U.S. Shoots Down Secret Report That Syria Used a Hallucinogen Weapon

The State Department is publicly discounting claims made by its own diplomats about a chemical weapons attack in Syria.

On Tuesday, Foreign Policy detailed a secret and previously unknown cable from the U.S. consulate in Istanbul which came to the explosive conclusion that Syrian government forces dropped a hallucinogen known as 'Agent 15' on rebels in the town of Homs on December 23.

But less than a day later, State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland has denied the report, saying that the Foreign Policy story 'did not accurately convey the anecdotal information that we had received from a third party regarding an alleged incident in Syria in December.'

'At the time we looked into the allegations that were made and the information that we had received, and we found no credible evidence to corroborate or to confirm that chemical weapons were used,' she added. That's a major deal, because the international community has repeatedly told the Assad Regime in Syria that the use of chemical weapons is beyond unacceptable. The White House issued a statement along similar lines.

U.S. officials contacted by Danger Room said the information in the cable originated from a contractor hired by the State Department to monitor opposition media coming from Syria. After the attack in Homs, rebel activists posted gut-wrenching videos to YouTube of gasping victims crying out in agony. In the clips, opposition figures claimed that they had been hit with a poison gas ' maybe a nerve agent, maybe a hallucinogen.

American experts could find little in the videos that corroborated either chemical weapons story. (For one thing, hallucinogens and nerve agents have almost opposite symptoms and treatment regimes.) In the hours after the attack, U.S. officials expressed skepticism about the rebel claims. The bit about Agent 15 seemed particularly odd; while the U.S. military experimented on its own troops with hallucinogens, there was yet to be a proven case of the the agent being used in anger on the battlefield. Nevertheless, according to CNN, the State Department did ask 'a U.S. partner' to follow up, interviewing Syrian doctors and chemical weapons specialists.

CNN says that the gas was determined to be a 'riot control agent' ' a broad category of weapons that includes tear gas, pepper spray, and Agent 15. None of these agents are designed to be deadly. But they're also not designed to be inhaled in large quantities. 'Just like with tear gas, if you breathe in an entire canister, that can have a severe effect on your lungs and other organs,' one official tells CNN.

In other words, if a chemical was used in Homs, it wasn't a weapon of mass destruction.

It almost certainly wasn't a hallucinogen, either. CNN also interviewed a doctor who said he treated victims in Homs with atropine. If that's true, it rules out the use of a hallucinogen like Agent 15. Both are anticholinergic agents, blocking the neurotransmitters in the parasympathetic nervous system. One would only enhance the effect of the other. CNN says experts concluded that the Homs attack 'was later determined not to be Agent 15.'

The issue of chemical weapons continues to loom over the conflict in Syria. The regime's stockpiles are enormous, and they'be shown the willingness to prepare at least some of the agents for a possible attack. But for now, the U.S. government appears to have decided that, whatever happened in Homs, it didn't cross the chemical 'red line' that the President on down had pledged would trigger outside intervention into the civil war.