AN UNHEALTHY RESPECT FOR AUTHORITY
The Notorious London Spy School Churning Out Many of the Worlds Top
Journalists
The fact that the very department that trains high state officials and
agents of secretive three letter agencies is also the place that produces
many of the journalists we rely on to stand up to those officials and keep
them in check is seriously problematic.
by Alan Macleod
June 04th, 2021
Mint Press News
By Alan Macleod
LONDON In a previous investigation, MintPress News explored how one
university department, the Department of War Studies at Kings College
London, functions as a school for spooks. Its teaching posts are filled with
current or former NATO officials, army officers and intelligence operatives
to churn out the next generation of spies and intelligence officers.
However, we can now reveal an even more troubling product the department
produces: journalists. An inordinate number of the worlds most influential
reporters, producers and presenters, representing many of the most
well-known and respected outlets including The New York Times, CNN and the
BBC learned their craft in the classrooms of this London department,
raising serious questions about the links between the fourth estate and the
national security state.
A School for Spooks: The London University Department Churning Out NATO
Spies
Alan Macleod uncovers the deep links between the British security state and
the Department of War Studies at Kings College London.
MintPress News|Alan Macleod|May 3
National security school
Increasingly, it appears, intelligence agencies the world over are beginning
to appreciate agents with a strong academic background. A 2009 study
published by the CIA described how beneficial it is to use universities as
a means of intelligence training, writing that, exposure to an academic
environment, such as the Department of War Studies at Kings College London,
can add several elements that may be harder to provide within the government
system.
The paper, written by two Kings College staffers, boasted that the
departments faculty has extensive and well-rounded intelligence
experience. This was no exaggeration. Current Department of War Studies
educators include the former Secretary General of NATO, former U.K. Minister
of Defense, and military officers from the U.K, U.S. and other NATO
countries. I deeply appreciate the work that you do to train and to educate
our future national security leaders, many of whom are in this audience,
said then-U.S. Secretary of Defense (and former CIA Director) Leon Panetta
in a speech at the department in 2013.
Kings College London also admits to having a number of ongoing contracts
with the British state, including with the Ministry of Defence (MoD), but
refuses to divulge the details of those agreements.
American connections
Although a British university, Kings College markets itself heavily to
American students. There are currently 1,265 Americans enrolled, making up
about 4% of the student body. Many graduates of the Department of War
Studies go on to attain powerful positions in major American media outlets.
Andrew Carey, CNNs Bureau Chief in Jerusalem, for example, completed a
masters there in 2012. Careys coverage of the latest Israeli attack on
Gaza has presented the apartheid state as responding to Hamas rocket
attacks, rather than being the instigator of violence. A leaked internal
memo Carey sent to his staff last month at the height of the bombardment
instructed them to always include the fact that the Gazan Ministry of Health
is overseen by Hamas, lest readers begin to believe the well-documented
Palestinian casualty figures brought on by days of bombing. We need to be
transparent about the fact that the Ministry of Health in Gaza is run by
Hamas. Consequently, when we cite latest casualty numbers and attribute to
the health ministry in Gaza, we need to include the fact that it is Hamas
run, read his instructions.
Carey leaked memo
Kings College alumnus turned CNN Jerusalem bureau chief Andrew Carey
instructed reporters on how to cover Israels latest assault on Gaza
Once publicized, his comments elicited considerable pushback. This is a
page straight out of Israels playbook. It serves to justify the attack on
civilians and medical facilities, commented Al-Jazeera Senior Presenter and
Producer Dena Takruri.
The New York Times, the United States most influential newspaper, has also
employed Department of War Studies alumni. Christiaan Triebert (M.A., 2016),
for example, is a journalist on their visual investigations team. He even
won a Pulitzer Prize for Revelations about Russia and Vladimir Putins
aggressive actions in countries including Syria and Europe. Hiring students
from the school for spooks to bash Russia appears to be a common Times
tactic, as it also employed Lincoln Pigman between 2016 and 2018 at its
Moscow bureau.
Josh Smith, senior correspondent for influential news agency Reuters and
formerly its correspondent in Afghanistan, also graduated from the
department in question, as did The Wall Street Journals Daniel Ford.
Arguably the most influential media figure from the university, however, is
Ruaridh Arrow. Arrow was a producer at many of the U.K.s largest news
channels, including Channel 4, Sky News and the BBC, where he was world duty
editor and senior producer on Newsnight, the networks flagship political
show. In 2019, Arrow left the BBC to become an executive producer at NBC
News.
The British invasion
Unsurprisingly for a university based in London, the primary journalistic
destination for Department of War Studies graduates is the United Kingdom.
Indeed, the BBC, the countrys powerful state broadcaster, is full of War
Studies alumni. Arif Ansari, head of news at the BBC Asian Network,
completed a masters analyzing the Syrian Civil War in 2017 and was soon
selected for a leadership development scheme, placing him in charge of a
team of 25 journalists who curate news primarily geared toward the
substantial Middle Eastern and South Asian communities in Great Britain.
Many BBC employees begin studying at Kings years after their careers have
already taken off, and balance their professional lives with pursuing new
qualifications. Ahmed Zaki, Senior Broadcast Journalist at BBC Global News,
began his masters six years after he started at the BBC. Meanwhile, Ian
MacWilliam who spent ten years at BBC World Service, the countrys
official news broadcast worldwide, specializing in sensitive regions like
Russia, Afghanistan and Central Asia decided to study at Kings more than
30 years after completing his first degree.
Another influential War Studies alumnus at the World Service is Aliaume
Leroy, producer for its Africa Eye program. Well-known BBC News presenter
Sophie Long also graduated from the department, working for Reuters and ITN
before joining the state broadcaster.
Its an open secret that Kings College London Department of War Studies
operates as the finishing school for Anglo-American securocrats. So its
maybe not a surprise that graduates of its various military and intelligence
courses also enter into a world of corporate journalism that exists to
launder the messaging of these same security agencies, Matt Kennard an
investigative journalist for Declassified U.K. who has previously exposed
the universitys connections to the British state told MintPress. It is,
however, a real and present danger to democracy. The university imprimatur
gives the departments research the patina of independence while it works,
in reality, as the unofficial research arm of the U.K. Ministry of Defence,
he added.
Neri Zilber
Israeli writer and Kings College alumnus Neri Zilber has bylines in many of
the medias most important outlets
The Department of War Studies also trains many international journalists and
commentators, including Nicholas Stuart of the Canberra Times (Australia);
Pakistani writer Ayesha Siddiqa, whose work can be found in The New York
Times, Al-Jazeera, The Hindu and many other outlets; and Israeli writer Neri
Zilber, a contributor to The Daily Beast, The Guardian, Foreign Policy and
Politico.
Whats it all about?
Why are so many influential figures in our media being hothoused in a
department well known for its connections to state power, for its faculty
being active or former military or government officials, and for producing
spies and operatives for various three-letter agencies? The point of this is
not to allege that these journalists are all secretly card-carrying spooks:
they are not. Rather, it is to highlight the alarmingly close links between
the national security state and the fourth estate we rely on to be a check
on their power and to hold them accountable.
Journalists trained in this sort of environment are far more likely to see
the world in the same manner as their professors do. And perhaps they would
be less likely to challenge state power when the officials they are
scrutinizing were their classmates or teachers.
These sorts of questions abound when such a phenomenon exists: Why are so
many journalists choosing to study at this particular department, and why do
so many go on to be so influential? Are they being vetted by security
agencies, with or without their knowledge? How independent are they? Will
they just repeat British and American state talking points, as the
Department of War Studies publications do?
On the question of vetting, the BBC admitted that, at least until the 1990s,
it conspired with domestic spying agency MI5 to make sure that people with
left-wing and/or anti-war leanings, or views critical of British foreign
policy and empire were secretly blocked from being hired. When pressed on
whether this policy is still ongoing, the broadcaster refused to comment,
citing security issues a response that is unlikely to reassure skeptics.
While it strikes me as very interesting that a single academic institution
could play such a major role in the recruitment of pro-establishment
activist intellectuals and delivery of the same to the media, it is not so
surprising, Oliver Boyd-Barrett, Professor Emeritus at Bowling Green
States School of Media and Communication and an expert in collusion between
government and media, told MintPress, adding:
Elite institutions in the past and doubtless still today have been major
playgrounds for intelligence services. The history of the modern
nation-state generally, not just the USA, seems to suggest that national
unity and therefore elite safety is regarded by elites as achievable
only through careful management and often suppression or diversion of
dissent. Far more resources are typically committed to this than many
citizens, drilled in the propaganda of democracy, realize or care to
concede.
The Bellingcat Boys
While the journalists cataloged above are not spooks, some other Department
of War Studies figures working in journalism could possibly be described as
such, particularly those around the influential and increasingly notorious
investigative website Bellingcat.
Cameron Colquhoun, for instance, spent almost a decade at GCHQ, Britains
version of the NSA, where he was a senior analyst running cyber and
counter-terrorism operations. He holds qualifications from both Kings
College London and the State Department. This background is not disclosed in
his Bellingcat profile, which merely describes him as the managing director
of a private intelligence company that conduct[s] ethical investigations
for clients around the world.
Bellingcats senior investigator Nick Waters spent four years as an officer
in the British Army, including a tour in Afghanistan, where he furthered the
British states objectives in the region. After that, he joined the
Department of War Studies and Bellingcat.
For the longest time, Bellingcats founder Eliot Higgings dismissed charges
that his organization was funded by the U.S. governments National Endowment
for Democracy (NED) a CIA cutout organization as a ridiculous
conspiracy. Yet by 2017, he was admitting that it was true. A year later,
Higgins joined the Department of War Studies as a visiting research
associate. Between 2016 and 2019 he was also a senior fellow at the Atlantic
Council, the brains behind the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
Higgins appears to have used the university department as a recruiting
ground, commissioning other War Studies graduates, such as Jacob Beeders and
the aforementioned Christiaan Triebert and Aliaume Leroy, to write for his
site.
Bellingcat is held in very high regard by the CIA. I dont want to be too
dramatic, but we love [Bellingcat], said Marc Polymeropoulos, the agencys
former deputy chief of operations for Europe and Eurasia. Other officers
explained that Bellingcat could be used to outsource and legitimize
anti-Russia talking points. The greatest value of Bellingcat is that we can
then go to the Russians and say there you go [when they ask for
evidence], added former CIA Chief of Station Daniel Hoffman.
The Spook to Bellingcat Pipeline: How Bellingcat Launders National Security
State Talking Points into the Press
For a self-proclaimed citizen journalism outfit, an alarming number of
Bellingcats staff come from the military and intelligence agencies.
MintPress News|Alan Macleod|Apr 28
Bellingcaught
A recent MintPress investigation explored how Bellingcat acts to launder
national security state talking points into the mainstream under the guise
of being neutral investigative journalists themselves.
Newly leaked documents show how Bellingcat, Reuters and the BBC were
covertly cooperating with the U.K.s Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO)
to undermine the Kremlin and promote regime change in Moscow. This included
training journalists and promoting explicitly anti-Russian media across
Eastern Europe. Unfortunately, the FCO noted, Bellingcat had been somewhat
discredited, as it constantly spread disinformation and was willing to
produce reports for anyone with money.
Nevertheless, a new European Parliament proposal published last month
recommends hiring Bellingcat to assist in producing reports that would lay
the groundwork for sanctioning Russia, for throwing it out of international
bodies, and to assist Russias transformation into a democracy. In other
words, to overthrow the government of Vladimir Putin.
An academic journalistic nexus
The Department of War Studies is also part of this pro-NATO, anti-Russia
group. Quite apart from being staffed by soldiers, spooks and government
officials, it puts out influential reports advising Western governments on
foreign and defense policy. For instance, a study entitled The future
strategic direction of NATO advises that member states must increase their
military budgets and allow American nuclear weapons to be stored in their
countries, thereby shar[ing] the burden. It also recommended that NATO
must redouble its commitment to opposing Russia while warning that it needed
urgently to form a coherent policy on the Chinese threat.
Other War Studies reports claim that Russia is carrying out
information-psychological warfare through its state channels RT and
Sputnik, and counsel that the West must use its technical means to prevent
its citizens from consuming this foreign propaganda.
Kings College London academics have also proven crucial in keeping
dissident publisher Julian Assange imprisoned. A psychiatrist who has worked
with the War Studies department testified in court that the Australian was
suffering only moderate depression and that his suicide risk was
manageable, concluding that extraditing him to the United States would
not be unjust. As Matt Kennards investigation found, the U.K. Ministry of
Defence had provided £2.2 million ($3.1 million) in funding to the institute
where he worked (although the psychiatrist in question claimed his work was
not directly funded by the MoD).
Kings College London markets the War Studies department to both graduates
and undergraduates as a stepping stone towards a career in journalism. In
its career prospects section for its masters course in war studies, it
tells interested students that graduates go on to work for NGOs, the FCO,
the MoD, the Home Office, NATO, the UN or pursue careers in journalism,
finance, academia, the diplomatic services, the armed forces and more.
Likewise, undergraduates are told that:
You will gain an in-depth and sophisticated understanding of war and
international relations, both as subjects worthy of study and as
intellectual preparation for the widest possible range of career choices,
including in government, journalism, research, and humanitarian and
international organisations.
Courses such as New Wars, New Media, New Journalism fuse together
journalism and intelligence and are overseen by War Studies academics.
It is perhaps unsurprising that the department has taught many influential
politicians, including foreign heads of state and members of the British
parliament. But at least there is considerable overlap between the fields of
defense policy and politics. The fact that the very department that trains
high state officials and agents of secretive three letter agencies is also
the place that produces many of the journalists we rely on to stand up to
those officials and keep them in check is seriously problematic.
An unhealthy respect for authority
Unfortunately, rather than challenging power, many modern media outlets
amplify its message uncritically. State officials and intelligence officers
are among the least trustworthy sources, journalistically speaking. Yet many
of the biggest stories in recent years have been based on nothing except the
hearsay of officials who would not even put their names to their claims.
The level of credulity modern journalists have for the powerful was summed
up by former CNN White House Correspondent Michelle Kosinski, who last month
stated that:
As an American journalist, you never expect:
Your own govt to lie to you, repeatedly
Your own govt to hide information the public has a right to know
Your own govt to spy on your communications
Unfortunately, credulity stretches into outright collaboration with
intelligence in some cases. Leaked emails show that the Los Angeles Times
national security reporter Ken Dilanian sent his articles directly to the
CIA to be edited before they were published. Far from hurting his career,
however, Dilanian is now a correspondent covering national security issues
for NBC News.
Boyd-Barrett said that governments are dependent on the assistance of a
penetrated, colluding and docile mainstream media which of late and in the
context of massive confusion over Internet disinformation campaigns, real
and alleged appear ever more problematic guardians of the public right to
know.
Facebook Hires NATO Press Officer as Intelligence Chief
Facebook hired, Ben Nimmo, former NATO press officer, and senior fellow at
the Atlantic Council, to lead global threat intelligence strategy"
MintPress News|Alan Macleod|Feb 9
In recent years, the national security state has increased its influence
over social media giants as well. In 2018, Facebook and the Atlantic Council
entered a partnership whereby the Silicon Valley giant partially outsourced
curation of its 2.8 billion users news feeds to the Councils Digital
Forensics Lab, supposedly to help stop the spread of fake news online. The
result, however, has been the promotion of trustworthy corporate media
outlets like Fox News and CNN and the penalization of independent and
alternative sources, which have seen their traffic decrease precipitously.
Earlier this year, Facebook also hired former NATO press officer and current
Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council Ben Nimmo to be its chief of
intelligence. Reddits Director of Policy is also a former Atlantic Council
official.
Meanwhile, in 2019, a senior Twitter executive for the Middle East region
was unmasked as an active duty officer in the British Armys 77th Brigade,
its unit dedicated to psychological operations and online warfare. The most
notable thing about this event was the almost complete lack of attention it
received from the mainstream press. Coming at a time when foreign
interference online was perhaps the number one story dominating the news
cycle, only one major outlet, Newsweek, even mentioned it. Furthermore, the
reporter who covered the story left his job just weeks later, citing
stifling top-down censorship and a culture of deference to national security
interests.
Inside Journalist Tareq Haddad's Spectacular Departure from Newsweek
In an exposé essay that doubles as a goodbye to the profession, Newsweek
journalist Tareq Haddad explained why he very publicly quit his job.
MintPress News|Alan Macleod|Dec 20, 2019
The purpose of this article is not to accuse any of those mentioned of being
intelligence agency plants (although at least one person did actually work
as an intel officer). The point is rather to highlight that we now have a
media landscape where many of the Wests most influential journalists are
being trained by exactly the same people in the same department as the next
generation of national security operatives.
It is hardly a good look for a healthy, open democracy that so many spies,
government officials, and journalists trusted to hold them accountable on
our behalf are all being shot out of the very same cannon. Learning side by
side has helped to create a situation where the fourth estate has become
overwhelmingly deferential to the so-called deep state, where anonymous
officials words are taken as gospel. The Department of War Studies is just
one part of this wider phenomenon.