Information Wars January 8, 2019
New Documents Reveal a Covert British Military-Intelligence Smear Machine
Meddling In American Politics
The Integrity Initiative has mobilized an international disinformation
campaign across Europe. Now, with government and right-wing foundation
money, this massive "political smear unit" is infiltrating the US.
By Max Blumenthal and Mark Ames
A bombshell domestic spy scandal has been unfolding in Britain, after hacked
internal communications exposed a covert UK state military-intelligence
psychological warfare operation targeting its own citizens and political
figures in allied NATO countries under the cover of fighting "Russian
disinformation."
The leaked documents revealed a secret network of spies, prominent
journalists and think-tanks colluding under the umbrella of a group called
"Integrity Initiative" to shape domestic opinion-and to smear political
opponents of the right-wing Tory government, including the leader of the
opposition Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn.
Until now, this Integrity Initiative domestic spy scandal has been ignored
in the American media, perhaps because it has mostly involved British names.
But it is clear that the influence operation has already been activated in
the US. Hacked documents reveal that the Integrity Initiative is cultivating
powerful allies inside the State Department, top DC think tanks, the FBI and
the DHS, where it has gained access to Katharine Gorka and her husband, the
fascist-linked cable news pundit Sebastian Gorka.
The Integrity Initiative has spelled out plans to expand its network across
the US, meddling in American politics and recruiting "a new generation of
Russia watchers" behind the false guise of a non-partisan charity. Moreover,
the group has hired one of the most notorious American "perception
management" specialists, John Rendon, to train its clusters of pundits and
cultivate relationships with the media.
Back in the UK, Member of Parliament Chris Williamson has clamored for an
investigation into the Integrity Initiative's abuse of public money.
In a recent editorial, Williamson drew a direct parallel between the group's
collaboration with journalists and surreptitious payments the CIA made to
reporters during the Cold War.
"These tactics resemble those deployed by the CIA in Operation Mockingbird
that was launched at the height of the cold war in the early 1950s. Its aims
included using the mainstream news media as a propaganda tool," Williamson
wrote.
"They manipulated the news agenda by recruiting leading journalists to write
stories with the express purpose of influencing public opinion in a
particular way," the Labour parliamentarian continued. "Now it seems the
British Establishment have dusted off the CIA's old playbook and is intent
on giving it another outing on this side of the Atlantic."
Unmasking a British military-intelligence smear machine
The existence of the Integrity Initiative was virtually unknown until this
November, when the email servers of a previously obscure British think tank
called the Institute for Statecraft were hacked, prompting allegations of
Russian intrusion. When the group's internal documents appeared at a website
hosted by Anonymous Europe, the public learned of a covert propaganda
network seed-funded to the tune of over $2 million dollars by the
Tory-controlled UK Foreign Office, and run largely by military-intelligence
officers.
Through a series of cash inducements, off the record briefings and all-day
conferences, the Integrity Initiative has sought to organize journalists
across the West into an international echo chamber hyping up the supposed
threat of Russian disinformation-and to defame politicians and journalists
critical of this new Cold War campaign.
A bid for funding submitted by the Integrity Initiative in 2017 to the
British Ministry of Defense promised to deliver a "tougher stance on Russia"
by arranging for "more information published in the media on the threat of
Russian active measures."
The Integrity Initiative has also worked through its fronts in the media to
smear political figures perceived as a threat to its militaristic agenda.
Its targets have included a Spanish Department of Homeland Security
appointee, Pedro Banos, whose nomination was scuttled thanks a media blitz
it secretly orchestrated; Jeremy Corbyn, whom the outfit and its media
cutouts painted as a useful idiot of Russia; and a Scottish member of
parliament, Neil Findlay, whom one of its closest media allies accused of
adopting "Kremlin messaging" for daring to protest the official visit of the
far-right Ukrainian politician Andriy Parubiy - the founder of two neo-Nazi
parties and author of a white nationalist memoir, "View From The Right."
These smear campaigns and many more surreptitiously orchestrated by the
Integrity Initiative offer a disturbing preview of the reactionary politics
it plans to inject into an already toxic American political environment.
Lessons from "the man who sold the war"
A newly released Integrity Initiative document reveals that the outfit plans
an aggressive expansion across the US.
The Integrity Initiative claims to have already established a "simple
office" in Washington DC, though it does not say where. It also boasts of
partnerships with top DC think tanks like the Atlantic Council, the Center
for European Policy Analysis, CNA, and close relationships with US
officials.
A major hub of Integrity Initiative influence is the State Department's
Global Engagement Center, a de facto US government propaganda operation that
was established by President Barack Obama to battle online ISIS recruitment,
but which was rapidly repurposed to counter Russian disinformation following
the election of Trump.
The Integrity Initiative has also recruited one of the most infamous
American PR men to organize its clusters of journalists and political
figures.
He is John Rendon, best known as "The Man Who Sold The War" - several wars,
in fact, but most notoriously the Iraq invasion. Rendon was the
self-described "information warrior" who planted fake news in the major
US-UK media about non-existent WMD threats. With deep ties to the CIA and
other military-intelligence agencies, his PR firm was paid $100 million to
organize and sell Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress. In 2002, the New
York Times exposed a Pentagon program using Rendon to plant "disinformation"
- including "false stories" and "the blackest of black PR" - in media
outlets around the world, in order to shape public opinion and sell the Iraq
invasion.
John Rendon (left) with Maj. Gen. Michael Snodgrass, US Africa Command Chief
of Staff (photo by US Africom Public Affairs)
Journalist James Bamford outlined a catalogue of disinformation feats Rendon
performed for the Pentagon, such as identifying "the biases of specific
journalists and potentially obtain an understanding of their allegiances,
including the possibility of specific relationships and sponsorships."
Bamford also found proposals and programs Rendon was involved in that aimed
to "'coerce' foreign journalists and plant false information overseas. [and]
find ways to 'punish' those who convey the 'wrong message.'"
These tactics seem particularly relevant to his work with the Integrity
Initiative, especially considering the internal documents that reveal
further Rendon-style plans to produce reports and studies to be "fed
anonymously into local media." (Among the outlets listed as friendly hosts
in Integrity Initiative internal memos are Buzzfeed and El Pais, the
center-left Spanish daily.)
Keeping up with the Gorkas
Internal documents also refer to interactions between Integrity Initiative
Director Chris Donnelly and top Trump officials like Katharine Gorka, a
vehemently anti-Muslim Department of Homeland Security official, as well as
her husband, Sebastian, who earned right-wing fame during his brief tenure
in Trump's White House.
The latter Gorka is an open supporter of the Hungarian Vitezi Rend, a
proto-fascist order that collaborated with Nazi Germany during its
occupation of Hungary. Following Trump's election victory in 2016, Gorka
appeared for televised interviews in a black Vitezi Rend uniform.
Sebastian Gorka, in Vitezi Rend garb, with his wife, Katharine, on Election
Night
Gorka was among the first figures listed on an itinerary for Donnelly to
Washington this September 18 to 22. The itinerary indicates that the two had
breakfast before Donnelly delivered a presentation on "Mapping Russian
Influence Activities" at the federally funded military research center, CNA.
According to the itinerary, Donnelly was granted access to Pentagon
officials like Mara Karlin, an up-and-coming neoconservative cadre, and John
McCain Institute executive director Kurt Volker, another neoconservative
operative who also serves as the US Special Representative for Ukraine.
Numerous meetings with staffers inside the State Department's Office of
Global Engagement were also detailed.
A foreign agent in the State Department?
Of all the State Department officials named in Integrity Initiative
documents, the one who appeared most frequently was Todd Leventhal.
Leventhal has been a staffer at the State Department's Global Engagement
Center, boasting of "20 years of countering disinformation, misinformation,
conspiracy theories, and urban legends." In an April 2018 Integrity
Initiative memo, he is listed as a current team member:
Funded to the tune of $160 million this year to beat back Russian
disinformation with "counter-propaganda," the State Department's Global
Engagement Center has refused to deny targeting American citizens with
information warfare of its own. "My old job at the State Department was as
chief propagandist," confessed former Global Engagement Center Director
Richard Stengel. "I'm not against propaganda. Every country does it and they
have to do it to their own population and I don't necessarily think it's
that awful."
Like so many of the media and political figures involved in the Integrity
Initiative's international network, the Global Engagement Center's Leventhal
has a penchant for deploying smear tactics against prominent voices that
defy the foreign policy consensus. Leventhal appeared in an outtake of a
recent NBC documentary on Russian disinformation smugly explaining how he
would take down a 15-year-old book critical of American imperialism in the
developing world. Rather than challenge the book's substance and
allegations, Leventhal boasted how he would marshall his resources to wage
an ad hominem smear campaign to destroy the author's reputation. His
strategic vision was clear: when confronting a critic, ignore the message
and destroy the messenger.
Integrity Initiative documents reveal that Leventhal has been paid $76,608
dollars (60,000 British pounds) for a 50% contract.
While those same documents claim he has retired from the State Department,
Leventhal's own Linkedin page lists him as a current "Senior Disinformation
Advisor" to the State Department. If that were true, it would mean that the
State Department was employing a de facto foreign agent.
As a cut-out of the British Foreign Office and Defense Ministry, the
Integrity Initiative's work with current and former US officials and members
of the media raises certain legal questions. For one, there is no indication
that the group has registered under the Justice Department's Foreign Agent
Registration Act, as most foreign agents of influence are required to do.
Grants from the neocons' favorite foundation
An Integrity Initiative memo states that the right-wing Smith Richardson
Foundation has also committed to ponying up funding for its US network as
soon as the group receives 501 c-3 non-profit status. The foundation has
already provided it with about $56,000 for covert propaganda activities
across Europe.
The Smith Richardson Foundation has old ties to the US intelligence
community and controversial cold war influence operations. According to
reporter Russ Bellant, the foundation was secretly bankrolling radical
right-wing "indoctrination campaigns for the American public on cold war and
foreign policy issues"- programs that got the attention of Senator William
Fulbright, who warned then-President Kennedy of their dangers. At one of
these indoctrination seminars, a Smith Richardson Foundation director "told
attendees that 'it is within the capacity of the people in this room to
literally turn the State of Georgia into a civil war college,' in order to
overcome their opponents."
Smith Richardson has funded a who's who of the neoconservative movement,
from hyper-militaristic think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute
and the Institute for the Study of War. "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 journalist Kelley Vlahos.
Besides Smith Richardson, the Integrity Initiative has stated its intention
to apply for grants from the State Department "to expand the Integrity
Initiative activities both within and outside of the USA." This is yet
another indicator that the US government is paying for propaganda targeting
its own citizens.
The "Main Event" in Seattle
An Integrity Initiative internal document argues that because "DC is well
served by existing US institutions, such as those with which the Institute
[for Statecraft] already collaborates," the organization should "concentrate
on extending the work of the Integrity Initiative into major cities and key
State capitals [sic] across the USA."
This December 10, the Integrity Initiative organized what it called its
"main event" in the US. It was a conference on disinformation held in
Seattle, Washington under the auspices of a data firm called Adventium Labs.
Together with the Technical Leadership Institute at the University of
Minnesota, the Integrity Initiative listed Adventium Labs as one of its
"first partners outside DC."
Adventium is Minneapolis-based research and development firm that has reaped
contracts from the US military, including a recent $5.4 million
cyber-security grant from the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects
Agency, or DARPA.
Inside a modest-sized hotel conference room, the Adventium/Integrity event
began with a speech by the Integrity Initiative's Simon Bracey-Lane. Two
years prior, Bracey-Lane appeared on the American political scene as a field
worker for Bernie Sanders' 2016 presidential primary run, earning media
write-ups as the "Brit for Bernie." Now, the young operator was back in the
US as the advance man for a military-intelligence cut-out that specialized
in smearing left-wing political figures like Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour
leader widely regarded as the British version of Sanders.
Bracey-Lane opened his address by explaining that Integrity Initiative
director Chris Donnelly had been unable to appear at the event, possibly
because he was bogged down in the scandal back home. He proceeded to read
remarks prepared by Donnelly that offered a window into the frighteningly
militaristic mindset the Integrity Initiative aims to impose on the public
through their media and political allies.
According to Donnelly's comments, the West was no longer in a "peace time,
rules based environment." From the halls of government to corporate
boardrooms to even the UK's National Health System, "the conclusion is that
we have to look for people who suit a wartime environment rather than
peacetime."
During Q&A, Bracey-Lane remarked that "we have to change the definition of
war to encompass everything that war now encompasses," referring vaguely to
various forms of "hybrid warfare."
"There is a great deal to be done in communicating that to young people," he
continued. "When we mean being at war we don't mean sending our boys off to
fight. It's right here in our homes."
The emphasis on restructuring society along martial lines mirrored the
disturbing thinking also on display in notes of a private meeting between
Donnelly and Gen. Richard Barrons in 2016. During that chat, the two
officers decided that the British military should be removed from democratic
supervision and be able to operate as "an independent body outside
politics."
While Bracey-Lane's presentation perfectly captured the military mindset of
the Integrity Initiative, the speakers that followed him offered a diverse
array of perspectives on the concept of disinformation, some more nuanced
than others. But one talk stood out from the rest - not because of its
quality, but because of its complete lack thereof.
Reanimating the "red-brown" grifter
Alexander Reid Ross (left) and Emmi Bevensee at the Integrity Initiative's
"main event" in Seattle
The presentation was delivered by Alexander Reid Ross, a half-baked
political researcher who peddles computer-generated spiderweb relationship
charts to prove the existence of a vast hidden network of "red-brown"
alliances and "syncretic media" conspiracies controlled by puppeteers in
Moscow.
Ross is a lecturer on geography at Portland State University with no
scholarly or journalistic credentials on Russia. His students have given him
dismal marks at Rate My Professors, complaining about his "terrible monotone
lectures" and his penchant for "insert[ing] his own ideologies into our
class." But with a book, "Against the Fascist Creep," distributed by the
well-known anarchist publishing house, AK Press, the middling academic has
tried to make his name as a maverick analyst.
Before the Integrity Initiative was exposed as a military-intelligence front
operation, Ross was among a small coterie of pundits and self-styled
disinformation experts that followed the group's Twitter account. The
Integrity Initiative even retweeted his smear of War Nerd podcast co-host
John Dolan.
In a series of articles for the Southern Poverty Law Center last year, Ross
attempted to bring his warmed-over Cold War theories to the broader public.
He wound up trashing everyone from the co-author of this piece, Max
Blumenthal, to Nation magazine publisher Katrina Vanden Heuvel to Harvard
University professor of international relations Stephen Walt as hidden
shadow-fascists secretly controlled by the Kremlin.
The articles ultimately generated an embarrassing scandal and a series of
public retractions by the editor-in-chief of the Southern Poverty Law
Center, Richard Cohen. And then, like some Dr. Frankenstein for discredited
and buried journalism careers, the British Ministry of Defense-backed
Integrity Initiative moved in to reanimate Ross as a sought-after public
intellectual.
Before the Integrity Initiative-organized crowd, Ross offered a rambling
recitation of his theory of a syncretic fascist alliance puppeteered by
Russians: "The alt right takes from both this 'red-brown,' it's called, or
like left-right syncretic highly international national of nationalisms, and
from the United States' own paleoconservative movement, and it's sort of
percolated down through college organizing, um, and anti-interventionism
meets anti-imperialism. Right?"
In a strange twist, Ross appeared on stage at the Integrity Initiative's
Seattle event alongside Emmi Bevensee, a contributor to the left-libertarian
Center for a Stateless Society (C4SS) think tank, whose tagline, "a left
market anarchist think-tank" expresses its core aim of uniting far-left
anarchists with free-market right-libertarians.
Bevensee, a PhD candidate at the University of Arizona and self-described
"Borderlands anarcho into tech and crypto," concluded her presentation by
asserting a linkage between the alternative news site, Zero Hedge, and the
"physical militarized presence in the borderlands" of anti-immigrant
vigilantes. Like Bevensee, Ross has written for C4SS in the past.
The irony of contributors to an anarchist group called the "Center for a
Stateless Society" auditioning before The State - the most jackbooted
element of it, in fact - for more opportunities to attack anti-war
politicians and journalists, can hardly be overstated.
But closer examination of the history of C4SS veers from irony into
something much darker and more unsettling.
Pedophile co-founder, white nationalist associates
C4SS was co-founded in 2006 by a confessed child rapist and libertarian
activist, Brad Spangler, who set the group up to promote "Market anarchism"
to "replace Marxism on the left."
When Spangler's child rape confessions emerged in 2015, the Center for
Stateless Society founder was finally drummed out by his colleagues.
There's more: Spangler's understudy and deputy in the C4SS, Kevin Carson -
currently listed as the group's "Karl Hess Chair in Social Theory" - turned
out to be a longtime friend and defender of white nationalist Keith Preston.
Preston's name is prominently plastered on the back of Kevin Carson's book,
hailing the C4SS man as "the Proudhon of our time" - a loaded compliment,
given Proudhon's unhinged anti-Semitism. Carson only disowned Preston in
2009, shortly before Preston helped white nationalist leader Richard Spencer
launch his alt-right webzine, Alternative Right.
The C4SS group currently participates in the annual Koch-backed
International Students For Liberty conference in Washington DC, LibertyCon,
a who's who of libertarian think-tank hacks and Republican Party
semi-celebrities like Steve Forbes, FCC chairman Ajit Pai, and Alan
Dershowitz.
In 2013, C4SS's Kevin Carson tweeted out his dream fantasy that four Jewish
leftists - Mark Ames, Yasha Levine, Corey Robin, and Mark Potok - would die
in a plane crash while struggling over a single parachute. Potok was an
executive editor at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which last year
retracted every one of the crank articles that Alexander Reid Ross published
with them and formally apologized for having run them.
For some reason, the super-sleuth Ross conveniently failed to investigate
the libertarian group, C4SS, that he has chosen to partner with and publish
in. That ability to shamelessly smear and denounce leftists over the most
crudely manufactured links to the far-right - while cozying up to groups as
sleazy as C4SS and authoritarian as the Integrity Initiative - is the sort
of adaptive trait that MI6 spies and the Rendon Group would find useful in a
covert domestic influence operation.
Ross did not respond to our request for comment on his involvement with the
Integrity Initiative and C4SS.
Disinformation for democracy
As it spans out across the US, the Integrity Initiative has stated its
desire to "build a younger generation of Russia watchers." Toward this goal,
it is supplementing its coterie of elite journalists, think tank hacks,
spooks and State Department info-warriors with certifiable cranks like Ross.
Less than 24 hours after Ross's appearance at the Integrity Initiative event
in Seattle, he sent a menacing email to the co-author of this article, Ames,
announcing his intention to recycle an old and discredited smear against him
and publish it in the Daily Beast - a publication that appears to enjoy a
special relationship with Integrity Initiative personnel.
Despite the threat of investigation in the UK, the Integrity Initiative's
"network of networks" appears to be escalating its covert, government-funded
influence operation, trashing the political left and assailing anyone that
gets in its way - all in the name of fighting foreign disinformation.
"We have to win this one," Integrity Initiative founder Col. Chris Donnelly
said, "because if we don't, democracy will be undermined."
Mark Ames is the co-host of the Radio War Nerd podcast. Subscribe to Radio
War Nerd on Patreon.
Max Blumenthal
Max Blumenthal is an award-winning journalist and the author of books
including best-selling Republican Gomorrah, Goliath, The Fifty One Day War,
and The Management of Savagery, which will be published in March 2019 by
Verso. He has also produced numerous print articles for an array of
publications, many video reports and several documentaries including Killing
Gaza and Je Ne Suis Pas Charlie. Blumenthal founded the Grayzone Project in
2015 to shine a journalistic light on America's state of perpetual war and
its dangerous domestic repercussions.
http://grayzoneproject.com