The 2018 Syria Attack
Was the Alleged Douma Gas Attack a False Flag Act?
A reported gas attack on the Syrian village of Douma perpetrated by the government provided the justification for missile strikes on Syrian targets by the US, UK and France in April 2018. However, an inspector with the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons who was in Douma days after the attack claims there is no evidence a chemical weapons attack occurred. Ian Henderson provides a detailed account in a new book that casts doubt on the narrative there was a toxic gas attack.
The Tonkin Gulf Resolution effectively started the US war in Vietnam. The joint resolution passed by Congress on August 7, 1964 gave President Lyndon Johnson broad authority to conduct military operations in Vietnam without a declaration of war. The pretense for the resolution was the Pentagon claimed a pair of US Navy destroyers, the USS Turner Joy (DD-951) and USS Maddox (DD-731), came under attack by North Vietnamese gunboats on August 4th.
However, there was no attack on the Turner Joy and Maddox that day. Then-Commander James Stockdale flew air support for the destroyers in an F-8 Crusader assigned to the aircraft carrier USS Ticonderoga (CV-14). Stockdale revealed in his 1984 memoirs In Love & War: The story of a family’s ordeal and sacrifice during Vietnam years there was no attack. In fact, there were no gunboats in the vicinity of the destroyers. The engagement justifying the start of the Vietnam war never took place.
The fabricated attack remained a closely guarded secret for years. The year after the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, Stockdale was shot-down over North Vietnam and was held a prisoner-of-war for more than seven years. He would later be awarded the Medal of Honor for heroic actions as the senior Navy officer held as a POW.
This wasn’t the only time the US started military operations in response to an alleged military threat that didn’t exist. Four decades later, the US launched Operation Iraqi Freedom claiming Iraq possessed dangerous weapons of mass destruction and was poised to use them. No WMDs were discovered in Iraq.
The US, UK and France launched more than 100 cruise missiles at targets in Syria on April 14, 2018. They acted, the three nations claimed, in response to media reports of a poisonous gas attack on civilians carried-out by the Syrian military in the village of Douma a week earlier on April 7th. The Syrian Civil Defense initially reported at least 42 casualties. Located in the suburbs of Damascus Douma was held by anti-government rebels.
The problem with the claimed justification for the cruise missile strikes was there was no evidence the Syrian government conducted a chemical weapons attack, according to Ian Henderson. These observations are included in his book The Syria Scam: An insider look into Chemical Weapons, Geopolitics and the Fog of War (released February 4, 2025). Henderson was a lead investigator with United Nations-aligned Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. The OPCW is the independent organization that monitors the implementation of and compliance with the Chemical Weapons Convention that went into effect in 1997. Nearly all nations, about 200, are parties to the CWC.
Prior to joining OPCW in 1997 as one of its first inspectors, Henderson, a South African, had served in the military, and then worked as a chemical engineer. He was an expert on chemical munitions.
Referring to himself as Inspector A, Henderson states he wrote the book to set the record straight. He makes the case the OPCW published assessments at odds with the facts in order to align with the interests of powerful nations. Although he doesn’t directly name the all the countries he implies they include the US, UK and France.
In the book, Henderson notes the primary target of the April 14th retaliatory cruise missile strikes was the Barzah scientific studies and research center outside of Damascus. The attacking nations implied Barzah was a source of the chemical weapons used in the Douma attack. This was a shock to Henderson who led a pair of detailed inspections of Barzah. He wrote, “Having completed two intrusive inspection of that facility, we in the OPCW were clearly aware that there had been nothing related to chemical weapons at that facility.” OPCW inspection results are public information so western authorities would have known the Barzah facility was not a chemical weapons center.
Twenty years earlier, President Bill Clinton ordered a cruise missile attack against a factory in the Sudan he claimed was producing chemical weapons for Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda. Instead of a chemical weapons plant, the US destroyed the al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory that produced 60% of the antibiotics used in the Sudan. The factory employed 300 workers including Americans and Europeans. Some noted Clinton conveniently ordered the August 1998 attack shortly after Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky became public.
Days after the alleged Douma incident, Henderson joined an OPCW Fact-Finding Mission (FFM) that was deployed to Damascus. This followed a request by the Syrian government for an FFM be sent to Douma to collect evidence. The Syrian government was confident facts would confirm it was not behind a gas attack. After arriving in Damascus, the FFM was delayed by several days from traveling directly to Douma due to an unsafe security situation. Anti-Syrian government rebels controlled the area, posing a threat to the team. The FFM eventually arrived in Douma to conduct its mission two weeks after the alleged attack and days after the three western nations launched their missile strikes.
The most prominent evidence was a pair of gas cylinders that were found at two attack sites. It was initially believed these containers were filled with gas and dropped by Syrian military helicopters. However, the condition of the cylinders raised suspicions, wrote Henderson. Both cylinders were relatively undamaged despite claims they were dropped from a helicopter. One cylinder allegedly slammed through a steel-reinforced concrete apartment roof and was laying on a bed. A second cylinder allegedly punched a hole in an another steel-reinforced concrete roof but remained on the rooftop releasing gas into the apartment building, killing dozens.
The FFM did not observe “marks and deformation that would have been expected from the impact with the concrete slab and from tearing through and snapping the steel reinforcing bars,” noted Henderson. The final resting places and the intact physical conditions of both cylinders didn’t make sense to the FFM team. The scenarios appeared staged, according to Henderson.
Another curious development was some members of the team were ordered by the OPCW director-general to depart Syria and to interview people claiming to be witnesses in Turkey. Why go to Turkey more than 730 miles away, Henderson wondered? Twenty-one of the 34 witnesses were interviewed in Turkey. “[T]he truth of some [witness] accounts received in Turkey was later rendered questionable, because they were describing nerve gas symptoms,” Henderson wrote.
Photos posted on social media showed bodies with “heavy foam around the mouth and nose” as if they died from nerve agents; however, no nerve agents were detected by the FFM team. The team collected samples of soil and debris for lab analysis and used chemical warfare agent detectors for immediate results. While there were no nerve agents detected there were trace amounts of chlorine found. Henderson wrote, “the levels measured were at the trace (parts per billion) level, which you’d expect to see in any household environment.” Moreover, none of the available photos of decedents appeared to show symptoms associated with chlorine poisoning. Nothing the FFM team observed made any sense.
The FFM team was unable to collect tissue samples from any of the deceased to confirm if they perished from poisoning. All the bodies had been buried by the rebel faction by the time the team arrived in Douma. The government didn’t know where the victims were buried and the rebel faction did not reveal the location of the burial site making it impossible to exhume any of the deceased for forensic analysis.
Photos of victims with foam around the mouths and noses suggested nerve agent poisoning, but there were no nerve agents detected, which raised suspicions with the FFM team. The team interviewed doctors and other medical staff at the Douma hospital. Like every other witness they interviewed in the community none of the medical staff described a chemical attack.
Only the people interviewed in Turkey claimed to have witnessed a poisonous gas attack. Henderson wrote, “[the] alleged witnesses interviewed in Turkey provided descriptions of nerve gas symptoms, where sample analysis showed no presence of nerve agent or degradation products.” Were they coached on what to say? A British reporter observed the same dichotomy that witnesses in Turkey described a gas attack while witnesses in Douma claimed to have not seen one.
The Independent journalist Robert Fisk arrived in Douma just days after the alleged chemical weapons attack. He could not locate a single person who claimed to have witnessed a gas attack yet he learned of reports of alleged witnesses in Turkey describing a chemical attack. He wrote, “How could it be that Douma refugees who had reached camps in Turkey were already describing a gas attack which no-one in Douma today seemed to recall?”
A Syrian doctor Fisk interviewed dismissed the notion there was a chemical attack. “[The] doctor then adds something profoundly uncomfortable: the patients, he says, were overcome not by gas but by oxygen starvation in the rubbish-filled tunnels and basements in which they lived, on a night of wind and heavy shelling that stirred up a dust storm,” Fisk reported. The doctor said, “[Someone] shouted ‘Gas!’, and a panic began. People started throwing water over each other. Yes, the video [posted on social media] was filmed here, it is genuine, but what you see are people suffering from hypoxia – not gas poisoning.”
Henderson reported an early draft of the FFM investigation report raised questions about what actually killed the civilians. Toxicologists he described as “NATO experts” wrote:
Some of the signs and symptoms described by witnesses and noted in photos and video recording taken by witnesses, of the alleged victims are not consistent with exposure to chlorine-containing chocking or blood agents such as chlorine gas, phosgene or cyanogen chloride. Specifically, the rapid onset of heavy buccal and nasal frothing in many victims, as well as the colour of the secretions, is not indicative of intoxification from such chemicals.
The large number decedents in the one location (allegedly 40 to 50), most of whom were seen in videos and photos strewn on the floor of the apartments away from open windows, and within a few meters of an escape to un-poisoned or less toxic air, is at odds with intoxification by chlorine-based chocking or blood agents, even at high concentrations.
The toxicologists reported chlorine does not immediately incapacitate someone and anyone overcome by heavy concentrations of chlorine could have merely walked to open doorways and windows just steps away. That 40-50 victims immediately collapsed in one location and died from chlorine intoxification seemed implausible. This observation by the toxicologists was deleted from the final report by senior OPCW officials.
After more than two-weeks on the ground, and with its inspection and evidence collection completed, the FFM team returned to OPCW headquarters to begin compiling its report. Brendan Whelan (referred to as Inspector B) was assigned to draft an interim report that reflected the consensus of the FFM team members. After several days the draft was completed and was in circulation with OPCW senior staff.
Days later, Whelan learned that significant changes including new conclusions were being added to the report without the input of the FFM team. This launched an ongoing back-and-forth between FFM team members and senior OPCW officials who had final say over the report’s content.
One day, an American OPCW staffer requested to meet with Henderson “to look at another proposal for the contentious text.” Henderson assumed this was an effort to reach consensus with the FFM team. Instead, the proposed language offered by the staffer stated there was no doubt “there had been a chemical attack with chlorine.” When Henderson protested the proposed conclusion as inaccurate the staffer dropped a bombshell. The American staffer said, “Well, we’ve been told by the first floor that we’ve got to make it sound like we found something.” The first floor is occupied by the OPCW director-general.
While the draft was undergoing review a rift developed between the FFM team members and OPCW senior staff. One day, several of the FFM team members were ushered into an impromptu meeting with a delegation of three visiting Americans. Henderson wrote the Americans never revealed their names nor divulged the agency for whom they worked.
The US visitors stated unequivocally the Syrian government carried-out a fatal chlorine gas attack. The Americans informed the FFM team they reached this conclusion by calculating how much chlorine could have been contained in a cylinder, deduced the size of the apartment building and concluded there was enough chlorine to be fatal to dozens of people.
Some of the FFM team members were offended officials visiting from the US were second-guessing FFM team members who had actually been in Douma taking measurements, collecting evidence, and interviewing witnesses.
Henderson found the entire meeting to be awkward as the Americans appeared to be familiar with the contents of their draft report. The report was a working document and should not have been available to anyone outside of the OPCW. He also noted the meeting was in violation with the Article VIII of the Chemical Warfare Convention, paragraph 46 which states:
In the performance of their duties, the Director-General, the inspectors and the other members of the staff shall not seek or receive instructions from any Government or from any other source external to the Organization.
In other words, OPCW staff are supposed to be insulated from pressures and influences from outside groups in order to remain impartial. Despite the blatant treaty violation, senior OPCW officials allowed the meeting to take place.
In the months after the FFM team returned from Syria Henderson became increasingly concerned significant changes without evidence would make their way into the final report. Respectful disagreement became frayed relations between Henderson and senior OPCW officials. Despite the simmering tensions, Henderson was sent on a follow-up FFM to Syria in November 2018. Upon return, Henderson and nearly every member of the Syria FFM team were excluded from participating in drafting the Douma final report.
In March 2019, nearly a year after the alleged gas attack, the OPCW released its findings. Senior OPCW officials made significant revisions to the FFM team’s draft submission. The OPCW final report concluded:
Regarding the alleged use of toxic chemicals as a weapon on 7 April 2018 in Douma, the Syrian Arab Republic, the evaluation and analysis of all the information gathered by the FFM—witnesses’ testimonies, environmental and biomedical samples analysis results, toxicological and ballistic analyses from experts, additional digital information from witnesses—provide reasonable grounds that the use of a toxic chemical as a weapon took place. This toxic chemical contained reactive chlorine. The toxic chemical was likely molecular chlorine.
The final report authored by senior OPCW officials aligned nicely with claims by the American, British and French governments. Yet, the report differed dramatically from the draft interim report prepared by the FFM team that actually deployed to Douma and collected evidence.
The FFM’s interim report reached a different conclusion:
The team has sufficient evidence at this time to determine that chlorine, or another reactive chlorine-containing chemical, was likely released from the cylinders. However, the FFM still needs to clarify some of the details and to this end, the investigation remains on-going.
The FFM investigators wrote in their interim report the evidence was inconclusive there was even a chemical attack. What killed the victims had not yet been proven. To accept the interim report as the final word would have meant US, UK and French officials acted imprudently, if not irresponsibly, in launching cruise missile strikes to punish Syria for a chemical attack that never took place. The OPCW final report, authored by senior officials provided the three nations with political cover for their missile strikes.
Documents and emails obtained by Wikileaks after the final report was released appear to support Henderson’s claims the OPCW ignored crucial evidence and included unsupported assumptions in its final report.
Henderson denied he leaked the documents to Wikileaks including a draft of the interim report. It didn’t seem to matter, he wrote. He was viewed as untrustworthy by senior OPCW officials.
Months before the final report was issued, OPCW officials had given Henderson and Whelan who performed the toxicology report on Douma permission to work with a pair of university academics on an engineering study to predict if the two cylinders could have been air-dropped by helicopters and landed intact as they were found. After completing a computerized prediction model called finite element analysis, the academics delivered their findings. Based on this evidence, the FFM concluded “there is a higher probability that both cylinders were manually placed at those two locations rather being delivered from an aircraft.”
In other words, the gas attack scene was staged.
OPCW refused to accept the engineering assessment and reconsidered the prior decision allowing Henderson and Whelan to receive outside engineering assistance. The OPCW declared the two inspectors in violation of confidentiality rules. In May 2019, Henderson was escorted from the OPCW headquarters by security. Whelan was also let-go.
The director-general issued a statement claiming Henderson was not a member of the Syria FFM despite his being present in Douma during the initial inspection, the follow-up inspection, and the OPCW notifying the Syrian government that Henderson was an FFM member. Henderson’s findings on Douma should be ignored, according to the director-general.
In January 2020, Henderson was invited to testify before the United Nations Security Council on the Douma controversy. However, the United States refused to issue him a visa, forcing him to deliver a recorded statement instead.
Mark Hyman is a 35-year military veteran and an Emmy award-winning investigative journalist. Follow him on Twitter (X) at @markhyman.
Mark welcomes all news tips and story ideas in the strictest of confidence. You can reach him at markhyman.tv (at) gmail.com.
Nothing in this story is surprising. I note that Western nations rarely attack nations that have the ability to hit back. Kosovo, Bosnia, Syria, Libya, iraq are examples. Except for Iraq these were not boots on the ground. 3 times the West put troops on the ground ànd was humiliated, Vietnam, Somalia and Afghanistan.