PRESS RELEASE
Prof. Ted Postol Revised Analysis: No Sarin Used in Khan Sheikhoun
April 22, 2017 (EIRNS)—Prof. Ted Postol, Professor Emeritus of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, yesterday released a correction to his April 18 paper, "The Nerve Agent Attack that Did Not Occur," which presents even stronger proof that there was no sarin attack in Khan Sheikhoun, Syria on April 4.
In his new paper, "Important Correction to ‘The Nerve Agent Attack that Did Not Occur, of April 18," Postol writes that the wind direction he cited in his April 18 was 180 degrees off—blowing in an opposite direction—which was in fact toward a densely populated area. Yet no casualties were shown.
Postol writes,
"When the error in direction is corrected, the conclusion is that if there was a significant sarin release at the crater as alleged by the White House Intelligence Report issued on April 11, 2017, the immediate result would have been significant casualties immediately adjacent to the dispersion crater.
"The numerous television and other journalists never reported any casualties that would have occurred within tens to hundreds of meters of the alleged release site, without even a cursory low-level review of commercial video data from the site by the U.S. Intelligence community,"
he says.
These new details are even more problematic because the White House Review cited commercial video as a source of information for its conclusion that there was a sarin attack from an airdropped munition at this location. But, says Postol, "The details of the crater itself unambiguously show that it was not created by the alleged airdropped sarin-dispersing munition."
The correction of the wind direction mistake, he says, shows
"the predicted direction of the sarin plume would take it immediately into a heavily populated area. The crater-area where the alleged sarin release was supposed to have occurred was close enough to the densely populated downwind area that significant amounts of sarin that would have fallen near the crater during the initial aerosol release, and would have resulted in a persistent plume of toxic sarin being carried into this populated area, as the liquid on the ground near the crater evaporated during the day. The close proximity to the crater would have certainly led to high casualties within the populated crater."
Postol says his April 21 assessment leads to new questions: Why were the multiple sets of journalists who were filming at the crater where the alleged sarin release occurred not showing the numerous victims of the alleged release who would have been immediately next to the area?
This publicly available evidence discredits the White House Report’s claims that the nerve agent release occurred, and that the agent released was the result of an airdropped munition.
Postol warns,
"Without an independent media providing accurate and unbiased information to citizens, a government can do pretty much what it chooses without interference from the citizens who elected it.... The facts are very clear—there is very substantial evidence that the President and his staff took decisions without any intelligence, or far more likely ignored intelligence from the professional community that they were given to execute an attack ... that had the danger of creating an inadvertent military confrontation with Russia," and further harmed U.S.-Russian relations, thus undermining U.S. efforts to defeat the Islamic State—a common enemy."
