet, but these people wrote this scathing report for your website here. It’s quite remarkable. Tell us about it, please.
Aaron Mate 1:44
You know, I can’t say too much about it. It. What I can say is that it was written by a team of OPC insiders. I can’t really detail exactly what that means, but what I can say is that the the piece was written by people who represent the views of a small group of current and former OPC W. Officials. And the message from them is that there is dissension inside the ranks and there is deep skepticism about the OPC w being politicized. And we saw that most starkly with the Duma leaks, which I’m sure we’ll talk about. But now these people are also coming out and saying that this same political ization, is being applied to this other investigation as well. And that was, as you say, this probe of an alleged chemical weapons attack in the Syrian town wattana in March 2017. And what’s interesting about that report, it was done by this it’s the first report of this newly formed team at the OPC w called the investigation and identification team and it was established extensively to identify alleged perpetrators of chemical weapons attacks in Syria. But what these op CW insiders write in their op ed is that basically it was set up with the sole aim of blaming any chemical weapons attack on the Syrian government so that the US and other Western powers, the ones who helped set up this new team and pushed it through, can blame Syria for chemical weapons attacks and pursue their proxy war and sanctions against Syria further, and so, this op ed just goes through the reasons to be skeptical about this latest report. It’s interesting, when you look at the media reports about this i t report, everybody took it as the OPC w saying that the that this investigation has found conclusively that the Assad government carried out this chemical weapons attack of both Farren and chlorine in this town in March 2017 When you actually read the report, all it says is that there are, quote, reasonable grounds to believe on quote, that a chemical attack occurred, which is far different from saying a chemical attack occurred and it was a standard government. All they’re saying is that it’s reasonable to believe that that it that it that the Syrian government was responsible. But as these op CW insiders point out, because that language is actually so tentative, and so ambiguous, that it also means that you can’t rule out that there are reasonable grounds to believe that it wasn’t the Syrian government that it wasn’t the Syrian government. And so even the way that this report has been ripped, has been taken by the media doesn’t even act accurately represent what the report says. And of course, these obviously, they’ll be used and give up plenty of other reasons to question even the case for even believing that there might be reasonable grounds to think that the Syrian government did it and people can read it. more of it at the gray zone com?
Scott Horton 5:02
Well, look, the deal is that if you had written this thing, it would have been great. But the fact that this was written by insiders and organization for the prevention of chemical weapons, and just the attitude behind it again, it’s absolutely scathing report the way that they criticize the official story here, such as it is, and they completely dismantle it with prejudice. You can tell. So, yeah. Can you talk a little bit about what are their arguments in here?
Aaron Mate 5:33
Well, I mean, the the most, I mean, first of all, what they do is they they enter actually the political realm, which is something that, you know, in a normal OPC w report, you wouldn’t do this case, they looked at the political question of motive. So what motive with the Syrian government after having been told that this red line by the US What motive would they have to drop chemical weapons into basically an empty field, which is, which is what allegedly happened here? If we’re supposed to believe the official narrative, that this that this was a Syrian chemical weapons attack in this town, then the what we have to believe is that the Syrian government dropped Sharon and chlorine into basically an empty space. And so why would they do that? They’re after they’ve been told of this red line and not in the many instances before. When, you know, you have instances like when when the Syrian militants were closing in on Latakia and threatening to carry out, you know, mass murder. There was no chemical weapons use then and all these other cases where, you know, even the Syrian government has lost areas, no chemical weapons use is there. So why all the sudden would they decide to use it now on this empty field, especially now that they’re working with Russia and This will also basically require Russia’s cooperation essentially, because they’re sharing military bases with Russia now, too, because now we’re talking about 2017. Well, after Russia has entered the war, so even from a point of view of motive, it doesn’t make sense. And then they get into some of the other technical stuff, which I, I will leave to them to, to summarize, because it’s complicated, and it requires a careful reading to understand and they get into, you know, the composition of bonds and, and things that technically, I’m not very well versed in, so I won’t, I won’t try. But they basically just make the case for why the idea that this was a Syrian Government attack is so implausible.
Scott Horton 7:39
Well, and a couple of points are general enough that I think that they can be paraphrased, where they’re just saying the chain of custody of the so called evidence here is completely suspect. And the people who wrote the report sat in Turkey, and received it at the hands of these NGOs who are all tied to the opposition. There’s no objective source for any of the information about This attack in the first place. So that was the chain of custody at any criminal trial in America, we get thrown right out.
Aaron Mate 8:07
So that’s the obvious one. That’s that. That’s a very good point. And Thanks for pointing it out. Yes, they they point out that the obviously there’ll be you it investigation says that they maintained chain of custody, quote, after the receipt of the items, unquote. So basically, after you get, you know, these these samples, and by the way, you don’t even get them right after the alleged incident, you get them over the course of a year, slowly coming in and into Turkey. And you’re saying that you only confirm the chain of custody, you can only vouch for the chain of custody after you’ve gotten custody, which is basically is totally meaningless. And yes, as you say, by those standards, this case, there is no court that would ever accept this stuff as evidence.
Scott Horton 8:56
Yeah. You know, and they talk about there too, he talks about, you know, these small little bits of shrapnel, little pieces of metal that they brought. And they said, Well, how come you didn’t bring the rest of it? Or we just have these little pieces instead of the actual container. And they had a plausible explanation for the container to that the Syrians when they gave up all their chemical weapons, after the big fake attack of 2013, that they kept some of the containers to fill them with conventional explosives. So if you had pieces of those, that would make sense since they were dropping regular, you know, conventional explosive bombs in the same form at By that time, since they’d gotten rid of all their chemical weapons and had some leftover.
Aaron Mate 9:48
Yeah, yeah. Now, that claim requires relying on the Syrian government’s account and, you know, so that has to be noted, but look The this is where it gets the the other cases as well, you have so many doubts now I’ve been raised about ghouta. I mean, Ted postal has done some of the some of the definitive work on that showing that the rocket ranges that were alleged against the Syrian government were actually implausible. And then it’s far more likely that the rockets that that delivered the chemical weapons and that incident actually came from militant controlled territory. And then we have the just preponderance of evidence in the Duma case, which shows how the opa CW superiors intervened to suppress all the evidence that the inspectors collected on the ground excluded their findings and excluded the key inspectors who carried out the investigation from the process and basically doctored all their evidence so you have just a series of questionable in one case in case of doom I just just completely scandalous. investigations and now you know, the fact that you’re seeing people close to the OPC W. Now feeling compelled to publicly directly challenge when it comes out with and basically say it’s been compromised, it just speaks to. It’s a huge scandal that deserves a lot of scrutiny and certainly a lot more attention.
Scott Horton 11:53
Hey guys, just real quick, if you listen to the interviews only feed at the institute or at Scott Horton. org. I just want to make sure you know that I do a q&a show from time to time at Scott Horton. org slash show the old whole show feed. And so if you like that kind of thing, check that out there. Hey, guys, here’s how to support this show. You can donate various amounts at Scott Horton. org slash donate. We’ve got some great kickbacks for you there. Shop amazon.com by way of my link at Scott Horton. org. Leave a good review for the show and iTunes and Stitcher. Tell a friend Oh yeah, and buy my books. fool’s errand time to end the war in Afghanistan and the great Ron Paul, the Scott Horton show interviews 2004 through 2019. And thanks Hey guys, check out listen and think audiobooks. They’re listening think.com and of course on audible.com and they feature my book fool’s errand time to end the war in Afghanistan, as well as brand new out inside Syria by our friend Reese, Eric, and a lot of other great books, mostly by libertarians there. Reese might be one exception, but essentially, they’re all libertarian audio books. And here’s how you can get a lifetime subscription to listen and think audiobooks. just donate $100 to the Scott Horton show at Scott Horton. org slash donate well, and so yeah, now remind us a little bit about that, because never even mind the case of the Duma attack, the case of the politics of the doom attack and the whistle blowing and the different I guess it was right about a year ago this started but all the different leaks and all of the fighting back and forth from some named and some unnamed whistleblowers out of the OPCW in the case of the doom attack is really interesting in its own right. It’s sort of could be its own story, even if it was about something less consequential.
Aaron Mate 14:29
So the Duma attack allegedly happens in April 2018. A few weeks later, the OPC w inspection team gets on the ground. They go to the sites, they take the cylinders, they tagged them, they do the measurements at the locations. They put out an interim report in July 2018. That’s pretty inconclusive, but doesn’t really say too much basically says we need to do some more investigation. Less than a year later, March 1 2019. They put out a final report and that’s when they say that there are reasonable grounds to believe that a chemical weapon that a chemical weapons attack took place, and that the chemical weapon was chlorine. And the influence of their finding, although they don’t directly say it is that the chlorine attack was carried out by the Syrian government, because that is the only party with aircraft. So and then is taken by, you know, by the media, by the US government as, as being validation for the US government airstrikes that Trump ordered shortly after the alleged attack. But then, in May of 2019, and engineering report, surfaces on the internet leaked to a group of British academics called the working group who by that point had been raising questions about some flawed or questionable language inside the final report. They were already pointing out some inconsistencies. And basically this engineering assessment is attributed to an A ob CW staff. Member named in Henderson. And it actually argues based on a detailed study of the Duma location where the cylinder where the cylinders were found. And based on the measurements that were taken there that actually, there’s a much higher likelihood that the cylinder is found there. Were not dropped from the sky, but we’re, quote manually placed. And in saying that, if you’re saying that it’s manually placed, you’re basically saying that the attack was staged. And so that sets off a huge controversy. The opposite view announces an investigation into the leak, but then we get more leaks from WikiLeaks. And now we learn a second OPC w expert, like Ian Anderson, who has written letters to the OPC w leadership right after that final report gets released in March 2019. Basically voicing his objection and saying that so much critical evidence not just in Henderson study, but A lot more, including toxicology and chemical samples from the scene showing that chlorine was found basically at trace levels. So basically at a meaningless level, and in fact, and that the chlorine that was found, can be found in basically everyday household chemicals like, you know, like bleach products and so on. So now we have to, obviously, they’ll be you, inspect rs, saying that all their evidence saying that their evidence was excluded, and we have no explanation for it. And then we get more and more leaks showing that these inspectors were minimize from the process that even though they were the ones on the ground in Syria, collecting the evidence and and actually one of them was tasked with writing the first draft of the report, because he was the he was the most senior investigator and most experienced, we see that they’ve been excluded from the process and that the opposite will be true. leadership has basically installed a very small team called the so called core team to basically take charge of writing the report. And it’s these people who are basically leaving out all the evidence that these inspectors found and, and putting in some disingenuous language and in terms of Ian Henderson’s report, we never get an explanation as to why his findings are excluded. We only learn that the OIC CW then consults three unnamed outside experts. We have no idea who they are, and we can’t even see their work except for a few fragments of it in the final report to judge for ourselves whether they’re accurate or not. Whereas we now have Ian Henderson’s you know, full detailed study where he makes the case for why the cylinders were likely manually placed so we have no way even to we have no explanation as to why Henderson’s report was excluded, and we have no way even to compare it to the reports that were relied on for the OPC W’s final conclusions.
Scott Horton 18:01
Yep. And the same question of motive remains. Why in the world would Assad do that? When the only thing that could accomplish to get him in trouble and nothing else?
Oh, yeah. I mean, Well, look, it’s, you know, with what, you know, contra mckuen happened right after Trump had been talking about and the Trump ministration. And we talking about, you know, regime change, no longer being a priority. For the US right after that. concha. Kuhn happens, and there have been all sorts of questions raised about that. And maybe one day we’ll we’ll hear more even from within the Opie CW ranks, I definitely would not rule that out. But the motive there never, ever made sense. And then you have fat and Trump, you know, responded to that allegation of Cancun with bombings, e bombs here one year later, a similar thing I thought is about to take back Duma on the outskirts of Damascus. He’s about to win and all of a sudden, we get This allegation, again, from militants on the ground in Duma, the group that controlled it at the time was j shell Islam, which is heavily backed by Saudi Arabia. They now accuse Assad of a new cup chemical weapons attack, and that again leads to Trump administration strike. So it just from a point of view, forgetting all the evidence, even of motive, why would Assad do the one thing that could trigger that he knows will trigger a US military response it you know, it makes no sense.
Yeah, well, which is funny because none of his motives make any sense as according to the Americans here, and they’re lying against him this whole time that well, all he wanted to do was get up in the morning and kill every last woman, man, woman and child in his country. But luckily, the plucky moderate rebels were there to resist him and try to stop him from doing that. And we don’t matter that none of that ever made any sense whatsoever. They had a narrative. They’re sticking with it, which is fine. But you know, what’s funny is this one that they’re debunking here in this piece is one that I didn’t even hear of which I guess, maybe goes to what you were saying about how, if it even happened at all, it was a bomb dropped out in the middle of an empty field somewhere. And there were no real consequences of it to report on. But I wonder, do you even think there was an attack at all at this point, or what was there?
Aaron Mate 20:31
No, I, I, I, I I have no reason to doubt that something happened. I mean, there was some militant activity around there and you know, this is a a crazy proxy war. So there’s bombings all over the place, it wouldn’t be hard to to take an attack that happens and pretend it was a chemical weapons attack if you’re the militants on the ground. It is interesting, though, that, you know, the reason why hasn’t gotten much attention is because there were no even casualties. Also, by the way, the hospital records, there are no available hospital records. And you know, that’s possibly because maybe there is a you know, it’s it’s a war and it’s hard to keep, you don’t have records for everything, or there just weren’t any actual casualties, which, you know, which seems to be the case. So look, it’s it’s very sketchy. And it’s funny. It’s interesting to me that they chose this one first, and not Duma. And I think the reason is, even though the AI, even though the IIT is mandated to investigate Duma, I don’t see how they can do that. Now. I don’t see how they can put their name anybody can put their name on a report that carries out the OPC W’s function now, which is basically to lend credibility to, you know, war mongering with Syria and to justify the US strikes that took place in response to the doom allegations, but how can they put anybody seriously put their name on that without Taking on the evidence that was excluded from the initial do my reports from the OPC w just anybody with any credibility? I just can’t do it. I think the best they could do is say that the evidence is inconclusive. But given now that all the evidence has come out the engineering report and the toxicology and the chemical samples, I mean, they’re gonna have to grapple with that, especially because Ian Henderson, before the ultra CW started trying to paint him falsely as this rogue actor who, you know, acted on his own without permission. He was even asked to submit his report to the IIT for their consideration. So they actually have to consider his report now. So for them to come out and weigh in on Duma means they’ll have to basically refute his engineering and he being an experienced engineering engineer at the open cw, I mean, he’s been with them since its inception in 1997. And him having taken the measurements at the scene, in Duma, and literally Got on his got down on all fours and crawled around and took the measurements. It’s gonna be very hard for them to take on his findings and dismiss them. So I think the fact that they did this one first, where there’s no countervailing evidence available and it’s it’s something people hadn’t even heard of, that strikes me as possibly being a deliberate choice. Yeah. Which I’d say also, it’s the dissension within the ranks is not just confirmed to being with these two whistleblowers we know about in Henderson and his colleague who was also a senior member of the opposite w team at the grey zone. We’ve published now, two separate notes from other whistleblowers at the OPC w people expressing serious discomfort with how the OPC W is being run, and both of them expressing just strong objections to how the Duma investigators were treated. So just just to show that this is an organization, and now with our with this piece we published about the IoT report. There is, there is major dissension inside the ranks, and I suspect we’re gonna hear more about it. As things unfold, great.
Scott Horton 24:56
Well, we’ll be keeping our eyes on the gray zone about that. And now listen, let me ask you a couple things about some Russia gate updates here. Yeah. First of all, we’ve known all along, since I’m not sure when I think 2017 or at least 18, that Mike Flynn, in fact, had colluded with a foreign government in the or to even in during the election campaign season and then during even the run up to the inauguration there in the transition period. And now, apparently, there’s even a little bit more information coming out about a possible collusion between the Trump campaign and a foreign power Russia?
Not Russia, but Israel and that was made known to us. pretty clearly when Michael Flynn was indicted it’s just the problem is the media ignored the Israel part of Michael Flynn’s indictment were basically he confirmed that at Israel’s request, the Trump the Trump transition team tried to intervene to undermine a UN Security Council vote that condemned Israeli settlement building in the occupied territories. The vote was taken in December 2016, just one month after Trump’s victory. And the Trump transition, including Michael Flynn, tried very hard to get another country to to veto that, that vote to vote against it because the Obama administration for pretty much the first time was not going to veto a UN resolution criticizing Israel. He wasn’t going to vote for But it was going to abstain, which meant that unless somebody else intervened, it would pass it would be approved. And so the Israeli government asked the Trump transition to intervene, and they tried and Michael Flynn helped carry that out when he called the Russian ambassador, Sergei Kislyak. And one of the things that they discussed was, you know, Flynn trying to convince him to vote against this, but the Russian government declined. So we’ve known about this for a long time, it’s all gotten completely ignored, because we’re not supposed to air about possible Israeli collusion. We’re only supposed to care about this non existent Russian collusion, which occupied everybody for three years until the fantasy collapsed. And now to back
Kislyak didn’t hear about it, he would have known that it was his job to give Flynn his marching orders not to decline a request
Aaron Mate 26:50
for Exactly, exactly. And, and then there is more documents that have come out recently with Roger stone where we’re in his case he was in contact with some some prominent Israeli figures. I don’t think we know exactly who yet. But it’s and Roger stone is relaying some offers of assistance from, from some prominent Israelis to help to help out the Trump campaign. Although you know, Roger stone is a pretty big blowhard saw. It’s hard for me to take anything he says seriously. I mean, for example, he was claiming for a long time that he had a secret back channel to WikiLeaks. And that was, of course a complete fabrication too. So but you know, look, there certainly that the, the fact that the Trump administration tried to undermine the the fact that the Trump transition tried to undermine the outgoing administration’s policy, at the request of the Israeli government and donors like Sheldon Adelson shows that certainly there was a close tie between the Trump circle and Israel and it’s just funny that unfortunately, because you know, blanket support for these really government is bipartisan. Even though we’ve known about this forever, it’s just you know, it doesn’t register. We don’t see it covered on msnbc. There’s, you know, the there’s like there’s liberal groups called the Moscow project, but there’s no you know, which is formed to investigate Trump Russia context, but there’s no Tel Aviv project, which is formed to investigate or scrutinize Trump Israeli contact. And that’s just because, you know, the policy of blind support for Israel is pretty much bipartisan. And whereas this Russia thing was a completely partisan and baseless scam, two that consumed our attention for three years and now we’re just the only information we’re learning now is just getting more of a window into to the extent of the scam and in the Michael Flynn case. We’ve had new documents this week, you know, that strongly point to what has been pretty apparent all along is that he was set up by the FBI who interviewed him? Because they wanted to get him fired? And that’s an interesting question as to why they did I suspect, it might even have something to do with Syria, because, you know, I, as you’ve covered extensively on your show, it was Flynn’s agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency that came out with that report, very early on in the story in the Syria proxy, where basically saying that, you know, the people who were the strongest fighting forces inside Syria, who we were supporting, or talking about supporting were the Salafi militias were al Qaeda and ISIS. And so, you know, there is antagonism towards Michael Flynn, inside the national security state. And I’ve always wondered whether the fact that he was calling out what the US was doing in Syria, I’ve always wondered whether that was a factor.
Scott Horton 29:51
Yeah, I mean, it wasn’t that he was such a hawk on Iran, which he is because they’re all hawks on Iran didn’t seem to bother him that much. So it’s not like he was going to be able to, you know, single handedly undo the Iran deal or something like that. And that ended up happening anyway under his replacement john bolton,
Aaron Mate 30:17
so. Yeah, ah, yep.
Scott Horton 30:18
So yeah, I think you’re right. It probably was about Syria. And now one more thing here about the collusion is the new report about Christopher Steele. And his meeting with Clinton campaign officials and whether this amounted to collusion. Obviously, Christopher Steele was a Brit, not an American. I don’t know if that counts or not. But then I want to ask you, too, about this whole Oh, no, the Russian collusion was really for Hillary and they were trying to sabotage Trump’s spin that’s going on around here lately, which seemed to have been attached to these new revelations here about the clinton lawyers meeting with Steel.
Aaron Mate 31:01
Oh, so you’re saying that that the allegation is that in fact that, that the Russian dissident that there was a Russian disinformation campaign trying to under
Scott Horton 31:13
Trump rather than Clinton? Yah.
Aaron Mate 31:15
Yeah. I mean, you know, whether this is whether this is Russian disinformation? I don’t know. I mean I, I suspect that I mean, the odds of the Russian government trying to get involved one way or the other. You know, I, I don’t see what motive they would have. They would have had to try to hurt Trump. I mean, Trump was trying to Trump is calling for better ties with Russia. So I don’t see the Russian government having an interest in trying to undermine him. And at that point, it was everybody believed that Hillary was gonna win anyway. So I don’t give that allegation, much weight. I mean, what I do know is that the fact that Steel was meeting with Clinton and DNC people to show the extent to which the Clinton campaign the DNC had a role in basically every facet of the Russia gate scam. They had a major role in the collusion aspect and that it was Christopher Steele, who first generated these allegations. And Christopher Steele says that one, you know, some of the things he included in his report actually came from the clinton DNC people he met with. So he says that this one DNC attorney last name assessment, gave him the idea which he included in his dossier, that there was some secret communication between the Trump campaign and this Russian bank, alpha bank. And then this led to all these crazy theories that that was the way the Trump administration and Russia conspired by speaking over the servers. There was like a major article in The New Yorker and in slate, and of course endlessly on MSNBC and CNN. And it turns out that you know that this idea comes from a Clinton campaign lawyer and steel just puts that in his dossier is somehow being a serious allegation or a serious theory. And so it just underscores that, and basically much every aspect of the Russia scam, you have a major DNC Clinton camp role in the collusion piece of this, you have the steel dossier, and all that stuff and how that was the bait that was used in the FBI investigation to get surveillance warrant on Carter page at minimum, as we already know, and then you have even in the Russian hacking education, who does that come from? CrowdStrike. Who are they they’re, they’re a DNC contractor. Even the you know, all the all the fear mongering about Russian social media trolls, that comes from according to The Washington Post, veterans from of the Obama and Clinton camps, who after the election came up with this theory that Russian so Media trolls had use sophisticated propaganda to sway voters in key states. And that’s what helped elect Trump and they shared those findings with the Senate or they shared their theories with the Senate Intelligence Committee, and the Senate Intelligence Committee Chair mark warner then flew out to Facebook. And, and and shared that idea with Facebook and not long after that, Facebook after initially concluding that these Russian social media pages were just basically juvenile clickbait commercial operations. Then they came out with these findings, basically lending credence to the theories of the Obama and Clinton operative so all the key aspects of the Russia scam collusion, the hacking, social media, you have a major part is enroll and it’s you know, if we had a minimally serious media all this would have been laughed at a long time ago but yet look what happened. It consumed our US media in politics for over three years.
Scott Horton 35:02
Yeah. It’s really kind of amazing. And yet also typical, shocking, but not surprising, as they say. Yeah, for sure. And especially I love the one about the alpha bank where it turned out that it was just a spam bot for the Trump hotels or whatever it
Aaron Mate 35:19
as. Yeah, it was mining. It was it was it was sending out marketing emails. Yeah. And using the same server, it’s, you know, but yet, if you go back, I mean, you could, on every aspect of this thing. There’s hours and hours of cable news footage of, you know, serious people supposedly taking all his with, you know, sober very, very serious concern as if all this means something when really it’s just it’s, it’s all fantasy. It’s all complete fantasy.
Scott Horton 35:50
Yeah. Well, and now they’re doing the same thing to China as well. They just had this story last week or Trump is in hock to China 10s of millions of dollars. Oops. And then they retracted it because that wasn’t true.
Yeah, they they said that Trump owes the Bank of China 10s of millions. And then they came out a week later and say, oops, we made a mistake. We forgot to call the Bank of China. And when we did, they told us that he wants out us this, but that the that alone was passed on to someone else. So it’s not even us anymore. That that that holds alone. You know, it’s so yes, the the sloppy reporting definitely continues.
Yeah. And I think that even sold it. The Chinese bank had sold the debt off back in 2012. So four years before he even an.
Aaron Mate 36:43
Yeah, yah. difficult. Yeah. All right.
Scott Horton 36:44
Well, listen, I appreciate all your great journalism and you do a great job and I love your show and all your articles and really appreciate your time on the show again here.
Aaron Mate 36:55
Scott, thank you. Thanks for having me b
Scott Horton 36:57
ck. Aren’t you guys that is Aaron Mata. He is actually The gray zone project that is the gray zone.com and first of all you got to read this thing by the OPC w whistleblowers. It’s something else here. Exclusive OPC w insider slam compromised new Syria chemical weapons probe and then also check out Aaron’s show he’s got a brand new interview of Noam Chomsky up there on pushback. And all of that is available for you at the gray zone calm. The Scott Horton show, Antiwar Radio can be heard on kpfk 90.7 FM in LA, APSradio.com antiwar.com ScottHorton.org and libertarianinstitute.org
