In the Lion's Den_ An Eyewitness Account of Washington's Battle With Syria - Andrew Tabler [56]
Sure enough, in paragraph ninety-six, the report said, “One witness of Syrian origin but resident in Lebanon, who claims to have worked for the Syrian intelligence services in Lebanon, has stated that approximately two weeks after the adoption of Security Council Resolution 1559, senior Lebanese and Syrian officials decided to assassinate Rafik Hariri.” The “Track Changes” version, however, showed that the names “Maher al-Assad, Assef Shawkat, Hassan Khalil, Bahjat Suleiman and Jamil al-Sayyed” in the original draft had been removed and replaced with “senior Lebanese and Syrian officials.” The tracked changes showed that the text had been removed at midday on October 20 by “special rep”—presumably Terje Roed-Larsen, UN special representative for the implementation of Security Council Resolution 1559.
I just stared at the screen in disbelief. Assef Shawkat? Maher Assad? Until then, the only place where you might see their names associated with any crime—the Hariri assassination or anything else—would be on far-right Lebanese websites or that of the exiled Reform Party of Syria in the United States. At Syria Today, we didn’t dare write their names, which was out of fear, but also out of lack of evidence. This report seemed to change all that.
I called my friend Ibrahim Hamidi at his office in the Al Hayat newspaper bureau. When I asked him if he had heard about the changes, he had no idea what I was talking about. After a few minutes of trying unsuccessfully to explain how “Track Changes” in Microsoft Word worked, I jumped in a taxi and went over to his office. At his terminal, I showed him the text. He didn’t say a word and just stared at the screen, expressionless, in shock.
At the United Nations, Syria’s foreign minister, Farouk al-Shara, faced tough questioning over the investigation. Shara responded to a line of the report stating that “there is probable cause to believe that the decision to assassinate former prime minister Rafik Hariri could not have been taken without the approval of top-ranked Syrian security officials” by turning the statement around and saying that, by the same definition, the United States, Spain, and the United Kingdom must therefore be responsible for the recent terrorist attacks on their own countries. Immediately, the United Kingdom’s foreign secretary, Jack Straw, issued a strong rebuttal, describing Shara’s comparison of Syria’s situation in Lebanon to that of the United States, United Kingdom, and Spain as “grotesque and insensitive.” He also reiterated Mehlis’s position regarding Syria’s lack of cooperation with the investigation, which he hoped Syria would rectify. “But I have to say, after what I have heard, that I am not holding my breath,” Straw said.16
The panic started immediately. In open-market currency trading in Lebanon, the Syrian pound lost nearly 25 percent of its value overnight. At Syria Today, staff members were stunned by the news. “My family and I stayed up all night watching television coverage of the report,” one staff member told me. Another said that he never “dreamed of a day when he would see high-level Syrians atop a United Nations report.”
In private, Hugh and I discussed the investigation in depth and how it would impact Syria Today‘s coverage. We both understood that the day’s events would have a profound impact on what the magazine could and could not print. However, we also recognized, based on our conversations with trusted sources, that things at the top of the Assad regime seemed chaotic and that it was a distinct possibility that the regime could topple, resulting in some kind of palace coup or an Alawite military officer seizing power. The Syrian opposition, historically hapless, had managed to agree on the Damascus Declaration. More impressive than the declaration’s text were the political skills shown by Syria’s most well-known opposition leader, Michel Kilo, who had managed to draft the declaration