British researcher David Miller discusses the tribunal victory that recognised anti-Zionist views as protected beliefs, and elaborates on the historical and political intricacies of Zionism and anti-Semitism, highlighting the influence of Zionist organisations worldwide.

Miller also explores British involvement in Iran, the geopolitical dynamics of Zionist expansion, and the significance of Iran’s resistance.

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English translation of original Arabic (below)

#Hezbollah #Lebanon #AlMayadeen

The Islamic Resistance in Lebanon continues to impose new field equations through qualitative operations and precise targeting of occupation vehicles and soldiers, amid rising discussion in global media on the effectiveness of the deterrence imposed by the resistance on the northern front of occupied Palestine.

War media published new footage of resistance fighters confronting the fourth attempt by occupation forces to advance in the southern town of Hadatha, indicating faltering Israeli military objectives despite ongoing escalation.

In contrast, questions are increasing in Western newspapers and social platforms about Europe’s retreat in major international files, from Ukraine to the aggression on Iran, amid signs of declining political influence of the old continent.

The international scene appears to be entering a major repositioning phase, where new powers and axes advance to impose their political and military presence in a rapidly changing global system.

Participants: Bahia Halawi - Director of Al Mayadeen Online,
Bisan Tarraf - Al Mayadeen correspondent in Tehran,
Ahmed Taha - Al Mayadeen envoy to Tehran,
David Miller - Professor of Political Sociology

#حزب_الله #لبنان #الميادين

تواصل المقاومة الإسلامية في لبنان فرض معادلات ميدانية جديدة عبر عمليات نوعية واستهدافات دقيقة لآليات وجنود الاحتلال، وسط تصاعد النقاش في الإعلام العالمي حول فعالية الردع الذي تفرضه المقاومة على الجبهة الشمالية لفلسطين المحتلة.
الإعلام الحربي نشر مشاهد جديدة لتصدي المقاومين لمحاولة التقدم الرابعة لقوات الاحتلال في بلدة حداثا الجنوبية، في مؤشر على تعثر الأهداف العسكرية الإسرائيلية رغم التصعيد المستمر.
في المقابل، تتزايد التساؤلات في الصحف الغربية ومنصات التواصل حول التراجع الأوروبي في الملفات الدولية الكبرى، من أوكرانيا إلى العدوان على إيران، وسط مؤشرات على تراجع النفوذ السياسي للقارة العجوز.
المشهد الدولي يبدو أمام مرحلة إعادة تموضع كبرى، حيث تتقدم قوى ومحاور جديدة لفرض حضورها السياسي والعسكري في نظام عالمي يتغير بوتيرة متسارعة.

الشخصيات المشاركة: بهية حلاوي _مديرة الميادين أونلاين ,
بيسان طراف _مراسلة الميادين في طهران ,
أحمد طه _موفد الميادين الى طهران ,
ديفيد ميلر _أستاذ علم الإجتماع السياسي

#حزب_الله #لبنان #الميادين
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قناة وثائقي الميادين: / @almayadeendoc

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Iran controls the Strait of Hormuz — and it’s changing everything. British sociologist and propaganda researcher Dr. David Miller joins the Kianistan Podcast to break down the explosive US-Iran memorandum of understanding talks, why Israel is quietly working to destroy any deal before it’s signed, the internal war inside Iran between revolutionaries and reformists, and why no peace is truly possible while Zionist power operates unchecked inside Western governments.
🔍 WHAT YOU’LL DISCOVER:
— What the US-Iran memorandum of understanding actually says — and where the two sides fundamentally disagree
— How Iran shot down three MQ-9 Reaper drones and chased US boats from the Strait of Hormuz
— The two competing factions inside Iran: principalists vs. reformists — and how they nearly gave away the family silver
— Why Israel will sabotage any US-Iran deal — and the false flag playbook they’ve used for decades
— Jared Kushner’s hidden role: no official title, full policy control — and why that’s more dangerous than a cabinet post
— The Abraham Accords decoded: what Israel gets, what Gulf states get, and why the Muslim world is being carved up
— UAE’s secret Islamophobia funding pipeline — and how it connects to Tommy Robinson, GB News, and Reform UK
— Why Russia’s relationship with the Zionist movement is deeper than most people realize
— Iran’s missile range: can it reach Europe? What about US bases beyond the Middle East?
— David’s stark conclusion: there will be no peace in the region without Iran dismantling the Zionist colony entirely
⏱ CHAPTERS:
00:00 — Introduction & Eid Mubarak Message
01:20 — Who Is Dr. David Miller? Dismissed for Supporting Palestine
02:00 — The Bandar Abbas Incident: Iran Shoots Down MQ-9 Reapers & Chases US Boats
05:10 — Iran’s Dominance Over the Strait of Hormuz
06:00 — Trump’s AI-Generated “Adios” Post & the Chaos of His Decision-Making
07:30 — What Are the Terms of the US-Iran MOU? Tolls, Nukes & Frozen Assets
09:30 — Two Copies of the Iranian Proposal: The Real Story Behind the Confusion
11:00 — Principalists vs. Reformists: The Internal War Inside Iran
13:00 — Iran’s Leverage: Can They Actually Hold Trump to an Agreement?
14:30 — Israel’s Strategy to Sabotage the Deal — False Flags & Historical Examples
16:30 — The “No Peace With Zionists” Argument: Why Every Agreement Eventually Fails
18:00 — Gaza & Lebanon as Non-Negotiable Red Lines for Iran
19:30 — Zionist Occupation of the American Regime: From the 1950s to Kushner
22:00 — Israel’s Ability to Derail the Deal — And Iran’s UAE Threat in Response
24:00 — Iran’s Missile Range: Diego Garcia, Ramstein, RAF Welford
27:00 — Could the UAE Absorb Iranian Strikes? Why It’s a Junior Zionist Partner
28:30 — UAE’s Global Islamophobia Funding: Tommy Robinson, GB News & Reform UK
33:00 — Should UAE and Saudi Arabia Even Exist as States?
34:30 — The Abraham Accords Explained: Normalization, Greater Israel & Global Expansion
39:00 — Abraham Accords as a Condition of the MOU — Will Gulf States Sign?
42:30 — Did China Broker This Deal? Pakistan’s Army Chief in Tehran & the Timing
44:00 — China Brokered Iran-Saudi Deal — But What About the Saudis Funding Iran International?
46:00 — Zionists Now Fund Iran International: The Intelligence Minister Meeting in London
47:00 — Russia, Putin & the Chabad Lubavitch Connection
50:00 — Muslim Billionaires vs. Jewish Billionaires: A Power Imbalance Explained
53:00 — Closing Thoughts: Will the MOU Ever Be Signed? David’s Final Verdict
55:30 — Iran as the Last Line of Defence for Humanity

👤 ABOUT DR. DAVID MILLER:
Dr. David Miller is a British sociologist born in 1964 whose research focuses on Islamophobia, propaganda, and political power. He was a professor of sociology at the University of Bristol until 2021, when he was dismissed following his public support for Palestine and criticism of Zionism — a case widely cited as an example of the suppression of academic freedom in UK institutions.

📌 STAY CONNECTED WITH KIANISTAN:
🔔 Subscribe for geopolitics, history & global south conversations
🎧 Listen on all major podcast platforms — search Kianistan
🌐 Visit: https://www.kianistan.com

💼 Sponsored by: https://www.worldwidelistings.co.uk

First published on UK Column, Wednesday, 10th December 2025

UK Column Editor's note: This article originally stated that Andy Pryce has worked for MI6. Mr Pryce wishes us to make it clear that he denies ever having worked for MI6, or having ever operated as an intelligence agent or covert operative.

Emma Briant’s journey from an apparently left-wing critic of propaganda to participant in propaganda networks of Western security establishment was so far-reaching that she ended up as an active participant in a bona fide British intelligence network convened by Andy Pryce, a Foreign Office intelligence-adjacent veteran diplomat who is known to have coordinated closely with ‘left-wing’ journalist Paul Mason.

In Part 2 of this investigation, we look at how her seemingly innocent interest in researching state propaganda activities very quickly morphed into active participation in Western propaganda networks. Part 1 delved deep into her career.

Atlantic Council Conference, June 2021

Among the speakers for a four-day Atlantic Council event at which Briant spoke in June 2021, were scores of Atlantic Council speakers from their Digital Forensic Research (DFR) Lab, joined by assorted senior executives at social media companies, including Meta and its subsidiary Facebook, Wikimedia, and others. They included Ben Nimmo, formerly of the Atlantic Council and sometime Integrity Initiative contractor, the military intelligence/MI6 project funded by the British Foreign Office to counter Russian disinformation. Nimmo is now the grandly titled Global Influence Operations Threat Intelligence Lead at Facebook/Meta. Briant also (virtually) rubbed shoulders with Nina Jancowicz, later the briefly tenured head of the Disinformation Governance board at the Department of Homeland Security.

The “Disinfo for hire” panel, more appropriate as a term for the panellists than their ostensible targets.

Briant’s own panel was called “Disinfo for hire” with an academic, a journalist, and the ubiquitous DFR Lab staffer as the panel chair. The final panellist was a colleague of Nimmo’s, David Agranovich, Director of Global Threat Disruption at Facebook. Agranovich is a former US Government intelligence operative, part of an increasing pattern of Western intelligence staff being recruited at higher levels of social media giants.

Emma Briant collaborating with the Atlantic Council. (Source of video)

Leaked emails show that Briant reached out to Agranovich in 2022 to enlist his aid in regaining a lost Facebook profile for a Nazi-washing Ukrainian nationalist propaganda vehicle. The emails between Briant, the journalist Paul Mason and Andy Pryce, show Briant working behind the scenes to improve the visibility of a Nazi-washing propaganda outlet.

Lobbying Facebook To Allow Nazi-washing

Evidence that Briant was deeply involved with Mason and was copied into correspondence with Andy Pryce, Mason’s ‘handler’, is compounded by an intervention she made on behalf of a Ukrainian nationalist grouping, EuroMaidan PR, on 14 April 2022. She forwarded details of this to Mason with the following message:

This below is FYI ... I can introduce you to the campaign … to the best of my knowledge FB still haven’t explained or reinstated their ability to advertise. All while Russian accounts seem to get reinstated almost immediately. It might be that Russia is better at engaging crowds of people to inundate the platforms with requests to take down Ukrainian and complaints of censorship aimed to reinstate their own accounts? It’s likely not a deliberate policy of the platforms to favour Russia but it seems Russia is the one trying to complain that it’s subject to censorship, which may make the platforms nervous.

The paranoia in this message is palpable. This is in a context where Russian Government-funded media such as RT and Sputnik are banned and closed down in multiple countries. By contrast, EuromaidanPR was not shut down. Someone at EuromaidanPR had written to Briant as follows:

My team in Ukraine runs EuromaidanPR, a large independent news service with a very strong social media presence. Two days ago, Facebook suddenly prohibited us from boosting any FB posts as we have been doing all along. You can see below that none of the posts we tried to boost should have been rejected, but FB is now prohibiting us from boosting any posts. This was likely caused by Russian trolls constantly complaining about our truthtelling. Just last week, the Washington Post lauded our work yet now FB is trying to curtail it.

EuroMaidan PR — masquerading as “Independent Citizen Media” while pushing US government propaganda and Nazi apologia. (Source)

On 13 April, Briant sent an email to lobby Facebook on behalf of the Nazi-washing venture. Who did she turn to? The Facebook executive she had been on the panel with at the Atlantic Council event some 10 months earlier.

Dear David,

I hope my message finds you well. I know you understand how urgent it is for Ukrainian voices to be heard the amid war crimes and human rights abuses taking place in Ukraine ... I am therefore writing to raise an issue to your urgent attention please.

The EuromaidanPR campaign raises Ukrainian voices and engages in advocacy from a Ukrainian perspective, playing a significant enough role in the grassroots effort to be mentioned in the Washington Post this week. In the same week, Meta stopped their advertising giving no explanation besides a general statement about ‘inauthentic behavior or violations of our Advertising Policies of Community Standards’.

I have taken a look at Meta’s communication to them and the content they were pushing and other posts to their account and nothing seems likely to have obviously violated any of your policies as far as I can see.

As I am sure you know, EuromaidanPR and other Ukrainian campaigns receive a lot of trolls and Russian reporting trying to get them banned, which I assume may have happened in this case. Given the urgency of the situation in Ukraine I am therefore writing to ask you please to reinstate the ability to boost the Ukrainian voices or at least please provide them with a proper explanation if they did do something wrong, so they can alter their strategy for future content.

Thank you ever so much in advance for your time in considering this request, I do hope you can help them and understand the need for a swift reinstatement of their ability to raise their voices in the midst of what looks like a genocide.

If there is a genocide happening in ‘Ukraine’ it is of Russian speakers - which numerous accounts verify have been targetted for some considerable years by the Nazis’ and Ukrainian nationalists in charge in Kiev.

Agranovich replied the same day: “Hello Emma! Thanks for flagging this. I’ll get it to our Ukraine team ASAP. They should be able to verify the reason and revert if it was inaccurate”.

“Leave me out of any story on this please” — Briant lobbies Facebook on behalf of Ukrainian Nazis, and then snitches to Paul Mason.

EuromaidanPR: ‘Independent News Service’ or Nazi-washing Western Propaganda?

EuromaidanPR, Euromaidan Press, or EMPR, describes itself as:

#1 independent citizen media about Ukraine from a point of view of ordinary Ukrainian citizens ... giving analysis and reporting the TRUTH for the rest of the world. Our reporters are ordinary people. EMPR is entirely independent, reliant on our volunteers and we reject any owner or large donor who may affect our independence.

In fact, Euromaidan has published scores of false stories on the developing situation, being especially belligerent in promoting the false story that the pre-coup Ukrainian government was responsible for the shooting deaths of the Maidan protestors and in Nazi-washing the Azov battalion/regiment and other Nazi formations in Ukraine. In one report, it rebutted the claims — now known to be factual — that snipers associated with the far right/Maidan injured or killed almost every protestor. In a handy guide called “What is Azov Regiment? Honest answers to the most common questions”, the glib conclusion is: “the short answer to the question about ‘Azov Nazis’ is: ‘no, Azov is not a neo-Nazi regiment’”. In May 2022, EMPR referred to “cheesy Russian propaganda on Azov as neo-Nazi”.

EuromaidanPR is funded by the International Renaissance Foundation — part of the Soros regime change empire. In 2020, Briant received $25,000 from the Open Society Foundations (also part of the Soros empire) towards a fellowship at Bard College in upstate New York. Soros was also a possible go-to source of funding discussed by Mason and Briant for their disinformation network.

I should note that I have also been in receipt of money from the Open Society Foundations to study the Islamophobic Counter-Jihad network and to examine the EU’s Radicalisation Awareness Network, a venture which turned out to be infiltrated by Zionist actors as well as to be covertly influenced by British intelligence.

The claim that Euromaidan reporters are ordinary people does not survive a quick search on its website where one can find many puff pieces written by the following agencies: Radio Liberty (14 items), Radio Svoboda (75) (or Radiosvoboda (62)), Radio Free Europe (15), Voice of America (17) (or RFE/RL (6)). All of these outlets are directly US Government-funded state propaganda outposts, and have nothing to do with ‘citizen journalism’.

In addition, EMPR advertises several ‘partners’ on its website, including the anonymous-sounding International Media Solutions. This is a Washington, DC-based company which states it has “a particular focus on new media development in conflict and post-conflict countries”. Among its activities in Ukraine are an ‘anti corruption speaking club’ in Kherson and workshops on ‘social media best practice’ in Kiev, led by Kate Head of the US National Democratic Institute. Both initiatives are funded by USAID, and are thus revealed as US propaganda outputs.

Another partner is Mir & Co, a non-profit organization founded in August 2014 and funded by the Soros’ International Renaissance Foundation — which also funds EMPR. Mir & Co states that it delivers “various supplies” to the war zone in Eastern Ukraine, including “ammunition … and equipment for [the] Ukrainian military”. This kind of activity does not seem consistent with “citizen journalism”.

In other words, EMPR is neither citizen journalism nor independent. It would appear to be almost entirely a US Government-sponsored operation. It is not surprising it would be defended by Emma Briant with her multiple NATO, US, and UK contacts in propaganda and intelligence.

Conclusions

As The Grayzone reported, Mason and Briant discussed the Soros Open Society Foundations as a possible funding source for the ‘cut out’ which Mason was planning with Andy Pryce. Briant passed the above email chain on all this to Mason, asking, in the message cited above, to “leave me out of any story on this please”.

I have seen a number of emails between Tatham and Briant in the period 2015-2018. This is the period where Briant went from colleague to sceptic on Tatham as his role in SCL became questionable as the CA ‘scandal’ built. These emails were passed to me by Briant herself, usually with an indication that the contents should not be linked to her. In reviewing these, it is apparent that there is nothing of note in them that was not a matter of public record, though it may have been the object to cultivate the recipient.

This possible motive would help to explain how Briant privately claimed to be supportive of my case when I was under attack by the Zionist movement, but was unwilling to publicly support me. For example, according to her PhD supervisor, Professor Greg Philo, who messaged me in 2022, that in conversation with him, Briant “actually defends you”. However, she “sees you as being always negative about her and as she is generally paranoid it’s not a good combination”.

Briant’s ‘support’

Of course, this lack of willingness to support publicly is also consistent with the subsequent ad hominem response to the earlier article I co-authored with Kit Klarenberg.

Briant’s odd mixture of self-promotion with a desire to be ‘left out of the story’ provides a cautionary tale for academics who want to be influential. Sooner or later, the world may hear of what you were actually doing.

Coda: Reaction to exposure

Briant’s empty threats about legal action, June 2022

When the emails first surfaced, Briant attempted on 7 June 2022 to claim that the emails had been hacked. If anyone “does decide to publish my hacked private information”, she wrote, “they will hear from my lawyers”. Four days later, Briant claimed that the hack had been confirmed by Twitter. It hadn’t.

‘Confirmation’ of a hack that was no such thing.

Twitter did not confirm that Briant’s account was hacked.

At first, Briant posed as outraged that she was being traduced, though she did not attempt to rebut any fact or any specific charge in the reporting. “The idea that I am advising on a secret plot to silence the UK left”, she wrote, “while simultaneously working my ass off on public statements to parliament about attacks on speech and declining government transparency … needs a special kind of deranged mind to reconcile”. As we have seen, her ‘critique’ of Cambridge Analytica was all of a piece with the MI6 line that the issue was about Russian interference, and not the actual import of what was happening, which was about intelligence-led disinformation about Russia.

As can be seen here, there was no attempt to engage with the substance of the allegations. (Source)

Later, when we reported further details of her involvement in what in fact were secret plots, Briant resorted to ad hominem slurs and claims of “fantasy”, which, of course, were not substantiated.

The “authenticity of the allegedly hacked material is under doubt”. Except it was not.

Ad hominem attack as a ruse to cover for the total failure to rebut any of the reporting. (22 June 2022)

The next strategy was to lean into the charges and pretend that she found them comedic — posting a mocked-up Twitter banner of herself as James Bond, an “international woman of mystery”, with the comedy spy Austin Powers as her profile picture, and a line that she is “not MI6 btw GZ”. This cover image and text were live for less than twelve hours, according to holdings in the Internet Archive. It was posted some time after 10:32 in the morning of 22 June 2022 and was deleted by 21:58 in the evening. It can be seen at 15.07 here. Perhaps she felt that this kind of approach might defuse the story. Shortly after this, Briant deleted her profile on Twitter (now X).

The latest of the desperate and incoherent responses: “Dr Briant (& and not MI6 btw GZ) but YEAH BABY YEAH!”. None of the reporting had alleged that Briant was MI6.

Learning Lessons?

But perhaps, dear reader, you have concluded that whatever mistakes Dr Briant might have made, she must surely be chastened by her exposure as a small cog in various intelligence-related machines? Without wishing to present the following as a thorough analysis of all her activities in the last three years, I submit that they indicate greater continuity with her past than discontinuity.

From December 2023, Briant has written three articles for Index on Censorship while under the control of genocidal Zionist Ruth Smeeth and former Jewish Chronicle hack Martin Bright. Index on Censorship has, since its inception, been close to the national security apparatus of the United States, and Bright has even admitted this in print endorsing the view that the CIA were playing “a sophisticated game” in routing payments to the magazine via the Ford Foundation. Index continues to get funding from the National Endowment for Democracy, the so-called CIA sidekick, though Bright has not been so upfront about what that means for its relations with the CIA.

Perhaps even more extraordinary is Briant’s involvement in editing a book which showcases a chapter by one of three Ukrainian sisters known to be Nazi sympathisers. The Routledge Handbook of the Influence Industry was edited by Briant and collaborator Vian Bakir. The Ukrainian author is Alexandra Chalupa. Her chapter is titled ‘The Kremlin’s Influence Industry and its Use of Lawfare to Undermine Democracy’.

Briant’s latest book publication features a chapter by a Ukrainian Banderite implicated in the Russiagate scandal.

Alexandra was co-chair of the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC’s) Ethnic Council, and her fingerprints are all over the disinformation that the Russians hacked and leaked the Clinton and Podesta emails — a core claim of the Russiagate deception. In 2015, according to her own account, Andrea was close to Michael Weiss of the Atlantic Council and various other NATO propaganda operations, such as The Interpreter Magazine. The connection of all three to Banderite propaganda networks and of Irena and Andrea to the Atlantic Council is illuminating, given the role that it appears the Atlantic Council played in a further Ukraine related propaganda operation.

All three sisters (the other two are Irena and Andrea) are — so it is reported — devotees of 1939-45 war-era Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera and his OUN-B fascist militia. Irena works for the US state propaganda outfit Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was also (around 2015) a non-resident fellow at the NATO think tank, the Atlantic Council. In 2016, she regularly posted debunking posts on StopFake. According to Ukrainian nationalist sources, Andrea and Alexandra were founders of a propaganda outlet Digital Maidan, created in New York in January 2014, which agitated for the coup in Ukraine. Their “closest working partners” included EuroMaidan Press, which was founded by Banderite thugs, and, as we have seen above, regularly publishes pieces by a wide range of official US propaganda outlets like Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

So, even after all this time, Briant is still associating with individuals who, at best, are deeply involved in Atlanticist state propaganda networks, and, at worst, in Nazi-affiliated networks.

Where is Emma Briant now?

Despite these connections, it would appear that Briant has not managed to either find herself a permanent job or to finish the work that she started on Cambridge Analytica back in 2018.

Since her work on Cambridge Analytica in 2018, Briant’s Senior Lecturer position at Essex, which lasted only one year and eight months, came to an end in March 2019. Since then, she has listed a series of part-time or honorary posts as follows:

• Part-time Fellow, University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain, October 2022-June 2025

• Honorary Fellow, Central European University, Vienna, April 2022-January 2023

• Honorary Associate, Cambridge Judge Business School, Cambridge, March 2022- present

• Part-time Adjunct Professor, American University, Washington, DC, April-December 2021

• Visiting Researcher/Honorary Fellow, Bard College, New York, July 2019-June 2025

• Scholar in Residence, American University, Washington, DC, April-August 2019

• Visiting Scholar, Stanford University, Palo Alto, California, July-September 2018

• Visiting Researcher, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, March 2018-May 2019

• Visiting Scholar, George Washington University, Washington, DC, March-July 2018

• Researcher/Post-Doc, George Washington University, Washington, DC, August 2016-April 2019

She appears not to have had a full-time academic job, except for a post in Australia: “In June 2023, Dr Briant moved to Melbourne, Australia to take up a new position as Associate Professor of News and Political Communication, at Monash University in the School of Media, Film and Journalism”. According to her LinkedIn page, this post lasted only one year and seven months. Her most recent post is stated to be a “visiting” role since February 2025 at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, though she states that this is “full-time”.

It would seem that she has had a series of “visiting” and “honorary” appointments, which in general, would not attract a salary, and several “adjunct” appointments, which are usually specific contracts for teaching and are not highly paid. So, how does Briant keep body and soul together? Well it appears that her “visiting/honorary” position at Bard College (2019 to the present) in upstate New York, was supported by George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, and she is also featured on the website of Chertwell Speakers where she offers her services for, according to her own website, “Speaking Fees: $10,000 – $25,000 USD”. Though, as one academic with knowledge of her career notes, “she makes a useful tool for intelligence and intelligence-linked academics and this might also help her shift from job to job”.

In 2019, she claimed to have already “spent 11 years researching SCL Group and Cambridge Analytica”. Given Cambridge Analytica was only created in 2013, this seems an inflated claim. As early as June 2019, she began mentioning her next book: “She is now consolidating recent research … into a long-term book project tentatively titled Propaganda Machine: The Hidden Story of Cambridge Analytica and the Digital Influence Industry”. Also in 2019, she said the book was “expected” in 2020. She announced pre-orders for the title “from Amazon or Barnes and Noble” in September 2019. She created a website for the book in 2020. It was listed as already published on Google Books in 2020. It was, according to Amazon UK, due for publication on 4 January 2022. In May 2023, she said, “She is “now finalizing her third book, Propaganda Machine: Inside Cambridge Analytica and the Digital Influence Industry”. Her own website still heralds it as a “forthcoming book project”. It appears not to be published as of December 2025.

In the end, the nature of the cautionary tale is that academics and journalists should pay much more attention to the potential that they might be co-opted and turned into assets of Western intelligence agencies than is exhibited in the cautionary tale that is Emma Briant.

Part 1: An Innocent Abroad?

In summer 2022, Kit Klarenberg and I exposed in The Grayzone how Emma Briant — self-styled “disinformation expert” and “maven of persuasion” — had conspired with journalist Paul Mason, under the tutelage of Andy Pryce, a career MI6 officer, to discredit and deplatform left-wing, anti-war academics, activists, and journalists.

This article digs deeper and looks closely at the various activities in which she engaged which ended up placing her into intelligence connected networks. It analyses the way in which academics such as Briant can get drawn into collaboration with shadowy intelligence figures, perhaps without fully realising what is going on. I put it this way to give Dr Briant the benefit of the doubt at the start of this article. But readers will no doubt come to their own conclusions as we traverse her career and her varying and increasingly close contacts with the national security apparatus in the UK, US, and NATO.

Emma Briant poses as a leftish critic of state and corporate agendas. Here she is on a recent panel in April 2025 at the University of Cambridge, which she organised on threats faced by academics.

Amongst other things, she says the following:

It’s a testament to the power of research colleagues work that some of … them find themselves singled out for a barrage of abuse and attempts to silence them. Beyond the more specific challenges faced by researchers challenging powerful or deceptive actors, we are witnessing an increasingly hostile environment for scientific inquiry of all kinds. Attacks on the university itself, for example, are happening in the United States ...

In contrast to the many conspiracy influencers that are crying ‘censorship’ across social media to millions of followers, academics often feel unsafe and unable to speak out about threats that they may face publicly … They feel very often that more attacks will follow if they raise the alarm. Now that means a lot of people end up fighting this battle alone, and we want to make sure that that doesn’t happen, which is why this organizing this panel was so incredibly important to me.

The threats that we see are not just a feature of the US political environment, though. They are experienced already in the United Kingdom and across Europe and around the world …

Threats may be complex, relentless, and lack solutions, which is why we’re talking about them today, because we need to provide solutions for the many, many researchers to enable their work around the world.

Much of the media focus in recent years has focused on attacks on researchers discussing them as though they were a feature of the social media environment alone leading many to the assumption that researchers are complaining about nasty comments on the internet that they’re being oversensitive to legitimate criticisms. What we’re talking about isn’t that. What we’re talking about here are coordinated multi-vector attacks from often well-funded political actors or governments.

This sounds quite anti-authoritarian, vaguely left-wing, and certainly liberal. It is notably non-specific about the origins of these attacks, though it is pretty clear that Briant means to include in those attacks legitimate reporting about the role of ‘disinformation’ researchers in intelligence networks, as was done in The Grayzone pieces I mentioned at the beginning, and indeed as is done in this article.

As if to emphasise that point, we can report that the opening keynote speech at the event was given by Elliot Higgins, the CEO of Bellingcat, the ‘open source’ intelligence firm which is an asset of Western intelligence agencies including MI6 and the CIA and has received funding from the “CIA sidekick”, the National Endowment for Democracy. Emphasising those connections, another of the keynote speakers was Nina Jankowicz, the former Executive Director for the Disinformation Governance Board in the US Department of Homeland Security.

As I have previously reported, Jankowicz herself previously managed “democracy assistance programs” to Russia and Belarus at the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, a core part of the National Endowment for Democracy. After that, she was involved in advising the government of Ukraine on ‘disinformation’ via an organisation called StopFake in 2016-2017, which claimed to be independent, but was actually a government cutout with a deserved reputation for Nazi apologism.

These speakers, which connect Briant to intelligence networks, may make us sceptical about Briant’s comments, but we will come back to what she said at the end of this article to ask about how best to understand them.

Emma Briant’s Backstory

To be fair, Emma Briant has an early history as a researcher with the Glasgow Media Group, which pioneered studies of news bias and then propaganda and media effects on public belief and opinion from the 1970s-2000s.

The Group was once described famously by Lord Annan, the government-appointed reviewer of broadcasting, as “a shadowy guerrilla force on the fringes of broadcasting”. It was certainly not seen as compromised by powerful sources. Its most well-known figure, Professor Greg Philo, who died in 2024, was widely known as a critic of Western news media. As it happens, he was also the PhD supervisor of both myself and Emma Briant. I wrote about his career and achievements in the wake of his passing last year.

Briant completed a number of reports and publications with the Group, including on mental health and on the media coverage of refugees, before publishing a version of her PhD as a book in 2014. In my own case, I completed my PhD with the Glasgow Group in 1994, some years prior to Briant’s association, which started in 2005.

Full Disclosure …

So, although our paths at the Glasgow Media Group didn’t really cross, I should also disclose that prior to undertaking her PhD at Glasgow, Briant applied to do a PhD at the University of Strathclyde, also in Glasgow, under my supervision in the Department of Geography and Sociology. I was the Professor of Sociology and Director of Research there from 2004. As part of the preparatory process, I gave her a book to read prior to signing up for a PhD: Web of Deceit: Britain’s Real Role in the World by Mark Curtis. Mark had been appointed as a Visiting Fellow in the department on my instigation. It was later cited by Briant in discussion with a third party (whose name I am withholding) as a key reason why she decided to do her PhD at Glasgow and not Strathclyde. Her concerns about the book can be seen in her review of it in 2005. Arguments “in some areas”, she wrote, “are disappointingly unsophisticated” and “the book would not stand up to rigorous academic standards”. At one point, Briant tries to justify the use of propaganda: “particularly during wartime, propaganda or censorship is in any state sometimes a necessary tool”. Though she was, for a time, more critical of propaganda, this early view provides a good prediction of her more recent positions, and indeed actions.

In any event, between 2005-2011, Briant was a tutor and postgraduate student at the University of Glasgow, and was then a researcher at Glasgow from April 2012-September 2013, according to her LinkedIn profile. It should also be noted that Alan McLeod, who writes for Mintpress, also undertook his PhD at Glasgow (completed in 2017). Mintpress was also a target of the network in which — wittingly or not — Briant became involved.

The journey of Emma Briant from presenting herself as being on the left to being implicated in intelligence-run networks is a cautionary tale for all critics of imperial power. It raises the question of whether we are suspicious enough of our colleagues, and whether we do enough to protect our activities from infiltrators.

“Maven of Persuasion”, or Intelligence Asset?

On Briant’s website, she claims to merely be a passive observer and critic of “disinformation and influence operations”, explicitly declaring she “DOES NOT [emphasis in original] assist with propaganda campaigns, strategic communications — a euphemism for information warfare — or ‘countering’ disinformation”.

In reality, the seemingly part-time academic has repeatedly been closely involved in state propaganda activities. What’s more, it’s clear Briant has had multiple intimate contacts with serving and former US and British intelligence operatives.

Briant in Bath

In June 2015, Briant attended a University of Bath conference, ‘Understanding Conflict’, which was organised by the present author. Amongst attendees were numerous noted critics of Western foreign, defence, and counter-terror policy, amongst them Max Blumenthal, The Grayzone’s editor. Eerily, the event was also attended by a representative of Britain’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL — aka Porton Down — the British Government’s chemical and biological warfare centre), who appeared to have a keen interest in convening private discussions with younger attendees.

DSTL has, since its creation in 2001, been responsible for research and advice on Information Operations, and set up a Cyber and Influence Science and Technology Centre. Also present were two representatives of the Israeli Embassy in London; their surveillance of conference attendees and covert recordings of the event were reported on contemporaneously by Electronic Intifada.

Invited to the Pentagon

While at the event, Briant discussed receiving an invitation to the Pentagon in the US. As a result, she left the event early to travel to this meeting on 10 June 2015 in Washington DC. She was met at the airport by Joel Harding, who by his own account — in a now-deleted blog post — had been “an enlisted soldier on a Special Forces Operational Detachment” before starting a career as a military intelligence officer.

Joel Harding’s website shows connections with SCL and its director Nigel Oakes and mentions his involvement with the question of Ukraine.

Harding notes he has “worked and supported information operations at all levels” since the mid-1990s. Among those he thanked for their help in this regard were Nigel Oakes and Dr Lee Rowland, key figures in Strategic Communication Laboratories (SCL), the parent company of Cambridge Analytica, which conducted psychological warfare training and operations for NATO, and many member state governments and militaries. Harding said the pair showed him “what is possible in the art and especially the science of influence”.

The Cambridge Analytica scandal led to SCL’s closure, and a period of minor celebrity for Briant, as she was presented as a leading critic of the company’s operations once the story broke. This led to her serving as senior researcher for the Netflix documentary The Great Hack, a farcical conspiratorial fantasy that The Economist suggested would be used “as a testimonial” by Cambridge Analytica’s bosses if the company hadn’t shut down, such was its credulousness about the firm’s professed psychological wizardry.

Harding claimed on the aforementioned blog to “expose Russian propaganda”. He provided a disturbing example: “If the Azov Battalion in Ukraine uses symbology and gestures reminiscent of the German Nazi party of the 1930s and 40s, the reminiscence is the kernel of truth, after that the propaganda begins”.

Harding went on to refer to Briant as a “dear friend”, discussing how they drove into Washington DC and attended a Pentagon “workshop”. Curiously, this is not listed on a seemingly comprehensive section of her website documenting ‘Selected Conferences & Invited Talks’ she has attended and given since 2005. The question of which other events have mysteriously gone unmentioned there — and why — is an open and obvious one.

Certainly, Briant continued to cooperate with Harding after the trip. In November 2015, she circulated a call by Harding to recruit assets on an academic mailing list.

Briant apparently helping Joel Harding to recruit assets.

Prior to sharing this, Briant had sent it to me on 28 November 2015 asking if I could share it on the listserv, but “not saying it is from me please?” Two minutes later, she wrote, “Please remove my signature at the bottom before you post it!” I responded the same day: “Why are we sharing this?” Briant stated she was “worried having my name on it” in case it might be restricted, but she would now share it herself.

It seems, then, that already by 2015, Briant was complicit in high-level Western whitewashing of the Azov Battalion’s Neo-Nazi nature, which has been a key NATO talking point even before this incident. As we shall see in Part 2 of this investigation, she enthusiastically threw herself into this informational battle when the NATO proxy war in Ukraine flared in 2022.

Washington Report

Following her secretive journey to Washington, Briant wrote, in an email to me on 14 June 2015 that the trip was “enlightening to say the least — a window into another world was flung open beyond my wildest imaginings”. She gleefully added she had “been offered an unimaginable level of access to planning, at the moment off the record”, and invited to the Pentagon’s “next discussions” on these matters in July. Nonetheless, Briant displayed some recognition of the morally ambiguous role she was playing as a result, noting:

I did try to influence and challenge a few things I felt would be positive without going so far as to get flung out the room … I need to handle my ongoing research very carefully, it’s very much unchartered territory being invited in this deep, I am getting a real insight into things that is invaluable but I need to be careful not to be used.

Since Briant wrote those words, has she been careful enough? One might suggest not, given that:

In September 2015, she addressed a report on US information operations to the Director of the US Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy.

In November 2015, she addressed a US Department of Defence ‘Strategic Multilayer Assessment Research Team’. The talk “went well” according to Briant’s subsequent account on 8 December 2015. She went on:

It was well attended (over 50 from across US gov’t) and there were loads of questions … I received a flurry of emails from people about the talk after many of whom were challenging my stance especially my defence of Muslims and critique of Islamophobia among IO planners. They were all respectful and some quite accepting of my criticisms - I’ve been invited back to advise them further.

The PowerPoint presentation she used at the briefing (a copy of which is in my possession) did not use the word ‘Islamophobia’.

The next year, as her national security state contacts developed, she provided advice to the Pentagon on propaganda strategy. Briant drew on her “recent/current work on Iraq” to “highlight a couple of points/thoughts in response to the question you sent, in the hope they are helpful in some way”. Her willingness to help, rather than oppose the illegal occupation of Iraq, is emphasised by her use of dehumanising Western military terms like “within theatre”. She goes on to call for “understanding” of “the tragedy that has befallen Iraq”.

Announcement of Briant’s talk at the Pentagon, November 2015

But of course, the tragedy was imposed by the illegal US invasion and occupation; it did not ‘fall’ out of a clear sky. She advised, “It is essential [for the US] to evidence real ability to establish an effective and legitimate state”. In reality, it was essential then, and remains so now, that the US ends the occupation.

Briant poses at the Pentagon. Source

NATO Strategic Communications

Back in Europe, in August 2015, Briant was an ‘invited participant’ to ‘StratCom Dialogue: Perception Matters’ run by the NATO Strategic Communication Centre of Excellence, Riga, Latvia. Among the governmental figures addressing the ‘high level session’ on ‘StratCom’s Role in NATO Transformation’ were the President, Prime Minister, and Foreign Minister of Latvia, the Polish Defence Minister, the Estonian Foreign Minister, and the Lithuanian Defence Minister.

Among those ‘contracted’ as ‘Subject Matter Expert’ advisors at the NATO centre was former British military and intelligence operative Steve Tatham. Presumably, Tatham and Briant conversed at this event (though they had met before when Briant interviewed Tatham for her 2014 book on propaganda and counter-terrorism).

During the year he spent at the NATO centre, Tatham “set up and edited the first journal of NATO Strategic Communications.” Briant was among those invited to join the editorial board of the new journal Defence Strategic Communications. Briant does not list this role on her LinkedIn page or her website.

At the time of this appointment, Briant appeared to recognise that it might be damaging to her reputation to be involved. She wrote to me in April 2015 on the overtures being made to her by operatives in the propaganda world following publication of her book on propaganda:

The reaction I received from Joel Harding, a Republican and IO operative who I quote in the book and who has seen a copy has been glowingly positive. He is offering to review it. I am getting a lot of interest from people I quote, rather amusingly SCL asked if I’d be interested in working with them, a suggestion of Nigel Oakes apparently. I sent a polite but vague reply stressing my concern to retain academic independence and that any collaborations would need to fall in line with the core concerns I highlight in my book, pointing them to take a look at that. I also have been invited to be on an editorial board for a new NATO journal ‘Defence Strategic Communication’, chaired by Steve Tatham! I could not have been more shocked. I actually have accepted that as I thought that perhaps I can be a positive influence on the journal, broaden the range of perspectives included in it. We shall see. Don’t worry, I am not embracing a future career as a government-approved terrorologist! Do you know how you get considered for the more academic ones? I’m keen to balance it out! ;)

I responded the same day with the following advice: “Crossing to the dark side there!... You should probably not accept any more ‘propaganda’ propaganda journals until you get on some proper ones!”

The first edition of Defence Strategic Communications, a NATO journal, winter 2015. Source

“I can give you the name of all the main organisers on the academic side of things as I am on their organizing listserve [sic]”. This author was one of the mentioned organisers, or “far left rogue academics”, as Paul Mason put it.

It is notable that although the journal is published by NATO which is a belligerent in several conflicts around the world, notably in Ukraine and Syria, as are its member states, Briant has never mentioned this conflict of interest in her academic publications after 2015.

Tatham had previously been commanding officer of the 15th Psyops Group of the British Army between July 2010-January 2013, and has also spent time working for British intelligence, a matter about which he has been somewhat shy.

• In 2009, he was appointed as Military Liaison Officer to the UK Cabinet Office’s Strategic Horizons Unit, part of the Joint Intelligence Organisation.

• His final appointment in the military was developing advanced Strategic Communication tools for the UK National Security Council, which is also part of the British intelligence apparatus, based in the Cabinet Office.

In his (now-deleted) biographical page on the Exeter University’s Strategy and Security Institute, cited in the preceding paragraph, he was also shy of giving the name of the specific part of the military to which he was attached.

Tatham went on to work at SCL Group, the parent of Cambridge Analytica, a company in which Briant became very interested from 2017. But she never wrote about the role that SCL and its associated companies played in facilitating western propaganda and disinformation, in particular in encouraging anti-Russian sentiment. Instead, she was more interested in the alleged role that Cambridge Analytica played in collaborating with Russia to undermine Western democracy — a role that, in retrospect, appears to have been a total fantasy. The importance of that scandal was that the firm used a huge amount of Facebook data to influence the US presidential elections and also the UK Brexit referendum in the interests of Russia. As it turned out, there was absolutely no evidence that this had happened either in the US or in the UK. Back in the real world, this document and other public information demonstrate that, on the contrary, SCL Group and its subsidiaries SCL Defence and Iota-Global (led by Tatham) were, in fact, working closely with Ukraine against Russia. This was even reported in the mainstream media, though the conclusion that the Russiagate hysteria was overblown did not percolate through.

Steve Tatham: Targeting Russia

In addition to setting up this journal, Tatham’s activities in the period 2015-2020 involved close cooperation with NATO and with NATO members on strategic communication and, in particular, in the development of strategies to target Russia. It is these activities with which Briant was in agreement. But the problem was, as time went on, Tatham’s associations with Strategic Communications Laboratories, the parent of Cambridge Analytica. The Cambridge Analytica story, not at first, but as it developed, became about Russian influence, including in the US elections and Brexit. Briant dived enthusiastically into the Cambridge Analytica story, which began to make her raise questions about Tatham and his connections to the scandal. In reality, Tatham and SCL were embedded in pro-NATO networks and were directly involved in encouraging Russophobia.

Drakula’s blog and the alleged manipulation of “hack and leak”

Tatham has been at the forefront of developing information warfare response to Russia in this period. SCL, for whom he worked, undertook a contract with the regime in Ukraine put in place following the US-supported coup. In 2014, his association with the National Defence Academy of Latvia’s Center for Security and Strategic Research resulted in a publication titled ‘NATO Strategic Communication: More to be Done?’ He co-wrote this with a Canadian army officer. Tatham was stated to be “currently the Special Project Officer in the MoD’s Military Strategic Effects (MSE) branch”. Military Strategic Effects is a propaganda unit in the MoD. It is the successor unit, created in 2013, to Targeting and Information Operations‎. According to a Ministry of Defence FoI release, MSE had 34 staff in mid-2018.

It was also noted that he retired from the UK military in June 2014. Following this, he joined SCL Defence and ran their contract with NATO which involved “StratCom training” and was paid for by the Canadian Government (at a cost of $1 million CAD) for Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova.

Steve Tatham (left) and his boss, Old Etonian Nigel Oakes (right), Riga, February 2015 |

The minutes of the meeting held in Riga on 9 February 2015 were later leaked to and published by the Romanian-based Drakula’s Blog. This was embarrassing, especially because it showed that Ukraine was doing very badly in the propaganda war. The ‘challenges’ it faced included:

• Lack of tangible results of either Anti-Terrorist Operation (ATO) or government reforms

• Lack of success stories

• Lack of trust of the population of the south/eastern regions in the central government

• Increased popularity of the Russian leadership among the population of the south/east of the country

When this was published on the blog, the response of Steve Tatham was to claim that the document had been manipulated.

Tatham claimed that:

• The level of distortion was higher in Russian-language sites, where NATO StratCom COE was portrayed as conducting a propaganda war to help Ukraine overthrow Putin.

• The extra bullet point added by Drakula’s Blog was included by most of the news outlets as an alleged revelation of NATO’s main concern in the Ukrainian conflict, e.g. on the Russian website Vzglyad(Взгляд.ру).

• Headlines in Russian distorted the original information considerably, e.g. Ridus (Ридус): ‘NATO Trying to Get Rid of Putin’.

Imagine Russian media having the temerity to believe that NATO was operating against Russia?

Most entertainingly, Tatham’s intervention had the effect of confirming the veracity of the leak, with the exception of the alleged minor alteration.

The leaked document with the allegedly added bullet point at the bottom. It is probably sensible to be sceptical of Tatham’s claims on this.

Amongst his work with NATO was a series of meetings to examine the challenges faced in strategic communications.

Now-deleted post on the SCL Group website on Ukraine. This makes it perfectly clear that the company was working against Russia and for the Nazi-infested government of Ukraine. Source

Russiagate and Cambridge Analytica

As the Cambridge Analytica story developed, Briant’s relationship with Tatham did as well. He moved from being a colleague and co-conference attender to a person of research interest. In this process, Briant would sometimes email me with information about Tatham, which she affected to believe would be of interest to me, always making sure to ask that I keep her messages confidential, as in this example from 18 November 2015: “FYI - as usual, not from me”.

Scrutinising Tatham and SCL Defence?

Tatham, SCL Defence, and IOTA-Global were thus regarded as part of the Cambridge Analytica Scandal. But of course, in reality, Tatham and the old Etonian Nigel Oakes, who ran SCL, were heavily implicated in conducting strategic communications against Russia for all of this period. This is of course the opposite of the charges implied against them by the journalist Carole Cadwalladr (and less directly Briant) and other partisans of the British intelligence-inspired ‘Russiagate’ narrative. Just as a reminder, it is worth citing Craig Murray’s extraordinary debunking post on the Cadwalladr cult amongst British liberals from 2022.

The most important piece of information to come out of Carole Cadwalladr’s current libel trial is perhaps the least reported: that she received material alleging links between Arron Banks, Vote Leave, and Russia from “a contractor to the UK security services”. The information came to light because, under discovery rules, she had to disclose a great deal of relevant material to Banks.

Here is something else I am pretty confident you did not know about Cadwalladr. Her great story for which she won the Pulitzer Prize was simply a lie. There was in fact no connection between Vote Leave or UKIP and the Brexit campaign and Cambridge Analytica. This is what the official investigation by the UK Information Commissioner uncovered. The entire glorious campaign of huge Guardian articles by Cadwalladr on how Cambridge Analytica, aided by Russia, won the Brexit vote, was in fact found to be entirely untrue.

Briant was a kind of junior Cadwalladr wannabe. When Briant wrote specifically about Tatham and SCL Defence (briefly mentioning IOTA-Global), she had nothing much to say about what they might be doing that was problematic. Let’s look briefly at the piece she wrote about the need to scrutinise SCL Defence on the SCL Group subsidiaries. Titled ‘Amid Shocking Revelations about Cambridge Analytica Unethical Activities, SCL Group’s Defence Work Needs Real Scrutiny’, it was published in Open Democracy in 2018.

She refers to SCL, Cambridge Analytica, SCL Defence, and IOTA-Global, and there is a fleeting reference to their work against Russia for NATO. But the real issue with SCL Defence, and with SCL/CA in general, is that their involvement in propaganda against the West’s official enemies disappears in the ideological requirement to focus on the wrong things: bad Russians and whether Cambridge Analytica was related to the rest of the SCL Group. She became increasingly propagandistic in her condemnations of alleged Russian influence, though like other purveyors of this narrative, she was never able to produce any evidence. Here is the introductory paragraph of a briefing she prepared for the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee of UK Parliament in 2021:

Since Russian efforts to influence the results in the UK’s Referendum on Membership of the European Union and the US Election of Donald Trump in 2016, concern about the role of ‘strategic leaks’ and truthful information algorithmically propelled within misleading influence campaigns with disinformation, as well as foreign intelligence operations, have all increasingly dominated national security concerns.

This is a farrago of speculation and falsehood.

In 2019, Briant contributed to the making of a documentary on the affair called The Great Hack. This also failed to provide the evidence in which its promoters blindly believed. The Economist noticed that the film’s focus on Cambridge Analytica meant that The Great Hack is too narrow but that when “it does, eventually, broaden out, it does so using innuendo and conflating different things, spookily intoning about Russians or populists”. The magazine of the capitalist class concluded that the film “is a misinformed documentary about misinformation”. However, we are now in a position to go further and suggest that it is a film about disinformation that was itself disinformation, sponsored, in this case, by the secret state.

Relations with Alicia Kearns MP

Briant also appears to have been in contact with Alicia Kearns, another interesting intelligence-linked person in the propaganda world. Both Kearns and Briant contributed chapters to a book which came from the event at the University of Lund, titled Countering Online Propaganda and Extremism: The Dark Side of Digital Diplomacy, which was published in December 2018. This appears to have been the product of a conference, held in Lund by the editors of the book, which Kearns attended in October 2016. She may well have known Briant prior to this, given the fact that she tagged her in a tweet on attendance.

Kearns is, at the time of writing, Conservative MP for Rutland in the UK, as well as being the chair of the powerful Foreign Affairs Committee in Parliament. In that role, attained only months after being elected to the House of Commons, Kearns has started to make a name for herself as a bellicose cold warrior in calling for a declaration that Iran’s IRGC be declared a terrorist organisation. In the course of this, she has even called for the closure of a mosque in London. This is on the spurious fantasy grounds whipped up by the ultra-Zionist Jewish Chronicle that the Islamic Centre of England in Maida Vale, which is a community centre and mosque, is actually the “London office” of the IRGC.

A glance at Kearns’ LinkedIn page reveals an entirely blank career between her university days and her November 2019 election to Parliament. What on earth was she up to? Probably her first role in intelligence connected activities was in August 2014, when she joined the Counter-Daesh Coalition Communications Cell as its director. Here is a review of her ‘blank’ period from Kit Klarenberg:

Kearns’ work for the Cell variously included devising a “Prime Minister-approved communications strategy to defeat Daesh and support Syria,” leading the Foreign Office’s psychological warfare response to “Russian military activity” in Damascus, and representing London “at one-to-one meetings with Foreign Ministers, the most senior religious leaders of countries, NGOs, and foreign militaries for 15 countries.” Accordingly, her team delivered “overt and discreet communications campaigns” within Britain, and West Asia.

During this time, Kearns received three bonuses for “exceptional” work, and was nominated for the Foreign Office’s “exceptional policy delivery award.” A scathing internal review of the Cell’s activities, not intended for public consumption, was much less flattering. It concluded that these covert propaganda programs “were poorly planned, probably illegal and cost lives.”

The contractors Kearns supervised typically consisted of high-ranking military and intelligence veterans. Whether the spooks within these firms ever resigned their formal agency posts is unknown. Take for example InCoStrat, a shadowy cutout founded by former members of the British Army and Emma Le Mesurier, the wife of the late Syrian White Helmets founder and ex-military-intelligence officer James Le Mesurier. Emma Le Mesurier has admitted to being an MI6 officer, and acknowledged that her company conducted “covert influence ops.”

As head of the Cell, Kearns would meet with “former” MI6 representatives posted at these front groups every week, and “had the last say in everything.” It would be highly unusual for a civilian to be entrusted by British intelligence agencies to oversee the work of its operatives. This alone strongly suggests she was no ordinary Foreign Office employee during this time, but in fact, an MI6 officer.

After presiding over the spook-infested anti-ISIS Cell, Kearns moved on to Torchlight Group – yet another British intelligence front. From 2017 to 2019, Kearns held a position with Torchlight as a “freelance consultant” on “violent extremism, counter-disinformation, hybrid warfare and behaviour change programmes for governments, militaries and NGOs.”

Unsurprisingly, the company was and remains staffed by former high ranking spies and soldiers specialized in tasks such as training repressive governments in GCHQ’s dirty tricks, spying on Palestinian refugees, and infiltrating foreign security and intelligence services on London’s behalf.

Whatever the precise relationship in the past between Kearns and the intelligence agencies, it seems clear that she is devoting herself to being an asset of MI6 in her parliamentary career so far.

The Russian “Hack and Leak” Trope

By 2021, Briant was advising the Home Office in response to a call for evidence on the issue of alleged “hack and leak” attacks in recent years, “where documents have been obtained and then released in Russian propaganda and ideological blogs accompanied by analysis that is both ill-informed and often ill-motivated”. Typically, she does not provide evidence or examples of such activities. Her pursuit of this line of argument puts her very much in the same camp as others denouncing alleged “hack and leak” operations such as Steve Tatham, Paul Mason, and his handler Andy Pryce, with all of whom Briant has been in touch (even if only indirectly in the case of Andy Pryce).

More recently, the pro-NATO (and now former) SNP MP Stewart McDonald has resorted to this trope. McDonald told the BBC:

If it is indeed a malicious state-backed group, then, in line with what I’ve seen elsewhere, I expect them to dump some of the information online. And I can expect them to manipulate and fake some of that content and I want to get out ahead of that to ensure any disinformation attack against me is discredited before it’s even published.

Unsurprisingly, Briant is in the same territory when it comes to Ukraine, which we will examine in Part 2 of this article.

Conclusion

This article has examined the trajectory of Emma Briant, a minor British academic who became ensnared in UK and US intelligence networks. The extent to which she knew what she was doing may be open to some doubt. However, the evidence cited in this article to my mind suggests a process whereby Briant became socialised into the worldviews of her interlocutors, but in part probably because she shared some of their assumptions and this helped to bring her on board, especially in relation to Russia, and, as we will see in the next part of this article, on the question of Ukraine.

British intelligence spearheaded the overthrow of Iran’s elected prime minister in 1953, bribed officials, staged chaos and used the BBC for a coded coup signal — all to protect oil profits — after previously treating Zionist extremists as the top national security threat. Later and until today, they targeted the Islamic Republic of Iran and developed close collaborations with the Mossad.

1947: MI5 Saw Zionists as a Primary Threat

MI5 identified Zionist groups like Irgun and the Stern Gang as the primary national security threat to Britain in 1947, prioritising them over the Soviet Union. Declassified files confirm plots to assassinate officials including Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin and fears that these groups would import ‘terrorist’ tactics to the UK mainland. And in fact the Zionists were pioneers of terror tactic in the first use of the book bomb — in a hollowed out copy of Shakespeare’s plays — which was sent in the post to a British military officer, Roy Farran, addressed to ‘R Farran’. His brother Rex opened the parcel and died from the injuries he sustained. MI5 also tracked Irgun terror networks across the country, including in Glasgow, where notable Zionist luminaries were implicated, including Maurice Bloch, the distiller, who ran the Glasgow Jewish Institute in the Gorbals. This is where the Irgun terror cell regularly met. Also implicated was Isaac Wolfson of the well-known Zionist Wolfson family, which today owns the Next retail chain. Isaac had been the special guest invited to open the Jewish Institute in 1935 and was close to Bloch. Another Wolfson — Isaac’s elder brother Samuel — had fought with Jabotinsky in the 1914-18 war in the Jewish Legion.

Both Bloch and Isaac Wolfson were implicated in the 1947-1948 Irgun spy scandal, and were called to provide evidence of their knowledge about the spy at the Lynskey Tribunal. Bloch was never charged with any offence, though his name was “erased from the list of Justices of the Peace for Glasgow” as a result. Wolfson was closely cross-examined over payments to the Irgun spy, Sidney Stanley, which were disguised by being split between three separate firms controlled by Wolfson. The focus of the investigation was on corruption, and as Christopher Andrew notes in his official history of MI5, the spying allegations were not raised at the Tribunal. It is unsurprising to note that the descendants of Isaac Wolfson are today centrally involved in the ‘charity’ pipeline, sending cash to the genocidal Zionist occupation forces via, for example, a charity called Beit Halochem. As in the 1920s and 1940s, the Wolfson family remain a threat to British national security.

1946: MI6 Fuels Iranian Tribal Unrest

MI6 encouraged uprisings among Iranian tribes in 1946 to pressure Tehran’s central government and safeguard British interests.

1951–1953: MI6 Leads Operation Boot to Topple Mossadegh

MI6 orchestrated Operation Boot to overthrow the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh after he nationalised the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. Officer Christopher Woodhouse, head of the Tehran station, persuaded a reluctant CIA to join by framing it as anti-communist action. Norman Darbyshire ran MI6’s Persia station from Cyprus and directed the violent street uprising. In a recovered 1985 interview, Darbyshire stated, “My brief was very simple. Go out there, don’t inform the ambassador, and use the intelligence service for any money you might need to secure the overthrow of Mossadegh by legal or quasi-legal means”. He admitted spending “vast sums of money, well over a million-and-a-half pounds” on bribes, later claiming “The coup cost £700,000. I know because I spent it”.

MI6 deployed the Rashidian brothers as key agents for bribery and organising demonstrations.

Darbyshire explained that the operation involved bribing Majlis members, army officers, police, editors, and religious figures, while arming northern tribes. Psychological warfare included planting fake stories in Iranian newspapers, staging false-flag attacks on mosques blamed on the communist Tudeh party, and hiring mobs to create chaos.

BBC Broadcasts the Coded Coup Signal

The signal for the coup came via the BBC Persian service. On 8 August 1953, the announcer changed the usual midnight phrase from “It is now midnight in London” to “It is now exactly midnight”. The 19 August 1953 coup restored the Shah’s autocracy. MI6 later helped build SAVAK to suppress opposition, cementing decades of British subversion in Iran.

MI6-Mossad Ties Deepen After Kilowatt 1971

MI6 joined the Zionist entity’s Mossad in the Kilowatt network launched in 1971, which was an encrypted telex system linking 18 Western intelligence agencies including the CIA, the French DGSE, and the West German BND to share raw data on Palestinian militants. MI6 supplied granular intelligence on safe houses, vehicles, movements, and tactics, which Mossad used to track and assassinate Palestinians across Europe as part of Operation Wrath of God after the 1972 Munich massacre.

MI6 and British Government Scepticism Over Mossad Operations on UK Soil

MI6 expressed repeated doubts over Mossad’s rogue operations on UK soil. In 1987, after the Mossad-linked killing of Palestinian cartoonist Naji al-Ali in London, Margaret Thatcher shut down the whole Mossad station in Kensington, and expelled operatives Arie Regev and Yaacov Barad plus two other Israeli ‘diplomats’.

Former MI5 officer Annie Machon revealed that an internal MI5 assessment concluded Mossad carried out a controlled explosion to smear local Palestinian activists. The alleged motives were to secure heightened security around all Zionist interests in London (after MI5 had repeatedly refused Mossad requests) and to frame two innocent Palestinians — Samar Alami and Jawad Botmeh — who ran a growing pro-Palestine support network gaining political and financial traction in Britain. Despite possessing evidence of their innocence, MI5 allowed the pair to be convicted and imprisoned, effectively dismantling the entire Palestinian advocacy network.

In 2010, after the Zionist entity’s Mossad used forged British passports in the Dubai assassination of Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, Foreign Secretary David Miliband expelled a senior Mossad officer from the Israeli embassy. Miliband stated there were “compelling reasons to believe that Israel was responsible” for the misuse of UK passports, and amended travel advice to warn British citizens against handing passports to Zionist officials.

Despite these tensions, MI6 continued to ramp up joint operations against Iran, including intelligence support for the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists between 2010 and 2012, as we shall see.

Early 1990s: MI6 Alleged Supply of Chemical and Nerve Agent precursors to Insert Agents into Iran

MI6 reportedly helped supply Iran with materials it could plausibly claim could be used to make chemical weapons in the early 1990s, despite Britain’s own ban on such sales. The operation was conducted with the Mossad, and aimed to insert British and Zionist operatives into the Iranian Government and gather intelligence on its weapons programmes. Former MI6 officer Richard Tomlinson claimed he personally obtained high-level government approval for the deals, which included components alleged to be for the production of mustard gas and nerve agents.

Tomlinson’s testimony was used by “lawyers of the jailed Israeli businessman Nahoum Manbar, who was sentenced for 16 years in Israel last July for his part in selling chemicals and technology for manufacturing poison gas weapons to Iran, through a network including British-based associates”. Manbar appealed against the sentence, and a key part of his defence was:

… based on testimony from Tomlinson claiming that MI6 and Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, were involved in these top secret operations.

According to an Israeli newspaper, his statement claims the British and Israeli intelligence agencies authorised Manbar to proceed with the chemical weapons deals in order to slip operatives into the Iranian government.

It is notable that despite being the victim of significant chemical weapons attacks by Iraq in the 1980s, no-one has ever credibly alleged that Iran has or has used such weapons.

MI6 Secretly Meets Iranian Coup Plotters

MI6 met with former Iranian military officers in the early 1990s, who allegedly sought to overthrow the regime and install a military government. Declassified files reveal at least five meetings between British officials and former Iranian army Colonel Nasrullah Tavakoli, who claimed contact with MI6 since 1980, and pushed for a coup to replace the Islamic Republic. MI6 maintains contacts with Iranian opposition figures and dissident groups promoting “military government” alternatives, though official statements avoid explicit confirmation of coup support due to diplomatic sensitivities.

MI6’s Role in Targeting Iranian Nuclear Scientists

MI6 collaborated with the Zionist entity’s Mossad on operations to sabotage Iran’s nuclear programme, including support for the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists. Iranian officials accused MI6, Mossad, and the CIA of providing intelligence and logistical backing for the killings of several scientists between 2010 and 2012, including Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan. Then-MI6 chief Sir John Sawers signalled in a 2010 speech that “intelligence-led operations” were required to stop states like Iran developing nuclear weapons. Iran linked the start of the assassination campaign directly to Sawers’ remarks. In 2012, Sawers claimed MI6 had “foiled” Iranian nuclear weapons efforts, prompting further Iranian accusations of British complicity in the killings.

MI6 joined Mossad and the CIA in the 2018-2019 exfiltration of a high-level Iranian nuclear scientist who was described as a “mole”. The scientist, who had allegedly supplied intelligence on the 2012 killing of Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, was smuggled out of Iran to Turkey by Mossad. MI6 took charge in France before spiriting him across the English Channel on a rubber dinghy on New Year’s Eve 2019 alongside ordinary Iranian migrants. A Sunday Express report quoted intelligence sources, saying the scientist was “taken to the UK for interrogation by British and American intelligence regarding Iran’s post-2015 nuclear programme before being granted safe haven in the US”.

MI6 faced similar accusations over the 2020 assassination of top scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh. While Iran primarily blamed the Zionist entity, which used an AI-assisted remote-controlled machine gun, Iranian media alleged that British-Iranian dual national Alireza Akbari, a former deputy defence minister executed in 2023, had passed intelligence to MI6 that enabled the hit. The UK denied any involvement in the Fakhrizadeh killing or related espionage.

The car of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh after the Mossad assassination

In 2023, I travelled to Iran and filmed a documentary about what I saw on my travels. I visited the Museum of Holy Defense, which is devoted to telling the story of what we in the West call the Iran-Iraq war. In the museum, there was a display of the actual cars in which Iranian nuclear scientists had been assassinated by the Mossad, complete with bullet holes, the effects of the explosions, and, of course, blood stains. British intelligence maintained this pragmatic alliance with the Zionist entity on Iran, while privately warning that Mossad’s “twisted ideals and self-centred pragmatism” risked uncontrolled escalation.

GCHQ’s JTRIG Runs Online Deception Against Iran

The Joint Threat Response Intelligence Group (JTRIG) was a hitherto unknown propaganda department at GCHQ. Revealed by the Snowden leaks, it showed that JTRIG targeted the general population of Iran between 2009 and 2011 as part of GCHQ’s ‘Effects’ operations. The unit deployed techniques to discredit the Iranian leadership and its nuclear programme, disrupt the nuclear programme, conduct online human intelligence operations, and run counter-censorship campaigns. A 2011 JTRIG report explained that staff used methods “to discredit, disrupt, delay, deny, degrade, and deter” targets, including spreading negative information on blogs, to attack private companies and scupper business deals linked to Iran’s nuclear efforts.

MI6 and GCHQ Cyber Sabotage: The Stuxnet Operation

MI6 and GCHQ collaborated with the US and the Zionist entity on Stuxnet, the world’s first known digital weapon deployed against Iran’s nuclear programme, in 2010. GCHQ supplied critical intelligence that enabled the development of four zero-day exploits specifically tailored to sabotage the Natanz uranium enrichment facility, as revealed in the 2016 documentary Zero Days. The operation, code-named Olympic Games, involved British agencies providing technical support for the worm that destroyed thousands of Iranian centrifuges between 2007 and 2010. Following this, the UK intelligence agencies developed their first cybersecurity strategy. It was written in 2011 by Chloe Squires, an Oxbridge graduate who went straight into the Fast Stream of the civil service, presumably in MI6, since she subsequently worked for, or closely with, almost every single British intelligence agency. GCHQ targeted Iranian networks with cyber operations throughout the Stuxnet campaign, later expanding this work through the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) which Squires helped establish before being promoted to one of the UK’s top spy jobs: overseeing the Homeland Security Group in the Home Office. This also gave her oversight on covert propaganda with the Research, Information and Communications Unit. The work continued with the National Cyber Force (a partnership between the Ministry of Defence and police intelligence) launched in 2020, working alongside the NCSC, where Iran remains a primary target.

CSSF Iran Programme: FCDO-MI6 Intelligence Funding

The UK funnelled millions through the Conflict, Stability and Security Fund (CSSF) to counter alleged Iranian “hostile state activity”, citing Iranian cyberattacks on Albania as justification for regional programmes that disrupt Iranian-backed networks and proxies. Critics, such as Mark Curtis of Declassified UK, argue that the CSSF diverts aid money into opaque security operations which advance the UK’s national security goals against Iran while risking complicity in human rights abuses.

The UK channelled £2.5 million in non-ODA funding through the CSSF for its dedicated Iran Programme in the financial year 2021–2022. FCDO led the programme, which funded scoping work, JCPOA gap analysis, monitoring of Farsi open-source material, ad hoc reporting on internal Iranian policymaking, and continued support for the Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges (INSTEX).

The MI6 project to subvert the Iranian nuclear programme

The CSSF operates under the direct oversight of the National Security Secretariat (NSS) and the National Security Council, making it intelligence-directed expenditure. Because MI6 sits within the FCDO structure, such CSSF programmes serve as convenient vehicles for British intelligence activities against Iran under the cover of diplomatic non-proliferation work.

UK’s Alleged IRGC Threat Campaign: 2023 Case

In December 2023, Magomed-Husejn Dovtaev was convicted of hostile reconnaissance at the then-Saudi funded propaganda channel Iran International’s London headquarters after allegedly filming security arrangements. Prosecutors linked the case to Iran, claiming it formed part of a broader plot. Dovtaev insisted he had been tricked into visiting the site to investigate a family fraud and described himself as a “useful idiot” set up by unknown contacts; his defence called the idea of an Iranian terror attack on a UK news outlet “far-fetched”. The arrest in this case is alleged to have led directly to the evacuation of Iran International from its London office and its relocation to the US. But the relocation was also precisely at the same time as another key event. Iran International has historically been funded by the Saudi regime and controlled by its Foreign Ministry, though it publicly denied these facts for a number of years.

All pretence was dropped, however, when China brokered a deal between Iran and Saudi Arabia revealed in early March 2023. One of the points of agreement was that Saudis would cease to fund the propaganda station. It looks like the money had already been pulled out by February 2023, when Iran International abruptly shut down under the cover of claims that the station had been ‘threatened’ by Iran — the far-fetched case just noted above. In August 2023, the channel confirmed it had already moved “to our new studios, where we have implemented bespoke security measures under Police guidance” in London, said Mahmood Enayat, General Manager of Volant Media, which runs the channel. The manufacture of fake claims about IRGC ‘threats’ appears to be central to the escalations against the Islamic Republic. It’s not clear in the 2023 case whether this was a Mossad or MI5 operation — or both.

The 2025 Escalation

By 2025–2026, the UK shifted from diplomatic management of Iran to large-scale counter-intelligence and active disruption of claimed Iranian state-backed hostile activity. While MI5 and police handle domestic operations on UK soil, MI6 supplies the foreign ‘intelligence’ on the IRGC that informs these actions.

The Government designated Iran under the Enhanced Tier of the Foreign Influence Registration Scheme (FIRS) from July 2025, requiring anyone acting for the Iranian state or IRGC to register activities to counter alleged Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (FIMI). This has been used to directly target the TV show of which I am the producer and co-host, Palestine Declassified, with fanciful and false talk of a “spy hub” in the studio in which the show was produced in London. This is another indication of the motives behind all this: Zionist-inspired obsessions with crushing critics of Zionism. MI5 Director General Ken McCallum stated in October 2025 that British agencies had allegedly tracked more than 20 potentially lethal Iran-backed plots since 2022. Back in 2022, the Mossad claimed that it had tipped MI5 off about these plots.

This is, of course, all part of the relentless campaign by the Zionist regime to deflect the blame for aggression and violence away from its primary source: themselves. It is a mark of how docile MI5 now is in relation to the Mossad that such obvious lies are not only accepted, but then trumpeted in a propaganda announcement to the British public.

Ken McCallum of MI5 with a “threat update”

In January 2026, the UK Government stated it is “acting decisively to disrupt threats posed by Iran” and is developing new tools to designate state-linked organisations that “do us harm”.

The Government also expresses “concern” over what it calls “Iranian-aligned centres”, and the Charity Commission launched inquiries into the Islamic Centre of England and Al-Tawheed Charitable Trust, accused of acting as agents of influence. In reality, this is cover for direct attack on Shia Muslims.

The Telegraph, encouraging fantasies about an ‘Iran spy hub’ in London

These regulatory actions targeting Shia institutions raise obvious questions about whether they function simply as propaganda tools to stigmatise Shia communities and justify wider measures against the IRGC. In retrospect, the preparation of the public mind for the idea of attacks by the IRGC in the UK has been mounting for some time. This raises suspicions that British intelligence agencies may have been involved in the false flag operation run by the Mossad in March and April this year, culminating in the arson attack on four ambulances in Golders Green, on which I have previously reported, which appears to have been a false flag.

Paul McKeigue, David Miller, Jake Mason, Piers Robinson

Working Group on Syria Propaganda and Media

21 December 2018

1 Summary

• The Integrity Initiative now accounts for most of the budget of a Scottish-registered charity named the Institute for Statecraft founded by Daniel Lafayeedney and Chris Donnelly in 2006. Most of the overt funding for this programme — about £2.6 million / year — comes from the Conflict Security and Stability Fund’s Russian Language Programme, now merged with a secret Counter Disinformation and Media Programme. Office space in central London and most of the staff salaries, appear to be provided as a covert benefit in kind.

• A close examination of past and present posts held by individuals associated with the Integrity Initiative indicates that specialists in military intelligence and other senior military personnel with responsibility for StratCom (strategic communication) operations are closely involved in the programme.

• The activities of the Integrity Initiative include:

  • setting up covert networks (“clusters”) of journalists, academics and military/foreign service StratCom practitioners in each country including the UK: “The programme has begun to create a critical mass of individuals from across society (think tanks, academia, politics, the media, government and the military) whose work is proving to be mutually reinforcing.”

  • covert manipulation of the public sphere, including campaigns to smear and suppress dissenters and block their appointment to public office. The “silencing of pro-Kremlin voices on Serbian TV” is listed as an “achievement”.

  • overt attacks on British politicians, academics and other critics of UK government policies, most notably on the Leader of the Opposition and his staff.

  • in the Baltic states and Ukraine, working closely with organizations and governments that foment hatred of ethnic Russian minorities and encourage Holocaust revisionism.

  • promotion of a hate campaign against the Russian Orthodox Church in the Balkans.

• These activities:

  • are not the charitable purposes set out in the Institute of Statecraft’s constitution, and are not charitable purposes in general.

  • violate the accepted principle that government funding may not be used for partisan political purposes.

  • indicate that the Government has misled the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee about the scope of the Russian Language Programme of the Conflict Security and Stability Fund.

  • indicate that military units specialized for information warfare are now participating in covert manipulation of political discourse at home, subverting parliamentary government.

  • have contributed to narrowing the range of public discourse so as to marginalize reality-based evaluation of policy options for relations with Russia and evidence-based assessment of events in which Russian involvement is alleged.

• There are serious concerns about the transparency of the Institute for Statecraft (formerly the Institute of Statecraft and Governance):

  • Its registered corporate address is a derelict building in rural Scotland which is being demolished

  • In a High Court judgement in 2006 against Lafayeedney, the judge commented adversely on his probity and his business methods.

  • The filed accounts show unexplained “defects” for the year ending 23 November 2010. After the Board had approved accounts showing income of £158,470, Lafayeedney filed accounts for a dormant company. The accounts were amended more than a year later by Donnelly who filed the accounts that the Board had approved.

  • Donnelly and Lafayeedney have on at least two occasions set up Scottish Limited Liability Partnerships (LLPs) with names that could easily be confused with existing charities or foundations. Thus in 2009 they set up ISG Corporate LLP at a time when the acronym ISG was used for the Institute of Statecraft and Governance by a charity with which it was in partnership, and in 2010 they set up Council on Foreign Relations as an LLP, with a name that is identical to that of a respected US foreign policy think tank.

  • Scottish Limited Partnerships and LLPs are notorious as a vehicle for non-transparent financial transfers.

2 Release of documents relating to the Integrity Initiative

A first tranche of documents relating to the Integrity Institute were released on 5 November 2018. The documents lay unnoticed for two weeks until 23 November, when a story on RT brought them to attention. A second tranche of documents was released on 29 November and a third tranche on December 13. The documents were represented as the result of a hack though it is possible that this disguises a leak by an insider. All documents are in PDF format with no metadata such as timestamps or authors preserved.

In response to the first tranche, the Integrity Institute confirmed that a leak of documents occurred, and described the documents as follows:

Although it is clear that much of the material was indeed on the Integrity Initiative or Institute systems, much of it is dated and was never used. In particular, many of the names published were on an internal list of experts in this field who had been considered as potential invitees to future cooperation. In the event, many were never contacted by the Integrity Initiative and did not contribute to it.

The Integrity Initiative has not asserted that any of the released documents were faked or tampered with. There are no internal signs that the documents have been tampered with although they contain minor mistakes such as misspelt names.

A full list of all documents released so far, with annotations, is given in the Appendix.

3 Sources of funding for the Integrity Initiative

The domain name integrityinitiative.net was first registered on 22 June 2015.

In the year to 23 November 2015 the Institute received £46,639 descibed as ‘funding from FW Investments Partnership, Foreign Office, Centre for Naval Analysis [a US-government funded think tank], CAFOD for various national and international initiatives’.

In the year to 23 November 2016 the Institute received:

• £87,250 unrestricted funds, described as ‘designated funds for various UK security, NHS, Royal Navy, NATO, Ukrainian and Russian research programmes’

• £33,441 descrived as ‘funding from Dulverton Trust and the FCO for a national and international programme’

There is no explicit mention of support for creation of the Integrity Initiative until the year to 23 November 2017 when the Institute received £307,000 from a “private donor” for the Integrity Initiative, and the first £124,567 from the Foreign Office grant of £250,000 for the financial years 2017/18.

A document dated 14 March 2017 is a draft bid for MoD funding for the period 2017-2019, evidently based on discussions with MoD officials. As the first application to the FCO is dated only six weeks later, it appears likely that the outcome of these discussions was that Donnelly was advised to apply through the FCO rather than directly to MoD.

3.1 FCO-led Russian Language Programme

The applications to the FCO request funding from the Russian Language Strategic Communication Programme. This appears to be the Russian Language Programme of the Conflict Security and Stability Fund, described in the Government’s response on 20 July 2017 to the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee’s report on the UK’s relations with Russia published four months earlier:

The FCO-led Russian Language Programme brings together expertise from the FCO, MOD, and DFID as well as external experts to co-ordinate a set of projects worth some £70m over four years. These projects seek to enhance independent media; to engage with Russian speakers; and to expose Russian Government disinformation.

Through this programme, the Government is working with a range of partners to enhance the quality of public and independent Russian language media so that it is able to provide Russian-speakers with reliable access to accurate information. The type of support given includes mentoring with UK media organisations; consultancy on programming; funded co-productions and support for regional Russian language media initiatives.

The anti-Russian tone of the material produced by the Integrity Initiative and its partner organizations, including promotion of what appears to be a hate campaign against the Russian Orthodox Church, would be unlikely to find ready welcome among Russian speakers. Yet the title of the programme and the Government’s description make clear that the stated remit of the programme was to counter disinformation and provide reliable information in the Russian language. Without Parliamentary oversight, this remit appears to have been changed to include operations in other languages including English-language media in the UK. As the application from the Institute of Statecraft to this programme was dated 23 April 2017 and this Government response was dated 20 July 2017, it is clear that the Government misled the Foreign Affairs Committee by describing the Russian Language Programme as aimed at Russian speakers and as targeting Russian language media.

In an attempt to explain this away, Sir Alan Duncan, the Minister of State at the Foreign Office gave a misleading reply to a parliamentary question.

In April 2016 we launched a new four year strategic communications and media development programme authorised by the National Security Council, called the Counter Disinformation and Media Development Programme. The former Russian Language Programme was amalgamated into this. The funding provided to the Institute for Statecraft was funded from the Counter Disinformation and Media Development Programme.

Duncan does not say when the Russian Language Programme was amalgamated into the Counter Disinformation and Media Development Programme, and does not explicitly say that all funding to the Institute was provided from this programme although this would be a natural reading of his reply. This document shows that the Russian Language Programme, one of the components of the Conflict Security and Stability Fund, was still current in the financial year 2017-18 with annual expenditure of £8 million. The first year of funding for the Integrity Initiative must therefore have been awarded from this programme, as implied by the application for 2017/18. It is difficult to read Duncan’s answer as anything but an attempt to mislead without actually telling a lie. Duncan was criticized by MPs for misleading them further by attempting to maintain that the Integrity Initiative’s Twitter account was not included in the activities funded by the FCO grant.

In answer to another question requesting a list of grants funded by the Russian Language Programme, Sir Alan Duncan replied:

Information about individual projects within the Programme will not be published, as this information could then be used to actively attempt to disrupt and undermine the Programme’s effectiveness.

In the CSSF summaries for the year 2018-19 neither the Russian Language programme nor the new Counter Disinformation and Media Development Programme are listed, implying either that the Counter Disinformation programme is not part of the CSSF or that it is secret. It his however possible to identify recipients from tables of the FCO’s monthly expenditure which show recent spending of between £100,000 and £200,0000 per month on the Institute for Statecraft, although these do not identify the programme from which this funding is coming.

The total cost of the project for the financial year 2017-18 was given as £582,635 of which £480,6352 was from FCO and the rest from NATO, “partner institutions” and the Lithuanian Ministry of Defence. The budget projection for 2018-19 gives a budget of £1.96 million for the funding requested from the FCO for 2018-19. The answer to a parliamentary question confirmed that this was awarded in full by the Foreign Office.

3.2 Co-funding

Co-funding of the Integrity Initiative for 2018-19 is listed:

Funding from HQ NATO Public Diplomacy, £12,000 for each inaugural workshop = £168,000

Funding from partner institutions £5,000 for each inaugural workshop = £70,000

Funding from NATO HQ for educational video films – free provision of camera team

Funding from Lithuanian MOD to provide free all costs for their stratcom team for a monthly trip to support a new hub/cluster creation and to educate cluster leaders and key people in Vilnius in infowar techniques = £20,000

Funding from US State Dept, £250,000 for research and dissemination activities (excluding any activity in USA)

Funding from Smith Richardson Foundation, £45,000 for cluster activities in Europe and USA

Funding from Facebook, £100,000 for research and education activities

Funding from German business community, £25,000 for research and dissemination in EU countries

This would give a total income of £2.6 million for 2018-19. As discussed below, this does not include office costs, for which no funding source is given. The accounts filed for the years ending 23 November 2016 and 23 November 2017 state that the Institute of Statecraft had no employees during 2015, 2016 or 2017, implying that another agency was employing them and seconding them to work on the programme. The budget submitted to the FCO for 2018/19 for the Integrity Initiative includes salary costs for only four staff including Donnelly, though another document lists 18 individuals as the “Temple Place resident team”.

The State Department quite properly stipulates that the grant funding it provides may not be spent within the United States. The UK FCO appears to have no such scruples about funding covert political activities within the UK.

The handbook instructs staff to say if asked about funding that:

The IfS gets its funding from multiple sources to ensure its independence. These include: private individuals; charitable foundations; international organisations (EU, NATO); UK Govt (FCO, MOD)

There is no other mention in the documents of funding from the UK MoD. The plan is that the “clusters” should eventually be sustained by longer-term funding from NATO and the Atlantic Treaty Association:-

HQ NATO PDD [Public Diplomacy Division] has proved a reliable source of funding for national clusters. The ATA [Atlantic Treaty Association] promises to be the same, giving access to other pots of money within NATO and member nations.

The role of NATO here is not one of collective defence, but instead one of covert political manipulation within its member countries.

4 The offices and team of the Integrity Initiative

4.1 Offices and team

The Institute for Statecraft has an office at Two Temple Place, a historic building completed in 1895 by William Waldorf Astor and now owned by a charity, the Bulldog Trust. There is office space in the basement, shared by the Fore (a project initiated by the Bulldog Trust) and the Institute for Statecraft. Based on the footprint of the building, this would be about 4000 square feet of offices. The budget documents for the Integrity Initiative do not include any provision for office costs. This suggests that office rental costs are being covered by some other agency in the public or private sector and that for some reason this is being concealed. 2000 square feet of fully serviced office space in central London would cost about £180,000 per year, so this is a substantial benefit in kind. For the office team, the operation is being run on a tight budget — economy-class flights and only £70/night for hotels or AirBnB.

The “Temple Place resident team” of the Institute for Statecraft is listed as

Simon Bracey Lane, Stephen Dalziel, Maria de Goeij, Nico de Pedro, Yusuf Desai, Chris Donnelly, Euan Grant, Charlie Hatton, Chris Hernon, Todd Leventhal, Victor Madeira, Johanna Moehring, Ben Robinson, Greg Rowett, Keith Sargent, Jon Searle, Guy Spindler, James Wilson.

“Specialist team members” are listed as

Eduard Abrahamyan, Diane Allen, Jamal Al-Tahat, Josh Arnold-Foster, Barrie Axford, Anne Bader, Qique Badia-Masoni, Oleksandr Danylyuk, Martin Dubbey, Harold Elletson, Perry Fawcett, Mark Galeotti, Babak Ganji, Francis Ghiles, Keir Giles, Glen Grant, Roger Golland, Jon Hazel, Steve Johnson, Phil Jolley, Stephen Jolly, Ren Kapur, Dan Kaszeta, Dmytro Kolomoiets, Karel Kullamaa, Birgy Lorenz, John Lough, Tim Reilly, Alan Riley, Andy Settle, James Sherr, Andrew Shortland, Luis Simon, Henry Strickland, Tomas Tauginas, Jason Wiseman, Sir Andrew Wood.

(SC) is appended to the names of Donnelly, Hazel, Kapur.
(DV) is appended to the names of Allen, Arnold-Foster, Fawcett, Golland, Johnson, Jolley, Settle, Shortland.

[Update 29 December 2018] These acronyms are used for levels of security vetting:

Security Check (SC): determines that a person’s character and personal circumstances are such that they can be trusted to work in a position which involves long-term, frequent and uncontrolled access to SECRET assets.

Developed Vetting: (DV) in addition to SC, this detailed check is appropriate when an individual has long term, frequent and uncontrolled access to ‘Top Secret’ information.

The names listed as “Team” in the Integrity Initiative Handbook dated 30 May 2018 are almost the same as the names listed as “Temple Place Resident Team” for the Institute of Statecraft, with a few additional names from the “Specialist Team members” list. This indicates that almost all core staff of the Institute for Statecraft are working on the Integrity Initiative programme.

On another “specialist and core” list the additional names Jonathan Chetwynd (possibly Chetwynd-Palmer, ex-army based in South Africa), Sean Cronin (possibly Cronin-Nowakowski, ex-army now KPMG) appear.

In addition to Donnelly and Lafayeedney, at least eight others on the team have a military background or have worked at the Defence Academy research unit that Donnelly headed.

4.1.1 Team members with military background (excluding founders Donnelly and Lafayeedney)

• Stephen Dalziel – his bio includes a year on a TA attachment in the Army, followed by six years at the Soviet Studies Research Centre, Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst where Donnelly was also based. From 1988 to 2004 he worked at the BBC as a Russian Affairs analyst, followed by five years as Executive Director of the Russo-British Chamber of Commerce while also working for and starting a consultancy firm.

• Tim Reilly – “Arctic/Russia-China specialist”. Commissioned into the Parachute Regiment in 1984 and served till 1990. He subsequently worked on business development in emerging markets including Russia. An article he published in March 2017 advocated a realist approach to post-Brexit relations with Russia.

• Alex Finnen – Executive Officer, Specialist Group Military Intelligence. Born in June 1952, he served at first in the Corps of Royal Engineers (Territorial Army), where he was promoted to Captain in 1994 and then Major in 1999. He transferred to the Intelligence Corps as Major on 1 June 2005. In 2010 he was awarded The Efficiency Decoration (Territorial) Medal. In 2014 he was listed as with the Parachute Regiment. In 2016 he was again listed with the Intelligence Corps. In his civilian role he is described as a ‘retired member of the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) who, since retiring, has served on a variety of contracts with the EU and the UK Department for International Development (DFID).’ There is no mention of Finnen in the Directory of British Diplomats based on officially published data. In 2007 he was Deputy Head of the OSCE presence in Albania. A biographical note records that he served as Director General for Elections in Bosnia. He has provided electoral advice to FCO, DFID and the UK Ministry of Defence for a range of countries from 1996 to date. He has a doctorate and is an Honorary Associate Fellow of the Centre for Global Politics, Economy and Society at Oxford Brookes University.

• Glen Grant, – former British Army Lt-Colonel and artillery expert in the Joint Intelligence Cell during the 1991 Gulf War, who provides somewhat unrealistic military advice to the Kiev government.

• Diane Allen – “former Royal Signals and currently Intelligence Corps reserve Lt Col; former CO Specialist Group Military Intelligence; worked with the Land Information Assessment Group and developing infowar capacity with the Army’s 77 Brigade” Awarded an OBE in June 2018.

• Jonathan Hazel – Intelligence Corps. Mentioned in dispatches as Captain (1993), Colonel in the Intelligence Corps by 2010 when he was the author of The Conflict With Extreme Islamism – How To Compete In The Global Information Environment (2010).

4.1.2 Team members with defence (non-military) background

Of the non-military team members, two have worked at the Advanced Research Assessment Group at the Defence Academy, headed by Donnelly from 2003 to 2007, and two others have worked in defence-related roles:

• Anne Bader – formerly served as a Senior Research Fellow and Director, Advanced Research Assessment Group.

• James Sherr – Between 1995-2008 he was a Fellow at the Advanced Research & Assessment Group.

• Stephen Jolly – was director of communications at MoD from December 2012 until June 2015. He left this role to take a research assignment as a senior research fellow in Military Information Operations at the Defence Academy on behalf of the MoD. According to Jolly he ‘trained as a special operations reservist/officer cadet with 15 (UK) Information Support Group, the UK military’s tri-service psychological operations unit. As a result, between 1999-2001, he held a Visiting Fellowship in Psychological Warfare at the International Centre for Security Analysis, King’s College London. It was in this capacity that he was commissioned by the International Public Relations Association to write the 2000 Mardin Essay on Psychological Warfare and Public Relations.’ A 2011 biographical note states that Jolly ‘was formerly an instructor on the Military Information Support Operations Course at the UK’s Defence Intelligence & Security School, Chicksands (1997-2001).’

• Julian Lindley-French holds many honorary or visiting appointments:

Currently Senior Fellow at the Institute of Statecraft London, Director of Europa Analytica, Distinguished Visiting Research Fellow at the National Defense University in Washington, a member of the Strategic Advisory Group at the Atlantic Council in Washington, Visiting Programme Director at Wilton Park, Honorary Fellow of the Strategy and Security Institute at the University of Exeter. He is also a Member of the Strategic Advisory Panel of the UK Chief of Defence Staff.

4.1.3 Team members with no defence background

• Simon Bracey Lane – described as “US & election campaign specialist”. In 2016 Bracey Lane was working in a field level position in Bernie Sanders’s Iowa campaign headquarters. His bio is given on the website for the Adventium meeting.

Simon Bracey Lane has three years of elections experience in both the US & the UK. He has managed the distribution of communications for the Integrity Initiative cluster system and for the last year been developing the Integrity Initiative’s presence across Europe & the US. He has worked specifically to counter malign interference in Greece, Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia, Lithuania and the US. This work includes the commissioning of several papers, building discussion events and the formation of a media observatory.

• Chris Hernon – formerly a team manager at BBC monitoring, appears to have responsibility for social media.

• Professor Alan Riley – expertise on the energy market

• Victor Madeira – expertise given as “Intelligence and National Security, Orthodox Church”. A bio announcing his appointment as a lecturer at the University of Buckingham stated:

Dr Victor Madeira comes to us from Cambridge (where he has been a lecturer and tutor for four years, working with Professor Christopher Andrew and Sir Richard Dearlove) and the Institute for Statecraft in London, directed by Chris Donnelly, where he is a Senior Fellow working on 21st Century security architecture.

• Guy Spindler – Chief Operating Officer, on the website of the Institute of Statecraft. He has broad responsibilities including information security. He appears on a list of MI6 officers released in 1999 with the annotation “Guy David St. John Kelso Spindler: 87 Moscow, 97 Pretoria; dob 1962.”

• Harold Elletson – former MP and sometime MI6 agent who supervises the German Cluster. According to a report in 2002 “when Elletson became an MP in 1992, John Major personally authorised the intelligence service to continue using him as a ‘secret contact’.”

• Charlie Hatton – expertise described as Marketing, PR, Project Development & Management, International relations – English and Italian

• Johanna Moehring – Military Power and Influence campaigns of part of a wider strategy – French, German, English, Russian

• Ben Robinson – Ukraine / Eastern Europe, Photographer, Education specialist – English, Russian

• Nico de Pedro – Analytical Russia specialist

• Todd Leventhal – State Department official whose role is described above

• Martin Dubbey – Managing director of Harod Associates, involved in preparing anti-doping case against Russian athletes. Also sole director of Astutus Intelligence, where Philip Matthews (Trustee of the Institute of Statecraft) was director from 2015 to 2016.

4.2 UK Cluster

The UK Cluster document lists the following groups, indicating that the Integrity Initiative’s ambitions extend to other policy issues including NHS reform:

• GIG (Governance and Integrity Group) – one name

• NHS Reform Group – no names yet

• Communication Engagement & Dialogue Group – no names yet

• Defence Acquisition Reform Group – no names yet

• Office Core Team – Fellows

• Office Core Team – Associates

• UK General – Inner Core – Russia

• UK General – Inner Core – Military & Defence

• UK General – Outer Core – Russia

• UK General – Outer Core – Military & Defence

• UK Journalists

From the expenditure records and budgets it appears that most cluster members who were not employees of the Institute were unpaid, except for a few consultancy payments for specific tasks such as preparing a report. A more subtle incentive to take part in such a scheme would have been the advantages of being on the inside, networking with senior government officials and military intelligence specialists. All concerned would know that this would open doors to future posts, consultancies and grant funding. On this basis, participants in such a network could reasonably be expected to declare their membership as a competing interest, whatever their personal motives for participating.

We have established that some of those included on the cluster lists had simply been on email lists, usually because they had attended a meeting organized by the Institute for Statecraft. However it is still relevant to study the identities and affiliations of these individuals because this may reveal what groups the Integrity Initiative was trying to draw into its network.

The procedure for the initial cluster foundation workshop is described in the budget document for 2018/19 as follows:

Connect cluster members, create internal national network, formally introduce them to the Integrity Initiative aims, practices and methodologies, establish target programme for research, dissemination and events.

New cluster able to self-organise. Increased coordination and shared best practice from cluster individuals and organisations working at the forefront of efforts countering RU disinfo, increased resource material for an Int’l audience.

Initial group of at least 8 members between core hub and network. Members agree team roles and start putting structures in place. Start exchanges of information with other clusters. Begin work on research and dissemination activities

5 Relationships of the Integrity Initiative to other organizations

The partner organizations of the Integrity initiative make up a nexus of NATO-connected think tanks including the Centre for European Reform, the neoconservative Henry Jackson Society and the Atlantic Council. Many individuals from these think tanks are also listed in the “Clusters”.

5.1 Partner organizations listed on the Integrity Initiative website

• Barcelona Centre for International Affairs (CIDOB)

• The Beacon Project – link beaconproject.info leads to “site under construction”. The domain name was registered on 19 April 2016 in Bratislava. This appears to be a project announced by the International Republican Institute in April 2016 that has never gone live.

• Centre for European Policy Analysis (Washington DC) – Mission is “to promote an economically vibrant, strategically secure, and politically free Europe with close and enduring ties to the United States.” Edward Lucas is a Senior Vice-President.

• European Values (Czechia) – “non-governmental policy institute defending liberal democracy” led by Jakub Janda who is named in the documents as a member of one of the ‘clusters’.

  • Kremlin Watch (Czechia) – a strategic program of the European Values Think-Tank

• Political Capital Policy Research and Consulting Institute (Hungary)

• University of Macedonia Public Opinion Research Unit

• Res – Public Affairs. Corporate Affairs GmbH (Berlin)

5.2 Other organizations listed as associated with the Integrity Initiative

• StopFake – there are multiple references to working with them in the 2018 application and budget plan:

We also worked with Stopfake in Ukraine, examining the excellent work done on this by them and their partners

We also arranged for the Lithuanian team to provide training on a regular basis for all our cluster leaders in the methodology of tracking and exposing Russian malign influence and disinformation, and linked them directly to the Ukrainian Stopfake leadership and to the UK LSE team (whom we took to Vilnius) to exchange practical experience.

Provide guest articles from Ifs and our clusters for StopFake’s printed material published and distributed along the contact line in Eastern Ukraine

Sending cluster members to educational sessions abroad (IREX, Detector Media,StopFake, EUvsDisinfo, LT MOD Stratcom)

A modular training programme (based on IREX/StopFake material) that adapts media source examples as needed to be most relevant and accessible across our cluster network

StopFake received direct funding of £80145 from the FCO in April 2018.

• Henry Jackson Society – Drew Foxall is listed as Inner Core: Russia

• Atlantic Treaty Association and Atlantic Council The Atlantic Treaty Association (ATA) is described by NATO as

an umbrella organisation for the separate national associations, voluntary organisations and non-governmental organisations that formed to uphold the values of the Alliance after its creation in 1949. The Youth Atlantic Treaty Association (YATA) is the youth branch of the ATA and was formed in 1996.

The Atlantic Council is the US affiliate of the ATA. Four individuals with Atlantic Council email addresses are listed: Anders Aslund, Elizabeth Braw, Robert Nurick and Ben Nimmo.

In an “impact assessment” dated 19 April 2016 of what was then called the “Institute of Statecraft Project on Russian Influence”, Nimmo is named as sole author of 12 of 22 outputs, and one has Nimmo and Edward Lucas as joint authors. Nimmo appears on a “production schedule” as scheduled to produce 10,000 words on “Mapping Russia’s whole influence machine” by end of June 2016. Nimmo was receiving a monthly consultancy fee of £2500 in January 2016, and in August 2016 he invoiced the Institute for Statecraft for £5000 for “August work on Integrity Initiative”. He is co-founder with Graham Brookie of the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Lab, which received £450,000 from the Foreign Office in August 2018

The cluster leader Savo Kentera is listed as President of Atlantic Council Montenegro.

• Centre for European Reform – Ian Bond, director of foreign policy

• Royal United Services Institute – Igor Sutyagin

• Chatham House – Three individuals with Chatham House emails are listed: James Nixey, Orsyia Lutsevych, James Sherr

• European Council on Foreign Relations – Four individuals with ECFR emails are listed: Nika Prislan, Borja Lasheras, Kadri Liik, Manuel Lafont Rapnoul. The European Council on Foreign Relations receives direct funding from the FCO.

• Hermitage Fund Two emails: William Browder, Vadim Kleiner

6 Role of the FCO and the Ministry of Defence in the Integrity Initiative

6.1 FCO staff associated with the Integrity Initiative

Three of those listed in the UK Cluster have held posts in or as director of the FCO’s Eastern Research Group:

• Duncan Allan – a bio gives his most recent FCO post as Principal Research Analyst, Eastern Research Group. “A member of the FCO’s Research Analysts since 1989, I’ve spent my career following the countries of the former Soviet Union, in particular Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova. I’ve completed full postings and spells of temporary duty in Russia, Ukraine and Central Asia. I’ve also been seconded to FCO policy departments and the Cabinet Office”. He retired from the FCO in 2017, and is now director of Octant Research & Analysis Ltd and Associate Fellow on the Russia and Eurasia Programme at Chatham House. In October 2018 Allan published a paper with Chatham House on the Salisbury poisonings calling for more confrontational responses by the UK government to the attack on the Skripals which he attributed to the Russian state.

• Craig Oliphant – head of the Eastern Research Group until he left the FCO in 2010, now Senior Adviser at a London-based NGO, Peaceful Change Initiative.

• Alan Parfitt – Head of the FCO Eastern Research Group as of August 2017. He has held this position since at least 2010.

Four have experience in communications:

• Catherine Crozier – listed on the Government Communication Service ‘people finder’ website as a Strategic Communications Advisor, Ministry of Defence.

• Andy Pryce – Head of ‘Counter Disinformation and Media Development’ at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London, a position he does not advertise on his LinkedIn page, which lists the following previous postings:

  • British Resident Commissioner, British High Commission, Castries – Sep 2013 – Jun 2015. Responsible for UK relations with St Lucia and St Vincent and the Grenadines.

  • Deputy Consul General British Consulate General Houston – Feb 2009 – Sep 2013. Leader on development and delivery of British Government strategy across Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Arkansas.

  • Head of Public Affairs, British Embassy Washington – Oct 2007 – Feb 2009. Led UK public advocacy in the US; thoroughly modernised UK outreach; integrated social media campaigning, direct mail with traditional diplomacy.

  • Head of EU Affairs, British Embassy Helsinki – Dec 2003 – Oct 2007. Led UK EU advocacy in Finland during UK and Finnish Presidencies of the EU.

  • Deputy Programme Manager Foreign and Commonwealth Office – 2002 – 2003 Led project to design, develop and deliver paradigm shifting new Intranet for British Foreign Service.

• Richard Slack – In 2011 Slack was listed as based in the British Embassy in Baghdad and in 2015 he was listed as Head of Communications at the British Embassy in Kabul. His current role is unclear.

• Joanna Szostek – now Lecturer in Political Communication, University of Glasgow. Previously based at Royal Holloway in the University of London, Szostek conducted a three-year fellowship from the European Commission on ‘the reception of rival narratives about international politics among different groups of Ukrainians’. The project incorporated a secondment to the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office from April to August 2017, during which she attended a seminar at the Institute of Statecraft.

The remaining one is Claire Lawrence, UK ambassador to Lithuania since 2015.

Of the four listed FCO staff who are to some extent specialists in communications, Crozier has left to work at the MoD, Szostek is an academic who was only briefly seconded to the FCO as part of a research project (Szostek), Slack has held a recent post that was at only mid-level seniority, and Pryce appears not to have held any previous posts in communications, his most recent posting being to the Caribbean.

The title of “Head of Counter Disinformation and Media Development’ appears in the public domain for Pryce only in relation to events at which he has appeared, for example at Stratcom DC organised by the Atlantic Council or in the press. On his own LinkedIn page he refers to himself only as a ‘diplomat’ and a ‘senior strategic advisor’. As noted above, in a written answer to a parliamentary question in December 2018 the FCO stated:

In April 2016 we launched a new four year strategic communications and media development programme authorised by the National Security Council, called the Counter Disinformation and Media Development Programme.

This programme had not previously been mentioned in public. Pryce’s job title suggests that he is the programme officer for this scheme.

6.2 Ministry of Defence and military personnel named in documents

6.2.1 Key to acronyms

The acronyms embedded in the local-parts of the MoD email addresses listed in the documents give some clue to the scale and diversity of StratCom operations now overseen by the Ministry of Defence.

• SGMI – Specialist Group Military Intelligence, based at at Denison Barracks, Hermitage, Thatcham, Berkshire. SGMI is part of the 1st Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Brigade which became operational on 1 September 2014. Among the other units in 1 ISR are 21 and 23 Special Air Service Regiments, 1-7 Military Intelligence Battalions, the Land Intelligence Fusion Centre and the Defence Cultural and Linguistic Support Unit. Overall it has 3,300 Regular and 3,000 Reservist personnel. According to the Army “approximately 55% of the Intelligence Corps is employed within the 1st Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) Brigade”.

• 77X – 77th Brigade also based at Denison Barracks and responsible for “information activity”. According to an FoI disclosure the 77th Brigade (in mid 2018) included 203 Regular Army posts of which 190 were filled and 271 Reserve posts of which 150 were filled, making a total strength of 340 personnel.

• PJHQ – Permanent Joint Headquarters, based in Northwood

  • J2 – operational intelligence division of PJHQ

• CGS – office of Chief of General Staff (head of the Army)

• MSE – Military Strategic Effects, part of the Operations Directorate in Whitehall. This branch was established around 1999 to 2000 when it was named Targeting and Information Operations. It was renamed Military Strategic effects in 2013. In mid 2018, according to an FoI disclosure, it contained 34 staff. From March 2014 to July 2015 it was headed by Chris Brazier, from then till March 2018 by Commodore Jonathan Burr, and since then by Air Commodore Nigel Colman.

• FSECC – Full Spectrum Effects Coordination Cell, a cross-department group set up in 2015 and overseen by a senior Tasking and Oversight Board chaired by Gwyn Jenkins (Deputy National Security Adviser for Conflict, Stability & Defence). The cell is based in MoD in Whitehall and works, according to a former member ‘in co-operation with the Cabinet Office, HMT, FCO, DfID, Home Office, GCHQ, MI5 and SIS, principally against ISIL/Daesh.’

6.2.2 MoD affiliations

• David Fields – his LinkedIn profile states that he was “Part of a small team which wrote the UK Ministry of Defence’s strategic approach towards Russia.” but is no longer employed by the MoD.

• Joseph Walker-Cousins appears in three of the documents: under Saudi Arabia in the xcountry document, and in two other lists that include military officers working closely with the Integrity Initiative.

He was commissioned as Second Lieutenant (on probation) in the Honourable Artillery Company on 1 April 2002 with seniority backdated, and the next day resigned his commission. The reporting of these events in the Gazette was delayed. His LinkedIn profile records that he worked as an intern in the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights in Gaza from September 2002 to February 2003, then immediately resumed his Army career as “Liaison Officer, British Army Reserves (including multiple tours in Iraq)” between Feb 2003 and Feb 2005. In December 2003 he joined the TA Intelligence Corps as Second Lieutenant. On 2 August 2006 he was promoted to captain in the TA Intelligence Corps. Information about his recent military career is available from a drunk driving case which came to court in May 2015. Major Alex Finnen, his superior officer, provided a character reference, telling the court that “Capt Walker-Cousins was due to be promoted this year but that ‘would definitely not be happening’ as a result of his actions.

In civilian life his LinkedIn profile records that he worked at Aegis Defence Services from Feb 2005 to May 2006, and then joined the regular Army as ‘Senior Staff Officer’ in September 2006 in Kabul. He was stabilisation adviser to the UK’s special envoy in Benghazi from 2011 to 2012 and head of the British Embassy Office in Benghazi from 2012-2014. Since April 2014, while still a reservist in the Intelligence Corps he has held the post of Director, Middle East Business Development for KBR, which holds the Operational Support Capability Contract for the Ministry of Defence.

On 13 March 2015 he contributed an article on Libya to The Guardian. On 17 November 2015 he was appointed as specialist adviser to the Foreign Affairs Committee’s investigation of the British role in the attack on Libya, and made which included his position with KBR and his military status as ‘Staff Officer, MENA Region, British Army Reserve’. In March 2018 he contributed an article extolling Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s “transformation of the Saudi economy” to the Institute for Statecraft’s website. He did not reveal his affiliation to the Intelligence Corps in any of these contributions.

• Lt Col Giles Harris – Army Strategic Engagement Team, Ministry of Defence.

• Charlie Hornick email local-part CGS-CIG-SO1b – US army officer seconded to the office of the Chief of the General Staff, who has recently warned of the Russian threat.

• Arron Rahaman email local-part OpsDir-MSE-StratComEurope – an online bio gives his current post as Strategic Communication Adviser (NATO and European Policy), Ministry of Defence. He is aged 32 and has a degree in marketing but no military experience.

• Nick Washer email local-part FSECC-1 UK Inner Core: Defence.

• Nick Smith email local-part FSECC-4 UK Inner Core: Defence.

• Joe Green email local-part PJHQ-J2-OPS-SO1-1. SO1 is staff officer level 1, equivalent to Lt Col.

• Paul Kitching email local-part PJHQ-J2-EURASIA-SO3-3. is staff officer level 3, equivalent to Captain

• Brigadier Chris Bell, commander of 77 Brigade. His predecessor, Alastair Aitken, also appears on the list with a private email address.

The involvement of these senior officers from military intelligence and information warfare units suggests that the MoD rather than the FCO is driving the Integrity Initiative programme. It is also of interest that reservists in Military Intelligence appear to be working under civilian cover without disclosing their intelligence background, though this can sometimes be found by searching the London Gazette.

Further evidence of the close links of the Integrity Initiative Programme with senior officers in military intelligence units comes from the schedule for the visit of Ukrainian special forces officers in July 2016, organized by the Institute for Statecraft. They had briefings or workshops with 3 Military Intelligence Battalion, HQ Field Army, 77 Brigade, Specialist Group Military Intelligence, NATO Intelligence Fusion Centre, and a final meeting with PJHQ staff who came to the Institute for Statecraft. The participants listed for 77 Brigade were the Commander, the Chief of Staff and the Deputy Chief of Staff.

6.2.3 Relation to the MoD’s StratCom programme on the Syrian conflict

Kevin Stratford-Wright was a Lt-Colonel in the British Army till 2012, where his last position was as Head of Information Operations for the regional HQ in Afghanistan. From his LinkedIn page we have a description of an MoD StratCom programme between 2012 and 2015 that was “the UK’s largest of its kind since the Cold War”, and has become “a template for activity elsewhere”.

UK Ministry of Defence – Strategic Communications Programme Manager: June 2012 – June 2015 (3 years 1 month) London, United Kingdom

Established a Strategic Communications programme to support UK government policy in a conflict zone.
– Developed strategy and plans.
– Engaged across the UK government (and internationally) to win support and approvals and to secure funding.
– Developed Statements of Requirement in partnership with selected enabling-contractors.
– Monitored and coordinated multiple project strands and reported on their activities and impact across UK government and to international partners.
– Generated year on year efficiency savings through constructive engagement with enabling contractors.
– The programme has been recognised as the UK’s largest of its kind since the Cold War. Its approach has also recently become a template for activity elsewhere (accepted by both UK government and international partners).

From the timing and scale of this StratCom programme, the “conflict zone” can only be Syria. In 2012 Stratford-Wright was working in the Targeting and Information Operations (TIO) unit of the Ministry of Defence that was renamed Military Strategic Effects in 2013. As Stratford-Wright noted, his approach has become “a template for activity elsewhere”. One feature of the MoD’s Syria StratCom operation has been the outsourcing, via the FCO and the Conflict Security and Stability Fund, of activities to “enabling contractors”: companies or nonprofit foundations set up by former military officers. The media operation for the “moderate armed opposition” was outsourced in late 2013. Although the tender document was issued by the FCO, metadata reveal that it was created on Stratford-Wright’s computer. The contract was eventually passed to a spin-out company named InCoStrat set up by Paul Tilley, another former Lt Colonel who had worked with Stratford-Wright in the MoD as a StratCom specialist. The White Helmets operation was set up by James Le Mesurier with funding from the Conflict Security and Stability Fund to Mayday Rescue, a nonprofit foundation registered in the Netherlands.

7 Operations in UK politics and media

7.0.1 Covert funding of academics

Monthly expenditure records for the Integrity Initiative over the period December 2015 to January 2016 show payments to two UK-based academics:

• Professor Andrew Wilson of UCL was paid £900 in March 2016 for his “Active Measures” paper

• Professor Julian Lindley-French was paid £285 for his blog “Speaking Truth unto Power”. Lindley-French records that he is a member of the Chief of the Defence Staff’s Strategic Advisory Panel – it is not clear whether members of this panel have to declare competing interests.

We have not been able to find any public disclosure of this funding. So far expenditure records have been released only for these four months: it is unlikely that these four months were the only period in which covert payments to UK academics were made.

7.1 UK journalists named in documents

• The Times – Deborah Haynes (now with Sky News), David Aaronovitch, Dominic Kennedy

• The Guardian – Natalie Nougayrede, Carole Cadwalladr

• The Economist – Edward Lucas

• FT – Neil Buckley

• BBC – Jonathan Marcus

• Paul Canning – blogger with a focus on Ukraine, who has contributed to The Guardian

• David Leask – Chief Reporter, Herald Scotland

• Borzhou Daragahi – The Independent – appears as the only individual listed under “Turkey” in the document xcountry.pdf that tabulates countries and election dates.

We have asked journalists listed in the documents whether they have had any contact with the Integrity Initiative. It may be relevant that the Integrity Initiative Handbook states that members of clusters are ‘to sign code of conduct & non-disclosure’.

Their responses can be grouped into four categories

7.1.1 I know nothing

• David Aaronovitch – When asked over Twitter whether he knew of or had had contact with Integrity Initiative, Institute for Statecraft or the UK Cluster, Aaronovitch replied

I have never heard of any of these three exotic entities. I think you have been hoaxed.

• Jonathan Marcus (BBC) – the BBC provided a statement to the Scottish Sunday Mail (print edition 16 December 2018) that

neither Marcus nor the BBC knew of the list of journalists, nor did he or the BBC consent to be part of any so-called cluster.

7.1.2 I attended a meeting or was on an email list, but was not involved

• Borzou Daragahi:

‘I do receive their emails‘

‘it goes to my junk email account‘

‘I systematically subscribe to think tank email newsletters‘

7.1.3 I am proud to be associated with them, there was nothing improper

• Edward Lucas – has written a commentary with title ‘West is Once Again Failing the Test Set by Russian Aggression’. published on the Integrity Initiative website on 26 November 2018. In an article on RT on 23 November 2018, he was quoted as writing:

I have not been paid by the institute. But I applaud their work in dealing with the Chekist regime’s pernicious information and influence operations’]

He did not confirm or deny the existence of a network, responding to questions on Twitter with:

I don’t see why one lot of people have to explain being on lists compiled by another lot of people

• David Leask – has been open about working with the Integrity Initiative. He has published two articles quoting “a spokesman for the Integrity Initiative”, one on the visit of Andriy Parubiy and one on Russian media coverage of the Salisbury poisonings. He has endorsed the output of the twitter account @initintegrity and others associated with the Integrity Initiative such as Nimmo. He responded to the release of documents with a 12 tweet thread on Twitter., acknowledging contact with the Integrity Initiative but denouncing Sputnik for “insinuation that I work for for or with a Nato/UK black ops”.

Leask’s description of the Integrity Initiative as “a network of researchers and journalists seeking to counter Russian propaganda and boost media literacy” confirms the existence of a network. In response to further questions, Leask asserted that government funding of the Integrity Initiative was “hardly a secret”. On this he was mistaken. The official summary of the Russian Language Programme does not list the recipient “implementing organizations” stating that “Information has been withheld from publication on security grounds”. Although the government funding of £1.96 million for the Integrity Initiative in the current financial year is now a matter of public record following a parliamentary question, this information was not in the public domain until the documents were released on 5 November 2018. The source of funding for the Integrity Initiative was not mentioned on its public website. It would have been possible for a diligent researcher to infer the total FCO spending on the Institute for Statecraft by going through the monthly expenditure tables for the FCO, but this would not have revealed the specific funding for the Integrity Initiative programme. The accounts filed at Companies House show FCO funding of £124,567 for the year ending 23 November 2017, but not the £1.96 million awarded for the current financial year.

The Integrity Initiative documents include notes of a meeting with Leask on 27 March 2018, allegedly taken by Guy Spindler, Chief Operating Officer of the Institute for Statecraft. The main focus of the interview is on Leask’s assessment of the prospects for the Scottish independence movement. The meeting finishes with a briefing on the misuse of Scottish Limited Partnerships as vehicles for money-laundering, which Leask’s own investigative reporting has helped to expose. It is not clear whether he is aware of the unusual use of this business structure by the founders of the Institute for Statecraft.

7.1.4 No response or refusal to answer

• Deborah Haynes – no response.
  Three of Haynes’s stories between 2016 and 2018 can be linked to internal documents of the Integrity Initiative: – For the visit of Ukrainian special forces officers organised by the Institute of Statecraft, a two-hour meeting with Haynes was scheduled at the Institute of Statecraft’s office in 2 Temple Place on 11 July 2016. Haynes wrote a story based on this meeting that appeared in The Times on 11 August 2016. Haynes was the only journalist scheduled for a meeting with the Ukrainian officers: all their other meetings were with military officers except for one with the House of Commons Defence Committee.

  • The draft application for MoD funding dated 20 March 2017 lists under “Success so far” (for the Integrity Initiative) the lead front-page story by Haynes in The Times on 17 December 2016 with title “Russia waging cyberwar against Britain”.

  • A document entitled “Representative selection of Integrity Initiative staff 2018 presentations and media interviews on Russian disinformation and malign influence” lists under the outputs of Victor Madeira a report in the Times on 9 March 2018 by Fiona Hamilton, David Brown and Deborah Haynes with the title “Spy mystery: Sergei Skripal’s contact with MI6 in Spain suggests links to Litvinenko case”. Victor Madeira is briefly quoted:

Victor Madeira, a senior fellow at the Institute for Statecraft in London, said yesterday that links with organised crime were entirely possible. Russia was a mafia state where organised crime and the authorities overlap, he said.

It may be relevant that Haynes is listed as an honorary member of the Pen & Sword club, whose main mission is “the promotion of media operations as a necessary and valued military skill in the 21st century.” This may be an appropriate aspiration for military officers, but not for journalists. The club has 334 members, including Steve Tatham (listed in the UK cluster), Paul Tilley and the former BBC correspondent Mark Laity. Almost all other members have a military background or are NATO officials.

• Dominic Kennedy – In response to an email asking whether he had heard of or was involved with the Integrity Initiative, Kennedy stated that he had not read the leaked documents, but did not answer the question.

On 14 April 2018 Haynes and Kennedy launched an attack on members of the Working Group on Syria Propaganda and Media in the Times, including a front-page article, a two-page spread and an anonymous editorial. Two members of the Working Group hold posts at the University of Edinburgh. Unable to find anything tying them to Russia, Kennedy attempted to suggest that the university was under Russian influence (based on a grant from the Russian cultural institute Russkiy Mir), and even that the city of Edinburgh was a base for Russian influence (based on the presence of Sputnik’s office).

• Neil Buckley (FT) – No response when asked over Twitter whether he had had contact with the Integrity Initiative.

• Carole Cadwalladr – Identified in the third tranche of leaked documents as scheduled to talk at an event at the Frontline Club in early November 2018, co-organised by the Integrity Initiative and Foreign Desk Ltd. She confirmed that she had spoken at the event and did not receive a fee, but did not answer a question on whether she had been involved with the Integrity Initiative or its parent the Institute for Statecraft.

• Natalie Nougayrede – No response when asked over Twitter if she was involved with the Integrity Initiative. She appears also in the French cluster list. In the same list, with a note that he is Nougayrede’s partner, is Nicholas Roche, whose current post is Director of Strategy at the Directorate of Military Applications of the French Atomic Energy Commission. It may be relevant that in May 2013, when she was editor of Le Monde, Natalie Nougayrede had a role in information operations in Syria. Under her direction, two Le Monde journalists acted as couriers to transfer samples provided by the opposition, allegedly from chemical attacks, to French intelligence agents in Jordan. Le Monde was then given the scoop of reporting that these samples had tested positive for sarin at the French chemical weapon detection lab at Le Bouchet.

7.2 Attempt to influence the House of Commons Defence Committee

Two of the Committee’s Specialists – David Nicholas and Eleanor Scarnell — are listed in the UK Cluster. Two current members of the Committee — Julian Lewis, the chair and John Spellar — appear in the “NGW seminars invitation list” document, along with Scarnell and Nicholas. This suggests that the Integrity Initiative has attempted to influence this committee. Another indication of this is that several members of the Integrity Initiative team testified to the House of Commons Defence Committee between 1 March 2016 and 19 April 2016 on “Russia: implications for UK defence and security”. For the visitors from the Ukrainian special forces, the Institute of Statecraft had scheduled a meeting with the Defence Committee on 12 July 2016.

7.3 Twitter account

Although the Twitter account @initintegrity accounts for only a very small proportion of the activity of the programme, it is relevant because unlike the covert activities of “networks” the output of the Twitter account is direct evidence that the programme is being used for partisan political purposes. Labour MPs and officials have expressed outrage that the Twitter account has been used to attack the Leader of the Opposition and his staff.

8 Links of the Integrity Initiative with extremism in the Baltic States and Ukraine

Some activities of the Integrity Initiative in the Baltic states and Ukraine, where people who consider themselves Russian make up large minorities, appear likely to foment sectarian hatred and civil conflict.

8.1 Holocaust revisionism

The Integrity Initiative works closely with the Lithuanian government and armed forces. The officially-encouraged spread of Holocaust revisionism in the Baltic States has been documented in detail by the magazine Defending History. Lithuania and Latvia have passed laws that limit discourse about the Holocaust in their territories and deny the role of local helpers in the Nazi genocide. In Ukraine a law passed in 2015 assigned officially protected status to the OUN and other organizations that collaborated with the Nazis and played a key role in the mass murder of Jews.

Both the Lithuanian and Latvian governments promote the double genocide version of Holocaust revisionism, which equates the (undisputed) political repression in the Baltic states during the years of Soviet rule to the genocide directed against the Jewish populations of those countries. In November 2010 the UK ambassador to Lithuania (Simon Butt) drafted and sent a letter to the the President of Lithuania, co-signed by the ambassadors of Estonia, Finland, France, Netherlands, Norway and Sweden, that expressed concern over the growing manifestations of antisemitism and denounced the “double genocide” version of history unequivocally:

Spurious attempts are made to equate the uniquely evil genocide of the Jews with Soviet crimes against Lithuania, which, though great in magnitude, cannot be regarded as equivalent in either their intention or result.

In May 2011 it was announced that Butt had retired from the Diplomatic Service (at the age of 53) and would be replaced as ambassador to Lithuania by David Hunt.

The Integrity Initiative documents report that Lithuanian armed forces have been training the British Army’s 77th Brigade:

Lithuania has become particularly important in our network due to its expertise in dealing with Russian malign influence and disinformation. We currently have four centres of expertise in Lithuania. Since 2015 we have had a close link with the Lithuanian Armed Forces Stratcom team, currently drawing on their expertise, with the support of the Lithuanian Chief of Defence, to educate other national clusters on effective methodologies for tracking Russian activities. We initiated a link between this team and the UK 77 Bde, resulting in 77 Bde adopting the Lithuanian techniques.

8.2 Neo-Nazism

As documented above, the Integrity Initiative works closely with StopFake, which has downplayed or denied resurgence of Nazism in the Baltic states and Ukraine. For instance in this article StopFake defends military boot camps for children run by the Azov Battalion. The Azov Battalion was founded in 2014, and its first commander was Andriy Biletsky, who previously headed the neo-Nazi group Patriot of Ukraine. The US Congress has banned the use of US aid for provision of “arms, training or other assistance to the Azov Battalion”.

StopFake has defended Ukrainian parliamentary speaker Andriy Parubiy against French commentators who have denounced him as a Nazi. When Parubiy visited Scotland, David Leask, one of the journalists listed by Integrity Initiative on its social media team, reported in almost identical terms to the earlier StopFake defence of Parubiy following his visit to France that ‘Parubiy is now “on the centre-right” in Ukrainian politics’. As the centre ground in Ukrainian politics is now aligned with policies that in most other European countries would be identified as those of the extreme right, it is difficult to dispute the assertion that Parubiy is on the centre-right in Ukrainian politics. A detailed study by Katchanovski (2015, updated 2018) has implicated Parubiy’s group in what is now widely held to have been a false flag massacre of Maidan protesters on 20 February 2014.

9 Promotion of hate campaign against the Russian Orthodox Church in the Balkans

The Integrity Initiative handbook and the UK Cluster document list Victor Madeira as part of the Office Core Team with expertise on “Orthodox Church”. The slide presentation that he prepared for a meeting at the University of Macedonia (Thessaloniki) on 12 November 2018 has the title “The Russian Orthodox Church: a State Tool of malign influence”. The opening slide is a cartoon, that, with some substitution of religious identifiers, would not have been out of place in the pages of Der Stürmer. It shows the face of an Orthodox cleric as the front of a locomotive, holding what appears to be a purse. Other parts of the locomotive are labelled with dollar signs, a hammer and sickle, and the name Russkiy Mir (the Russian cultural foundation). A uniformed driver with rat-like features leans out of the engine room, which is labelled USSR.

Other passages in the documents emphasize the threat allegedly presented by the Russian Orthodox Church:

Savvidis’s role is to prep the ground for the expansion of the Orthodox church in turn the expansion of Russian control over Greece. Persuading them they belong to the Eastern world, not the western.

The Orthodox religion is an important weapon which Russia is using. The Russian patriarch is trying to exceed the influence of the Greek patriarch. The Montenegrin church is trying to sabotage discussion of religion and security. Montenegro and other Balkan Orthodox religions look to Serbia and Russia, not to Greece.

The Integrity Initiative handbook lists one of the “topics for research” as “The Russian Orthodox Church and religion as weapons”. The slide presentation and the quotes above make clear that the Russian Orthodox Church itself is viewed as the threat, and not just wealthy donors to the Church like the Greek-Russian businessman Ivan Savvidis.

Two individuals with current or past affiliation to the Catholic Bishops Conference of England and Wales (CBCEW), the governing body of the Catholic Church in England, appear in the UK Cluster document. Dr David Ryall, Secretary of the International Affairs Department of the CBCEW, appears under “UK General – Inner Core – Military & Defence”. Primavera Quantrill, who held a post in the CBCEW from 2002 to 2005 and is now Partnerships Director at the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, appears under “Outer Core – Military & Defence”. Although there is no evidence that these individuals were involved with the Integrity Initiative (Ryall reported receiving emails only, and Quantrill reported knowing nothing about them), it is of interest that those running the programme apparently sought to involve lay officials of the Catholic Church.

10 Activities of the Integrity Initiative in the US

One of the points apparently raised by the FCO’s reviewers is as follows:-

US cluster update- what’s been happening since the Q4 report? Who in the system are you engaging with at what level? (Obviously Todd has numerous contacts!)

The applicants’ response began:

Todd has formally retired wef last week and will work in our team after the summer. He has provided access to the Global Engagement Centre

“Todd” appears to be Todd Leventhal. According to his LinkedIn profile, in May 2013 he left his post at the State Department’s Global Engagement Center which is charged with “leading the U.S. government’s efforts to counter propaganda and disinformation from international terrorist organizations and foreign countries”. In August 2013, however, he took up a new post as Strategic Adviser at the Global Engagement Center. He is listed in the Handbook as a member of the Integrity Initiative Team.

The applicants’ response continued:

Our application for 501c3 status as a US registered not for profit organisation is currently going through their IR process. We have a US (DC) office to work from. We are planning our US clusters (which will be in key states, not in DC). Within DC we are partnering with C N A and CEPA. Our first partners outside DC are Adventium Labs and the Technical Leadership Institute at the University of Minnesota.

This refers to a conference workshop at which the speakers include Chris Donnelly and Simon Bracey Lane. The applicants continued:

Via VUB we have access to Jakub Grygiel in the State Dept planning staff and are planning for a session with him this summer

The Smith Richardson Foundation will work with us on developing our US network when we have received the 501c3 status

We also have a contact to Katharine Gorka – Senior Advisor – US Department of Homeland Security

The Cluster roundup document notes that

The Integrity Initiative has the opportunity to develop the programme into North America, based on the Institute’s subsidiary, the Institute for Statecraft and Governance, which has a simple office in DC and is in the course of registering as a US 501c3 not-for-profit organisation.

Despite the State Department’s stipulation that none of the funding it provided for the Integrity Initiative should be spent in the US, it is clear that the Integrity Initiative is expanding its operations in the US with encouragement from the FCO and is working with US government officials in a manner that may not be entirely transparent to those who oversee them.

11 History of the Institute for Statecraft

11.1 Founding

The original company named The Institute for Statecraft and Governance was incorporated in Edinburgh in 2006, with Chris Donnelly and Dan Lafayeedney as co-founders. It was a non-profit company with a memorandum of associations listing the company’s objects, which included “to advance education in the field of governance, … to advance human rights, conflict resolution and/or reconciliation and religious/racial/ethnic harmony”. The witness to their signatures on the articles of association was Rosemary Cameron-Wanner, a NATO official based in the Public Diplomacy Division Media Operations Centre.

The Institute of Statecraft and Governance was apparently dormant until 2009 when it was registered as a Scottish charity. In 2010 there was an event at Wilton Park which gives the position of Anne Bader as Director of North American Programs, Institute of Statecraft and Government, University of Oxford. So by 2010 it already had programs, and was based in Oxford though its corporate address was in Scotland.

On 16 June 2011 it filed accounts signed by Lafayeedney for the year ending 23 November 2010 as a dormant company, as it had done each year since it was founded. On 29 August 2012, however it filed amended accounts for the same period (year ending 23 November 2010), signed by Donnelly and showing total income for that period as £158,470, broken down as:

1. £96,500 for “Designated fund for capacity building for two eastern European governments

2. £61,970 for “Counselling, research, democracy promotion and implementation programme for NATO”

The amendment records that the accounts showing income of £158470 had been approved by the Board on 6 June 2011 and includes a preliminary statement that

The accounts have been revised in respect to which the original accounts did not comply with the requirement of the act and include any significant amendment made consequently after correcting the defects.

There is no explanation of these “defects” or why Lafayeedney had filed accounts for a dormant company on 16 June 2011, ten days after its Board had approved accounts for the same period showing annual income of £158,470.

The summary of accounts on the charity register records that total income for the financial year ending 23 Nov 2017 was £521,786. The accounts state that “The charity had no employees during 2016 or 2017”. As the Integrity Initiative was launched in June 2016 and was highly active during this period, this implies that the office team were paid from other sources, and seconded to the Institute for Statecraft as a benefit in kind. Donnelly was paid £18000 for consultancy services over this period, and Szusterman £2000. No other trustees or staff received any emoluments from the charity.

On 13 April 2016 the registered address was changed from the Edinburgh office of the law firm Burness Paull, to Gateside Mills, a derelict building in rural Fife now being demolished. The current directors are Donnelly, Lafayeedney, and six others:

• Anthony Cooke – 21 directorships, occupation variously given as chartered accountant, ship broker and ship owner

• Harry Hart, resident in Switzerland – no other directorships. Son of David Hart, an adviser to Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s.

• Philip Matthews – sole director of PM Homeland Security and a former director of Astutus Intelligence (where Martin Dubbey is now sole director)

• Oliver McTernan, resident in France – former Catholic priest and co-founder of the conflict resolution charity Forward Thinking established in 2004. Chris Donnelly is a trustee of this charity. In 1992, while still a priest, McTernan founded a company named St Francis and St Sergius Trust Fund with objects including “advancement of religion within the territories of the former Soviet Union”. In 2001 this was renamed Partners in Hope and in 2011 to the Drive Forward Foundation, a charity “to empower care leavers aged 16-26 in London to achieve their full potential”. A bio of McTernan on the World Economic Forum site gives more details of his career since 2000:-

Formerly, Senior Adviser, Club of Madrid. 2000-03, Visiting Fellow, Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University. May 2002, initiated and participated in the first official high-level post conflict talks between NATO and the government in Belgrade [in 2002]; 25 years as Executive Committee Member, Pax Christi International, responsible for the movement’s East-West Dialogue programme during the Soviet period.

• Piroska Nagy-Mohacsi – Programme Director of the Institute of Global Affairs at LSE where “she is responsible for various global policy initiatives on financial resilience, growth and migration”. She does not appear in the Integrity Initiative documents though there is a reference to “the LSE team” in the 2018/19 application to the FCO, which appears to include Anne Applebaum and Peter Pomerantsev.

• Dr Celia Szusterman – 1986 doctorate at Oxford on Developmentalism and political change in Argentina, 1955-62. Listed in UK cluster

11.2 Youth work

The Shared Outcomes programme of the Institute of Statecraft appears to have originated in the work of the Active Change Foundation. According to the Ministry of Defence, in the financial years 2016-17 and 2017-18

the Armed Forces Covenant Fund Trust’s Local Grants Programme awarded a total of £177,650 to 12 separate small projects run by the Shared Outcomes Programme, an initiative of the Institute for Statecraft which works with young people (aged 14-18) from minority communities in areas facing economic and social challenge and aims to increase participants’ life opportunities and support them in fulfilling their potential. The Shared Outcomes projects enable young people to take part in challenging activities such as assault courses, night navigation exercises and camping while visiting an Army base, and other activities designed to improve community cohesion.

The Institute for Statecraft’s website describes this charitable programme run by the Institute for Statecraft as follows:

We work with young people (aged 14-18) from minority communities in areas facing economic and social challenge. Our aim is to increase participants’ life opportunities and support them in fulfilling their potential. We achieve our objectives through offering activities that develop employability skills, provide accredited qualifications and build confidence.

These activities include two-night Challenge Weekends at an Army base, two-day team-building exercises and Duke of Edinburgh Award programmes alongside the Army Cadet Force. The Directors’ Reports make clear that this programme is targeted specifically at Muslims. This newsletter from a school in Stepney describes a two-day trip for 30 pupils to an army camp with Shared Outcomes.

11.3 EU lobbying

The Institute of Statecraft declared two people at 0.25 FTE each for the year 2016, with annual cost given as £17,500 approximately.

12 Christopher Nigel Donnelly

There is a profile of Chris Donnelly on the Commonwealth Argosy site.

As a graduate of Manchester University and reserve officer in the British Army Intelligence Corps, Chris Donnelly helped to establish, and later headed, the British Army’s Soviet Studies Research Centre at RMA Sandhurst. Between 1989-2003, as Special Adviser to four NATO Secretaries General, he was closely involved in dealing with the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the reform of the newly emerging democracies in Central and Eastern Europe. He left NATO in 2003 to set up and run the UK Defence Academy’s Advanced Research and Assessment Group. In 2010 he became co-Director of The Institute for Statecraft dealing with new security threats and responses – specifically, new forms of conflict and warfare and how to transform institutions so that they are fit for today’s rapidly changing security environment.

He also: is adviser to the Foreign Minister of Lithuania; is a Security and Justice Senior Mentor in the UK’s Stabilisation Unit; is Trustee of the London-based charities Active Change Foundation and Forward Thinking; serves as Honorary Colonel, SGMI

The Soviet Studies Research Centre was founded in 1972 at Sandhurst. After the end of the Cold War, it became the Conflict Studies Research Centre, which became part of the Advanced Research and Assessment Group of the Defence Academy, which in turn was renamed the Research and Assessments Branch and wound up in 2010 after a number of internal disagreements. Many of those now working in the Institute of Statecraft have worked previously with Donnelly in the Advanced Research and Assessment Group.

Donnelly’s salary cost as director of the Integrity Initiative is £72,6000 per year in the budget for 2018.

12.1 Military intelligence role

Donnelly has had a series of commissions as reservist in the Intelligence Corps stretching back to 1970, when he was commissioned as 2nd Lt on probation in the TA reserve of the Intelligence Corps. These have all been in the reserves and appear to have run concurrently with his other roles including for example his work at NATO. Donnelly’s honorary colonel affiliation to SGMI began in 2015, the same year that the Integrity Initiative programme started. The Gazette gives two different dates for this appointment.

• Mr Christopher Nigel DONNELLY CMG TD is appointed Honorary Colonel Specialist Group Military Intelligence Army Reserve 1 May 2015 in a new appointment [Published 7 July 2015]

• C. N. DONNELLY CMG TD Honorary Colonel Specialist Group Military Intelligence Army Reserve from 1 January 2015 and is granted the rank of Local Colonel for the duration of the appointment (Belated Entry). [Published 11 October 2016]

13 Daniel Lafayeedney

It appears that his surname was originally Edney, and that he took the middle name Lafaye on marriage to his first wife Regine Lafaye, some time before October 1978 when as Daniel Lafaye Edney aged 32 years, he was commissioned into the Territorial Reserve Special Air Service Regiment, Group A (23 SAS) as 2nd Lt. on probation. 19 months later, still holding the rank of 2nd Lt on probation and now known as Daniel Lafaye-Edney, he resigned his commission. Although there is no record in the Gazette of any further military service or promotion, in 2004 he appears in the St Antony’s College Record as “Major Daniel Lafayeedney”.

23 SAS was was formed as a Territorial Army (part-time military reservists) unit in 1959 by renaming the Reserve Reconnaissance Unit, which had in turn been formed from MI9, a unit with expertise in escape and evasion during the Second World War. It is now, like Specialist Group Military Intelligence, part of the 1st Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Brigade.

Some time before March 1996 Lafayeedney appears to have formed a relationship with Fiona Katherine Adelaide Gatty, who is listed in an online directory of the peerage as the mother of Lafayeedney’s youngest son born in December 1996. Fiona Gatty describes herself as “an Art Historian specialising in late 18th- and early 19th-century French aesthetics with an extensive finance and business background in the high net worth family business and entrepreneurial sector.” She holds a post-doctoral research fellow post in Somerville College Oxford and is Program Officer for the Templeton World Charity Foundation. Lafayeedney and other members of his family have over the years held directorships of the property company set up in 2001 that owns the Gateside Mills site. Of the two current directors, one is Fiona Gatty who holds 19% of the equity.

13.1 High Court case in 2006

Lafayeedney’s business activities as a property developer led to an acrimonious case which came before the High Court in 2006 in which he attempted to deny the claim of Mr Garry Bramley that there was a written agreement on a 50/50 split of the profits on a property deal for which Bramley had lent Lafayeedney £350,000. The judge made adverse comments on Lafayeedney’s testimony:

there were certain specific matters, identified in Section B2 below, where I am bound to conclude that Mr Lafayeedney was not telling me the truth.

The judge commented with evident distaste on the business model for Lafayeedney’s property deals:

However it appears that the real profit was made from the complex inter-company arrangments, whereby it was the off-shore vehicle that sold the site to the Housing Association, thus sheltering the profit on the sale from any liability to Capital Gains Tax.

This had led to an Inland Revenue investigation into Lafayeedney’s affairs in 2004. The judge commented unfavourably on the character of both men:

In my judgement, it was entirely in character that each man, during their oral evidence, made allegations or insinuations of criminal conduct on the part of the other. For example, Mr Bramley alleged that, at one meeting Mr Lafayeedney explored with him the possibility of an innocent third party taking the consequences of the Inland Revenue investigation, whilst, for his part, Mr Lafayeedney said that Mr Bramley told him that he had not paid tax in 16 years.

In the same year (2006), he was described as a Scottish ‘multi-millionaire property developer’, in an account of his daughter’s marriage to Lord Seymour, heir to the Duke of Somerset.

14 Other companies directed by Donnelly and Lafayeedney

Donnelly and Lafayeedney share directorships in other companies. Some of these companies have filed dormant accounts but appear to have been active. These include several Scottish Limited Liability Partnerships (LLPs). Scottish Limited Partnerships (SLPs) are different to Limited Partnerships in England and Wales: a registered Scottish Limited Partnership can hold assets in its own name, as well as owning assets, entering into contracts, borrowing money and owning property. A Scottish Limited Liability Partnership (LLP) differs from an SLP in that each partner is afforded limited liability protection against any debts, losses or lawsuits as a result of malpractice. Although the ability to manage the business as a partnership means that any agreement between members does not have to be disclosed publicly, the LLP is required to publish annual accounts. Scottish general partnerships have a separate legal personality, but partners are jointly and severally liable to creditors for all the partnership’s debts.

Although SLPs and Scottish LLPs can be set up only in Scotland, they are regulated by UK law and the Scottish Government has no powers to regulate them. A press release from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy on 12 April 2018 noted that although Scottish Limited Partnerships are used by legitimate businesses, there was “growing evidence SLPs have been exploited in complex money laundering schemes”. The Business Minister Andrew Griffiths was quoted as saying that although the UK has taken a leading role in the fight against money laundering, “Scottish Limited Partnerships are being abused to carry out all manner of crimes abroad – from foreign money laundering to arms dealing.” Other investigations have documented that Scottish Limited Partnerships carried out such activities even when they were filing accounts as dormant companies.

The companies in which Lafayeedney and Donnelly have been involved include:

14.1 Pluscarden Investments LLP (2005-2010)

Pluscarden Investments LLP was registered in Glasgow as a Scottish LLP on 12 October 2005 with Daniel Lafayeedney and Fiona Gatty as directors, and dissolved on 19 February 2010. This LLP does not appear on the Companies House register but can be found by searching www.duedil.com. The establishment of this company may be related to the Pluscarden Programme at Oxford over the same time period, for which these two individuals donated funds to St Antony’s College. Fiona Gatty mentions on her CV her role in what may be an earlier company with a similar name: “Pluscarden Investments – Self Employed Corporate Finance Business Partner (May 1995 – April 2007)”. Pluscarden Abbey is a Benedictine monastery on the Moray Firth in north-east Scotland.

14.2 ISG Corporate LLP and ISG Corporate Limited (2009 to present)

ISG Corporate LLP was incorporated in Glasgow as a Limited Liability Partnership (LLP) on 19 August 2009, with the office of the law firm Burness LLP as registered address. The two founding Designated Members of ISG Corporate LLP were partnerhips with registered address as Gateside Mills: Pluscarden Associates Partnership and Pluscarden Investments Partnership. These entities are presumably Scottish general partnerships as they are not listed as companies. Accounts for the LLP as a dormant company were filed for the years ending 31 August 2010 and 31 August 2011. On these filed accounts, the signature for Pluscarden Associates Partnership is that of Chris Donnelly and the signature for Pluscarden Investments Partnership is that of Pierre Lafayeedney, Daniel Lafayeedney’s second son. On 30 December 2011 ISG Corporate LLP was renamed to Innovation Services General LLP and a new limited company (not an LLP) was formed with the name ISG Corporate Limited, with Donnelly and Daniel Lafayeedney’s eldest son Jean-Louis Lafayeedney each holding half the equity. Innovation Services General LLP filed accounts for a dormant company until it was dissolved on 1 February 2013. ISG Corporate Limited is still active with registered address as Gateside Mills, having filed accounts for a dormant company for every year since it was incorporated.

Until 18 January 2011 the company name of what is now the Institute for Statecraft was The Institute for Statecraft and Governance for which the acronym ISG was used in the report of its partner charity Active Change Foundation (Figure 1). From 19 August 2009 when ISG Corporate LLP was founded, the name of this LLP could easily have been confused with this acronym for the charity Institute of Statecraft and Governance. This may explain why the name of the Institute for Statecraft and Governance was changed to the Institute for Statecraft on 18 January 2011, and why ISG Corporate LLP was later renamed to Innovation Services General LLP.

14.3 Council on Foreign Relations LLP (2010 to present)

A company named Council on Foreign Relations was incorporated as a Scottish LLP in February 2010, five months after the Institute was registered as a Scottish charity. The Scottish LLP has filed accounts as a dormant company since it was set up in 2010. Its registered address is the derelict Gateside Mills building, same as the Institute for Statecraft. The three current directors are Chris Donnelly, Daniel Lafayeedney and Jean-Louis Lafayeedney (Daniel’s 38-year old son by his first marriage, now based in Hong Kong). Oliver McTernan (see above) and Lesley Simm were directors from 2010 to 2013. Simm, now retired, was a civil servant at the Defence Academy’s Advanced Research and Assessment Group with a specialism in Islamist movements. This Scottish LLP has the same name as the US think-tank CFR founded in 1921, but has no connection with it (confirmed to us by CFR’s General Counsel).

14.4 Techfin London Limited (2014-2016)

Techfin London Limited was incorporated in August 2014 with Donnelly and Lafayeedney as two of five directors. It filed no accounts, leading to compulsory strike-off in March 2016

15 St Antony’s College Oxford and the Pluscarden Programme for the Study of Global Terrorism and Intelligence

On the current website of St. Antony’s College Oxford, Lafayeedney is listed as a ‘benefactor.’

The co-founder and Director of The Institute for Statecraft, has wide experience in international affairs, working with both the UK and foreign Governments. As Senior Associate Fellow at the Advanced Research and Assessment Group at the Defence Academy of the UK (2004- 2010) he specialised in the development and implementation of capacity-building projects for high-level governance of the security sector in European and middle-Eastern countries, and in supporting the development of counter-radicalisation programmes for at-risk ethnic communities in the UK. His military service, legal background and career as an entrepreneur have given him an understanding of the importance of the link between business and national security.

He is a Senior Member, St Antony’s College, University of Oxford, Member of The Law Society of Scotland holds a degree in Scots Law from the University of Aberdeen and a Diploma in International Comparative Law from San Diego University, USA.

His position from 2004 as Senior Associate Fellow at ARAG would have put him close to Donnelly, who had set it up.

From enquiries among those involved we have established that the funding for the Pluscarden Programme was donated by Daniel Lafayeedney and Fiona Gatty. Daniel Lafayeedney was on the Management Committee, though in the College Record he does not appear as Director as is stated in his biographic sketch on the College website. Fiona Gatty (under her married name MacLeod) appears on the Advisory Committee. On her CV she lists her role in the Pluscarden programme as co-founder and member of Advisory Committee as from 2004 to 2013.

As the Inland Revenue had begun an investigation into Lafayeedney in 2004, this might not have been the best time for him to make a substantial donation to an Oxford college. The Pluscarden Programme for the Study of Global Terrorism and Intelligence began in 2005. The academic director was Steve Tsang, a China specialist. A report of its first year of operation is available in the St Antony’s College record. The level of activity of the Pluscarden Programme appears to have been modest: during its first year it held two seminars per term and a large international workshop in December Delegates had to pay a £400 registration fee for the workshop. The first annual Pluscarden conference was designated by NATO as one of its Advanced Research Workshops, entitled ‘The Changing Face of Intelligence’ held over two days in December 2005.

Pluscarden’s meetings during its first year included three Israelis with an academic or military background as speakers or session chairs: Professor Yoram Dinstein, General Yaa’cov Amidor, Professor Itzik Ben-Israel. Lafayeedney attended the Herzliya Conference in Israel on 21-24 January 2007, and his affiliation was given as BICOM (Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre), an active pro-Israeli lobbying group underwritten by Chaim “Poju” Zabludowicz, a London-based property developer. The attendance list also included Donnelly and Zabludowicz. Other than a document from the Italian Senate dated 2017 that links the Institute of Statecraft with the Herzliya Institute of Counter-Terrorism in a NATO-supported research project, there is no other evidence that Lafayeedney or Donnelly were supporters of pro-Israeli organizations.

16 Charities with Donnelly and Lafayeedney as trustees

16.1 Forward Thinking

Founded by Oliver McTernan in 2004, Chris Donnelly is one of six trustees. Its stated aims are:-

To promote a more inclusive peace process in the Middle East. To facilitate political dialogues in, and between, the Arab/Muslim and Western worlds. To promote in the UK greater understanding and confidence between the diverse grassroots Muslim communities and the wider society including the Media and the British establishment.

Yusuf Desai, listed as UK programme regional director for Forward Thinking, is listed as a Fellow in the Office Core Team of the UK Cluster of the Integrity Initiative and as a Senior Fellow at the Institute For Statecraft.

16.2 Active Change Foundation

Active Change Foundation was incorporated in 2006 and based in Walthamstow, with a Memorandum of Association listing five specific “objects for which the Company is established”: to provide diversionary projects to excluded young people, to promote integration, cohesion and tolerance, to train and facilitate employment prospects for disenfranchised young people, to promote and provide healthier life style within the minority ethnic community, and to provide help and education and other facilities to youngsters in order to reduce crime. Donnelly was appointed as a director on 3 June 2008: from enquiries among those working there we have established that it was Oliver McTernan who introduced Donnelly to the Active Change Foundation. On 9 September 2008 a special resolution was passed, amending the Memorandum of Association to include prevention of terrorism as one of the principal objects of the charity. This appears to have made it possibly to access new sources of funding. Donnelly subsequently brought three other Defence Academy alumni into Active Change foundation as executives or directors: Lesley Simm who was listed as Chief Executive in 2010-11, Dan Lafayeedney as director in 2014, and David Gilbertson, former deputy assistant commissioner at the Metropolitan police, as director in 2015. The five trustees in 2016 included Chris Donnelly, David Gilbertson and Dan Lafayeedney. In October 2017 all three of these resigned or retired as trustees.

The accounts for Active Change Foundation on the Companies House site are uninformative, including only an end of year balance sheet and not even totals for income and expenditure. More information is available in the Trustees’ reports and accounts filed with the Charity Commission. Reports from before 2013 are not available online, and the reports that are available online from 2013 onwards do not give a breakdown of income. We have access to original printed reports. Home Office funding from the Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism began in the year ending 31 January 2009, reaching a peak in 2009-2010 when total income was £467,148 and the Home Office was the principal source of financial support. From the FCO, the Active Change Foundation received £162,410 in 2011-2012 and £402,578 in 2013.

In their report for 2008-2009, the Trustees reported that partnerships had been formed with the Defence Academy, the Ministry of Defence, the Institute for Statecraft and Governance, the Advanced Research and Assessment Group, and the Atlantic Council. In the list of partners the acronym ISG is used for the Institute of Statecraft and Governance (Figure 1).

Partnerships reported by the Active Change Foundation for the year 2008-2009

17 Charitable status of the Institute of Statecraft

17.1 Publicly declared charitable purposes and privately stated objectives

The Institute for Statecraft is registered as a Scottish charity. The charitable objects in the constitution are stated as follows:

1. To advance education in the fields of governance and statecraft, and in particular focussing on the leadership, direction, management and administration of public and private institutions, major organisations and other bodies (whether incorporated or otherwise), and the skills needed by those in authority within such institutions, organisations or bodies to enable them to deal effectively with current and future challenges particularly in respect of security

2. To advance human rights, conflict resolution and/or reconciliation and religious/racial/ethnic harmony, to promote equality and diversity, citizenship and community development, and to advance national and international security; and in particular through assisting governments (including emerging democracies and countries in transition) and other institutions, organisations or bodies (whether in the UK or abroad) to respond to the challenges posed by new developments in the world (whether social, political, economic or technological) and to develop and embed structures and institutions that reflect principles of best practice in governance and statecraft.

The statement released in response to the November 2018 leak says that the Integrity Initiative is set up to “counter disinformation by states and sub-state actors.”

The Integrity Initiative is a partnership of several independent institutions led by The Institute for Statecraft. This international public programme was set up in 2015 to counter disinformation and other forms of malign influence being conducted by states and sub-state actors seeking to interfere in democratic processes and to undermine public confidence in national political institutions

This might be a charitable purpose if it included disinformation by all states including our own. But the internal handbook and the grant make clear that the Integrity Initiative is directed at Russia only.

The Integrity Initiative was set up in autumn 2015 by The Institute for Statecraft in cooperation with the Free University of Brussels (VUB) to bring to the attention of politicians, policy-makers, opinion leaders and other interested parties the threat posed by Russia to democratic institutions in the United Kingdom, across Europe and North America.

The 2017-2018 application form also states that the programme is specifically directed against Russia:

To counter Russian disinformation and malign influence in Europe by: expanding the knowledge base; harnessing existing expertise, and; establishing a network of networks of experts, opinion formers and policy makers,to educate national audiences in the threat and to help build national capacities to counter it.

The activities of the Integrity Initiative in Ukraine and the Baltic States seem directed at conflict promotion rather than conflict resolution.

The applicants’ response to the FCO’s reviewers shows that the Integrity Initiative is under close supervision from the FCO. The applicants begin with a summary of the “top three deliverables for FCO”. This implies a customer-contractor relationship which calls into question the independence of the Institute of Statecraft – charities are supposed to act independently of government influence. The top three “deliverables” are listed as:-

Developing and proving the cluster concept and methodology

• lists “Jelena Milic silencing pro-kremlin voices on Serbian TV” as an example

Making people (in Government, think tanks, military, journalists) see the big picture, making people acknowledge that we are under concerted,deliberate hybrid attack by Russia

Increasing the speed of response, mobilising the network to activism in pursuit of the “golden minute”

• lists “Recent example from Spain of our influencing the appointment of the pro-Kremlin candidate within a few hours of the announcement”

Silencing dissenters and blocking their appointment to public posts are not charitable purposes.

17.2 Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator’s criteria for making a complaint:

The criteria listed on the website are:

Charities that are being used for private gain

Where a charity’s independence is being called into question. We expect charity trustees to act independently of any private, government or political interest

When it is not clear who is in charge of the charity. For example: one charity trustee seems to be in overall control of the charity, an employee seems to be in overall control of the charity, or none of the charity trustees is taking responsibility – this can result in serious governance problems, which could harm the charity

When it appears that the charity’s assets are at risk or not being used for charitable purposes

The charity is not carrying out the charitable purposes defined in its governing document

The Integrity initiative, which accounts for most of the Institute for Statecraft’s budget, raises concerns on these criteria:

• it is not acting independently of government and political interests. Key personnel, including the director, have honorary or reservist posts in military intelligence units. It is open to question whether a military intelligence officer, even a part-time one, can ever be off duty. It appears that office space, and at least some of the staff are being provided as benefit in kind by an unknown agency.

• there are governance problems: the registered office is a derelict building. Donnelly and Lafayeedney seem to be in overall control of the charity and they have a non-transparent business relationship through their Scottish Limited Liability Partnerships.

• the charity’s assets are not being used for charitable purposes

• the charity is not carrying out the charitable purposes listed in its governing document

Acknowledgements

We thank David Habakkuk for historical background, Max Blumenthal for pointing us to sources on Ukraine and David Scott for visiting the Gateside Mills site.

Appendix – list of documents released up to 20 December 2018

First tranche released 5 November 2018

17.2.1 UK-related documents

1. FCO application form 2017-18 Signed by Chris Donnelly, dated 27 April 2017.

2. FCO application 2018 v2 Also signed by Chris Donnelly, also dated 27 April 2017 but presumably submitted in 2018.

3. FCO proposal integrity budget 2017-18

4. Integrity 2018 Activity Budget v3 Quarterly budget projection for 2018-19.

5. Top three deliverables for FCO This appears to be the applicants’ response to reviewers’ comments on the grant application for 2018-19. The date can be inferred to be close to 8 June 2018.

6. II handbook v2 of the Integrity Initiative dated 30 May 2018.

7. The Integrity Initiative Guide to Countering Russian Disinformation May 2018

8. Cluster Roundup Jul18 Progress report on establishing national clusters.

9. Cluster Leaders

10. Cluster Participants List of all cluster participants

11. xcountry Table of countries with election dates, institutions, and indviduals associated with the Integrity Initiative.

12. Moncloa campaign apparently dated 8 June 2018 and submitted as supporting material with the applicants’ response to FCO reviewers. Timeline of social media output during Integrity Initiative’s successful campaign to block the appointment of Colonel Pedro Baños Bajo to the post of head of the National Security Directorate of Spain. Includes a list of seven individuals under the heading “UK II team Twitter impact: Influential Individuals Social Media activity”.

13. UK Cluster

17.2.2 Other regional / national clusters

14. Austria cluster

15. Baltics Cluster

16. Central Eastern Cluster

17. France Cluster

18. Germany Cluster

19. Greece Cluster

20. Italy Cluster

21. Netherlands Cluster

22. Nordic Clusters

23. Spain Cluster

24. USA & Canada Cluster

A file named xOutreach contains only a single record, for Marcel R. D. Chirwa who is Permanent Representative for Malawi to the UN office in Nairobi.

Second tranche of documents released 29 November 2018

17.2.3 Germany

• THE GERMAN CLUSTER – INTERIM REPORT By Hannes Adomeit 03/10/2018

• Harold Elletson’s paper (in German)

• Elletson’s paper (in English)

• Domestic Determinants of Russia’s anti-Western Campaign

• Claim for reimbursement

17.2.4 Spain

• Cluster breakdown

• Consultancy agreement with Nico de Pedro

• Invoice to the Spanish CIDOB research centre from its British supervisors

• Why is it so difficult to address the Russia issue in Spain – Manual for campaigns in Spain

• Framing Russian meddling in the Catalan question October, 2017

17.2.5 Greece

• Simon Bracey Lane’s report on trip to the Balkans

• Greece cluster enlistment in Thessaloniki

• Contract with the second Greece cluster

• Cluster meeting schedule in Thessaloniki

• Covert meeting of cluster members at Sissy Alonistiotou’s house in Athens

• Cluster report on preparing a desirable reaction to the expulsion of diplomats

• Mark Voyger’s ‘Russian lawfare’ slides for the cluster meeting in Thessaloniki

• Greece cluster requests for funds from the UK center: proposal 1 and proposal 2

• Cluster’s review of media coverage of Salisbury poisonings

• HUB 2017 Greece – Cluster listing.

• Cluster research on alleged agents of Russian influence in Greece

• Victor Madeira’s slides for his presentation at the Thessaloniki meeting

Third tranche released 13 December 2018

• Integrity Initiative monthly expenditure for December 2015 to March 2016.

• Production timetable March-April 2016, dated 25 February 2016

• Production timetable March–June 2016, dated 5 April 2016

• Draft of application to MoD for funding, dated 14 March 2017. This appears to be based on preliminary discussions with the MoD, as there is a passage that appears to quote a communication from the MoD:

How much money are you asking for this project? (Different amounts for different levels of project is fine, but we need specifics on how much for what. Is there funding from other sources? What about long-term)

In this draft one of the performance indicators is “Tougher stance in government policy towards Russia”.

• Twitter performance report January 2018

• Twitter performance report April 2018

• “Ideas for Ramping up IfS Contributions to the Cause” – memorandum by Victor Madeira, dated 16 March 2018. One suggestion is “Find ways to remove e.g. RT/Ruptly video and infographic content from mainstream media e.g. newspaper websites, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, etc.”

• Integrity Initiative staff 2018 presentations and media interviews on Russian disinformation and malign influence” – covers January to March 2018

• Agenda for seminars on 27th and 28 February 2018 with Center for New Generation Warfare

• Invitation list for these seminars

• Lists of Temple Place Resident Team and Specialist Team – can be dated to June-July 2018

• Draft agenda for conference “Tackling Tools of Malign Influence” at Frontline Club on 1-2 November 2018

17.2.6 Visits by Ukrainian officers

• Schedule for visit of five Ukrainian officers to the UK, dated 11 July 2016. In this document they are described as “reserve officers” but in the draft application to the MoD they are described as “a Ukrainian Special Forces team”. The draft application states that

in a series of meetings with their UK counterparts they passed on invaluable information about how they are dealing with Russian military operations in Eastern Ukraine.

In interviews conducted in the summer of 2016, Ukrainian special forces personnel described their operations behind enemy lines in the separatist-controlled Donbass region, including targeted killings and destruction of infrastructure.

• Invoice from Institute of Statecraft to MoD for visit of 2 Ukrainian officers dated 22 November 2017

17.2.7 Documents related to the Salisbury poisonings

• Russian Lies and the Skripal Case – Stephen Dalziel, dated 10 March 2018

• Sergei Skripal Affair: what if Russia is responsible? – assumes that the attack is attributable to Russia – dated 11 March 2018 from filename

• Social media investigation and monitoring proposal – a costed proposal prepared by Greg Rowett, dated 15 March 2018

• Article by Ana Alonson from El Independiente, Madrid, 18 March 2018, with input from Stephen Dalziel

• Report for FCO 16 March 2018

• Roundup of coverage of Skripal case on 20 March 2018: expresses concern about how a letter to The Times on 16 March 2013 from Dr Stephen Davies (A & E consultant at Salisbury District Hospital) “is being used”. A saved copy of the GMC registration record of Dr Davies, accessed on 20 March 2018, is also included in the documents.

• Report for FCO 23 March 2018 by Chris Hernon – expresses concern that Dr Davies’s letter “is still getting play”. Hernon also comments that ‘The line about the Skripals probably having “limited mental capacity” after the attack seems to have got good traction’. This links to a Reuters report of the judgement in the Court of Protection in which the judge noted that

The precise effect of their exposure on their long term health remains unclear albeit medical tests indicate that their mental capacity might be compromised to an unknown and so far unascertained degree.

• Report for FCO 24 March 2018

• Report for FCO 30 March 2018

• Notes on coverage in the Baltic States, dated 18 March 2018

• Roundup of social media coverage dated 21 March 2018

• Roundup of coverage across the Integrity Initiative network, dated 10 September 2018

• Skripal case coverage in Italy

• Flyer for a one-day training program “Discernment in Action” based on the Skripal case

17.2.7.1 List of names with email addresses

The file CND Gen List 2 is a list of 22 names with email addresses. Most of these individuals have no other connection with the Institute for Statecraft or the Integrity Initiative. The presence on this list of Pablo Miller and Howard Body suggests that this is a list for email updates or consultations on the Salisbury poisonings story.

• Current military / MoD

  • Colonel Angus Taverner – director of MoD’s news media operations policy during the Iraq war, subsequently enrolled for a master’s degree in public relations.

  • Lt Col Annabelle Janes – CO Land Intelligence Fusion Centre

  • Lt Col Debi Lomax – Chief of General Staff’s Commander’s Initiative Group

  • Captain Joe Walker-Cousins, reservist in Specialist Group Military Intelligence and employed by KBR in Saudi Arabia (see above)

  • Howard Body – Principal Analyst and Assistant Head Science Support, Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, Porton Down. “Analyst” presumably refers to strategic rather than laboratory analysis, as he has no science background and gave a presentation on “stabilisation operations” in 2005.

  • Ian Cohen – has both army and HSBC corporate emails – name matches HSBC’s Global Asset Management managing director

• FCO – Adam Rutland, Communications and Engagement Department.

• US Embassy – Zachary Harkenrider, Counselor for Political Affairs

• Hudson Institute – Craig Kennedy, Senior Fellow and past president of the German Marshall Fund

• Journalists

  • Helen Boaden – former Director of BBC news

  • Isabel Oakeshott – now writing a book about the state of the army

• Chatham House

  • Duncan Allan – former FCO Eastern Research Group.

  • Mathieu Boulegue – Research Fellow, expertise on Russia

• Risk/security/intelligence consultants

  • Paul Harkness – formerly Brigadier at Army Headquarters, now sole director of Hawk Consultancy

  • Pablo Miller – formerly Sergei Skripal’s MI6 handler, now Orbis Business Intelligence according to his deleted Linkedin profile.

  • Neil Barnett – former journalist, now runs a risk consultancy named Istok Associates

  • Paddy Nicoll – served in Black Watch till 1996, and was director of Rubicon International till 2005.

• Institute for Statecraft trustees

  • Harry Hart – property investor

  • Philip Matthews – former director of Astutus Intelligence, current director of PM Homeland Security

• Academic – Professor James Gow, KCL Department of War Studies

• Unidentified affiliations

  • William Bortrick – registered domain britishexperience.com in 2004, possible match to editor of Burke’s peerage

  • Alexander Patterson – sole director of Talisman ADC

17.2.8 Invoices to Institute of Statecraft

• Invoice from Keir Giles, Conflict Studies Research Centre, dated 2 March 2017

• Invoice for set up of cluster in Jordan dated 15 April 2018

• Invoice for £5000 from Ben Nimmo for work in August 2016

• Invoice from Bruce Jones for Public Affairs Consultancy dated 7 April 2017

• Invoice from James Sherr for “Contribution for Integrity Initiative” dated 4 December 2017

• Invoice for £12,000 from Harod Associates for “Specialist Consultancy Services as agreed with Guy Spindler”

17.2.9 Donnelly documents

• Donnelly’s memorandum on post-Brexit policy

• Donnelly’s curriculum vitae

• Donnelly’s proposed military measures for Ukraine to regain Crimea, dated 1 March 2014 (two days after Russian special forces had taken control of key points)

• Donnelly’s notes of a private discussion with General Sir Richard Barrons (retired as Joint Forces Commander in 2013) –

17.2.10 Scotland

• Notes of a meeting with David Leask, allegedly made by Guy Spindler

17.2.11 France

• Extended list of French cluster members

• French cluster leader’s contracted article and earlier draft

  • payment for this article

• another example of a contracted article

• Donnelly’s meetings in Paris

• Johanna Möhring’s meetings in Paris

• Avisa Partners presentation

• Avisa’s proposal for a programme to combat Russian disinformation

17.2.12 Italy

• Italian cluster leader’s report

• Invoice for work in Italy

First published: 16 December 2019

Emma Le Mesurier - MI6 Officer

1 Summary

• During the last few months, the Working Group on Syria Propaganda and Media was preparing a briefing note focusing on the publicly-funded business activities of James Le Mesurier. A near-final draft was ready when his death in Istanbul was announced on 11 November 2019. We have decided to publish it, with minimal updating, as the material is relevant both to understanding the role of the UK government in the Syrian conflict and also to the investigation of Le Mesurier’s death.

• Le Mesurier was founder of three companies named “Mayday Rescue”: Mayday Rescue FZ-LLC in Dubai (2014), Mayday Search and Rescue Training and Consultancy Services Limited in Turkey (2014) and Stichting Mayday Rescue Foundation in the Netherlands (2015). No accounts are available for any of these companies.

• After providing misleading answers to questions submitted under the Freedom of Information Act, the FCO has admitted that its payments to “Mayday Rescue” for support of the White Helmets – £43 million from 2015 to 2018 – were made not to Stichting Mayday Rescue Foundation but to the commercial company Mayday Rescue FZ-LLC in Dubai.

• Stichting Mayday Rescue Foundation is not registered as a charitable organisation (Algemeen Nut Beogende Instelling) and as it is “without commercial enterprise” it does not have to file accounts. In the Netherlands a Stichting is commonly used as a vehicle to disburse overseas investment income to undisclosed beneficiaries while minimizing tax liability.

• From September 2016 to February 2018, while Stichting Mayday Rescue Foundation was receiving payments from the Dutch Foreign Ministry, the Stichting complied with requirements for governance and transparency by appointing a Secretary and Treasurer. In April 2017 Le Mesurier founded what appears to have been a dummy company named R3Covery BV based in Amsterdam. This company has failed to comply with the legal requirement to file accounts. A possible intended or actual use for this company was to tunnel money out of the Stichting.

• In January 2019 Le Mesurier registered My Zahara Limited as a dormant company in northern England. As the address belongs to a company formation agent that specializes in business tax management and compliance with money laundering regulations, it is likely that the intended use of this company was to repatriate money from Le Mesurier’s overseas companies.

• OPCW inspectors have told us that during the investigations of alleged chemical attacks in opposition-held territory conducted by the Fact-Finding Mission (FFM) from 2015 onwards, Le Mesurier worked closely with Len Phillips, the leader of FFM Team Alpha, to select White Helmets as “witnesses” for interview by the investigation team in Turkey. We have set out elsewhere evidence that these alleged chemical attacks were staged, and that in at least three of these incidents the staging entailed mass murder of civilian captives. As an experienced military intelligence officer, Le Mesurier should have been able to assess this evidence.

• Le Mesurier’s activities during the final months of his life indicate that he was following (and possibly coordinating) efforts to smear and silence members of the Working Group on Syria Propaganda and Media. It is likely that by the end of October 2019 Le Mesurier was aware that both the business activities of Mayday Rescue and his connection with the increasingly controversial OPCW investigation of the Douma incident were coming under close scrutiny.

2 Biography

As links to many original sources such as a ZoomInfo biography of Le Mesurier have recently been deleted, reconstruction of his biography is based partly on published articles that cited these original sources: * Vanessa Beeley 23 October 2015, Whitney Webb 31 July 2017, Tim Hayward 20 December 2017, Vanessa Beeley and Whitney Webb 27 August 2018, Vanessa Beeley 2 December 2019.

• 1971: year of birth, named James Gustaf Edward Le Mesurier

• September 1990: 2nd Lt. (on probation) Undergraduate Cadetships

• August 1996: Captain (536239) in Royal Green Jackets, British Army.

• 1998 : seconded to the Office of the High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina under Carlos Westendorp, before being sent to Kosovo in the summer of 1999 after the deployment of KFOR (the NATO-led Kosovo Force).

• July 1999 – 2000: appointed Intelligence Coordinator for Pristina City, acting as liaison officer between intelligence officers of different national contingents in KFOR. A correction dated 3 August 2018 to an article in The Guardian confirmed this, stating that Le Mesurier “held a military intelligence post while on peacekeeping operations in the Balkans in 1999 for one year”.

• June 2000: still recorded as Captain in Royal Green Jackets, retires and is appointed to Reserve of Officers. There is no record of an appointment to the Intelligence Corps in the official British government source, The Gazette.

• January 2001 – February 2002: Deputy Head of the Advisory Unit on Security and Justice in the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK). In this position, Le Mesurier acted as political advisor to the UN Police Commissioner and represented the Special Representative on civil-military-police coordination bodies.

• February 2002 – July 2003: advisor on economic crime with the EU Mission in Kosovo, supporting units countering money laundering, terrorism, smuggling, anti-corruption and financial disclosure.

• 2003: posted to Jerusalem where he “worked on implementing the Ramallah Agreement”

• 2005: Vice President for Special Projects at the Dubai-based security firm Olive Group, and Special advisor to Iraqi Minister of Interior.

• 2006-2010: Senior Principal at the security company Good Harbor Consulting, based in Abu Dhabi, where his work included training a gas field protection force.

• 2011-2014: worked with the former diplomat Alistair Harris at ARK. Ark-Lebanon had been founded in 2009 in Beirut, and ARK FZC was registered in Dubai in 2011.

3 Establishment of the White Helmets

Following a meeting in March 2013 in Istanbul with the Syrian National Council and the Qatari Red Crescent. With $300,000 in seed money from Japan, the United States and the United Kingdom, Le Mesurier worked with the Turkish disaster response team AKUT to set up a seven-day course to train and equip a 25-person rescue team, recruited by the SNC, for duty in opposition-held areas of Syria. The Syrian National Council made available two Syrian activists — Raed Saleh and Farouq Habib — to assist Le Mesurier in this. In a speech delivered in Lisbon on 26 June 2015 (recording now deleted), Le Mesurier cited a study by the market research agency GfK Verein showing that in fragile states security forces have some of the lowest levels of public trust, and that professions with the highest level of public trust are firefighters, paramedics, rescue workers and other similar types of first responders.

The White Helmets brand first appeared in August 2014 with the registration of the domain name whitehelmets.org by Alison Weiner of Purpose Inc., a communications agency based in Brooklyn, New York. UK government support for the White Helmets since 2017 has been provided under the Syria Resilience Programme of the Conflict Security and Stability Fund (CSSF). In a Summary of this programme dated 18 July 2017 the FCO reveals some of the UK government’s objectives of this support. The Programme Summary notes that the White Helmets “provide an invaluable reporting and advocacy role”, which “has provided confidence to statements made by UK and other international leaders made in condemnation of Russian actions”. Metadata show that the document was saved by Amanda Harris, manager of the Joint Programme Hub of the CSSF.

4 Companies controlled by James Le Mesurier and his associates

4.1 Mayday Rescue FZ-LLC (2014)

The domain name maydayrescue.org was registered on 8 August 2014. A business named “Mayday Rescue FZ-LLC” was registered in 2014 in the International Humanitarian City Dubai as a Free Zone Limited Liability Company (FZLLC). a legal designation for a commercial company in this zone. The International Humanitarian City website states that in January 2019 it had 81 members of which 9 were UN agencies, 63 were humanitarian organizations and 18 were commercial companies (FZLLCs). The IHC Special Regulations require FZLLCs to maintain records for accounting purposes that are available for inspection by an authorized person, but do not require accounts to be filed. Unlike an LLC, an FZLLC in Dubai does not have to have a local Emirati as sponsor. There is no withholding tax on dividends so an FZLLC can freely repatriate profits back to a parent company or foreign shareholders. On 11 July 2019 Mayday Rescue FZ-LLC placed an announcement in the Khaleej Times stating that the company “wishes to reinstate their license”. Soon after this, the registered name of the business was changed to “Mayday Rescue Foundation” though as Mayday Rescue Foundation is still listed under the category “commercial companies”, it must still be registered as an FZLLC.

4.2 Mayday Arama Kurtarma Egitim ve Danismanlik Hizmetleri Limited (2014)

A Turkish company Mayday Search and Rescue Training and Consultancy Services Limited is listed with Le Mesurier as director, startup date as 22 September 2014 and registered address in the suburb of Ataşehir on the Anatolian side of Istanbul. An article dated 14 September 2018 in the Turkish-language site of the Iranian Fars News agency gives some details of the accounts filed for 2017. The company is listed in the phone directory at 3 Ali Pasa Medresesi Sok. in Beyoğlu, a fashionable and historic district on the European side of Istanbul. This three-storey building, recently renovated with a cafe on the ground floor, was one of the residences of Le Mesurier and his wife during the last few months of his life. His body was found in the street outside this building on 11 November 2019.

4.3 Stichting Mayday Rescue Foundation (2015)

Stichting Mayday Rescue Foundation (64492915) was registered by Le Mesurier as sole founder in Breda on 5 November 2015 with registered address given as De Cuserstraat 93, 3e en 4e verdieping, 1081CN Amsterdam. The articles of association of Stichting Mayday Rescue Foundation state that “De Stichting beoogt niet het maken van winst” which translates as “The Foundation does not intend to make a profit”. This implies that Stichting Mayday Rescue Foundation is a Stichting “without commercial enterprise” that does not employ labour to generate profit via commercial activities and transactions. A Stichting without commercial enterprise is not required to pay taxes or file accounts. This is not the same as a charitable organization, which in the Netherlands would be registered as an Algemeen Nut Beogende Instelling (ANBI), translated as Public Benefit Organisation. While a Stichting can apply to be recognized as a Public Benefit Organization, this imposes requirements for transparency, including provision of a financial statement and the names of the directors on a website, that are not met by Stichting Mayday Rescue Foundation.

A Stichting without commercial enterprise is created for the benefit of specifically named persons or an identifiable group of persons who are called the “beneficiaries”. The founder donates assets to the Stichting, which remains the legal owner of the assets. The beneficiaries are issued with certificates through which dividends are paid. The Stichting’s board of directors administers the purpose and objectives of the Stichting and manages its assets. A Stichting has many advantages for protecting privacy and minimizing tax liability: foreigners can form foundations where all parties and assets are foreign, all passive foreign income received is non-taxable, and the identities of the beneficiaries remain private. Thus if Stichting Mayday Rescue Foundation in the Netherlands is the owner of the FZ-LLC in Dubai, it would be able to receive profits from the FZ-LLC free of tax and the directors would be able to pay dividends to the beneficiaries, whoever they are.

4.3.1 Directors of Stichting Mayday Rescue Foundation

The directors of a Stichting “without commercial enterprise” may not be in paid employment by the Stichting. A Kamer van Koophandel (Dutch business registry) document dated 21 October 2018 shows that three directors were appointed in September 2016:

• Thiessen, Per Fredslund (Treasurer). His LinkedIn profile records that he was Finance Director of “Mayday Rescue” from September 2015 to August 2018. As this does not correspond to the period (September 2016 to February 2018) for which he was Treasurer of the Stichting, he must have been employed by another entity named “Mayday Rescue”. In October 2019 Thiessen declined to answer questions about his role.

• Plathonoff, Katie Elias Dimitri (Secretary). From a job advertisement it appears that at this time she was employed by Mayday in Turkey. She had formerly worked for CISV (originally “Children’s International Summer Villages”).

• Davis, Rupert Charles Owen (born April 1979) / Chairman. This is Captain RCO Davis (556347) Rifles, who entered the British Army on a Short Service Commission on 7 April 1999 and retired on 11 January 2008, appointed to Reserve of Officers. His LinkedIn profile records that he worked for the BBC from 2008 to 2010 as Deputy and Acting Head of High Risk, then from 2011 to 2012 as Head of Capability and Special Projects for Aegis Defence Services Ltd, in which capacity he was responsible for diplomatic protection during the Libyan war. From 2012 to 2015 he was “functional head within Rio Tinto Exploration (RTX) Africa & Eurasia Region”. He has a protected twitter account @chameleonglbltd.

Davis, Thiessen and Platonhoff appear to have been the “Board of Supervisory Directors” that is mentioned on the Mayday Rescue website:

The Board of Supervisory Directors appointed James Le Mesurier as the Director of Stichting Mayday Rescue Foundation on 17 October 2016. James Le Mesurier receives an annual stipend of €14,207.00 ($15,000.00) for performing the duties of Director of Stichting Mayday Rescue Foundation.

Although these individuals were not in paid employment by the Stichting, it thus appears that they were employed by other companies named Mayday Rescue and controlled by Le Mesurier. On 13 February 2018 Thiessen and Plathonhoff were removed, Davis ceased to be Chairman but remained as director, and Emma Hedvig Christina Winberg was appointed as director.

Winberg’s curriculum vitae can be reconstructed from an undated biography as a “contributor” on the website of the Skoll Foundation (though a search of this site finds no other mention of her) and her LinkedIn profile.

My postings have been in Kabul, Damascus, East Jerusalem, Istanbul and Erbil with shorter postings in Yemen and East Africa. I have been working in the Middle East and South Asia for the past ten years, first as a member of the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office and subsequently in the fields of strategic communications and community resilience.

“Strategic communications” and “resilience” appear to refer to InCoStrat and Mayday Rescue respectively. InCoStrat was set up by former Lieutenant-Colonel Paul Tilley as the contractor for funds awarded by the UK government for media support of the “moderate armed opposition”, registered in Washington DC (L00004999639). Emma Winberg lists herself as co-founder. Tilley and Winberg’s time at Incostrat lasted till December 2016, when he left to set up a new company named IN2-Comms and she left to join Mayday Rescue as “Chief Impact Officer”. Her engagement to Le Mesurier was recorded on a genealogy website in September 2017 and recent media reports mention that they were married in 2018. In June 2018 Winberg gave a presentation at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab where she stated that “the high profile nature of this work has resulted in a sustained disinformation campaign against the White Helmets” and showed a slide listing ten supposedly disinformative points, without attempting to rebut them. A twitter account @emmathielers created on 23 May 2017 appears to belong to Winberg. The output of this twitter account was markedly hostile to the journalist Vanessa Beeley who had investigated Le Mesurier’s career and the role of the White Helmets: one tweet enquired about the possibility of prosecuting Beeley for “inciting hatred”.

4.4 Chameleon Global Limited (2016)

Rupert Davis registered a company Chameleon Global at Office 32, 19-21 Crawford Street, London W1H 1PJ on 5 April 2016. 26 companies are registered at this address, which is a retail outlet of Mail Boxes Etc, a UK company that provides “virtual office solutions”. A single-page website states that:

Chameleon Global specialises in the creation of innovative, amplified and sustainable solutions, which address the critical threats and challenges within and from the worlds complex environments – be they national or trans-national.

Davis’s LinkedIn profile lists Director of Chameleon Global as his sole occupation since November 2015, though for each year up to 30 April 2019 he has filed accounts for it as a dormant company. In the UK it is common practice for privately held companies to file accounts as dormant when they are in fact trading.

4.5 R3covery BV (2017)

Le Mesurier, Davis and Winberg appeared in April 2017 as directors of R3covery BV based at Herengracht 282, Amsterdam. The domain name r3covery.com had been registered on 7 November 2016. R3covery BV has a minimal website stating that “R3covery specialises in developing and implementing resilience solutions in stabilisation environments.” R3 denotes “rescue response resilience”. R3covery BV has filed no accounts though this is a legal requirement. In the Netherlands, unlike the UK, the company registrar does not take action to strike off companies that fail to file accounts. On 20 August 2018 the company name was changed from R3covery to Sisu Global BV (KvK 68510705), and on 6 November 2018 Le Mesurier resigned as director. Based on the identities of the directors, Sisu Global BV appears unrelated to a company named Sisu Global Limited, incorporated in Guernsey on 31 May 2012 and struck off by the registrar on 15 May 2015. The domain sisuglobal.com had been registered on 5 December 2015; the server responds to a ping, but the website is down. Google cache shows a minimally informative web page with “Resilience against hybrid threats”, together with a definition of the Finnish word “sisu”.

The relationship of Stichting Mayday Rescue Foundation to this company is unknown. Between September 2016 and February 2018 Le Mesurier would not have been able to pay beneficiaries of the Stichting without the agreement of Thiessen and Platonhoff as treasurer and secretary. A possible motive for Le Mesurier to set up R3covery BV could have been to tunnel money out of the Stichting through purchasing “resilience solutions in stabilisation environments”.

4.6 My Zahara Limited (2019)

Le Mesurier registered a UK company My Zahara Limited on 2 January 2019, giving his own address as the virtual address of Stichting Mayday Rescue Foundation in Amsterdam. The company’s registered address is in Lancashire: Suite 14C, Link 665 Business Centre Todd Hall Road, Haslingden, Rossendale, BB4 5HU. 91 companies are registered in Suite 14C at this address. Of these, the only ones that appear to be physically present with phone numbers are two companies directed by Stephen O’Neill that provide company formation and compliance services: Business Tax Centre Limited and Money Laundering Compliance Limited.

5 Government funding of Mayday Rescue

An archived version of the the mayday.org website shows the donors as:

• UK – Conflict Security and Stability Fund

• Kingdom of Denmark – Ministry of Foreign Affairs

• Kingdom of The Netherlands – Ministry of Foreign Affairs

• Germany – Ministry of Foreign Affairs

The Financial Tracking Services database hosted by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs shows funding of $607,311 during 2019 to “Mayday Rescue Foundation” from the French government.

A Review Memorandum from the Department for Stabilisation and Humanitarian Aid of the Dutch goverment dated January 2015 lists payments from other governments up to that time: US $6 million, UK £10.3 million, Denmark $4.5 million, and Japan $0.55 million. FCO expenditure records show payments totalling £43 million between May 2015 and October 2018. The Danish ministry of Foreign Affairs lists DKK 60 million (£7.2 million) to “White Helmets” beginning in 2016. The Evaluation report of the Policy and Operations Evaluation Department (IOB) of the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs reported in September 2018 that the Netherlands government had contributed almost €10 million to Mayday. US funding for the White Helmets is provided through a US-based company Chemonics.

5.1 UK Government support for Mayday Rescue FZ-LLC

An FCO response in 2016 to an FOI request for information about UK support of the White Helmets stated that:

the total value of funds committed between June 2013 and the end of the current financial year (31 March 2016) is £19.7m. All funds are accounted for in line with HMG guidelines, including the receipt and review of quarterly financial reports.

The Syria Resilience CSSF Programme Summary document shows CSSF funding for “May Day Rescue Foundation” as £9 million for the three years beginning April 2017. A letter dated 11 October 2017 from the FCO Near East Department in response to an FOI request dated 4 August 2017 stated that:

By way of background, UK support to the Syria Civil Defence (White Helmets) is provided through our implementing partner Mayday Rescue, which is a registered foundation in The Netherlands. Under applicable law it is required to maintain financial and administration records. And as a recipient of Conflict Stability and Security Fund money, Mayday Rescue is required to submit regular accounting for its support to Syria Civil Defence.

A request for the accounts submitted by Mayday Rescue received the following reply on 10 November 2017 from the FCO Near East Department:

I can confirm that as a recipient of Conflict Stability and Security Fund money, Mayday Rescue is required to submit regular accounting for its support to Syria Civil Defence. However, the information details fall under the exemption in section 43(2) of the Freedom of Information Act, which relates to commercial interests. In applying this exemption, we have had to balance the public interest in withholding the information against the public interest in disclosure. There is a public interest in the disclosure of commercial information to ensure effective, open and honest use of public money and the scrutiny of public authorities in accordance with published policy and to provide an environment where business can better respond to government opportunities. However, we consider that this transparency also poses risks in that companies and individuals would, if this information were disclosed, be much less likely to provide the FCO with commercially sensitive information.

This refusal in November 2017 to provide accounts citing “exemption in section 43(2) of the Freedom of Information Act, which relates to commercial interests” and “commercially sensitive information” suggests that the FCO was aware that the “Mayday Rescue” entity in receipt of FCO funding was a commercial company rather than a nonprofit foundation.

Having discovered that payments to “Mayday Rescue” in FCO expenditure records dated from March 2015, though Stichtung Mayday Rescue had not been registered till November 2015, JM submitted the following questions (FOI request 1185-18):

1. With respect to the FCO’s payment of £825,342 to Mayday Rescue on 31 March 2015, please can you provide me with the full legal name of Mayday Rescue (including its legal company form e.g. LTD, PLC, LLC) and its full registered address?

2. Can you confirm whether all FCO payments to ‘Mayday Rescue’ as listed in published government transparency data have been to the same company?

He asked also about payments to IncoStrat and Regester Larkin. The FCO Middle East and North Africa Directorate replied on 14 December 2018:

1. Information relevant to company/organisation details can be found respectively at the following links:

http://www.incostrat.com/

1. ;

http://www.maydayrescue.org/

1. ; and https://www2.deloitte.com/uk/en/pages/press-releases/articles/deloitte-acquires-regester-larkin.html.

2. Since 2013 the FCO has contracted Mayday Rescue to implement a project to support Syria Civil Defence (White Helmets). All FCO payments to Mayday Rescue listed in the transparency data have been made to the same organisation.

This reply did not explicitly state that the legal name and registered address of the entity paid by FCO were those on the website www.maydayrescue.org: only that “Information relevant to company/organization details can be found” on this website. JM requested an internal review on the basis that the FCO had failed to provide the information requested. On 6 March 2019, the FCO finally admitted that they had been paying Mayday Rescue FZ-LLC.

While I am satisfied that every intention was made to respond to your request I am sharing the following information which I hope meets your request [for the legal name of Mayday Rescue and its registered address].

Mayday Rescue FZ-LLC: Suite 220, Building 1 International Humanitarian City, Dubai, United Arab Emirates

This attempts to pass off the letter sent three months earlier as an oversight (“While I am satisfied that every intention was made to respond to your request …”). The sentence as written does not make sense: the word “intention” may have been substituted for “effort”. It is difficult to read the wording of the letter dated 14 December 2018 as anything other than an attempt to mislead without resorting to an outright lie. It would be scarcely less disturbing if the FCO officials overseeing these payments – Christian Dennys, Amanda Harris, and Eleanor Szpona – had been unaware that the CSSF had paid more than £40 million to a commercial company in Dubai rather than to a foundation in the Netherlands.

5.2 Netherlands government support for Mayday Rescue FZ-LLC and Stichting Mayday Rescue Foundation

5.2.1 2015: contract with Mayday Rescue FZ-LLC

A Review Memorandum dated 4 Jan 2015 with the title “activity appraisal”, prepared by the Department for Stabilisation and Humanitarian Aid of the Dutch goverment, scores a proposal from Mayday Rescue against various criteria. The memorandum states that the contract is with Mayday Rescue FZ-LLC in Dubai and that this company is an afsplitsing (spinout) from ARK. The review memorandum lists other donors: US $6 million, UK £10.3 million, Denmark $4.5 million, and Japan $0.55 million. The total value of the Department for Stabilisation and Humanitarian Aid contract was €1.147 million, to run from 1 Apr 2015 to 31 Dec 2015.

5.2.2 2016-2017: payments to Stichting Mayday Rescue Foundation

The International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) records transactions for Stichting Mayday Rescue Foundation between 6 December 2016 and 31 December 2017 submitted by Per Thiessen, with the last submission on 31 January 2018.

• Incoming funds: two payments from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, totalling €5.19 million.

• Disbursements: four payments totalling €2.61 million, with receiver-org given as “Syria Civil Defence”.

• Expenditure: €2.31 million.

Under IATI rules “disbursements” are outgoing funds that are placed at the disposal of a recipient government or organisation, or funds transferred between two separately reported activities. Under IATI traceability standards the recipient of a disbursement should also be required to report their activities to IATI. “Syria Civil Defence” does not appear in the list of IATI publishers. Outgoing funds that are spent on goods and services for the activity should be reported as “expenditure”. The recipients of expenditures fall outside of IATI traceability standards.

This indicates that at some time no later than December 2016 the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs began paying the Stichting in the Netherlands rather than the FZ-LLC in Dubai as in the 2015 contract. It is likely that this required Le Mesurier to take measures to give at least the appearance of transparency: the appointment in September 2016 of a Board consisting of himself, Thiessen, Platonhoff and Davis; and the submission of transaction records to IATI. Thiessen’s final submission to IATI was on 31 January 2018. By 6 February 2018 the services of Thiessen and Platonhoff were no longer required, and Winberg was appointed in their place.

5.2.3 Funding during 2018

On 7 September 2018 the Policy and Operations Evaluation Department (Directie Internationaal Onderzoek en Beleidsevaluatie, IOB) of the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs released an Evaluation report of the monitoring of the White Helmets project. The report refers to “Mayday” but without making clear whether this is the Stichting in the Netherlands, the FZLLC in Dubai, or Mayday Arama Kurtarma Egitim ve Danismanlik Hizmetleri Limited in Turkey.

Mayday and the White Helmets are two separate entities on paper. In reality, however, their responsibilities overlap. Until last year, the two organisations shared their M&E [Monitoring & Evaluation] desk in the past and many White Helmets have completed traineeships with Mayday. At present, the organisations continue to share the same building but are now working from separate floors.

The IOB complained that:

There is little coordination amongst the donors and important information is not shared; reviews from the British CSSF and the Danish have not been shared with other donors or with Mayday/White Helmets. For the Vision 2020 report, an annex was prepared solely for the British and that information has not been shared with other donors..

The report mentiond SREO and RMTeam as consultants hired “to collect data on perceptions and stipends from the field”. The founder of “RMTeam” is an opposition activist named Bassam al Kuwatli, a Canadian national resident in Turkey. The domain name of the website was registered in 2013, but the company was registered in the UK in March 2019, with Bassam as sole shareholder. SREO Consulting was founded in Turkey by Matt Trevithick and Daniel Seckman, and reported to have 26-50 employees.

On 10 September 2018 the Netherlands government announced that funding for the White Helmets would be discontinued after December 2018. This raises the question of what entity they were paying during 2018, as for Stichting Mayday Rescue Foundation no treasurer was in post after 6 February 2018 and no transaction records were submitted to IATI after 31 January 2018.

6 Role of Le Mesurier in providing evidence to the OPCW Fact-Finding Mission (FFM) in Turkey

From 2015 to 2018, FFM Team Alpha undertook investigations of alleged chemical attacks in opposition-held territory based on material gathered from opposition-linked NGOs in Turkey. It is clear that since 2015 these FFM investigations relied on White Helmets as witnesses and providers of samples and alleged munitions, though the FFM reports sometimes attributed this to other NGOs such as the Chemical Violations Documentation Centre in Brussels or the Syrian Institute for Justice. We have been informed by OPCW inspectors that during these investigations in Turkey Le Mesurier worked closely with Len Phillips, the leader of FFM Team Alpha, to select White Helmets as “witnesses” for interview by the FFM team. We have reported also that Phillips worked closely with his successor as leader of FFM Team Alpha, Sami Barrek, on the preparation of the interim and final Reports of the Fact-Finding Mission on the Douma incident. Le Mesurier’s role in providing purported witnesses for the FFM indicates that that he was closely involved in managing the FFM investigations and raises the possibility that he was involved in planning these incidents.

Of the alleged chemical attacks investigated by FFM Team Alpha, three were associated with civilian fatalities that were documented by images: six members of the Taleb family in Sarmin (2015), some 70 civilians in Khan Sheikhoun (2017), and at least 35 civilians in Douma (2018). In each of these incidents people dressed as White Helmets and endorsed by the leadership of that organization had a key role as purported first responders. We have reviewed elsewhere evidence that these incidents were staged and that the victims were massacred captives. The clearest evidence that the White Helmets were actively involved in managing a massacre of civilians is from the Khan Sheikhoun incident on 4 April 2017, where a Syrian jet was alleged to have dropped a sarin-containing munition on the town causing the deaths of at least 70 people. The Joint Investigative Mechanism’s subsequent investigation of this incident reported that a flight map (presumably provided by the US military) “indicated that the closest to Khan Shaykhun that the [Syrian] aircraft had flown had been approximately 5 km away”, effectively ruling out an airstrike as the explanation for the incident. The only possible alternative is that the Khan Sheikhoun incident was organized on the ground, and this must have required the active involvement of the White Helmets. Although the White Helmets are famous for videoing their activities, there were no images of a search and rescue operation from the Khan Sheikhoun incident. The first images of the incident were recorded from about 7 am onwards, showing victims being hosed down by the White Helmets outside their base in a cave complex near the town. Later they were seen laid out in morgues in the town. Images of the children who were laid out in morgues showed that several had recent head injuries. In at least two cases by arranging images in temporal sequence and matching identities it was possible to establish that they had received these head injuries after the time they were purportedly rescued by the White Helmets.

How much Le Mesurier knew about the planning of this incident as a managed massacre, and the role of the White Helmets in carrying it out, we do not know. It is however reasonable to state that as an experienced intelligence officer, he should have been able to assess the reliability of the testimony of the White Helmet witnesses that he selected to be interviewed by the FFM.

7 Role of Le Mesurier in media operations against critics of the White Helmets

From late 2016 reports from Syria by Vanessa Beeley and Eva Bartlett began casting doubt on the role of the White Helmets. In April 2017 a counter-attack against these critics was initiated by Chris York of the Huffington Post. Before then, York had written only a few brief articles about the Syrian conflict, from a neutral standpoint. York’s first appearance as a journalist, describing himself as “overqualified”, had been on 24 October 2011 as the author of a HuffPost article reporting how he had been denied entry to Palestine six days earlier. His LinkedIn profile gives no details of his curriculum vitae before 2012. On 6 April 2017, two days after the alleged chemical attack in Khan Sheikhoun, he posted an article that denounced “‘false flag’ accusations” as “totally wrong” and cited a purported fact-check of an article by Vanessa Beeley that had commented adversely on Le Mesurier and the White Helmets. In response to a question from us, York has stated that he had no contact with James Le Mesurier or Emma Winberg before writing this article, and that he met Emma Winberg only in March 2018. In October 2017 York attended an event in London at which Beeley spoke.

On 18 December 2017 an article in The Guardian by Olivia Solon denounced Beeley, Bartlett and others who had suggested that the White Helmets were an information operation, describing them as a “network of anti-imperialist activists, conspiracy theorists and trolls with the support of the Russian government”. This was followed two days later by a report from the Syria Campaign that described Beeley as “at the heart of this Russia-backed disinformation campaign” and quoted a study of Twitter conversations commissioned from the social media analytics firm Graphika:

The social media activity criticizing the White Helmets looks similar to other disinformation campaigns we have analysed and bears some of the same indications of coordination, and a number of the specific accounts attacking the White Helmets have played a role in other specifically Russian disinformation campaigns as well.

In response, the Working Group on Syria Propaganda and Media posted its first public statement, citing the Syria Resilience CSSF Programme Summary, and arguing that this document provided “grounds for considering the White Helmets as part of a US/UK information operation designed to underpin regime change in Syria”. This brief post by what was at the time an obscure group of academics was followed by a stream of online flak directed at members of the Working Group. In this onslaught George Monbiot of The Guardian and Idrees Ahmad of Stirling University appeared to have leading roles, apparently as triggers for a larger set of mostly anonymous accounts that piled in against their targets. From February to April 2018, hit pieces on the Working Group were published by Brian Whitaker on his blog, by York in the Huffington Post, and in The Times at the instigation of Oliver Kamm.

A report dated June 2018 written by four students at the Central European University in Budapest and posted by Bellingcat reveals that Le Mesurier had been studying closely the media activities of Vanessa Beeley and others who had expressed doubts about the White Helmets at around this time. The authors describe an interview with Le Mesurier and Winberg on 8 February 2018 in which Le Mesurier appeared to echo the Graphika study:

The Mayday foundation was a victim of a disinformation campaign released by actors calling themselves “independent journalists” such as Vanessa Beeley, a British blogger who made her way through Russian-controlled media outlets. The campaign tried to claim the White Helmets didn’t exist but were actors instead, or that they were a branch of Al-Qaeda in Syria. “We didn’t design ourselves to do that [counter-attack disinformation campaign],” said James Le Mesurier. He investigated these attacks on social media and found resemblances with Russian information warfare techniques getting disseminated by small segments of pro-Assad, pro-Russia, or anti-Western profiles on Twitter. The anatomy of his work shows prominent levels of coordination by these actors.

Le Mesurier had two twitter accounts – @lemesurierjames and @USARinwar– that followed 3270 other accounts by September 2019. These follows included not only the individuals mentioned above – York, Monbiot, Whitaker, Kamm, Ahmad – who had led attacks on those who question the role of the White Helmets, but also numerous anonymous accounts that appear to be triggered by their activities. These anonymous accounts generally repeat the same talking points, without adding any original material. It would be surprising for Le Mesurier to have been following them unless he had some role in coordinating or evaluating their activities.

8 Le Mesurier’s final months

Le Mesurier’s registration of My Zahara Limited in the UK in January 2019, using a company formation agent that specialized in compliance with money laundering regulations, suggests that he planned to repatriate money from his overseas companies and perhaps to wind them up as the role of the White Helmets came to an end with the return of opposition-held territory to Syrian government control. This is consistent with reports in the Turkish media that in the last few weeks Le Mesurier had told colleagues that he was planning to leave Turkey. In a briefing note posted on 26 June 2019, we included two items of new information about Le Mesurier’s activities: (1) that we had learned from OPCW inspectors Le Mesurier had met regularly in Turkey with Len Phillips, leader of OPCW’s FFM Team Alpha which deployed to Turkey from 2015 onwards to interview purported witnesses to alleged chemical attacks in opposition-held territory; and (2) that the FCO payments to “Mayday Rescue” had been to Mayday Rescue FZ-LLC in Dubai rather than to Stichting Mayday Rescue Foundation in the Netherlands. Two weeks later a change of name of Mayday Rescue FZ-LLC to “Mayday Rescue Foundation” was initiated, presumably by Le Mesurier.

In 2019 online information about Le Mesurier’s past began to disappear. Additions to Le Mesurier’s list of Twitter follows suggest that in the last few months of his life he was monitoring efforts to smear and silence members of the Working Group: Twitter accounts that he began to follow in September and October 2019 included student journalists in Bristol and Edinburgh who had published articles smearing members of the Working Group in their university posts, and a local councillor in Lewisham who had objected to a member of the Working Group being invited to speak. Confirmation of Le Mesurier’s role in media operations against the Working Group was provided on 13 November 2019 by Oliver Kamm, who tweeted a quote from a leading article in The Times that day (presumably written by him):

Last year The Times identified a small group of academics at British universities spreading pro-Assad conspiracy theories … Le Mesurier was ceaselessly targeted by conspiracy theorists, whose falsehoods have insinuated themselves into public debate. He reached out to this newspaper to urge us to keep on their case.

On 23 October the Courage Foundation released new information about the OPCW FFM investigation of the Douma incident that had been revealed by a “reluctant but credible whistleblower” to a panel including the first Director-General of the OPCW. At about this time we began contacting former employees of Mayday Rescue with questions about transactions between companies controlled by Le Mesurier. Thus by the end of October Le Mesurier would have had reason to believe that the net was closing on his role in the staging of alleged chemical attacks and on his business dealings.

One objective of our investigations into the information operations associated with alleged chemical attacks in Syria is to bring to justice the perpetrators of these incidents and those who colluded with them. From open sources combined with material from confidential informants, we have identified some of the key individuals involved, of whom Le Mesurier was one. We appeal to others who have information about these operations to come forward or to contact us in confidence. Documents that are covered by official secrecy laws can be passed securely to Wikileaks.

Now that several more “attacks” have been credited to this fake group, here is my investigation on the topic.

A series of arson attacks and alleged incidents targeting alleged Jewish-linked sites across Europe have been attributed to a little-known group called Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamia (HAYI), or Ashab al-Yamin. The group has been widely described in media and security circles as an Iran-backed network, allegedly linked to the IRGC.

Since March 9, HAYI has been credited with what some analysts describe as “hybrid warfare” style operations spanning multiple countries from Greece and Belgium to France, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. Among the most high-profile incidents was the burning of four ambulances in Golders Green, North London, on March 22.

The emergence of this group coincides with the escalation of the US-Israeli war against Iran. In parallel, media outlets and pro-war commentators have warned that Tehran could expand the conflict by carrying out attacks across Europe.

But a closer examination raises serious questions about its actual existence and the pro-Israel groups pushing this narrative.

Several of the incidents attributed to HAYI do not appear to have directly targeted Jewish communities. Others remain murky, with limited verified information about the perpetrators. And beyond scattered claims and online statements, there is little concrete evidence that this group as described actually exists.

In the fog of war, narratives can move faster than facts.

At the same time, governments across Europe and the UK are moving to formally designate the IRGC as a terrorist organization — a policy long pushed by pro-war, pro-Israel lobbying networks. Many of the same actors amplifying the HAYI narrative are also leading that campaign within Western media to manufacture consent for war and accelerate this political objective of proscription. While raising the possibility that unverified claims of an Iran-linked threat are being leveraged to shape public fear and justify sweeping new security measures tied to the widening war.

This investigation examines each reported attack, the sources promoting the HAYI narrative, and how claims of a coordinated campaign may be shaping public perception — fueling fears of rising antisemitism, calls for expanded security measures and proscribing the IRGC as a terrorist organisation amid an illegal war.

But what is Ashab al-Yamin? Where did it come from and does it exist at all?

This investigation reveals that there is no such group. It appears to be a fictional cut out. Half of its reported activities simply did not occur. The other half were so amateurish, and inconsequential – with not a single injury – One theory is that they may have been messily undertaken by hired gig criminals and/or incompetent Sayanim, the name given to Mossad’s network of little helpers in countries all over the world. This investigative analysis shows that even the Zionist regime and its assets in establishment think tanks acknowledge that so-called “gig criminals” have been involved in this series of events, in a striking parallel with similar events in Australia (fourteen of them between October 2024 and January 2025) which were similarly low impact with no casualties, declared to be “fake” by Australian police in March 2025.

What happened?

There have been ten incidents attributed to Ashab al-Yamin between March 9 – March 23rd. Of these ten incidents, as we will show, five did not happen. Three of these were entirely fictional (Greece, 11/12 March; France, 23 March; Haarlem, Netherlands, 23 March). One was not associated with the alleged terror group nor was it an attack on “the Jews”.(Antwerp, Belgium, 23 March). The fifth was only ever alleged to have been “planned” but nothing actually happened (Chabad Hebrew School, Heemstede, Netherlands, 23 March)

The other five events, or “attacks” if you will, did occur. Four involved a small “explosion”, accompanied in one, or perhaps more, cases by a fire (Liège, Belgium, 9 March, Rotterdam, Netherlands, 13 March, Bank branch, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 15 March) and the final one involved the burning of four ambulances (Golders Green, London, 22 March).

Disinformation – Fake attacks

Even the establishment think tank the International Centre for Counter Terrorism in the Hague was sceptical of several of the attacks. It reported on 23 March that “HAYI has claimed attacks against an unspecified site in Greece on 11 March, as well as in France and another in the Netherlands both on 23 March, which all likely constitute disinformation.” The ICCT analysis “of the ‘Greek attack video’ indicates that it depicts an explosion at a residential building in Rotterdam on 3 March.” Even the Zionist regime’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs said the Greek incident “may constitute disinformation”.

Of course, what the ICCT and the Ministry mean is that the disinformation was produced by the alleged terror group, on behalf of Iran. But if it is not, then who produced the disinformation?

The fourth of the fake attacks was an incident involving what was claimed by the Ministry of Diaspora Affairs to be “An arson attack targeting a vehicle in a Jewish neighborhood in Antwerp, Belgium (March 23).” However, as the Dutch newspaper HLN reported, the owner of the car was Moroccan and not Jewish:

The car’s owner, Fatia M., was also full of praise for the emergency services and the police. “These vandals must be severely punished. I believe they first smashed the window to search the car. There were jewels inside that I received from my late father. They were stolen. After that, the perpetrators set the car on fire. Why? This is a 2005 Ford Fiesta. What a senseless act that is?”

Most mainstream media reports in English stated that the car was in the Jewish quarter. While some accounts said that the car was “on the edge” of the Jewish district, Nieuwsblad reported the car was located “just outside the Jewish quarter” (“net buiten de Joodse wijk”). Two “minors” were arrested in relation to the alleged crime.

The last non-attack was reported to be a possible plan to attack a Chabad school in Heemstede. The Dutch police arrested two teenagers, aged 14 and 17 on Monday 23 March “on suspicion of preparing a terrorist attack”. A Fourteen year old? The two were allegedly in possession of “fireworks”. The police and the Public Prosecution Service “are taking into account the possibility that a synagogue near Adriaan Pauwlaan, where the two were arrested, was the target of an impending explosion.” Other reports claimed the target might have been a local Chabad Hebrew School. Chabad is, of course, an ultra genocidal Jewish supremacist cult. Even the Ministry of Diaspora Affairs was reticent about claiming this one. The arrests they said: “may have been linked to Ashab al-Yamin; however, no confirmed connection to the group has been established at this time.” They did however, falsely claim that the police had “foiled a planned bombing attack”.

Real events

Of the five “real” events four involved a small “explosion” with what was referred to as an “improvised Explosive Device” or IED, resulting in one, or possibly more, cases in a short lived fire. The similarity in the first four suggests one group was possibly responsible for all of them.

In Liege a synagogue was targeted with a small incendiary device which reportedly “damaged the door and windows on the front façade.”

There was reportedly an alleged explosion at a synagogue in Rotterdam on 13 March, which caused scorching to the door. Four men aged 17-19 were arrested in relation to the Rotterdam incident. A fifth (age 19) was picked up later and then two more (ages 20 and 23) were arrested on 27 March.

In the 14 March alleged explosion outside a Jewish school, there are hardly any images of the damage done, since it was so minimal. Here is the best image I have found, captured from video news footage. As you can see in small print at the top, the report says that the alleged explosion reportedly “damaged a drainage pipe and charred an outer wall”.

The alleged explosion at the Atrium reportedly “targeted the Bank of New York Mellon”. In the video released by the alleged terror group the Bank correctly noted that its office is on the fourth floor of the South Tower of the building. The homemade IED was, however, thrown at the outside door of the building on the ground floor, as can be seen in the image above.The Golders Green arson attack on the four Hatzola ambulances appears to have been carried out by three men, who can be seen in the CCTV footage supplied to news organisations. While suspects in the less serious incidents in the Netherlands are still in custody, the Metropolitan Police promptly bailed two suspects that they picked up in London, and refused to say any more than that they were UK nationals, leading to speculation about the motivations of the attack.

Here is the the English language version of a communique from the alleged new terror group:

The Machzike Hadath Synagogue in London is one of the important centers of Orthodox Judaism, and its deepest connection to Israel is through Rabbi Abraham Isaac HaCohen Kook, the first Chief Rabbi of Israel and one of the most influential thinkers of Religious Zionism, who served at this synagogue before immigrating to the Land of Israel. This historical bond continues to this day, and the synagogue has become one of the main bastions of support for Israel in Britain, so much so that in June 2024, Rishi Sunak, the former British Prime Minister, visited this site amidst the Gaza war to affirm, alongside his expression of solidarity with the Jewish community, his country’s unwavering support for Israel.

This is oddly written. First of all, the attack was on four ambulances belonging to Hatzola Northwest, not on the synagogue beside which the ambulances were parked. Did the crack team dispatched by the IRGC confuse the ambulances with the synagogue? Note also the use of the term “land of Israel” a decidedly zionist turn of phrase. The Machzike Hadath Synagogue is hardly an “important center” of Orthodox Judaism (note the US/Israeli spelling of “centre”). Rabbi Kook, though an important figure in the history of Religious Zionism, is hardly a top target of Palestinians (or Iranians), given he has been dead for over ninety years. His association with the Synagogue is something likely known only to very few, including, most obviously, congregants of the Synagogue itself.

The Synagogue is not one of the “main bastions” of support for “Israel” in Britain. There are hundreds of Zionist organisations that are more important. While the Synagogue is a Jewish supremacist institution, it is not explicitly Zionist, especially by comparison with hundreds of other synagogues, Jewish schools, youth groups and indeed formal affiliates of the Zionist movement. Its origins are in the so-called Litvac or ‘Misnagdim’ community – from Lithuania.

It is a member of the Federation of Synagogues which gathers together both Hasidic and Central-orthodox synagogues. While several synagogues from the genocidal ultra-Zionist Chabad cult are members, the Z word is nowhere mentioned on the website of the synagogue. This is a contrast to the many others affiliated with the largest and avowedly Zionist United Synagogue movement. At best this claim is an unconvincing statement either written with AI or possibly by someone with close knowledge of the synagogue.

On the “real” attacks

The first thing to say about the “real” events is how low impact they have been. There were no casualties and barely a smashed window (with the exception of the ambulance arson). The Islamic Republic of Iran is currently defending itself against US-Israeli strikes with the most sophisticated missiles and a stockpile of underground cities as the Islamic Republic destroys US military bases and radar systems worth billions of dollars in the region. At the same time, the European and British public are asked to believe that Iran sent sloppy individuals, some of them children/teenagers, to set small fires at or near Jewish venues (or in some cases venues with no Jewish or Zionist connection) some of which were put out by a fire extinguisher?

It looks like Ashab al-Yamin is not all it is claimed to be and what the media would us to believe. So, lets look at the sources of data used to convince us that an IRGC cut out was in play. That alleged evidence were claims that Telegram channels allegedly associated with the Axis of Resistance and then with the alleged group HAYI itself had issued claims of responsibility for the attacks.

The three sources of data on alleged Telegram posts.

It is widely reported in the mainstream media that these incidents were (mostly) claimed by the new group via Telegram groups aligned to the Axis of Resistance and from its own Telegram channel. This tale falters a little when one learns that the group’s alleged Telegram channels only became operational after five of the “attacks” had taken place. It is alleged there were two Telegram Channels – one created in 2023 but not active until the 16 March or thereabouts, after five of the alleged attacks had taken place. The other was created only on 21 March just before the other five alleged attacks took place.

Claim videos were posted there, so it is claimed, only after they had already circulated on pro-Iran/axis-of-resistance Telegram channels. These claims first appeared on Telegram on 11 March for example on Sabereen News which posted the video showing an incendiary device being placed on the front step of the synagogue in Liege on 9 March.

It is also claimed that it had “a few dozen followers” at the time of activation. Referred to generically as “an allegedly official Telegram account of HAYI” or “the Telegram channel that HAYI uses to claim its attacks.” No specific Arabic/English username was published and nor were any links given.

Second HAYI Telegram Channel

A second Telegram account was reportedly created on 21 March 2026, two days before the Golders Green Hatzola ambulance arson on 23 March. It, reportedly, became immediately operational upon creation and was used for the London attack claim, which included a QR code in the video linking directly to this channel. The Telegram accounts are only described generically by the ICCT as “another Telegram account, likewise posing as an official mouthpiece of HAYI” or “a second HAYI-affiliated channel.” No t.me handle or exact name is disclosed, though the Ministry of Diaspora affairs published a screenshot of one of the alleged channels. That channel has now been deleted.

It is claimed that the first organisation to amplify the claims made on this second Telegram channel from 21 March was the SITE Intelligence Group. SITE is a well known Zionist intel cut out run by the daughter of a Zionist spy executed in Iraq in 1969, Rita Katz. It’s involvement – rather late in the day – following the previous interventions of the FDD and the Zionist regime itself.

So, who is it that has made these claims about Telegram channels and messages? There are only three sources.

Foundation for Defense of Democracies

The first source was on 12 March, when Joe Truzman wrote a short article posted both on the site of the Long War Journal, which he edits and on the site of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies where he works and which publishes the journal. He was the first to claim the possibility of an Iran link: “The claimed attacks could signal that Iran or Iran-aligned actors are executing acts of terrorism in Europe”. FDD is a Likudnik cut out, and as we famously admitted by the then Director General of the Ministry of Strategic Affairs, Sima Vaknin-Gil, FDD is used by the regime to gather information: ‘we have FDD. We have others working on this.’

The FDD’s intervention though, saw limited traction. It was cited by the regimes Ministry of Foreign Affairs on X and some pro-Israel accounts, and niche sites. But there was no major mainstream media pickup. Social media mentions were low-volume. Clearly bigger guns were needed.

The Ministry of Diaspora Affairs

The second source, on 16 March was none other than the Ministry of Diaspora Affairs based in Apartheid Israel. Almost all of the coverage in English and in other languages took its cue from this intervention. The Ministry of Diaspora Affairs has absorbed international hasbara operations from the downgraded Ministry of Strategic Affairs, now funding overseas cutouts and churning out propaganda materials to shape narratives abroad. The Ministry of Diaspora Affairs assumed responsibility for Israel’s international propaganda efforts when the Ministry of Strategic Affairs was downgraded. Minister Amichai Chikli’s department rebooted the former Concert project as Voices of Israel post-October 2023, directing it to go “on the offensive” against critics.

The ministry funds overseas cutouts to evade foreign-agent scrutiny while producing propaganda content. It allocated $2 million to STOIC for covert social-media campaigns targeting US lawmakers and spent millions on campus operations and media kits. It also issues calls for proposals that channel shekels into settler outreach and “struggle against delegitimisation” videos. Israel’s hasbara machine now operates under one roof, quietly scaling influence operations worldwide.

The International Centre for Counter Terrorism

The third source claiming a link to Iran was an establishment think tank in the Hague. It published a piece on its website on 23 March the same day as the London attack. It was only after this that big mainstream media like the BBC (24 March) started to mention Iran links, though it appears not to have ever been mentioned on CNN.

But what is the International Centre for Counter Terrorism? It is based in the Hague receives a ‘core subsidy’ from the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It also advertises the following partners all of which are affiliated with the Western imperial complex and have presumably provided funding of some sort: NATO, Global Counterterrorism Forum, RUSI Europe, Swiss Ministry of Foreign Affairs and USAID.

One of its Junior Research Fellows, Julian Lanchès, authored the ICCT briefing on Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamia. Lanchès previously worked at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) a well known asset of Apartheid Israel and is well networked with Zionist and groups It was created Lord Weidenfeld, the publishing magnate, and former adviser to Chaim Weizmann when he was the first president of the entity in 1949. The ISD is overseen by a board and a team of advisors. The board is stuffed with figures from the financial sector. These include some who have other connections such as the former chief of staff of the British Army Charles Guthrie, who has also had advisory roles with neoconservative think tanks and pro-Zionist groups such as the Jewish National Fund. Guthrie also, is an advisor to the haute neocon lobby group United Against a Nuclear Iran.178

A wide range of western government departments has funded the ISD including from Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Germany, Canada, Australia as well as the UK Home Office (parent of propaganda group RICU) and Foreign Office, the US State Department and the EU itself. Also of note is the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation at Kings College. The Eranda Rothschild Foundation, one of the the family foundations of the UK branch of the Rothschild family, has also supported it, as well as funding neoconservative think tanks such as the Henry Jackson Society and the Jerusalem Foundation, which is engaged in illegal occupation activities in East Jerusalem.

Lanchès also studied at the King’s College in War Studies which is run by the International Centre for Study of Radicalisation (ICSR). The ICSR was created as a result of attempts by pro-Israel figures to combat Boycott Divestment and Sanctions in relation to Israel/Palestine and is financially supported by foundations that also fund pro-Israel, indeed pro-settler activities, including from foundations created by the following Zionist families: Atkin, Wolfson, Sacher, Clore, Ronson, Pears and Sieff.

When the terrorism experts at the ICCT do talk about Israel or Zionism, it is clear that it is Israel centric talking points that they spout. The image above shows Bibi van Ginkel appearing on Dutch TV to spout lies about the Jewish supremacist thugs who spread terror throughout Amsterdam when they arrived for a Maccabi Tel Aviv game in November 2024. The ICCT reported that she: “spoke on the possible qualification of the attack as terrorism or vigilant terrorism.” Incredibly she was not referring to the Maccabi Tel Aviv fans but to the brave Muslims who fought back. Back in December 2023 she perjured herself by saying on NPO, the Dutch public broadcasting organisation, that “Hamas itself now also has a network here, that had planned attacks against Jewish institutions. And that really is a new development.” The ICCT is, therefore, one step down the food chain from its masters in the Ministry of Diaspora Affairs.

History of False Flags

Of course this would not be the first time that the Zionists have indulged in False Flag operations. Such operations go way back, as anyone familiar with the Lavon Affair (Code named Operation Susannah) knows. Israeli Defense Minister Pinchas Lavon organised a plan to use Egyptian Jews and undercover Zionist agents to bomb American, British, and Egyptian buildings in Cairo. Lavon’s goal was to blame the bombings on Arabs, creating the impression of an anti-Western atmosphere and helping convince the British and Americans of the need to have the British stay in the Suez Canal zone. Instead there was a public trial and conviction of eight Egyptian Jews who carried out the covert operation, two of whom were subsequently executed; this led to a chaim of events culminating in the Suez invasion and then, as Leonard Weiss writes: “France expanded and accelerated its ongoing nuclear cooperation with Israel, which eventually enabled the Jewish state to build nuclear weapons.” As this cautionary tale indicates false flags can be effective motors of human history.

It’s also known that the Zionists created a fake terror group in Lebanon: The Front for the Liberation of Lebanon from Foreigners (FLLF). It operated in Lebanon between 1980 and 1983. While it claimed to be a Lebanese resistance movement, it was actually a covert terrorist organisation run by the Zionist regime. It was established on the orders of Rafael Eitan, then Chief of Staff of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF), and was overseen by Israeli General Avigdor Ben-Gal and Meir Dagan, who later became the director of Mossad. Its primary goal was to “cause chaos among the Palestinians and Syrians in Lebanon” without leaving an Israeli fingerprint. The group engaged in car bombings and other terrorist activities targeting Palestinian and Syrian interests, often under the guise of Lebanese sectarian infighting.

But have they operated false flags in Europe? As is widely known an MI5 whistleblower, Annie Machon, has claimed that MI5 concluded that the Zionists bombed their own embassy in London in 1994. It’s also known that Zionists executed the famous Palestinian cartoonist Naji El Ali in Knightsbridge in London in 1987 using Palestinians to carry out the act to cover their tracks. In 1988 Margaret Thatcher – yes Margaret Thatcher – expelled the whole Mossad station from the country as a result.

More recently an apparent rash of “antisemitic” attacks in Australia was revealed by the New South Wales Police to have been a hoax in March 2025. The alleged attacks were reportedly undertaken by an organised crime network. Zionist regime sources pushed this line in Australia:

• Peter Wertheim Executive Council of Australian Jewry – “low-level local criminals paid to provide crime as a service… a web of local and off-shore criminal intermediaries.” (27 August 2025)

• Mossad (official statement released via Israeli Prime Minister’s Office) – “terror without Iranian fingerprints, high compartmentalization, recruitment of foreigners, use of criminals, and covert communications,” (26 October 2025).

This alleged use of criminal networks was a key element in the saga of Ashab al-Amin, the ones that actually happened at least.

The Ministry of Diaspora Affairs claimed that the attacks might involve “Contracted operatives – local criminals or youth recruited and paid through intermediaries, similar to models previously used by Iranian networks in Europe.”

The ICCT ludicrously tried to explain away the anomalies by claiming (links in original):

Another relevant development is the emergence of a new crime–terror nexus, whereby hostile state actors increasingly cultivate ties with criminal networks, ranging from organised crime groups to local petty criminals, and leverage them for hybrid activities. Iran, for instance, has reportedly commissioned criminal gangs such as Foxtrot and Rumba in Sweden, including for the aforementioned grenade attack against the Israeli embassy, as well as groups such as the Hells Angels for attacks against synagogues in Germany.

Is this a new Mossad Modus Operandi? Employing “gig criminals” to carry out fake terror plots to pursue particular foreign policy objectives? If so, as millions have now discovered: when it comes to Zionism – every accusation could be a confession.

First published on PressTV, Thursday, 05 March 2026 4:55 PM

While the likes of Trump, Netanyahu, and Rubio peddle inconsistent justifications for the illegal and unprovoked aggression on Iran, CIA intelligence shreds claims of imminent threats, revealing how the Zionist entity dictates US foreign policy.

US President Donald Trump unleashed a barrage of contradictory explanations for the joint US-Zionist assault on the Islamic Republic of Iran, launched on 28 February 2026.

In his initial video statement, Trump asserted the strikes aimed to eliminate “imminent threats” from Iran, including its alleged pursuit of nuclear weapons and long-range missiles capable of reaching the American homeland.

He painted Iran as a “vicious group of very hard, terrible people” whose actions endangered US interests.

This narrative quickly evolved. By 3 March, Trump admitted the decision stemmed from his “opinion” that Iran would attack first if not struck preemptively.

“It was my opinion that they were going to attack first,” he stated, abandoning earlier claims of concrete intelligence.

Such flip-flops, once again, expose exaggeration. Trump claimed Iran neared intercontinental ballistic missiles threatening the US, an assertion contradicted by US intelligence assessments.

The BBC highlighted how Trump’s “imminent threats” lacked support, noting Iran’s nuclear capabilities remained far from weaponisation despite rhetoric.

Trump’s pre-strike doubts further undermine his case. The Associated Press reported Trump’s dissatisfaction with ongoing nuclear talks, leading to the order despite diplomatic avenues. This pivot from diplomacy to aggression reeks of opportunism, not necessity.

Netanyahu’s decades-long push: ‘Regime change’ at any cost

Zionist entity premier Benjamin Netanyahu has long championed aggression against Iran, viewing it as an existential foe. In justifying the 2026 strikes, Netanyahu declared them pre-emptive to thwart Iran’s nuclear and missile programs, threatening overwhelming force.

He warned that allowing Iran nuclear weapons and ICBMs would endanger humanity.

Netanyahu’s rhetoric echoes his four-decade obsession. Even complicit journalists like Mehdi Hasan noted Netanyahu “has been yearning, dreaming of doing this for 40 years,” with Trump as the first US leader to oblige.

The Guardian labelled the assault an “illegal act of aggression” without a lawful basis, driven by Netanyahu’s preference for military solutions over diplomacy.

Post-strike, Netanyahu celebrated the operation’s goals and called (in Farsi) for Iranians to “come to the streets, come out in your millions, to finish the job, to overthrow the ‘regime’ of fear that has made your lives bitter”. Mondoweiss exposed how initial nuclear justifications morphed into overt regime change admissions, mirroring Iraq War tactics.

“When we are finished, take over your government,” President Trump said, addressing the Iranian public in his own video. “It will be yours to take.”

Yet The Nation revealed aims to turn Iran into a failed state, obliterating coherent governance. Netanyahu dusted off the genocidal language used against the Palestinians, saying on Sunday, 1 March, during a visit to a site struck by an Iranian missile.

“We read in this week’s Torah portion, ‘Remember what Amalek did to you.’ We remember—and we act,” he said.

The Amalekites are identified in the Hebrew Bible as a persistent adversary of the Israelites, linked to a Torah commandment to erase their memory. Specifically, 1 Samuel 15:3 mandates the killing of men, women, and infants. This was a clarion call to eliminate all Iranians, showing the utter hypocrisy of calling out on the streets those he wishes dead.

Rubio’s Freudian slip: Admitting Zionist sway over US decisions

Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s comments laid bare the Zionist entity’s influence on US policy. On 2 March, Rubio stated the US struck because “we knew that there was going to be an Israeli action,” prompting preemptive moves to avoid higher US casualties from Iranian retaliation.

Rubio elaborated that awareness of Zionist plans necessitated US involvement, framing it as defensive. Al Jazeera described this as a “looping justification,” highlighting how Zionist intentions drove US timing.

Facing backlash, Rubio walked back his words, insisting the strikes were inevitable regardless of Zionist actions. The New York Times reported his clarification: “The president determined we were not going to get hit first.”

Axios noted Rubio’s remarks ignited MAGA divisions, underscoring Zionist power. The Guardian highlighted Democratic fury over Rubio’s implication of a “war of choice” on behalf of Zionists. PBS detailed Rubio’s defence, warning Iran of further escalation. These revelations confirm that US policy follows Zionist whims.

CIA intelligence shreds the ‘imminent threat’ facade

CIA assessments dismantle claims of Iranian aggression. The Associated Press revealed that US intelligence showed no pre-emptive Iranian strike planned against the US.

Briefings to Congress confirmed no such indicators. Reuters echoed Pentagon admissions: no intelligence on Iran attacking first. The Hill reported similar findings, contradicting Trump’s “imminent threat.”

A House of Commons Library briefing noted in 2025 that US intelligence judged Iran not to be building nuclear weapons. CNN detailed CIA tracking of Iranian leaders, but no offensive plans. Al Jazeera reported CIA talks with Kurds for uprisings, indicating an offensive US posture. Even the Zionist funded propaganda network Iran International quoted ex-CIA Director Petraeus on Iran’s strategic errors, but no pre-strike aggression.

These reports expose fabricated threats to justify unprovoked war.

Pentagon’s panic: Depleted THAAD stocks and radar losses

Pentagon officials express intense paranoia over dwindling air defense stockpiles as a result of Iran’s legitimate self-defense. The Washington Post reported sources describing the mood as “intense and paranoid.” The Daily Beast characterised these Pentagon officials as “secretly panicking” about THAAD interceptor shortages if fighting drags on.

This panic stems from high consumption rates. It takes two or three interceptors per incoming missile, straining limited THAAD stocks.

Some sources claim that for every $1 Iran spends on drones, countries like the UAE (and by implication the US and the Zionist entity) spend approximately $20 to $28. The Washington Post said officials are warning that resources are “stretched thin.”

Compounding this, the US Navy resists escorting ships through the Strait of Hormuz. USNI News reported Navy officials informing shipping leaders of no availability for escorts, despite Trump’s pledges.

Lloyd’s list detailed this U-turn, with the Navy ruling out protection.

These issues link directly to Iran’s destruction of the AN/FPS-132 radar at Al Udeid base. NDTV reported Iranian claims to have obliterated this $1.1 billion system, crucial for ballistic missile tracking. The radar’s loss weakens early warning, compressing reaction times for THAAD systems.

Army Recognition, a defence industry news site, explained that this reduces sensor depth, forcing more interceptor use and accelerating stock depletion. In fact, they describe it in full as this: “early-warning radar uses a fixed UHF phased-array to detect and continuously track ballistic missiles and space objects at very long range, generating early launch warning, trajectory and impact predictions, and cueing data for layered defenses such as THAAD, Patriot, and naval air-and-missile defense systems across the Gulf”.

So, it affects the whole range of layered air defences.

For Navy escorts, diminished radar coverage heightens risks in Hormuz. Radar losses are key to broader defense cracks, making naval operations precarious without full surveillance.

These problems have only been compounded by the latest strikes, which even the New York Times is admitting have damaged or destroyed Radar and other monitoring and targeting equipment in US bases across the region in Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

This chain—radar destruction leading to inefficient defenses and stock drain—fuels Pentagon panic and Navy caution, exposing vulnerabilities in the aggression.

Zionist entity’s grip: How the US became a tool in Iranian aggression

The Zionist colony has long steered US policy toward confrontation with Iran. Al Jazeera probed how Zionist plans precipitated US strikes, with Rubio admitting awareness shaped decisions.

The establishment think tank CFR detailed US intervention following Zionist unilateralism, escalating to full aggression. Mondoweiss argued the war follows an Iraq playbook: false WMD claims shifting to regime change. The Guardian condemned it as illegal, driven by Netanyahu’s impatience with diplomacy.

Euronews quoted Iran’s UN ambassador decrying US betrayal during talks, highlighting Zionist sabotage. Al Mayadeen announced Netanyahu’s declaration of joint aggression. The Nation exposed aims to fragment Iran, with Zionist officials targeting all leadership. WBUR reported Trump’s regime change calls, echoing Zionist goals.

This puppetry endangers global peace, subordinating US interests to messianic Zionist ambitions.

Key contradictions in leadership statements

• Trump’s threat claims vs. intel: Trump warned of missiles soon reaching the US, but even the NYT fact-checks show these are inaccurate.

• Netanyahu’s pre-emption vs. evidence: Netanyahu framed strikes as a gateway to peace, yet Arab News notes endless war denial.

• Rubio’s Zionist trigger vs. walkback: Rubio suggested Israeli plans forced the US hand, later denied.

• Intel on no strike vs. official narratives: AP sources confirm no preemptive Iranian plans.

These inconsistencies fuel scepticism in the American security apparatus as well as - increasingly - with the US allied states in West Asia.

These deceptions are being unmasked in real time. The unthinkable is now dawning on the US and its allies; this may be the moment that the US is pushed out of West Asia once and for all.

Solidarity with Iran at this time demands truth over propaganda and the final push to remove US influence and finally collapse the Zionist colonisation project in Palestine.

In this interview, Dr David Miller argues that the clamour to proscribe the IRGC is not about public safety but a state propaganda campaign designed to spread fear, smear Iran and justify greater repression.

He explains why he believes the narrative is being pushed, who benefits from it - and what it could mean for civil liberties and political dissent.

The Islamic Republic of Iran was subject to a focused Mossad inspired attack on the 8th and 9th of January.

The Islamic Republic has never wavered in its support for the Palestinian people’s struggle against Zionist oppression, and has been a bulwark against the Greater Israel project.

That’s why Benjamin Netanyahu’s desperately trying to persuade the United States to mount a full-scale war against Iran.

So, in our first report, Latifa Abouchakra explains how the West’s economic warfare campaign provides a backdrop to the riots that’ve recently been in the news.

Our next report looks at why the United States pulled back from the brink of a full-scale war with Iran at the eleventh hour.

Joining us as our guest contributor today is the independent researcher and writer, Dr Phil Bevin, who publishes his material on a range of topics via his Patreon account and various other publications.

Prof Dr Miller breaks down his claim that Pax Judaica will be replacing Pax America. They will be the New World Order.

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Originally published on X on 4 February 2026.

Meet Paul Singer, the billionaire set to make massive profits from the actions of the Zionist proxy forces known as the US military in kidnapping President Maduro and his wife from Caracas.

Paul E. Singer started his career as a real estate attorney at the investment bank Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette. Singer went on to found the hedge fund firm Elliott Management in 1977, of which he is the president and co-CEO as of 2025. Singer would also move towards activist investing and distressed debt investing after the 1987 stock market crash.

Singer pioneered Vulture Capitalism

He pioneered “vulture capitalism,” buying distressed sovereign bonds, such as those of Argentina and Peru, at steep discounts and pursuing full repayment through litigation, earning both massive profits and criticism.

Singer, has been described by journalist Ken Silverstein, as follows, “Paul Singer is a rapacious hedge fund manager and leading donor to the GOP and pro-’Israel’ groups who retains a raft of corporate intelligence firms to slant the news in ways that favor his personal and political interests. In his spare time, he plots to topple governments and beggar citizens in the Third World to increase profit margins at Elliott Investment Management”. Singer has not only been interested in destroying industrial capacity and the living conditions of people in the Global South, he has also been happy to do so in the US. Singer was one of Tucker Carlson’s key targets while still at Fox News back in 2019:

Feeding off the carcass of a dying nation is what Singer and his firm Elliott Management have done in this country and to this country … Bloomberg News once described Singer as “the world’s most feared investor” and that tells you a lot. No one’s even pretending Paul Singer’s tactics are good for anyone but Paul Singer ... this kind of behaviour, it bears no resemblance whatsoever to the capitalism we were promised in school. It creates nothing. It destroys entire cities. It couldn’t be uglier or more destructive. So why is this allowed in the United States? The short answer is because people like Paul Singer have tremendous influence over our political process. Singer himself is the second largest donor to the Republican Party, he’s given millions to a super PAC that supports Republican Senators. In Washington he is rock star famous, and that may be why he’s almost certainly paying a lower effective tax rate than your average fireman.

Zionist takeover at Salams

Singer has his fingers in many pies including attempting to undermine Islam. Muslim marriage app Salams recently faced criticism after it was acquired by the Match Group. Spencer Rascoff, appointed CEO in February 2025, is a Zionist, and Match Group is strongly associated with the promotion of so-called “hookup culture.” While Salams is intended to be for Muslims seeking marriage, Match Group also owns hook-up culture dating apps Plenty of Fish, OK Cupid and especially Tinder.

Match Group was subject to vulture fund pressure from Elliot Management, which, in January 2024, was revealed to have made a $1 billion investment in Match Group. In March that year, Match disclosed for the first time that it had an “information-sharing deal with Elliott”, and at the same time announced two new directors, including Rascoff, “after talks with activist investor Elliott Investment Management to improve its performance” In other words, Singer, a key Zionist player, placed Rascoff at Match.Will user data submitted by Muslims to the Salams app now be available to Zionist intelligence agencies?

Singer built Elliott into one of the world’s most formidable hedge funds, managing $72 billion in assets by 2025. As of 2026, Forbes pegged his net worth at $6.7 billion, making him the 576th richest Billionaire in the world. In 2025 he was the 88th richest Jewish Billionaire in the Forbes list.

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Singer in Venezuela

In 2024 Venezuela Analysis reported that “US corporation Elliott Investment Management has been picked as the winning bidder in a court-mandated auction of Venezuela’s US-based refiner CITGO. Legal filings showed that court-appointed “Special Master” [Robert] Pincus chose Elliot’s US $7.286 billion bid for the entirety of PDV Holding (PDVH), CITGO’s parent company. The proposal reportedly comes from the company’s affiliate Amber Energy.”

In October 2022, Delaware District Judge Leonard P. Stark launched a sale of PDVH shares to satisfy claims from 18 creditors against the Caribbean nation totaling US $21.3 billion mostly stemming from international arbitration awards. The process was initiated by Canadian mining enterprise Crystallex.

And who is Robert Pincus who chose Singer’s firm? Robert “Bob” Pincus refers to himself as a ‘proud Zionist’. He led Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom’s corporate practice in Wilmington, Delaware, and chaired the firm’s Partnership Selection Committee for many years until retirement in 2018. Leonard Stark, the Judge who appointed him had also worked at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, at the same time, between 1997 - 2001.

Pincus is on the National Board of Directors of American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Singer is a donor to AIPAC (on which more below).

Pincus previously served as the President of the Jewish Federation of Delaware and as Chair of the Jewish Fund for the Future, its endowment arm. Among other community roles, Pincus has served on the executive committee of US Maccabiah/Sports for Israel and on the Jewish National Fund’s Delaware Board of Directors.

The Singer Family Charitable Foundation (and associated family foundations) has donated significantly to conservative and pro Israel causes including the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Hudson Institute, the Birthright Israel Foundation and the Likudnik think tank: Foundation for Defense of Democracies

Singer is the 6th largest donor to AIPAC to which he donated two million dollars. He has been a major benefactor of groups like Friends of the IDF, supported United Hatzalah, an Zionist volunteer organization in occupied Palestine, and has been linked to donations for supremacist Jewish schools and welfare programs that benefit Jewish settlers.

In the first 12 years of his Paul E. Singer Foundation, some $247 million was ploughed into donations most of which were to Donor Advised Funds which are specifically created to ensure the link between the donor and the ultimate recipient is and remains opaque. They are a mechanism for disguising “dark money in the political system and society more broadly. Obviously their supporters like Prism the Gift Fund and Vanguard Charitable say they are “time, cost and tax-effective” or “a charitable giving vehicle that empowers you to grow your philanthropy with ease and precision”, respectively. Unsurprisingly both these groups, the first in the UK and the second in the US are run by genocidal Zionists and/or are supplied by and spend on Zionist causes.

As I have noted elsewhere Prism: The Gift Fund is a Zionist vehicle:

Prism the Gift Fund was set up by Anne Josse . Josse is described by the Jewish Chronicle as “an Orthodox Jew who … co-runs private equity firm Regent Capital (with Prism co-founder Gideon Lyons)” She ran the Zionist funding agency the New Israel Fund UK in the 1990s… The charity operates as a donor advised fund, a mechanism to obscure public knowledge of where funding for recipients originates… [and is]…unsurprisingly, is deeply embedded in the Zionist movement. It runs the activities of the Jerusalem Foundation - engaged in ethnic cleansing in East Jerusalem [Al-Quds] as well as at least two other Zionist family foundations (the Bluston Charitable Settlement, of which Anne Josse is a trustee, and the Pelz Trust), which also give to the IOF and other genocidal charities.

Turning to the US, the Vanguard Charitable has received money from the Jewish Communal Fund.

And it has donated significant funds to

• American Jewish Committee

• Anti Defamation League

• Central Fund of Israel

• CAMERA

• Foundation for the Defense of Democracies

• Friends of the Israel Defense Forces

• Israel Project

• Middle East Media Research Institute

• Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs

As well as to key Zionist supported promoters of Islamophobia:

• Center for Security Policy

• Clarion Fund

• David Horowitz Freedom Center

• Henry Jackson Society

• Investigative Project on Terrorism

• Jihad Watch,

• Middle East Forum

Singer’s political donations

Between June 2023 and October 2024 ( according to Open Secrets) Singer donated some $43.25 million to pro-Zionist electoral campaigns. These included massive donations to Trump. He had previously supported the presidential campaigns of former President George W. Bush, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, and,

in 2015, to Marco Rubio. Singer was also the largest donor ($1 million) to a super PAC seeking to oust Rep. Thomas Massie (the anti AIPAC Republican) according to a filing submitted to the Federal Election Commission in July 2025. The group, MAGA KY, raised $2 million between its launch in late June and the end of July.

Make no mistake Paul Singer is a Zionist instrument helping to cement Pax Judaica - the emerging Jewish Empire - in the US and Latin America.

In today’s show, we’ll be considering the implications of the High Court judgment against the previous Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, for acting unlawfully when she proscribed Palestine Action as a terrorist organization last year.

But the three High Court judges who found against the govt. paused the enforcement of their judgment while an appeal is being decided. So, in our first report, Latifa Abouchakra summarizes the case that the High Court threw out, and which the new Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, is appealing.

Our next report looks at the legal arguments that followed the High Court judgment, and highlights the ongoing direct action against the UK’s complicity in Zionist genocide.