The White House has just released the unclassified “U.S. Government Assessment of the Syrian Government’s Use of Chemical Weapons on August 21, 2013.”
The report starts as follows:
The United States Government assesses with high confidence that the Syrian government carried out a chemical weapons attack in the Damascus suburbs on August 21, 2013. We further assess that the regime used a nerve agent in the attack. These all-source assessments are based on human, signals, and geospatial intelligence as well as a significant body of open source reporting.
Our classified assessments have been shared with the U.S. Congress and key international partners. To protect sources and methods, we cannot publicly release all available intelligence – but what follows is an unclassified summary of the U.S. Intelligence Community’s analysis of what took place.
Read the full report here
The author is a retired U.S. Air Force officer and a writer.