Inside the Temple of Covert Propaganda: The Integrity Initiative and the UK’s Scandalous Information War
By Mohamed Elmaazi and Max Blumenthal
The Grayzone entered the carefully concealed offices of a covert, British government-backed propaganda mill that is at the center of an international scandal the mainstream media refuses to touch.
Recent hacked documents
have revealed an international network of politicians, journalists,
academics, researchers and military officers, all engaged in highly
deceptive covert propaganda campaigns funded by the British Foreign and
Commonwealth Office (FCO), NATO, Facebook and hardline national security
institutions.
This “network of networks”, as one
document refers to them, centers around an ironically named outfit
called the Integrity Initiative. And it is all overseen by a previously
unknown England-based think tank registered in Scotland, the Institute
for Statecraft, which has operated under a veil of secrecy.
The whole operation appears to be run by, and in conjunction with, members of British military intelligence.
According to David Miller, professor of
political sociology in the school of policy studies at the University of
Bristol and the director of the Organization for Propaganda Studies,
the Integrity Initiative “appears to be a military directed push.”
“The most senior government people are professional propagandists and spooks,” Miller explained. “The ‘charity’ lead on this [Chris Donnelly]
was also appointed as a colonel in military intelligence at the
beginning of the project — a truly amazing fact that suggests this is a
military intelligence cut out.”
A minister for the UK FCO has officially confirmed that it has been funding the Integrity Network.
In addition to conducting diplomacy, the
FCO oversees both the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) the
UK equivalent to the National Security Agency, and the Secret
Intelligence Services (SIS) commonly known as MI6.
The think tank that oversees the
Integrity Initiative, the Institute for Statecraft, has also received
funding from the British Army and Ministry of Defense.
The entire extremely shady enterprise, as
Miller explained, is an elaborate front for the British
military-intelligence apparatus. Its covert coordination with friendly
politicians and mainstream journalists recalls the Cold War-era intrigue
known as Operation Mockingbird.
That scandal involved the unmasking of “more
than 400 American journalists who…in the past twenty-five years have
secretly carried out assignments for the Central Intelligence Agency,”
as Carl Bernstein revealed in a 1977 Rolling Stone report.
The exposing of the Integrity Initiative
has just scratched the surface of what appears to be a much more
sophisticated, insidious, and extremely online version of Operation
Mockingbird. With new internal documents appearing each week through a
hacker’s organization called Anonymous Europe, the revelations are
yielding one of the most potentially explosive national security
scandals in recent times.
But even as members of Britain’s
parliament thunder with demands for official accountability, the UK and
US mainstream media still strangely refuses to touch the story.
Smearing left-wing political figures in NATO member states
The Integrity Initiative claims that it is “counter[ing] Russian disinformation and malign influence,” and indeed, the main players behind it appear intent on hyping the Russian threat to justify ramped up military budgets and a long-term war footing.
The Integrity Initiative waged a successful covert campaign to destroy the appointment of Pedro Baños to Director of Spain’s National Security Department on
the bogus grounds that he was “pro-Kremlin,” thus interfering in the
affairs of a fellow EU and NATO member. It carried out the hit job
through a hand-picked “cluster” of Spanish politicians and operatives to
flood social media and sympathetic outlets with messages demonizing Baños.
The Integrity Initiative appears to have employed the same tactics to smear left-wing journalists and political figures across the West, including the leader of the UK’s Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn.
Member of Parliament Chris Williamson – a close ally of Corbyn – is now openly and indignantly calling for “a public inquiry into the Integrity Initiative and similar information war efforts being funded by our government.”
It is not necessarily illegal for the FCO to direct propaganda towards its own citizenry, according to Miller of the Organization for Propaganda Studies. However, he said that “it is not legal for ministers to effectively direct a charity. Thus, if the MoD through military intelligence are effectively running a charity, that would be contrary to law.”
An abandoned mill in Scotland covers for an active office in London’s “Temple”
To conceal its potentially illegal activities, the Institute for Statecraft has employed a web of deceptions. Not only did they hide their government funding, the outfit listed a fake location as its address.Mohammed Elmaazi, a co-author of this piece, discovered the elaborately hidden location of the Institute for Statecraft inside a posh warren of barristers’ offices in London. Elmaazi’s swift ejection from the premises confirmed the lengths that this shadowy organization continues to go to to avoid public scrutiny.
The Institute for Statecraft, is a registered charity in Scotland, whose registered office is listed as being an old mill in Fife Scotland involved in the “manufacture of wood and other products.” David Scott of UK Column news, visited the registered office in Fife only to find a “an empty, semi-derelict, partly demolished, building.”
While the address in Fife, Scotland
appears to be a derelict building, the London address listed in the
hacked documents is fully operational, so far as Elmaazi could tell.
He located the offices belonging to The
Institute for Statecraft at the Embankment at Two Temple Place in
London. It shares offices in the basement of a “spectacular neo-gothic mansion” which is owned or leased by The Bulldog Trust, an
organization dedicated to “promoting culture and philanthropy”. This
area, known as “the Temple,” is filled with barristers’ chambers and
used to serve as the precinct for the Knights of Templar.
Elmaazi found the offices on December
6, having nearly given up and becoming convinced that he would discover
nothing more than was found at the derelict house in Fife. When he
arrived at the location, preparations were underway for some sort of
Christmas-themed event to be held in the main building on the ground
floor. But upon discovering the signs pointing downstairs to the
basement, Elmaazi found himself staring at a door with a sign that read,
“The Institute for Statecraft / The Fore.”
No comment
Elmaazi rang the Institute for
Statecraft’s doorbell and was eventually let in by a well-dressed
elderly gentleman in a beige overcoat. The man claimed that he worked
neither at The Institute nor at The Fore but at “another organization.”
He then called out for “Charles.” Having
walked in, Elmaazi could see a few smaller offices to the side, with a
larger planned office with tables and computers around the corner.
A man whom Elmaazi presumed
was “Charles” came around the corner and called out, “Yes?” He seemed
somewhat confused by the journalist’s presence, understandably so as he
was there without an appointment. When “Charles” confirmed that he
worked with the Institute for Statecraft, Elmaazi identified himself as a
journalist and asked if he would be willing to be interviewed. The
request was met with a curt refusal.
“Charles” then guided Elmaazi sternly
with his hand back to the entrance. When the journalist repeated his
request, he was met with stone silence. And that was that.
A “Charles Hart” is listed as the chairman
of the Institute for Statecraft, but no photo is available to confirm
that Hart was the same “Charles” that Elmaazi met.
The neocon connection
Two buildings away from the Institute for Statecraft, separated only by the home of British American Tobacco, lies the offices of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). This think tank is key organ of the Western foreign policy establishment, pushing military interventionism and promoting the Saudi-backed Syrian opposition-in-exile.Among the funders of IISS is the Smith Richardson Foundation.
This foundation also happens to be a supporter of the Integrity Initiative, providing it with £45,000 (about $56,600 USD) for covert propaganda activities in Europe and the US.
The Smith Richardson Foundation
was founded by billionaire heir to the Vicks fortune, H. Smith
Richardson, in 1935. In 1973, the founder’s son, Randolph Richardson – a
free market fundamentalist and long-time patron of neoconservative
ideologue Irving Kristol – inherited the organization.
Kristol’s son, William Kristol, is a co-founder of the Project for a New American Century which openly called for the US to assert itself as the single global hegemon following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Recipients of funding from the Smith
Richardson Foundation include a who’s who of neoconservative and
militaristic right-wing institutions. The foundation has bankrolled neoconservative outfits like the
American Enterprise Institute (to the tune of nearly $10 million since
1998), the Hudson Institute, the Institute for the Study of War, Freedom
House, the Hoover Institution, the Foundation for the Defense of
Democracies, along with Democratic Party-aligned think tanks like the
Center for New American Security and the Center for American Progress.
“To say the [Smith Richardson] foundation
was involved at every level in the lobbying for and crafting of the
so-called global war on terror after 9/11 would be an understatement,”
wrote Kelley Vlahos in a profile
of Nadia Schadlow, a former Trump administration deputy national
security advisor who previously worked as the senior program director
for Smith Richardson.
Smith Richardson complements a roster of international funders backing the Integrity Initiative’s parent organization:
- HQ NATO Public Diplomacy, £12,000 for each inaugural workshop = £168,000
- Partner institutions £5,000 for each inaugural workshop = £70,000
- NATO HQ for educational video films – free provision of camera team
- 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
- US State Dept, for research and dissemination activities (excluding any activity in USA) = £250,000
- Smith Richardson Foundation, £45,000 for cluster activities in Europe and USA
- Facebook, £100,000 for research and education activities
- German business community, £25,000 for research and dissemination in EU countries
A covert asset in the Bernie campaign?
Elmaazi, the co-author of this piece, was not the only reporter to gain momentary access to the Institute for Statecraft’s hidden location at 2 Temple Place. On December 11, five days after Elmaazi’s visit, Kit Klarenberg of Sputnik Radio entered the covert propaganda mill’s neo-gothic offices. As soon as he identified himself as a journalist, he was angrily ejected by an Institute for Statecraft staffer named Simon Bracey-Lane.“You need to leave right now!” Bracey-Lane barked at Klarenberg. “You haven’t arranged to see us! Go! Right now! Please leave immediately! Leave!”
Bracey-Lane is a 20-something British citizen with no publicly acknowledged experience in intelligence work. But as Klarenberg noted, there are some unusual details in the young staffer’s bio.
In 2016, Bracey-Lane appeared out of nowhere to work in Iowa as a field organizer for the Bernie Sanders campaign for president.
“I spent a year working, saving all my money, just thought
I was gonna go on a two month road trip from Seattle to New York and I
thought, you know what? I’m gonna stay and work for the Bernie Sanders
campaign,” Bracey-Lane told a reporter for AFP on January 27, 2016.
He said that after he decided to work for Bernie, he first
went to England to “get a visa and get everything legal,” then came
back to join the campaign in earnest.
Bracey-Lane also claimed to AFP, “I’m not sure there’s a place for me
in British politics… I’ve never been struck by an urge to work in my
own political system.”However, a February 1, 2016 profile of Bracey-Lane by Buzzfeed’s Jim Waterson said the Brit-for-Bernie “was inspired to rejoin the Labour party in September [2015] when Corbyn was elected leader. But by that point, he was already in the US on holiday.”
It is clearly odd for Bracey-Lane to tell one reporter that he had never had any interest in British politics, while claiming to another that he had been eager to support Corbyn before he joined the Bernie campaign. What’s more, as Klarenberg reported, Bracey-Lane went on to establish a get-out-the-vote effort for various progressive politicians and parties in Britain’s 2017 general election, gaining inside access to a wide array of campaigns.
The contradiction in Bracey-Lane’s narrative raises serious questions about his real role on the Bernie campaign, as does his suddenly transition from progressive politics to a staff position at a military-backed propaganda farm that waged a covert information war on Corbyn and other left-leaning politicians across the West.
An Institute for Statecraft document on “roles and relevant experience” of the outfit’s “expert team” notes that Bracey-Lane conducted a “special study of Russian interference in the US electoral process.” The document does not make clear when that study was conducted, however, it is listed directly next to its author’s history of work with the Bernie campaign.
“At Thanksgiving, I was asked, why are you meddling?”
Bracey-Lane remarked to Reuters, referring to his work for Bernie
Sanders. “Which is an interesting way to phrase it, but I was happy to
answer: it needs meddling with.”
Those comments take on an entirely different meaning now that the
former Bernie field worker has been outed as part of a British
military-intelligence influence operation.In the coming days, the Grayzone will take a closer look at the Integrity Initiative’s activity inside the US, and whether it is interfering in American politics as it has done in other NATO member states.
Mohamed Elmaazi obtained his LLB from SOAS and Masters in International and Comparative law from the American University in Cairo. He worked in human rights law for a number of years before shifting to journalism. He occasionally reports for The Real News Network and currently contributes to Open Democracy, The Canary, and the Grayzone. You can follow him on Twitter @MElmaazi
Max Blumenthal is an award-winning journalist and the author of several books, including best-selling Republican Gomorrah, Goliath, The Fifty One Day War, and The Management of Savagery. He has produced print articles for an array of publications, many video reports, and several documentaries, including Killing Gaza.
Blumenthal founded The Grayzone in 2015 to shine a journalistic light
on America’s state of perpetual war and its dangerous domestic
repercussions.
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