Tag: intelligence community

‘Significant Problem’: Ex-CIA Analyst Warns Intel Agencies Will Meddle in 2024 Election to Stop Trump

A former CIA analyst is sounding the alarm about plans by intelligence agencies to get politically involved in the 2024 election to stop the Republican candidate.

Dr. John Gentry, a Georgetown professor who spent 12 years as a CIA intelligence analyst, said the politicization of intelligence agencies in the age of Trump has become a “significant problem” and is confident they will interfere in the 2024 election.

“My guess is that the the proverbial Deep State within the intelligence community will reemerge because presumably a Republican candidate will again be seen as a threat to the internal policies that many intelligence people like,” Gentry told Fox News.

Gentry pointed out how the CIA in a “clearly political” move days before the 2020 election with the “intent to help the Biden campaign” approved a letter penned by 51 former intelligence officials falsely claiming the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop published by the New York Post was “Russian disinformation.”

Gentry said he expects intelligence agencies to resume similar political ploys ahead of the 2024 election.

Keep reading

FOI request reveals Bellingcat collusion with Western intelligence

An email sent on November 12 2020 by an officer within Amsterdam’s National Coordinator for Security and Counterterrorism (NCTV) shows a Bellingcat investigation was intentionally shared with the agency prior to publication, so as to assist the Dutch spooks in shaping media strategies and messaging following its release. The revealing communication is irrefutable proof of the cozy relationship the self-styled “independent investigative collective of researchers, investigators and citizen journalists” enjoys with Western intelligence services.

In the message, marked “high importance,” the undisclosed author explained that Bellingcat would soon publish research amounting to a deeply libelous attack on independent journalists and researchers, who challenged the mainstream narrative surrounding Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. As such, the Dutch intelligence officer wrote, “it is probably smart to put together interdepartmental wording for this already”:

“Because the article highlights several sides (MH17 but also COVID19) it is probably wise to wait a while and see if; a. the mainstream media pick it up; b. from which angle the media pick up and highlight it (MH17 or COVID); c. from this angle to determine the wording and therefore which department is in the lead; d. coordinate the language as much as possible interdepartmentally.”

The article in question, entitled “The GRU’s MH17 Disinformation Operations Part 1: The Bonanza Media Project,” was framed as an investigation into a now-defunct independent media venture named Bonanza Media which was established by Russian journalist Yana Yerlashova with the help of freelance Dutch researcher Max Van der Werff. 

Much of Bonanza’s work challenged Western assertions that separatist fighters in Donbass shot down MH17 with a Buk surface-to-air missile system provided to them by the Russian military. Ukrainian officials began pushing that narrative, citing audio recordings they claimed to have intercepted alongside material purportedly found on social media implicating the separatists, even before Malaysia Airlines publicly announced it had lost contact with the plane.

Keep reading

Why Big Tech, Cops, and Spies Were Made for One Another

THE TECHLASH HAS finally reached the courts. Amazon’s in court. Google’s in court. Apple’s under EU investigation. The French authorities just kicked down Nvidia’s doors and went through their files looking for evidence of crimes against competition. People are pissed at tech: about moderation, about monopolization, about price gouging, about labor abuses, and — everywhere and always — about privacy.

From experience, I can tell you that Silicon Valley techies are pretty sanguine about commercial surveillance: “Why should I care if Google wants to show me better ads?” But they are much less cool about government spying: “The NSA? Those are the losers who weren’t smart enough to get an interview at Google.”

And likewise from experience, I can tell you that government employees and contractors are pretty cool with state surveillance: “Why would I worry about the NSA spying on me? I already gave the Office of Personnel Management a comprehensive dossier of all possible kompromat in my past when I got my security clearance.” But they are far less cool with commercial surveillance: “Google? Those creeps would sell their mothers for a nickel. To the Chinese.”

What are they both missing? That American surveillance is a public-private partnership: a symbiosis between a concentrated tech sector that has the means, motive, and opportunity to spy on every person in the world and a state that loves surveillance as much as it hates checks and balances.

Big Tech, cops, and surveillance agencies were made for one another.

Keep reading

Is Dark Money ‘Anti-Hate’ Group CCDH Run By An Intelligence Operative?

A UK dark money nonprofit with outsized influence over the digital advertising space and political sphere, which popped up seemingly out of nowhere, is run by a British operative who reportedly had dreams of being a spook in his younger years – only to surround himself with spook-adjacents in his quest to deplatform opinions that diverge from establishment orthodoxy.

As Paul Thacker writes in Tablet, Former British Labour party operative Imran Ahmed heads up the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), which in March of 2021 released a report about online misinformation that quickly reached the pre-Musk Twitter regime, and was used to silence Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who the report named as one of “The Disinformation Dozen.” The report was then cited by by the Biden administration.

“There’s about 12 people who are producing 65% of anti-vaccine misinformation on social media platforms,” claimed former White House spox-turned-MSM gaslighter Jen Psaki in July 2021.

After Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced he was running against Biden for the Democratic nomination and appeared on Joe Rogan, Ahmed told the BBC, “He’s working really hard to keep people from knowing he’s a hardcore anti-vaxxer.” -Tablet

The report notes how Ahmed’s group, funded by all sorts of dark money, pulled off a near-impossible feat in DC – climbing to the upper echelons of influence in the DC cesspool dominated by massive think tanks and hardball lobbyists.

Keep reading

Revealed: UK Intelligence Officials Are Behind The Censorship Of Russell Brand

Allegations of sexual impropriety and abuse by comedian and podcaster Russell Brand by the British media prompted YouTube to demonetize the star’s popular channel on September 20.

The Grayzone can now reveal that YouTube’s financial censorship of Brand is the result of an effort waged by a former British government minister who was responsible for London’s crackdown on dissent during the Covid-19 pandemic. Her husband has also participated in that campaign of state repression as deputy commander of 77th Brigade, the British Army’s psychological warfare division.

YouTube justified its demonetization of Brand on the grounds that he violated its “creator responsibility policy.” This marks the first time a content creator has been financially punished by the company for reasons other than the videos published on the site. A spokesperson has claimed, “if a creator’s off-platform behaviour harms our users, employees or ecosystem, we take action.”

The allegations against Brand date from betwee 2006 and ’13, and have yet to be proven in court. There is no indication the charges are being investigated by law enforcement in Britain or the US, where the offenses allegedly occurred. Brand has vehemently denied accusations of abuse and rape.

Brand’s videos analyzing political developments and topics such as the Covid-19 pandemic, corporate media propaganda and the Ukraine proxy war have earned him an audience of millions, making him one of the world’s most influential alternative media personalities. For this, he appears to have been marked as a threat to the narratives spun out by Washington and London.

New developments suggest YouTube’s censorship of Brand was driven by direct British government decree. On September 19, the social media companies TikTok and Rumble received a pair of almost identical letters dispatched from Caroline Dinenage, the head of the UK parliament’s Culture, Media and Sport Committee. Dinenage informed the companies she was “concerned that [Brand] may be able to profit from his content” published on both platforms.

Keep reading

From Russia to the U.K. and With a UFO Society in the Middle of All the Chaos

“The Aetherius Society is an international spiritual organization dedicated to spreading, and acting upon, the teachings of advanced extraterrestrial intelligences,” its members state.  They continue: “In great compassion, these beings recognize the extent of suffering on Earth and have made countless sacrifices in their mission to help us to create a better world. The Society was founded in the mid-1950s by an Englishman named George King shortly after he was contacted in London by an extraterrestrial intelligence known as ‘Aetherius.’ The main body of the Society’s teachings consists of the wisdom given through the mediumship of Dr. King by the Master Aetherius and other advanced intelligences from this world and beyond. The single greatest aspect of the Society’s teachings is the importance of selfless service to others.”

UFO researchers David Clarke and Andy Roberts say: “The Aetherius Society were never a huge organization, indeed their numbers rarely totaled more than one thousand members worldwide…The Aetherius Society was not for everyone but, for those seekers who wanted or needed a spiritual dimension to their saucer beliefs, they provided a philosophy, structure and network of sincere like-minded souls.” George King suffered a heart-attack in 1986, underwent a multiple heart bypass in 1992, and died in Santa Barbara on July 12, 1997. The Aetherius Society, though, continues to thrive. Now, it’s time to address matters relative to the Aetherius Society, nuclear weapons, Russia, the U.K.’s Communist Party, and the secret surveillance of ufologists. 

Keep reading

The U.S. Intelligence Community is Doing Group Think on Steroids.

The line dividing consensus from group think is narrow and not well defined. There are four principal agencies in the U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) who actually produce raw intelligence — the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency and the State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research.

Why is this important? The USIC is on the record supporting the analytical conclusion that Russia is in trouble, Putin is on the ropes and Ukraine can expel Russia from Ukrainian territory as long as it gets the necessary support. How can so many people with advanced degrees from top flight universities be so blind and so deluded? The answer is simple — the USIC is a collection of gargantuan bureaucracies that do not encourage or promote thinking out of the box. Any analyst inclined to engage in counter intuitive or counter narrative analysis is not just ignored. He or she will be punished and, in some cases, fired or shuffled off to dead end jobs.

Let me take you inside the process I experienced as an analyst. I would arrive at my desk in the Central America Branch of the Middle America Caribbean Division of the Office of Africa and Latin American Affairs (ALA) around 7am and had to quickly read a 6 inch stack of paper containing the latest intelligence in order to identify any issues that would merit producing an article for the National Intelligence Daily or the Presidential Daily Brief. (Can you smell the bureaucracy?)

The intelligence I perused consisted of messages from State Department and Embassies overseas, intercepted voice and electronic communications courtesy of the NSA, DIA human intelligence reports and CIA human intelligence reports. Let’s say that after my review I knitted together several pieces of intelligence showing that the Central American leaders were working in secret to produce a peace plan that ran counter to the policy of the President of the United States regarding Nicaragua. I would go to the morning Branch meeting, brief my colleagues and Branch Chief on the story and would get the green light to produce an analytical piece explaining the particulars of the Central American plan.

Keep reading

Meet the British intelligence-linked firm that warped MH17 news coverage

In November of 2022, a final judgment arrived in the trial of alleged perpetrators of the attack on Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (MH17). Russian nationals Igor Girkin and Sergey Dubinskiy, and Donbas separatist Leonid Kharchenko, were convicted in absentia for the murder of MH17’s 283 passengers and 15 crew members. They were ruled to have arranged the transfer of the Buk surface-to-air missile system that reportedly struck the plane.

Oleg Pulatov, the only defendant to seek legal representation during the trial, was conversely acquitted on all charges, which prosecutors will not appeal.

The Malaysian airliner had been purportedly shot down by a missile on July 17th 2014, killing all 283 passengers and 15 crew aboard.

Heavily dependent on information supplied by the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) and the Western government-funded “open source” investigations organization known as Bellingcat, the guilty verdicts appeared to vindicate an established narrative in which Russia and its Donbas allies were solely culpable. 

But as this investigation will reveal, much of the news coverage of MH17 was heavily influenced by a shadowy entity called Pilgrims Group, which is closely tied to British intelligence. 

Staffed and led by British Special Forces veterans, Pilgrims Group is a private security company offering elite security services to London’s embassies, diplomats, spies, and business interests abroad, particularly in high-risk environments. It also trains foreign militaries and paramilitary groups, and provides protection to reporters and their employers. 

It was in the latter context that Pilgrims Group shaped media coverage – and by extension, official investigations – of MH17. The company had maintained a presence in Kiev since the early days of the US-orchestrated Maidan “revolution” in late 2013, shepherding journalists to and from the scenes of major events in Ukraine. In the process, it maintained control over what the reporters under its watch saw and how they understood the situations they encountered.

As such, Pilgrims Group played a pivotal role in the effort by the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) and British intelligence to convict Russia and the Donbas separatists for MH17’s downing. The operation began while the plane’s wreckage remained smoldering on the ground of rebel-controlled territory, and ultimately prevented the initiation of any genuinely independent investigations.

Keep reading

US intelligence: No evidence foreign adversaries behind ‘Havana syndrome’

The U.S. intelligence community has determined it was unlikely that a foreign adversary is responsible for a series of anomalous health incidents (AHI) plaguing intelligence and diplomatic staffers across the globe.

A review conducted by intelligence agencies for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and released Wednesday probed a series of health incidents initially dubbed “Havana syndrome” after government employees first reported experiencing mysterious neurological ailments there in 2016.

But the review attributed those conditions to other factors and noted that intelligence agencies — with varying degrees of confidence — deemed it was unlikely that a U.S. adversary had such capabilities.

“Available intelligence consistently points against the involvement of U.S. adversaries in causing the reported incidents,” the report states. 

“There is no credible evidence that a foreign adversary has a weapon or device that is causing AHIs.”

Keep reading