US defense contractors were involved in Syria gas attack: Investigative journalist


American investigative journalist Jeffrey Silverman says he has information showing US defense contractors were "directly or indirectly" involved in last month’s chemical weapons attack in Syria.


“The way the attack was carried out shows that there are some defense contractors who have been involved with planning this attack for a long time,” Silverman said in an interview with Press TV on Saturday.

“And these defense contractors are tied in with former employees of the US Department of Defense,” he said.

Silverman said that he has read many anonymously hacked military emails between Anthony James MacDonald, a retired colonel who works for a Colorado-based defense contractor named TechWise, a DoD employee and others, revealing the role of TechWise and former DoD officials in planning the chemical attack in Syria.

The emails “that all connect to the region” even show those involved congratulating each others for their success in a recent operation, then linking to “a Washington Post article that implicates the regime in Syria as having been responsible which obviously is not the case based on the information that we now have,” the journalist added.

“So it is very likely that the US defense contractors were directly or indirectly responsible for this gas attack.”

Washington has accused the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad of launching the August 21 chemical attack in the suburbs of Damascus, killing hundreds of people. The Syrian government has strongly rejected the allegation.

President Barack Obama, who has previously described the use of chemical weapons as a “red line,” said last Saturday that the United States should attack Syria.

HJ/HJ