On June 10, 2012, RT ran the story ‘Syrian rebels aim to use chemical weapons, blame Damascus’, which claimed rebels had acquired Libyan chemical weapons. It claims to have sourced the story from Dampress.net, which is a Syrian-government friendly news site based in Damascus. This story was also reported on June 10-11, 2012 on InfoWars.com and GlobalResearch.ca, citing RT. The RT report seems to have been the first English-language press report linking chemical weapons in Syria with Western-backed rebels. Within two months, then-US President Barack Obama would be warning the Bashar al-Assad regime that the use of chemical weapons in Syria would constitute a “red line” justifying a Western military response.
John Hogue, who had the top selling book of 9/11 (“Nostradamus: The Complete Prophecies“) and runs the website ‘Hogueprophecy.com’ claimed on 29 April 2013 that chemical weapons attacks officially attributed to the Bashar al-Assad regime were the cover for a ‘false flag’ by Western- backed rebels of the Free Syrian Army.
In August 2013, Hogue cited (as valid) Russian reports on chemical weapons used in Syria as inconsistent with the chemical composition of official Syrian stockpiles, and denigrated United Nations testimony on chemical weapons given by then-US president Barack Obama.
“These days, the only networks that give some critical journalism on television are American news bureaus of overseas networks. One of these happens to be RT (Russia Today), along with Al-Jazeera and to a lesser extent BBC WORLD.” – John Hogue
Hogue however, was not the first to propose this narrative. Achieving what must have been an initially strong run of disinformation, the RT reference was picked up by the less-than-venerable Daily Mail around 28 January 2013 before it was deleted (it cited InfoWars.com as the primary source ).
Also contemporaneously to Hogue, on 2 May on the Al-Jazeera (Qatari government) owned CurrentTV, former US defense official Lawrence Wilkerson claimed it had been an ‘Israeli false flag’ .
As previously elaborated, the notion of rebels being in possession of chemical weapons intended to be used in this fashion first seems to have appeared in English on RT.com in June 2012 and was itself derived from a pro-Assad online newspaper.
Appearing as a regular guest on the conspiracy radio show Coast to Coast AM in September 2013, host George Noory introduced Hogue as having predicted “using astrological methods” in July 2013 that “we would eventually learn” the chemical attacks had been a “rebel false flag” (there was no emphasis on the RT story, CurrentTV, or InfoWars). Noory, who regularly hosts Alex Jones on his show and appears on Infowars, has been observed by some Marxist commentators to be consistently “Assadist” and a proponent of “Baathist rule” specifically citing this appearance by Hogue as evidence .
In September 2013, RT (Russia Today) also began to claim the ‘false flag’ angle in regards to Syrian rebels, bringing the narrative full circle just as the UN resolution on destruction of chemical weapons in Syria was implemented .
What is most fascinating about all of this, is that John Hogue and Alex Jones were critical figures in spreading the 9/11 era conspiracies of “Nostradamus” and “False Flag” respectively. These networks of popular eschatology and conspiracy theory continue to support Russian public diplomacy, and the organizational consistency makes it seem unlikely to be a coincidence; especially considering pro-Syrian propaganda is also objectively connected to the “4000 Jews Stayed Home” conspiracy of 9/11 – and Russia’s ‘strategic marriage’ to Assad in Syria.
While it does not suggest Hogue’s open collaboration with any foreign government, Hogue does openly admit that the English-language bureaus of government-operated RT and Al-Jazeera are his preferred media outlets. The evolution of the Syrian false flag claims in the press follow the contours of this stated media preference. Today, the Center for Research on Globalization is being investigated by NATO’s Strategic Communications Centre as a front for Russian disinformation. Alex Jones’ InfoWars is allegedly under similar scrutiny from the FBI. It is unknown if John Hogue is under any similar scrutiny. Hogue’s prior perspectives on prophecy may indicate that his 2001-era predictions may have also been influenced by Russian information networks in a similar fashion to Alex Jones.