It is worth starting by noting that a high percentage of the Integrity Initiative archive has been authenticated. The scheme has been admitted by the FCO and defended as legitimate government activity. Individual items like the minutes of the meeting with David Leask are authenticated. Not one of the documents has so far been disproven, or even denied.

Which tends to obscure some of the difficulties with the material. There is no metadata showing when each document was created, as opposed to when Anonymous made it into a PDF. Anonymous have released it in tranches and made plain there is more to come. The reason for this methodology is left obscure.

Most frustratingly, Anonymous’ comments on the releases indicate that they have vital information which is not, so far, revealed. The most important document of all appears to be a simple contact list, of a particular group within the hundreds of contacts revealed in the papers overall. This is it in full:

Tantalisingly, Anonymous describe this as a list of people who attended a meeting with the White Helmets. But there is no evidence of that in the document itself, nor does any other document released so far refer to this meeting. There is very little in the documents released so far about the White Helmets at all. But there is a huge amount about the Skripal case. With the greatest of respect to Anonymous and pending any release of further evidence, I want you to consider whether this might be a document related to the Skripal incident.

The list is headed CND gen list 2. CND is Christopher Nigel Donnelly, Director of the Institute for Statecraft and the Integrity Initiative and a very senior career Military Intelligence Officer.

The first name on the list caught my eye. Duncan Allan was the young FCO Research Analyst who, as detailed in Murder in Samarkand, appears in my Ambassadorial office in Tashkent, telling me of the FCO staff who had been left in tears by the pressure put on them to sign up to Blair’s dodgy dossier on Iraqi WMD. During the process of clearing the manuscript with the FCO, I was told (though not by him) that he denied having ever said it. It was one of a very few instances where I refused to make the changes requested to the text, because I had no doubt whatsoever of what had been said.

If Duncan did lie about having told me, it did his career no harm as he is now Deputy Head of FCO Research Analysts and, most importantly, the FCO’s lead analyst on Russia and the Former Soviet Union.

Now let us tie that in with the notorious name further down the list; Pablo Miller, the long-term MI6 handler of Sergei Skripal, who lived in Salisbury with Skripal. Miller is the man who was, within 24 hours of the Skripal attack, protected by a D(SMA) notice banning the media from mentioning him. Here Pablo Miller is actively involved, alongside serving FCO and MOD staff, in a government funded organisation whose avowed intention is to spread disinformation about Russia. The story that Miller is in an inactive retirement is immediately and spectacularly exploded.

Now look at another name on this list. Howard Body. Assistant Head of Science Support at Porton Down chemical weapon research laboratory, just six miles away from Salisbury and the Skripal attack, a role he took up in December 2017. He combines this role with Assistant Head of Strategic Analysis at MOD London. “Science Support” at Porton Down is a euphemism for political direction to the scientists – Body has no scientific qualifications.

Another element brought into this group is the state broadcaster, through Helen Boaden, the former Head of BBC News and Current Affairs.

In all there are six serving MOD staff on the list, all either in Intelligence or in PR. Intriguingly one of them, Ian Cohen, has email addresses both at the MOD and at the notoriously corrupt HSBC bank. The other FCO name besides Duncan Allan, Adam Rutland, is also on the PR side.

Zachary Harkenrider is the Political Counsellor at the US Embassy in London. There are normally at least two Political Counsellors at an Embassy this size, one of whom will normally be the CIA Head of Station. I do not know if Harkenrider is CIA but it seems highly likely.

So what do we have here? We have a programme, the Integrity Initiative, whose entire purpose is to pump out covert disinformation against Russia, through social media and news stories secretly paid for by the British government. And we have the Skripals’ MI6 handler, the BBC, Porton Down, the FCO, the MOD and the US Embassy, working together in a group under the auspices of the Integrity Initiative. The Skripal Case happened to occur shortly after a massive increase in the Integrity Initiative’s budget and activity, which itself was a small part of a British Government decision to ramp up a major information war against Russia.

I find that very interesting indeed.

With a hat-tip to members of the Working Group on Syria, Media, and the Propaganda, who are preparing a major and important publication which is imminent. UPDATE Their extremely important briefing note on the Integrity Initiative is now online, prepared to the highest standards of academic discipline. I shall be drawing on and extrapolating from it further next week.

craigmurray

Berlin responded with due explanations but it’s not what matters. The publication of 12-year old pictures took place right before the Chancellor Merkel’s visit to Washington on February 9 and after the meeting between the German Chancellor, French President François Hollande and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow that lasted for many hours. 

Anonymous asked if a politician who was a member of GDR’s Socialist Youth Organization, an «East Berlin’s spy» and who hobnobbed with Nazis could be trusted to run Germany. 

The information attack had been preceded by an important event – the Chancellor opposed the idea of providing Ukraine with lethal arms. Angela Merkel addressed the Munich Security Conference on February 7 to say «The progress that Ukraine needs cannot be achieved by more weapons.» She reiterated this stance a number of times while on a visit to the United States and Canada. In America Senator John McCain and Victoria Nuland the Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, responded first. The Senator compared Angela Merkel and François Hollande's talks with Vladimir Putin to Neville Chamberlain's appeasement of Hitler. Mrs. Nuland as usually used obscene language talking about the head of the leading European state. 

It should be noted that since a long time ago US special services have been thoroughly collecting information to be one way or another used against the Chancellor of Germany. In October 2013 it became known that the National Security Agency tapped the Angela Merkel’s cell phone and the scandal broke out to reveal that the agency had held Mrs. Merkel under surveillance for more than 10 years. The Chancellor said she did not expect and did not insist on apology, but it was a severe breach of trust and great efforts had to be applied to have it restored. Words were not enough. The situation dictated the necessity of changes. Back then the Chancellor could hardly tamp down indignation. Washington turned a deaf ear to what she said. The phone tap row was hushed up with no changes to follow. 

Angela Merkel was not the first European leader to find out in practice that Washington quelled any expression of «free thinking» on the part of European leaders, especially when it comes to Russia. The examples are well known. 

Hungary led by Prime Minister Victor Orban signed a contract with Russia’s Rosatom to complete the construction of two new energy blocks for Hungary’s Paks nuclear power plant located 100 km from Budapest. The United States imposed sanctions against Hungary. Senator McCain, a politician who always jumps the gun, called the Prime Minister of Hungary «a fascist dictator». Now President Putin is invited by Orban to visit Budapest on February 17… 

The US administration is frustrated over the position of Milos Zeman, the President of the Czech Republic, who dares to ask for evidence that Russian troops have invaded Ukraine and calls on the United States and the European Union to lift the sanctions. America uses its channels in this country to wage a campaign to discredit its President. 

In his days as Prime Minister of Italy Silvio Berlusconi used to say that mutual understanding between Russia and the United States was a keystone to European stability. He said the US acted irresponsibly deploying the elements of missile defense in Poland and the Czech Republic, recognizing the independence of Kosovo and pushing Georgia and Ukraine into NATO. 

Strauss-Kahn, former Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, fell victim to a provocation well planned and organized against him in the United States when he was accused of raping a black hotel maid while staying in New York. As a result he had to face a US trial. Later it was revealed that the maid lied but it was not important. Strauss-Kahn lost his position in the International Monetary Fund and missed his chance to become President of France. 

Orban, Zeman, Berlusconi, Strauss-Kahn and now Merkel – they have all become targets for US precision strikes delivered by information weapon against those European politicians have become too independent on foreign policy issues according to Washington’s opinion. 

The American establishment believes that Europe should toe the line and follow the US policy without any deviations. In their opinion that is the quintessence of Trans-Atlantic cooperation. Right after meeting Merkel, the US President complacently told Vox in an interview that the US is compelled to have «the strongest military in the world.» As he put it further, «we occasionally have to twist the arms of countries that wouldn't do what we need them to do». He said it bluntly enough to leave no doubt about the US readiness to twist the arms of any ally who would state the views on the world problems different from the vision of the United States. 

Neither European, nor Asian US allies (or vassals?) should have any doubts about it. Turkish President Erdogan is expected to be the next to have his arms twisted. He is not forgiven for signing the Turkish Stream agreement with Putin last year. The clock is ticking.