A U.S. intelligence assessment of last week’s suspected chemical-weapons attack near Damascus cites intercepted communications that allegedly showed Syrian government officials making preparations to use chemical weapons three days before the attack and then launching efforts afterward to cover it up. The assessment released by the White House on Friday asserts that U.S. officials tracked the actual firing of chemical munitions, which were launched by rocket batteries from government-held positions and landed in rebel-held or contested neighborhoods in suburbs east and southwest of the capital. The high civilian death toll — U.S. officials believe the attack killed 1,429 people — apparently triggered a panic inside the Syrian regime, U.S. intelligence officials concluded. In an intercepted message, a senior Syrian official was overheard confirming that government troops had launched the Aug. 21 attack, and expressing concern that a visiting team of U.N. weapons inspectors would find out about it, the document stated. A Syrian chemical-weapons team was “directed to cease operations,” the U.S. assessment said. Soon afterward, Syrian troops began an intensified barrage on the same neighborhood using conventional artillery in an apparent effort to cover up the evidence. Read more http://www.washingtonpost.com/world...864662-1196-11e3-85b6-d27422650fd5_story.html
