Here is more from two other sources about some kind of command chaos within Syrian forces regarding the attack:

Exclusive: Intercepted Calls Prove Syrian Army Used Nerve Gas, U.S. Spies Say
By Noah Shachtman, ForeignPolicy.com, Aug. 27, 2013

Last Wednesday, in the hours after a horrific chemical attack east of Damascus, an official at the Syrian Ministry of Defense exchanged panicked phone calls with a leader of a chemical weapons unit, demanding answers for a nerve agent strike that killed more than 1,000 people. Those conversations were overheard by U.S. intelligence services, The Cable has learned. And that is the major reason why American officials now say they're certain that the attacks were the work of the Bashar al-Assad regime -- and why the U.S. military is likely to attack that regime in a matter of days.

But the intercept raises questions about culpability for the chemical massacre, even as it answers others: Was the attack on Aug. 21 the work of a Syrian officer overstepping his bounds? Or was the strike explicitly directed by senior members of the Assad regime? "It's unclear where control lies," one U.S. intelligence official told The Cable. "Is there just some sort of general blessing to use these things? Or are there explicit orders for each attack?" 

Nor are U.S. analysts sure of the Syrian military's rationale for launching the strike -- if it had a rationale at all. Perhaps it was a lone general putting a long-standing battle plan in motion; perhaps it was a miscalculation by the Assad government. Whatever the reason, the attack has triggered worldwide outrage, and put the Obama administration on the brink of launching a strike of its own in Syria. "We don't know exactly why it happened," the intelligence official added. "We just know it was pretty fucking stupid." [.....]

And this from Phil Sands in The National (of the UAE) August 26:

[....] there were indications from Damascus that some of the army officers involved had tried to distance themselves from what happened, and insisted they were not told the rockets they were firing were loaded with toxins.

"We have heard from people close to the regime that the chemical missiles were handed out a few hours before the attacks," said a source from a well-connected family, who has contacts with both the opposition and regime loyalists.

"They didn't come from the ministry of defence but from air force intelligence, under orders from Hafez Maklouf . The army officers are saying they did not know there were chemical weapons. Even some of the people transporting them are saying they had no idea what was in the rockets - they thought they were conventional explosives."

Hafez Maklouf, Mr Al Assad's cousin, commands the department of General Intelligence, a powerful and feared intelligence unit [.....]

Note that Sands goes on to present the rebel version of the story, so it's not like he's touting one side or the other.

So that's 3 totally different sources suggesting some sort of command confusion: a member of a "well connected Syrian family," U.S. intel sources (?), and an Israeli official.

From the new Snowden leak of the Intel Agencies "Black Budget,"

U.S. spy network’s successes, failures and objectives detailed in ‘black budget’ summary
By Barton Gellman and Greg Miller, Washington Post, August 29, 2013,

here's what's related.

On Syria:

High-tech surveillance

The documents make clear that U.S. spy agencies’ long-standing reliance on technology remains intact. If anything, their dependence on high-tech surveillance systems to fill gaps in human intelligence has intensified [....]

In Syria, NSA listening posts were able to monitor unencrypted communications among senior military officials at the outset of the civil war there, a vulnerability that President Bashar al-Assad’s forces apparently later recognized. One of the NRO’s functions is to extract data from sensors placed on the ground near suspected illicit weapons sites in Syria and other countries [....]

On chemical weapons:

Critical gaps

Despite the vast outlays, the budget blueprint catalogs persistent and in some cases critical blind spots.

Throughout the document, U.S. spy agencies attempt to rate their efforts in tables akin to report cards, generally citing progress but often acknowledging that only a fraction of their questions could be answered — even on the community’s foremost priority, counter-terrorism. [....]

A chart outlining efforts to address key questions on biological and chemical weapons is particularly bleak. U.S. agencies set themselves annual goals of making progress in at least five categories of intelligence collection related to these weapons. In 2011, the agencies made headway on just two gaps; a year earlier the mark was zero.

The documents describe expanded efforts to “collect on Russian chemical warfare countermeasures” and assess the security of biological and chemical laboratories in Pakistan [....]

The latter makes me wonder about what the powers-that-be are thinking about what's going to happen to Syria's chemical weapons stores if the rebels end up ousting Assad.

Another thing. On the fact that WaPo agreed to a black out of lots of information from the leaked Black Budget on national security grounds gives me a clue to watch what the reporters who have had full access say and do about contentious intel issues like Syria. Gellman and Miller, they now know things on that front that we don't.