At the UN the next day, Ambassador Haley created a media sensation when she displayed photographs of the dead and accused Russia of being complicit.
“How many more children have to die before Russia cares?” she asked.
NBC News, in a typical report that day, quoted American officials as confirming that nerve gas had been used and Haley tied the attack directly to Syrian President Assad.
"We know that yesterday’s attack was a new low even for the barbaric Assad regime,” she said.
There was irony in America's rush to blame Syria and criticize Russia for its support of Syria's denial of any use of gas in Khan Sheikhoun,
as Ambassador Haley and others in Washington did. "What doesn't occur to most Americans" the adviser said,
"is if there had been a Syrian nerve gas attack authorized by Bashar, the Russians would be 10 times as upset as anyone in the West.
Russia’s strategy against ISIS, which involves getting American cooperation, would have been destroyed and Bashar would be responsible for pissing off Russia,
with unknown consequences for him. Bashar would do that? When he’s on the verge of winning the war? Are you kidding me?”
Trump, a constant watcher of television news, said, while King Abdullah of Jordan was sitting next to him in the Oval Office, that what had happened was “horrible, horrible” and a “terrible affront to humanity.”
Asked if his administration would change its policy toward the Assad government, he said:
“You will see.” He gave a hint of the response to come at the subsequent news conference with King Abdullah:
“When you kill innocent children, innocent babies – babies, little babies – with a chemical gas that is so lethal ... that crosses many, many lines, beyond a red line . ...
That attack on children yesterday had a big impact on me. Big impact ... It’s very, very possible ... that my attitude toward Syria and Assad has changed very much.”
Within hours of viewing the photos, the adviser said, Trump instructed the national defense apparatus to plan for retaliation against Syria.
“He did this before he talked to anybody about it. The planners then asked the CIA and DIA if there was any evidence that Syria had sarin stored at a nearby airport or somewhere in the area.
Their military had to have it somewhere in the area in order to bomb with it.”
“The answer was, ‘We have no evidence that Syria had sarin or used it,’” the adviser said.
“The CIA also told them that there was no residual delivery for sarin at Sheyrat [the airfield from which the Syrian SU-24 bombers had taken off on April 4] and Assad had no motive to commit political suicide.
” Everyone involved, except perhaps the president, also understood that a highly skilled United Nations team had spent more than a year
in the aftermath of an alleged sarin attack in 2013 by Syria, removing what was said to be all chemical weapons from a dozen Syrian chemical weapons depots.
At this point, the adviser said, the president’s national security planners were more than a little rattled:
“No one knew the provenance of the photographs. We didn’t know who the children were or how they got hurt.
Sarin actually is very easy to detect because it penetrates paint, and all one would have to do is get a paint sample.
We knew there was a cloud and we knew it hurt people. But you cannot jump from there to certainty that Assad had hidden sarin from the UN because he wanted to use it in Khan Sheikhoun.”
The intelligence made clear that a Syrian Air Force SU-24 fighter bomber had used a conventional weapon to hit its target: There had been no chemical warhead.
And yet it was impossible for the experts to persuade the president of this once he had made up his mind.
“The president saw the photographs of poisoned little girls and said it was an Assad atrocity,” the senior adviser said.
“It’s typical of human nature. You jump to the conclusion you want. Intelligence analysts do not argue with a president. They’re not going to tell the president, ‘if you interpret the data this way, I quit.’”