Listen to a reading of this article:

The Grayzone has published leaked email communications between faux-left British commentator and aspiring parliamentarian Paul Mason and a shady intelligence contractor named Amil Khan which plainly shows the two plotting to use state power to subvert anti-imperialist media outlets like Consortium News and Grayzone, as well as “far left rogue academics” and the broader left more generally.

Mason has obliquely authenticated the contents of the emails with a weird, rambling Medium post claiming to have been victimized by a “Russian hack-and-leak operation.” The post does not deny the veracity of the emails. Instead, Mason bizarrely claims that they “may be altered or faked,” as though they are not his own personal communications whose accuracy he could instantly deny if they were altered or faked in any way.

This is the same as verifying the emails and then yelling “But look over there! It’s Putin!”

It would take a very silly person indeed to look at a bunch of authenticated emails showing a major British media figure conspiring with an intelligence contractor to subvert the antiwar left, and then conclude that the correct response to this would be to get angry at the Russians.

There will probably be a lot written about these leaks in the coming days, but for now I’d like to focus on the fact that, in these private communications between a media insider and an intelligence insider, the “independent investigative journalism” outlet known as Bellingcat is described as a “proxy” for western intelligence agencies and is said to receive “a steady stream of intel” from them.

“Just as Bellingcat get a steady stream of intel from Western agencies, I suspect the attacks on you and others are fed by Russian and Chinese intel,” Mason is seen telling Khan, who has been the subject of a previous Grayzone exposé.

On the team of spinmeisters Mason and Khan were plotting to assemble to undermine anti-imperialist media, Mason said that “what it really also needs is intel service input by proxy – eg Bellingcat.” Which certainly reads like an explicit call to work with western intelligence agencies to take down his perceived enemies on the left.

“Khan – a long-time advocate and associate of [Bellingcat] – did not once challenge Mason’s repeated characterization of the supposed citizen journalist collective as a clearing house for friendly spy agencies,” write Grayzone’s Kit Klarenberg and Max Blumenthal.

As of this writing there has been little in the way of denial from Bellingcat of those claims the closet CIA fan Paul Mason made when he believed he was communicating in privacy. The Twitter page of its executive director and founder Eliot Higgins tweeted, “I see the Gray Zone has acquired even more hacked emails, I wonder who keeps providing them with those, hmmmm.”

When asked by a commenter if intelligence agencies leak information to Bellingcat, Higgins replied, “No and never,” which he then immediately retreated from when pressed, saying instead, “Well if we use sources that aren’t open sources we’ll use multiple independent sources to acquire the same or related data and triangulate the data to confirm its authenticity.”

Which is a mighty long pace from “No and never,” if you look at it. It’s saying well if we do get information from someone who might work for an intelligence agency, we’ll use “related data” from other sources (who themselves may or may not also have intelligence ties) to “confirm” it.

People would be well advised to take anything Higgins says about his operation with a large grain of salt. In 2016 he dismissed the suggestion that his operation is funded by the CIA cutout known as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) with a “Stop reading conspiracy websites.” Less than a year later he admitted when pressed that Bellingcat does indeed receive funding from NED.

This is not the first time it has been claimed that Bellingcat operates as a proxy for western intelligence information laundering, nor the second, nor the third. As Alan MacLeod documented last year for Mintpress News, there was already a mountain of evidence that the “independent” narrative management firm celebrated and beloved by the western political/media class operates as a proxy of the western intelligence cartel. Mason and Khan’s communications are just one more piece on the pile.

Western intelligence agencies have numerous pathways through which they can get information, misinformation and disinformation into the mainstream press without people noticing that the news media are publishing government propaganda. Mason’s emails are yet more evidence that Bellingcat is one such pipeline for intelligence cartel psyops.

If there’s something the cartel wants published, they launder it through proxies like Bellingcat and then the news media run it saying it’s been verified by an “independent” “OSINT” service. And presto, you’ve got yourself some good old fashioned Langley-cooked spook propaganda.

This doesn’t mean that everything Bellingcat publishes is entirely false (the best propaganda is generally a mixture of truth with half-truth, distortion, lies by omission, and the removal of context and perspective), it just means it’s generally untrustworthy. Because it operates at the direction, knowingly or unknowingly, of sociopathic government agencies whose only interest is in domination and control.

If the term “information laundering” sounds familiar to you, it might be because you heard it used in the news, like during the George W Bush administration when Dick Cheney’s inner circle was leaking false claims about Iraq to The New York Times, “verifying” that information when contacted to confirm it, and then citing those false news reports when continuing to make the case for invasion.

The term might also sound familiar to you because information laundering was the subject of the much-ridiculed Mary Poppins jingle sung by notorious imperial narrative manager Nina Jankowicz, who also featured in the Grayzone report. Apparently Mason contacted Khan in outrage over a Consortium News piece disputing the official imperial Ukraine narrative, and Khan reached out to Jankowicz for advise on what to do.

Jankowitz told Khan that Consortium was a case of “useful idiots rather than funding,” meaning it’s not paid by the Kremlin it just publishes things that empire managers don’t like. Khan then told Mason that there was a highly suspicious gap in Consortium News publications between 2005 and 2011, which Consortium editor Joe Lauria explained in The Grayzone piece was apparently the result of Khan not doing basic fact checking and not understanding how the internet works.

Lovely.

Sing it with me now:

“It’s how you hide a little, hide a little lie! It’s how you hide a little, hide a little lie!”

_____________________

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30 responses to “Paul Mason Says Bellingcat Launders Information For Western Intelligence”

  1. Hey Johnstone,

    Australian of the year nominations are coming up. Guess who I think is mighty deserving? Yeah I know you haven’t got a snowball’s chance but you’re a national treasure to me.

    X

  2. Many many folk know the truth. I don’t understand why so few actually hear what’s said.
    Just a very small sample of what springs to mind:
    From Mansun’s “Taxlo$$”:
    We’ll sell you down the river
    Just remember that we said we’d deliver
    …and…
    We think you are stupid
    Just remember that our assets are fluid
    From Rotersand’s “Capitalism”:
    We take it all and the rest is yours

    1. Dammit, what happened to my old avatar? I loved that avatar . . .

    2. Or maybe I’m the only one that listens to subversive music.

      1. I’m back! How did that happen?
        Thanks be to Cait!

  3. Lithuanian violinist in his jeans. How about the two Lithuanian bros Mark and Ian Brezinski that have helped Ukraine sooo much these last three decades. It’s the Polish puppeteers doing a terrible impression of Josef Pilsudski’s PROMETHEISM! Keep LVIV LVIV!

  4. Ted Christian Avatar
    Ted Christian

    I sometimes wonder how people can hold a world view they believe has to be supported by lying, but then I remember they’re pathologically dishonest swine.

    A lot of the larger lies eventually reveal themselves without having to be uncovered. Iraqi WMDs, the inevitable removal of Assad and Maduro, and the victory of Ukraine come to mind. Anybody who wants to pay attention can notice that imperial pronouncements are commonly proven false by events.

    1. Like Guaido in Venezuela. Nobody elected him and he isn’t in charge of anything; but American politicians and pundits insist that he’s the “real” president, because democracy.

  5. The Bilderbergers are in charge. That’s the way I see it. The World Economic Forum is a branch, a feeder organization, a subdivision, an illegitimate off-spring, of the Bilderberg Group. It receives the marching orders, it doesn’t give them.
    The WEC is the muscle that slaps around the muscle who’s job it is to slap around any nation-state that drifts out of line.
    Or more accurately, continually slap those nation-states silly 24/7 365, to better ensure that they don’t have to be “dealt with,” which usually means they must be dismembered, their leftover pieces thrown to the howling dogs, a process, that although deeply satisifying, can be both unprofitable and time consuming.
    Besides, what really floats the boats of our neo-liberal yachting class, is steadfast abject fealty.
    Max Blumenthal was one of two journalists, in the whole wide world (Lmao!!!), who covered the most recent Bilderberg meeting. When asked by Jimmy Dore, “Max … why do think the media doesn’t cover this?” Max replied, “well, many of them are inside.”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QI5Xz8fATDk
    I have to believe the Bilderbergers are charge, for my mental health, because the only other power center that could possibly lie above them, falls into the categories of all the various Lizard People Conspiracy Theorums, and I’m not ready to go their yet. Those are Rabbit Holes that are way too deep and infinite for me.
    I mean this Bilderberger shit is gentle on the mind. It exists. It is public. It is a proud organization that makes it clear to all that it is running the show behind closed doors.
    Easy peasy.

    1. Then again, I could be wrong. Maybe the Bilderberg Group (Marlon Brando) has stepped aside for the prodigal son (Al Pacino), who not only has the youth and energy and intelligence to keep the family operation humming, but has a plan to make the business “legitimate,” thereby all but assuring it can never be torn asunder by the forces of do-goodism, because the do-gooders will be absorbed during the legitimatization process almost as afterthought, along with everything else.
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nj38vCKNbqs
      Russel Brand is looking for his tinfoild hat at the end. Too funny. He misplaced it apparently. My advice to him is to have several at the ready at all times.
      I do. For instance, right this moment, I have put a new one on, and it’s allowing me to consider the possibility the Bilderberg Group has wisely, and graciously, accepted the role of ceremonial consigliere to the new boss of bosses, the WEF.

      1. I think that before we get to the lizard people, there’s a class that’s not represented at Bilderberg and who probably correspond with their lackeys there (the attendees) via earplugs like in James Bond’s Tosca performance scene in Quantum of Solace. It’s the owners. The Bilderberg attendees don’t own anything. They’re proles. The real bosses are the owners, like the Citigroup bankers who infamously chose Obama’s cabinet in 2008:
        https://www.governmentslaves.news/citigroup-chose-obamas-2008-cabinet-wikileaks-document-reveals/
        The MIC bankers, who need and plan wars, the boards of investment funds Blackrock and Vanguard that own over 80% of the world’s wealth and will own even more as the West goes into recession and more small businesses will go under and sell cheap (which is probably the goal of the otherwise incomprehensible provoked recession in the first place – “in 2030, you’ll own nothing”)
        Rather than lizards, that class is more like leeches…

  6. Bellingcat doesn’t have a monopoly as a laundry service.

    Site Intelligence Group comes to mind.
    It has posed as an independent service based in Bethesda, Md.
    Talk about obvious (if our MSM only had a brain). Site is manned by Israelis including “former” Mossad.
    They are permitted to base themselves right next to Washington DC.
    “Independent”, my foot.

    Most famously they are the ones that laundered Bin Laden Tapes.

    I personally remember them being the discoverers of an al Qaeda in The Arabian Peninsula (AQAP)
    website posting taking responsibility for mailing out bombs. How thin is that?
    A website managed like this one where someone anonymous makes a claim. And along comes
    Mossad, or rather Site Intelligence Group, and says, “Eureka, we know who did it”.
    No word from Mossad if they ever post to that website themselves.

    Perhaps you remember that particular bombing attempt. The Saudi “intelligence” were heroes as
    they defeated the plot. The Saudis came into possession of the tracking numbers for packages
    containing printers with explosives in them. They alerted everyone and the packages were traced and
    removed.

    What kind of terrorist bombers keep their package receipts with the tracking numbers on them?
    And then someone close enough to smell the breath of the bombers sees the 12-digit (?) numbers, three of them, and reports it to Saudi intelligence.

    Later, this logic hole was covered by the Saudis who named an agent of theirs that had infiltrated
    the group. That fig leaf soon fell when the named agent was proven to be hundreds of miles away at the time.

    None of the bombs went off. Saudi intelligence isn’t that ballsey all the time. The bomb wirings weren’t completed. The British, who are remembered for telling us the Saddam Hussein could launch WMD in 45 minutes, said that the printer bomb they intercepted (c/o Saudi intelligence) was only 15 minutes
    away from going off. We know what that really meant. The printer bomb wiring wasn’t complete
    but that in 15 minutes an expert could complete the job if he had wanted to.

    MI6, “only 15 minutes away from going off !” Great headline stuff.

    I recall monitoring the MSM during this Saudi farce and initially the MSM made note of SITE Intelligence
    Group as reporting the “*claim*”. But quickly the MSM reporting stopped mentioning SITE and then stopped using the word “claim”. Reporting moved the bar a bit at a time until finally MSM would only declare, “AQAP was responsible”.
    That is how they operate.

    1. That’s old Rita Katz:
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rita_Katz
      Every time an Arab sneezes, Rita Katz is immediately informed and it’s all over the MSM news.
      Never knew that the CIA was working hand in hand with al-Qaeda in Libya and Syria though. Nobody’s perfect… :o)

  7. See Something Say Something®

    The govment has release their latest
    National Terrorism Advisory System Bulletin – June 07, 2022 09:00 am

    In recent months, Russia and other actors have also amplified conspiracy theories alleging U.S. responsibility for the Russia-Ukraine crisis and claiming U.S. support for bio-weapons labs abroad.


    See Something Say Something®

  8. Re Salisbury alleged poisonings: It has always seemed totally implausible and inconceivable to me that it would take the police – and MI5/MI6 et al – six months to come up with the two suspects. A couple of weeks more like it, at the very most! I mean it seems highly unlikely that Sergei Skripal himself didn’t have security cameras/CCTV, and there would almost definitely have been other households in and around the location with CCTV. And THAT of course is where you would start – ie by obtaining all the CCTV footage you can in the immediate area, and checking that out first. And then check out CCTV footage working OUT from there, whilst other investigators – once the initial footage of the two suspects has been found – check out the footage from the railway station etc, etc. And once you know what the suspects look like, then you would of course have investigators simultaneously checking out footage from Heathrow and Gatwick to see if they arrived there etc. And I doubt that would all take more than three or four days working round the clock.
    .

    And if Bellingcat could establish their real names, are we really supposed to believe that MI5/MI6 et al couldn’t have done so, and done so within a week or two of the two suspects being initially identified which, as I say, would have taken no more than a few days.
    .

    And needless to say, it’s too absurd for words that the Russian secret service would, in the first place, plan to execute an assassination attempt in such a manner – ie coating the front-door handle with a deadly poison in broad daylight. And I mean all THREE – ie coating the front-door handle, using a deadly nerve agent, and doing so in broad daylight. It’s just totally ludicrous! Oh, right, and Vlad was suddenly so determined to have Sergei Skripal bumped off as soon as possible (once the urge to have him killed came over him), that he just didn’t care if it was carried out just two days before the celebrations to mark one hundred days to go to the World Cup Football (which Russia was hosting for the first time), and just over three months before the tournament kicked off.
    .

    And the chances of two people who came into contact with a nerve agent several hours earlier becoming incapacitated in exactly the same moment is absolute zero!
    .

    It was all staged, and those who planned it all got the Russians to send over a couple of agents on the pretext that Skripal had some top secret documents he wanted to hand on to the FSB, or whoever. But the arranged rendezvous for the Saturday had to be aborted at the last moment. as per the script……..
    .

    And how fortuitous that the Chief Nurse of the entire British Army just happened to be walking past just at the moment the Skripals suddenly became incapacitated.

    1. It’s because Inspector Lestrade was in charge and Sherlock Holmes was working on another case at the time.

  9. DisinfectantSunlight Avatar
    DisinfectantSunlight

    No matter how thick the wall of lies is, it seems the Universal Intelligence/Truth always leaves some cracks of honest souls to let the light of Truth to shine through. Caitlin, Consortium News, Gray Zones, Moon of Alabama, Ray McGovern etc. are such “cracks” in manufactured lies. This gives enough reason to get up every day and have hope for the future. We are all Grateful for your efforts. Truth always comes from a few disseminated to many, changing the Societies and Paradigms. We are living in such transitional time of “Paradigm shift”.

  10. It’s embarrassing to watch Amy Goodman rip & read their slimy lies, verbatim. MI6, WEF, CIA, Atlantic Council, AIPAC, CFR, Bezos & NYT has to shut down the truth; since sneeringly brainwashed, specously obsequious reactionary liberals can feed upon us at will. These last two years of murdering & debilitating many millions to fatten-up Creative Class & PMC equities portfolios & pick a war for fracking, is just a foretaste?

    1. Talk about controlled opposition… Nothing new either! I remember when CIA whistle-blower and anti-war activist Susan Lindauer was framed and jailed in 2004 under the Patriot Act for being vocal about the Iraq war scam – which was also incidentally the theme of then director of the IAEA Mohamed elBaradei’s 2011 book The Age of Deception as well as of a recent Dubya lapsus – and said Amy Goodman refused to even meet her to discuss her case. Democracy Now… Like in Ukrainian “democracy” where opponents and journalists are disappeared, tortured and/or killed by the bunch by the nazis “defending our freedoms”? I’m asking you… Amy Goodman has brought doublethink and newspeak to Guinness records levels :o)

  11. Vera Gottlieb Avatar
    Vera Gottlieb

    How much lower can our Western ‘civilized’ world sink??? Are there still some folks around who know how to do business the HONEST way?

    1. There are plenty of the honest ones. However, they would not compromise their integrity by going into politics. Nowadays, it takes a particular brand of immorality to aspire to be a politician.

  12. I don’t know what’s worse, the dreary likelihood that Bellingcat doesn’t believe everything it says about Russia or the troubling possibility that it does.

    1. Good point! I would rather go for the first option, remembering Kim Iversen explaining how she once accepted a no-strings attached invitation to visit Palestine by a Palestinian organization and, after mentioning in her report the appalling Israeli attitude there (which everybody interested has been
      aware of for 74 years anyway), was accused by Bellingcat of having been bribed while they knew full well it was not the case.

  13. Welcome to the Western MSM/intelligence nexus – where it’s “all criminality” – “all the time.”

    But, err, uhh – “it’s Putin’s fault!”

    1. Vera Gottlieb Avatar
      Vera Gottlieb

      But of course it is Putin’s fault!!! We have to blame someone…we can’t blame ourselves.

    2. Making Putin a victim again? What would Gabor say? Putin doesn’t really need your help. You think too much of yourself if you think he does.

      1. What about Zelensky? Does he need our help? And the non-existing Ukronazis? It certainly would help if you told us exactly what to say about everybody in order to help us acquire the humility you embody so brilliantly!

        1. Same applies to Zelensky. It’s interesting you thought it didn’t. Says something about your alienating reactionary biases. If you’re truly anti-war, you’re critical of all the oligarchs involved in this Ukrainian squabble. As for “Ukronazis,” shut up with that bullsh*t. Putin uses Nazis to his advantage every bit as much as the West does and the Ukrainian oligarchy does. Nazis are tools of oligarchs everywhere. A secondary paramilitary police force for oligarchs, if you will.

          1. No, Ukro nasties are a direct tool of the Ukie state. They have been terrorising the Rooskie speaking population in the Donbass regions that is not under
            the control of the separatists.

  14. Thanks for this. Consortium News & Grayzone are my two trusted news sources. And you are a trusted soul- much love.

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