Fife is one of Scotland’s counties, located on its eastern coast. Scotland is a beautiful country, rich in history and full of sights. Fife is no exception, and perhaps the most significant thing it has to offer is the historic Saint Andrews University, one of the oldest in the world. Certainly, no one would think to attribute corresponding importance to the Gateside Mills factory, hidden somewhere in the Fife countryside. It is the abandoned ruin of a Victorian-era industrial building, known only to the locals. And yet, this derelict structure, which not only lacks even basic infrastructure but has been declared dangerous and slated for demolition, happens to serve as the official headquarters of an institution registered as a “charity,” the Institute for Statecraft, and of a program—at least pan-European if not international—that this very institution designed, organized, and implemented, under the name Integrity Initiative; the initiative’s lofty slogan being “protecting democracy against disinformation.” Perhaps the reason Fife and this particular unsuitable building were chosen was that the property’s owning company’s director until 2011 was the current co-director of the institute, Daniel Lafayeedney. Strange or not, this individual is a former British SAS special forces officer and is now a member of the army’s secret services. A relatively obscure Scottish foundation, with a ruin as its cover headquarters and an agent as its head. What could be more natural!
From 2015 and for four years, the Institute for Statecraft (IfS) had managed, presenting itself as a “philanthropic foundation”, to keep its activities through the Integrity Initiative (II) in the dark. However, on November 5, some digital entity under the title of Anonymous uploaded to the internet, on the website cyberguerilla, a series of internal documents of the institute and the initiative. On November 29 followed a second package; and on December 13 a third. By March 29, 2019, the packages of documents that had been published had reached seven (many documents, in their original posting are now deleted, but can be found on other sites that republished them; the first three packages can be found collected here). Although the postings and presentation of the documents were done in a way that suggests hacking, the anonymous via a semi-official twitter account denied that they have any relationship. It is not impossible that it was a leak from someone inside the institute, who camouflaged his actions for obvious reasons. In any case, the important thing is that in no relevant statement did the IfS and the British government deny the authenticity of the documents.
The image revealed by the published documents is that of a Machiavellian war machine with the main field of action being the media and cyberspace, radically different from that of a discreet, benevolent institution. According to the documents, the UK has been running a secret black propaganda operation in Western media, primarily online, targeting Russia (mainly, but also China), as part of an undeclared but already unfolding war. This operation is conducted by an international network of politicians, journalists, academics, and intelligence personnel, all involved in systematic disinformation and deception campaigns. This “network of networks,” as it is characterized in one document—which is funded by the British Foreign and Defense Ministries, NATO, the U.S. State Department, Facebook, and a series of hardline Western institutions—is organized around the Integrity Initiative and overseen by the Institute for Statecraft. The II has established hubs (clusters) already operating in nine countries (Spain, France, Germany, Italy, Greece, Netherlands, Lithuania, Norway, Serbia, Montenegro, Belgium, Ukraine), while preparing many more (in the Middle East, USA, Canada, Poland, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Georgia, Hungary, Cyprus, Austria, Switzerland, Finland, Denmark, Turkey). The director of both II and IfS is Christopher Nigel Donnelly, a career officer of British intelligence services, and from top to bottom it is staffed by personnel from the Foreign and Defense Ministries—primarily specialists in espionage and public relations.
From November 5, when the first package of documents was released and for the following weeks, the issue of the Integrity Initiative moved between obscurity and the margins (and perhaps to break this wall of silence, the second package followed), with the exception of some social media accounts and the Russian news networks RT and Sputnik; in the UK itself and also in Europe, the issue remained buried. The case finally came to the British and European spotlight when the Sunday Mail discovered that through its Twitter accounts, the Initiative had criticized the Labour Party, republishing articles that characterized Jeremy Corbyn as a “useful idiot of Moscow” and accused the party’s spokesperson of promoting the Kremlin’s agenda “deliberately or inadvertently.” Of all that the internal documents of IfS and II revealed, the elderly Albion was scandalized by the fact that a “charity” that had been funded with 2 million pounds (2.3 million euros) from the Foreign Office was using public money to engage in domestic politics.
It took until December for a statement to finally be issued by the Foreign Office, according to which Moscow was to blame for everything. According to the statement, the £2 million grant had been given to the Institute over the past two years for “combating disinformation” abroad, and not for activities within the UK. “The Institute for Statecraft, an independent charitable foundation, was hacked several weeks ago and a series of documents were published and amplified by Kremlin news channels. The goal of the Russian state media campaign is clear. This is yet another example of Russian disinformation aimed at confusing the audience and discrediting an organization that works independently to combat the threat of disinformation.” We have already noted this, but let us repeat it. While the official British position may be shifting the blame to Kremlin’s malice and discovering Russian hacks and manipulations in order to kick the ball out of the stadium, the authenticity of the documents has not been disputed by anyone. Everything that follows is based precisely on these documents.
the real Integrity Initiative
The Integrity Initiative was established in 2015 by the Institute for Statecraft (which had been created in 2006 by Daniel Lafayeedney and Chris Donnelly, both intelligence service officials as we have already noted). According to an internal bulletin, its purpose is “to draw the attention of politicians, policy makers, opinion formers and any other interested parties to the threat Russia poses to democratic institutions in the United Kingdom and across Europe and North America”. In the funding application for 2017-18 to the Foreign Office, it cryptically outlines its methodology (the emphasis is ours). “In order to address Russian disinformation and malign influence in Europe, we need: to expand the knowledge base; to exploit existing experience and to build a network of networks of experts, opinion formers and politicians with the aim of educating the national audience on the threat and helping to build national capabilities to deal with it“.
The official funding of the Initiative comes mainly from the British Foreign Office, although documents regularly refer to funding also from the Ministry of Defense, the amounts of which are secret and not recorded anywhere. For the year 2017-’18, the official budget of the Initiative was only 586,000 pounds, which was covered by the Foreign Office, NATO, and also the Lithuanian Ministry of Defense. For the year 2018-’19, the budget appears to have skyrocketed, since the Foreign Office alone had already approved the allocation of 1.96 million pounds. Apart from the British ministries, with their overt or secret funds, the Initiative had other donors for the current year: 168,000 pounds from NATO’s diplomacy directorate; 70,000 from “collaborating institutes”; free provision of equipment from NATO headquarters; 20,000 from the Lithuanian MoD; 250,000 from the American State Department (with the note that the funding concerns activities outside the United States); 45,000 from the Richardson Foundation (a hardline think tank of the new conservatives and the new far-right in the USA and Britain); 100,000 from Facebook (for “research and educational activities”); and 25,000 from the “German business community.” Long-term, the II’s goal was for cores in each country to become independent from London’s funding and to be financially supported by NATO.
The director of the Institute for Statecraft, as well as of the Integrity Initiative, is Christopher Nigel Donnelly. Donnelly served for years in the secret services of the British army, where he had organized the “Soviet Studies Research Center” as its head. Later, he participated in the formation of the U.S. Army’s “Foreign Military Studies Office.” He had worked at the British Foreign Office and as an advisor to a series of NATO secretaries general. Today, apart from being director of the IfS and the II, he is an advisor to the Lithuanian Foreign Office. He is also a “security and justice senior mentor” for the British “stabilization unit,” whose responsibility is British interventions in other countries. Finally, he serves as an honorary colonel in the SGMI (Specialist Group Military Intelligence), where his responsibility is the recruitment of new agents.
In a report authored by Donnelly to the Foreign Office, marked as “confidential,” the warlike organizational spirit within which the IfS operated is clearly reflected:
Our problem is that for the past 70 years, we in the UK and Europe have lived in a secure, rules-based system that allowed us to enjoy a break from history.
…
Unfortunately, this state of affairs is now being tested. A new conflict paradigm is replacing the 19th and 20th century paradigm.
…
In this new paradigm, the clear line that most people could draw between war and peace, their expectation of stability and a degree of predictability in life, are now replaced by violent uncertainty, a permanent state of instability in which the distinction between war and peace becomes increasingly difficult. The “classical” understanding of conflict as a situation involving two distinct players or groups of players is giving way to a Darwinian world of competition, where all players – nation-states, sub-state actors, large corporations, national or religious groups, etc. – are constantly engaged in an “all against all” war. The rules-based Western system, which most Westerners take for granted and have come to believe is the “normal” one, is under attack from countries and organizations that seek to replace our system with their own. This is not a crisis we are dealing with; it is a strategic challenge coming from many directions simultaneously.
In October 2016, Donnelly had a private discussion with then General Sir Richard Barrons, which is characterized as “personal” and “confidential” in the documents. Barrons is not just anyone; he is a former head of the British armed forces’ general staff. The document’s title is telling:
“The British defense model is collapsing. HB is in real danger”.
There is a progressive, systemic weakening of NATO’s military capability and a dissolution of the defense of all member states…
We now see new/reinvented ways of warfare – hybrid, along with the reaffirmation of hard power in military confrontations…
Aircraft carriers can be useful for many things, but not for a war against China or Russia, which is why we must equip them accordingly…
The West no longer has the military advantage over Russia…
Our nuclear program drains resources from our conventional forces and hollows them out…
The British division in Germany has no value as a deterrent factor against Russia… Our battalion in Estonia is a hostage, not a deterrent factor…
In the recorded discussion (which we will revisit in a subsequent section), the general lamented the lack of influence the military exerts on the government and argued in favor of increasing funding for research think tanks that could subsequently pressure the government:
– So, if some disaster doesn’t occur that will wake people up and demand a response, then we need to find a way to force the core of the government to realize the problem and take it out of the political arena. We will need to impose changes on the heads of established interests.
– We did this in the ’30s.
– My conclusion is that we must be the ones to initiate the discussion or wait for something terrible to happen that will push us into action. We must provoke an independent discussion, outside the government…
We must pose the question of when and how we will begin to put things in proper order. Do we have the national capabilities/abilities to fix things? If yes, how will we improve the exploitation of the resources we have? We need this discussion now. There is not a moment to lose.
Draw your own conclusion as to whether this was a “personal discussion” or a direct order from the deep British state to Donnelly and IfS to become even more actively involved in restructuring the British war machine with an eye to the needs of a potential confrontation with Russia. Furthermore, the aversion to a “problem” that must be resolved by “stepping out of the political sphere” could quite clearly be seen as an indirect reference to a coup. The general, however, was clear: “we,” meaning the military complex, must impose the terms of the discussion; unless “something terrible happens” that “will force us to act.” Provocations and black operations have never been absent from any war, nor would they be absent from a fourth world war…
Barrons’ explicit “advice” was accepted. In 2017, the Integrity Initiative requested funding from the Ministry of Defense for various public influence projects targeting the public, parliament, the military, the government, as well as “foreign forces.” In the application, II provided a list of “performance indicators” that supposedly would measure the success of its activities:
– A harder stance by the government against Russia.
– Better understanding of the military risks threatening the UK.
– Publishing more information in the media about the threat of Russian activities.
– Expansion of the [MI6] network throughout Europe.
– Increase in the number of followers on Twitter.
– Enhanced education of the new generation on disinformation and the risks of social media.
– Greater awareness across all sectors of society regarding the threat of Russian activity against British democratic institutions.
The practical implementation of such goals and the Initiative’s action are documented in a document concerning negotiations between II and the French firm Lexfo, with the objective of organizing an international information warfare campaign (infowar campaign). The title is “Combating Russian disinformation – Organizing an online communication and information campaign to expose and combat state-controlled propaganda – General action plan”. The plan is classified as “strictly confidential” and concerns the dissemination of propaganda manufactured by II through an aggressive campaign, with a monthly cost per language of 20,000 to 40,000 pounds. The proposal also includes a second component of countermeasures through “negative public relations, legal actions, ethical hack back, etc.” (Hack-back refers to proactive protection against potential attempts to breach data confidentiality and practically involves the same set of hacking techniques, but in this case, the actions are considered “ethical” because they are carried out “for a good purpose”). According to the company’s plan, it claims it can upload hundreds of “articles” on a daily basis to as many websites as possible, while its offer even includes editing, meaning the appropriate “revision/correction” of Wikipedia entries.
Where the action of the Initiative is most specifically highlighted is in the work of the “clusters”, that is, the cores in each country. The case of the Spanish cluster, one of the first to be established and one of the most active, is characteristic. On June 7 of last year, around noon, the information circulated that the Spanish government intended to appoint Pedro Baños Bajo as director of the national security service (the equivalent of the FBI); the problem was that the aforementioned individual had a reputation as a Russophile. The document with the report on the actions of the Spanish cluster reads almost like a military communiqué and could very well describe a military operation; with the difference that this one was carried out in the media and on the internet.
– Noon: the Spanish core of the II hears that a known pro-Russian voice, Pedro Baños, is about to be appointed over the weekend to the position…
– 1400: the leader of the Spanish core informs the other members and prepares a file to inform the Spanish media. The core launches a campaign on twitter trying to prevent the appointment.
– 1445: the leader of the Spanish core informs the British team of the II, which activates the II’s network with the aim of causing international solidarity in the twitter campaign.
The British team creates a WhatsApp group to coordinate reactions on twitter, puts contacts on twitter to intensify the information and puts people to retweet the material. It publishes opinion articles by Nico de Pedro on the Spanish site StopFakes, which are also retweeted by key influencers.
The core sends material to El Pais and El Mundo for publication and informs contacts at the UK and French embassies.
Result: At 1945 the Spanish core assesses that the campaign has caused significant noise on twitter. Contacts in the socialist party confirm that the prime minister has received the message. Some Spanish diplomats also express reservations. Finally, both the popular party and the Ciudadanos demand that the prime minister stop the appointment.
On that day, June 7th, the Spanish public might have thought they were witnessing another “hot topic” with intense online confrontations, where influencers, personalities, figures of authority, researchers, experts, and every other kind of inhabitant of the digital ecosystem were clashing through posts about an issue of “public interest.” Some may have simply been watching, others took sides by furiously typing away at their keyboards, while others anxiously searched for scandalous details—it could have been any ordinary day on the internet. What nobody could possibly realize at that moment was that a regular, undercover, warfare operation was unfolding right before their eyes. “Today, around 14:00 hours, our bombers took off targeting enemy positions. By 20:00 hours, the operation was crowned with absolute success”…
Beyond this specific incident, the work of the Spanish core had proven so effective that its members were called to testify as “experts” before the British parliament. The subject of the hearing was the Catalan independence referendum and allegations of Anonymous involvement – on behalf of the Kremlin, of course. It is not at all unlikely that Ecuador’s change of stance and Julian Assange’s arrest are a direct result of this very testimony.
Skripal case
At the beginning of 2015, one of the officials of the Institute for Statecraft, Victor Madeira (who has also been in Greece to support the activities of the Greek core), proposed a plan on the theme of possible sanctions that could be applied against Russia. His basic proposal was “to expel every official of the Russian secret services” and military attaché “from as many countries as possible”, calling his plan “Operation Foot (1971) international”. Operation Foot was the largest-scale expulsion of diplomatic personnel in history, leading to the expulsion of more than a thousand Soviet officials from the UK. A second proposal by Madeira was to start systematic subsidization with state money of a series of newspapers, such as Kyiv Post (of Kiev), The Times, The New York Times, etc., in order to be able to compete better with the Russian RT network.
It was during that period that the IfS director Donnelly was promoted to the rank of honorary colonel in the SGMI (Specialist Group Military Intelligence), having as his responsibility, as we wrote above, the recruitment of others into this elite unit.
In October 2016, about 18 months before the case involving the poisoning of double agent Skripal, Donnelly had the discussion with retired general Barrons, which we have already mentioned, and the subject was war with Russia and/or China and Britain’s poor preparation for it.
Based on their assessments, the appetite for war in the UK had fallen significantly, both within the political establishment and among the public. This in turn led to the underfunding of the British war machine and the downgraded representation of the military establishment in decision-making centers.
Our wars did not require the full mobilization of the army nor the mobilization of civil society. They gave us the impression that we can withstand war at 2% of GDP, just like any other national activity. The last time we faced a similar level of complex threats, we were spending 4-5% of GDP. To reach this level, we need an additional 7 billion pounds to bring our current military force to a comparable level of effectiveness. Why do we make so little noise with our money? How will we become competitive at an affordable price?
At this point, Barrons and Donnelly began discussing the possibility of a disaster that “would wake people up and demand a response.” The recorded discussion also refers to the re-introduction of the second world war model, when the leaders of various bodies played a central role in shaping foreign policy:
The leaders are isolated from the National Security Council and the Defense Council. We must put the leaders back into the system, as in the second world war. The staff today only ask if something can be done, never whether it should be done.
After this meeting, Donnelly made a new recruitment for SGMI, Mark Andrew Laverick, a specialist in chemical and biological weapons. Meanwhile, the “destruction” that the Barrons and Donnelly so desired occurred. In March 2018, in Salisbury, someone poisoned double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia. While the official British version, which was readily accepted by the overwhelming majority of Western media and governments, that they were poisoned with the substance novichok by Russian secret services, was easy to dismiss due to the simple fact that the two victims are still alive, the Institute for Statecraft and the Integrity Initiative took immediate action.
The first thing the Initiative did was to launch Operation Iris, a program for systematically monitoring and recording coverage of the Skripal case by major media outlets in the West and Russia, as well as related discussions on social media (the Greek core also did relevant work).
In April, Andy Pryce, head of the British Foreign Office’s “disinformation combat” department and collaborator of IfS and II, sent a letter to the media summarizing everything he believed constituted Russian disinformation regarding the case. Pryce accused Russia of forging evidence, staging reports, and deploying an army of trolls and Twitter bots promoting the idea that the Skripals might not have been poisoned with Novichok from the Russian state. One of the “experts” cited by Pryce who allegedly supported his allegations was Dan Kaszeta, referred to in the letter as a “chemical weapons specialist.” The problem is that, on one hand, Kaszeta has absolutely no connection to the subject matter—in fact, his field is “crisis management”—and on the other hand, he had written articles about the Skripal case on behalf of the Initiative, which paid him for his writing, making him a paid contractor.
But the most important element showing the direct involvement of the IfS and the II in the Skripal case is not so much the discussions that preceded it or the actions that followed, but a meeting at the institute’s offices in London in July 2018. One of the leaked documents includes the names and email addresses of a number of military officials, government officials, and some think tanks. According to the anonymous source who published the documents, the list includes “the employees [of the IfS] who participated in a closed briefing with the ‘white helmets’.” If you missed it, the “white helmets” organization, funded by the US and the UK and directed by the respective intelligence services, operates in Syria, and its main job was staging chemical attacks allegedly carried out by the Assad regime. One name on the list carries particular weight:
Pablo Miller is a MI6 agent and was for years the “handler” of Skripal; furthermore, he happens to be his neighbor in Salisbury. Another name on the list is Howard Body, who is second in the hierarchy of the scientific support department at Porton Down. Porton Down is the headquarters of the largest scientific, technological and research center of the Ministry of Defense and is notorious for the secrecy covering its military research; it also happens to be located next to Salisbury.
To summarize, we have a group composed mainly of secret service agents and communications warfare specialists, which is pushing for an escalation of the confrontation with Russia, has a plan for a mass expulsion of Russian diplomats “from as many countries as possible,” discusses a “catastrophe that will wake up the world,” conspires with the goal of more active military involvement in shaping policy, collaborates with military specialists in chemical warfare, consults with a directed organization specializing in staging fake chemical attacks, and simultaneously unleashes a large-scale infowar operation around the Salisbury case…
If this is just another “conspiracy theory,” then facts and logical correlations no longer hold any value.
clusters – the cores in each country – the Greek case
The scale of the campaign unleashed by British intelligence services through the Institute for Statecraft and the Integrity Initiative is revealed by the clearest indication of the vast network of hubs they had established across Europe (including the Middle East, North Africa, and North America) with funded journalists, academics, politicians, and media specialists. In one of the documents from the first package, which appears to have accompanied the funding application to the Foreign Office for the 2018–19 period, the achievements of “phase 1” are briefly outlined:
1. Development and validation of the core plan and methodology; setting up cores in a number of countries with different conditions…
Connecting media, academic, political, and activist networks in each country with the goal of influencing policy and society: [cited as an example of achievement] silencing pro-Russian voices on Serbian television…
2. We make people (in government, think tanks, the military, journalists) see the big picture, we make people understand that we are under a concentrated, deliberate, hybrid attack from Russia…
3. Increasing response speed by mobilizing the activist network, hunting for the “golden minute” [the unique, appropriate moment]…
To what extent do we engage with governments in the other cores? Details about France and Lithuania have already been mentioned, so we don’t need them.
We engage with governments only very discreetly, relying entirely on confidential personal contacts, especially to ensure they do not view our actions as a problem, and we try to influence them gently, as befits an NGO like ours… [sic]
In another document, from July 2018, titled “progress report on the installation of national cores” and marked “confidential”, the status of cores in twenty countries and regions is recorded. We present excerpts from some cases; apart from Spain, which we have already referred to, they concern Germany, which is characterized as a “very difficult, but extremely important target”; Lithuania, which is treated as an exemplary case; Serbia and Montenegro, due to proximity; and of course Greece, for obvious reasons.
integrity of germany
At the core of this initiative is a distinguished academic who recently retired from the SWP [Institute for International Affairs and Security, one of Germany’s most influential think tanks], in collaboration with a think tank, the Zentrum Liberale Moderne, which was recently established by a former parliamentary member in Berlin. The development of the core was based on the work of a public relations specialist from the UK, who resides occasionally in Berlin. Each year, this individual authors a report on Russian influence in Germany, in both English and German. The German version has been circulated in significant German political circles, including the office of the Chancellor. […] The core has also supported analytical work on Germany’s specific vulnerability to Russian influence. The depth of this vulnerability and the intensity of Russia’s efforts make Germany an extremely difficult, but equally important, target.
integrity of lithuania
Lithuania has become particularly important in our network, due to its experience in dealing with Russian malign influence and disinformation. We currently have four specialist hubs in Lithuania. Since 2015 we have had close ties with the Stratcom [Strategic Communications] group of the Lithuanian armed forces, and we rely on their expertise, with the support of the Lithuanian Chief of Defence, to train other cores on effective methodologies for identifying Russian activities. We have formed a link between this group and the UK 77 Bde [British 77th Brigade. Its official responsibility is “non-lethal warfare”; practically all forms of cyber warfare], resulting in the UK 77 Bde adopting Lithuanian techniques. With the support of the Lithuanian MoD, we have set up a research group at the Vilnius Institute of Political Analysis, which conducts studies on new aspects of Russian malign influence. We fund a network of “vigilantes”, which has been established to counter Russian trolls [sic! What do they have in reserve for cyber warfare; fairies?], and which is now developing its capacity to help other cores set up similar organizations in their countries. Also, through the MoD and the National Library, we have developed a good working relationship with Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas. This relationship allows us contact with the Sakharov Center [in Russia] through which we can access Russian civil society and specialists who are developing new social media analysis tools. These four specialist centers will henceforth be coordinated by a former member of the Institute [IfS] based at the Lithuanian National Library.
Balkans campaign
In the latest set of documents uploaded online, February 2019, there are several references to the Balkans, which seem to constitute a significant field of action for IfS and the II for ’19. Among the documents there is also a letter from Donnelly, in which he proposes setting up an influence campaign in the western Balkans. The planned program would be carried out in collaboration with the multinational marketing company Edelman, which, according to Donnelly, could set up television programs that “promote the right messages”, “learning the English language”, even “a soap opera that examines the problem of corruption” (which Donnelly considered a field of Russian influence). In fact, for this particular campaign, IfS was ready to ask the British Foreign Office for funding of 5.5 million pounds.
The letter is addressed to former MI6 official Guy Spindler and Keith Sargent (referred to as a specialist in “good governance”), who appears to have been assigned a central role in the Balkan campaign. Donnelly explains to them that the work “will require local partners in the western Balkans,” who will assist journalists in identifying “who could be allies” so that they “come on trips to London, to NATO headquarters, etc.” The general framework of the campaign is “to contribute to achieving the goals and strategy of HMG” [Her Majesty’s Government]. The document is dated October 15, without the year specified. However, logically it must be from 2018, since the plan mentions January 2019 as a potential start date for the campaign.
Continuing with the Balkans, the report regarding the cores’ activities states the following:
Initially, we hoped to establish a single core of Western Balkans, but we quickly realized that the countries in the region, although willing to cooperate with each other, refused to do so if another country was considered leading. Consequently, we set up cores in each Balkan country as best we could, connecting them locally, but also with the broader international network. We work together with the local branches of the Atlantic Treaty Association both in Serbia and Montenegro. The heads of the cores are currently preparing a program of proposed actions for us to study and are writing an analysis of the situation in their countries regarding Russian media and the extent of influence and disinformation.
the Greek core
If in the Western Balkans, the Initiative had a problem because each country could not tolerate the other, in Greece it seems to have had the problem that the core members could not tolerate each other. This is probably the reason why the Greek core had been formed by two different groups – one in Athens and one in Thessaloniki – which coordinated not through direct contact, but through London. There is even a document referring to a “covert meeting” at the home of a core member in Athens. (It is ironic that many meetings and actions of the Initiative characterized as “secret” come from an entity that allegedly advocates “transparency” and “democracy”). At this meeting, which would also include members of the cores from Spain and Serbia (at least, based on the names we identified), the British coordinator making the report expresses concern because certain members show “reluctance” to meet with a specific person, because they do not “feel safe”.
The documents include several additional details, from requests by the Greek core for funding (20 thousand euros in one case, 25 thousand in another, proposals for several payments of a thousand euros per “project” in a third), to reports on the activity and “quality” of the groups, to lists with the names of members (in several documents, moreover in one of them, certain members are marked as “integrated”, that is, “incorporated”).
In the report on the status of the cores, the reference to Greece is as follows:
Greece is a particularly sensitive country in which to operate, given the current political and economic challenges. These, combined with its recent history, make it especially vulnerable to Russian influence and disinformation efforts. Consequently, our Greek hub is developing in a unique way. We have two completely distinct groups of specialists who coordinate through London. The Athens group consists of journalists who operate very discreetly, and their main means of dissemination are articles and a website. They have produced a very good study on Russian influence in Greece through oligarchic channels. A second group is based within the university of Thessaloniki [based on the rest of the documents, it becomes clear that he means the University of Macedonia], where the professor has set up a media monitoring laboratory, which records articles related to Russian influence and measures media and public trends towards Russia. Their first contribution was a study on reactions in Greece regarding the Skripal case [the Initiative’s insistence on the Skripal case gains special weight based on what we mentioned above]. They disseminate through academic publications and courses.
A basic tool in the countries where the Initiative was active was the organization of seminars for “training journalists, students and more broadly public sphere activists.” Moreover, Donnelly himself had personal experience of such “lessons”, since in the 90s he actively participated in organizing similar seminars in Slovakia with the aim of “training politicians who in turn would show businessmen the appropriate ways to exert pressure on the government, without resorting to the well-known brown envelope.” Such a “training” seminar appears to be what was organized on November 12, 2018 at the University of Macedonia. Judging from its title, “the Russian Orthodox Church: a state tool of malicious influence,” the seminar was closed; it would have been unthinkable to publicly announce such an “anti-orthodox” event in Thessaloniki. The speaker at the seminar was Victor Madeira, who is referred to in the documents as a member of the “office core team”, that is, the hard core of the Initiative, and specialist on the “orthodox church”. Part of his presentation was a slide presentation; the first of these could very well have been hosted on the pages of the infamous Der Stürmer. It shows the face of a Russian priest as the front of a steam engine, holding a bag (full of rubles?); scattered symbols include the hammer and sickle, “cccp”, the red star, along with plenty of golden items, while the driver (a caricature of Putin) looks almost mouse-like. If nothing else, the pathetic aesthetic of this majesty’s agents fits appropriately, without hiding it, with their racism.
the fourth worldwide on your screens
The motto of the Integrity Initiative is “defending democracy against disinformation”. Behind this slogan, an invisible mechanism of manipulation and propaganda dissemination was constructed by the British secret services and funded by the foreign and defense ministries, through established western media and social media, with the aim of escalating the competitive conflict with Russia.
It is the second time that the United Kingdom finds itself protagonizing a similar operation in the cyber realm. The first was with Cambridge Analytica, a British creation that excelled in the American elections and Brexit. The second now with the Integrity Initiative and its actions mainly in Europe. Some parallels between the two cases are worth noting. First, and extremely importantly, we do not know the ultimate reasons and the paths through which they came to be revealed. Second, at the level of political symbolism at least, the two mechanisms appear to fall into different strategic planning. The first was clearly pro-Trump, and its opponents, from the field of establishment politics and the media, struggled pulling the case by the hair and with ridiculous assumptions to discover Russian involvement behind Analytica. The second is entirely anti-Russian, it was defended by exactly those who accused the first, and furthermore, it is not unlikely that it may even be involved with the construction by British intelligence services of the infamous “Trump dossier,” which allegedly contained evidence of cooperation between the American president and Russia. If there is something these contradictions may show, it is the possibility of factional conflict within, clashing with each other and, if necessary, exposing each other in order to impose their strategy. But these conflicts do not necessarily mean a suspension of plans; however, they can make the miserable consequences even more miserable.
The argumentation with which His Majesty’s agents took care to justify their actions—that Russia is the absolute magnitude of malice that is plotting against “our democracy”—may be revelatory, a ridiculous repetition of the “good vs. evil” dichotomy of previous world wars, but it is equally revealing of the camp they represent. Since Russia engages in hybrid, propaganda information warfare and has unleashed armies of trolls into cyberspace, the reasoning goes, then the camp of the “good” is absolutely justified in doing the same, and to an even greater extent.
Certainly, it would be naive to assume that Russia (or China, or…) has not developed its own information warfare techniques and methods, but this makes the argumentation of His Majesty’s agents and their collaborators even more repugnant and ridiculous: war is being waged, but “we” brandish the sword of democracy while transforming Western societies into Orwellian models, while the “enemies” have horns and a tail of phosphorus. In any case, the final conclusion remains the same: the internet is now – from social media to the electronic pages of established media, from comments on Twitter to Wikipedia entries, from memes to Facebook posts – a front-line battlefield of the fourth world war.
The extent of the network set up by the Initiative, its methodology, and the specific actions recorded in the published documents (along with those yet undisclosed and remaining unknown) converge into two complementary conclusions. The first: any “truth” that goes viral and mainstream on the internet is extremely likely to be a tool of manipulation and a product of military planning. The second: an audience, as we once knew it, no longer exists. Operations such as that of Integrity rely on the intellectual inertia of “users” and their herd-like behavior, turning the audience into “building blocks” on a map, moved and used by headquarters as they see fit. However, this does not negate the active participation of many who swallow anything they read without the slightest verification or cross-checking, reproducing it manifold. It is their small, yet crucial, participation in the battles being fought. In other times, such as during World War II for example, such actions would have been praised as fulfilling a “patriotic duty.” In our time, when most people are digital hyper-personalities, it is preferable for such participation to be discreetly induced, so as not to disturb anyone’s digital composure. It may sound like an exaggerated scenario, but it may reflect our era: browsing and engaging online is no longer a private matter, and a single retweet, like, or republication is enough for someone to actively take part in the cyber warfare campaigns designed and conducted by military headquarters.
Hurry Tuttle
cyborg #15 – 6/2019