CIA Director Mike Pompeo said Thursday at his confirmation hearing to be secretary of state that he will work to share a document drafted last year justifying President Trump’s April 2017 attack on a Syrian airbase.
Pompeo assured Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., he would work to provide a copy of the document either to members of Congress or to the public, if it’s unclassified.
“I promise I will work alongside you to do the best I can to get you that information,” he said. “If it’s a classified version of it that you have a right as a member of the legislative branch to see, I’ll work to get you that, and if it’s an unclassified version, we will work to achieve that as well.”
Trump administration attorneys have been fighting public release of the document. The group Protect Democracy, which is suing for access to the legal justification, filed a brief Monday citing another possible attack on Syria’s military as bolstering the case for disclosure.
The transparency group’s Monday filing said the government has acknowledged that the document “is not classified or protected from disclosure by national security statutes. The government seeks to withhold the records under the deliberative process privilege.”
A court declaration from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence appeared to say only the first page of the memo has classified information and said only “a limited number of discrete worlds and phrases … within or referring to the factual background section on page one of the legal memorandum” are covered by Freedom of Information Act exemptions for classification or other legal release restrictions.
“These phrases form the underlying factual basis for the U.S. Government’s intelligence assessment that the Syrian Governmental forces carried out the chemical weapons attack at Khan Shaykhyn, Syria,” the ODNI official’s declaration said. “These phrases further identify and describe certain of the Signals Intelligence in the U.S. Government’s possession relating to this attack, and they describe the U.S. Government’s confidence level with regard to the accuracy of intelligence information.”
Trump is now threatening to bomb Syria again over the alleged use of chemical weapons in Douma, the last rebel-held town near Damascus. Last year, he launched 59 Tomahawk missiles in response to the alleged use of sarin gas in the northern Idlib province.
The legal justification for last year’s attack on Syria’s government presumably is similar to the justification that would be used for a second attack on President Bashar Assad’s government.
“We are waiting on the judge’s decision. It has been fully briefed,” said Soren Dayton, Protect Democracy’s communications and policy director.
Congress has not authorized the U.S. military to attack Syria’s government. The U.S. military currently has about 2,000 troops in Syria, however, leaning on a 2001 war authorization against al Qaeda. Under a controversial Obama administration theory, the Islamic State’s prior link to al Qaeda allows the deployment under that 2001 authorization.
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis conceded in February that “we do not have evidence” that Assad’s troops actually used sarin gas against a rebel-held town in northern Syria last year, even though that was the reason Trump bombed the Syrian airbase. Mattis said Thursday that the U.S. is still waiting to see the evidence of a chemical attack in Douma.
