Hersh on the Strike Against Syria

I normally don't post stories from other journalists, but since the subject of Israel's air strike against Syria in September has been a source of discussion on this blog, I thought I would point everyone in the direction of Sy Hersh's latest in the New Yorker: Air Strike in the Dark. The article investigates claims by anonymous sources inside the White House and Israel, speaking to the press in the weeks after the attack, that the target site in Syria was a North Korean sponsored nuclear weapons development program. Hersh finds those claims unsubstantiated.

Here's the nut graph:

'...in three months of reporting for this article, I was repeatedly told by current and former intelligence, diplomatic, and congressional officials that they were not aware of any solid evidence of ongoing nuclear-weapons programs in Syria. It is possible that Israel conveyed intelligence directly to senior members of the Bush Administration, without it being vetted by intelligence agencies. (This process, known as “stovepiping,” overwhelmed U.S. intelligence before the war in Iraq.) But Mohamed ElBaradei, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations group responsible for monitoring compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, said, “Our experts who have carefully analyzed the satellite imagery say it is unlikely that this building was a nuclear facility.”'

Andrew Lee Butters/Beirut