Media

Gaza-based journalist Motasem A. Dalloul provides Red Lines host Anya Parampil with a frontline view of Israel’s attack and details his own travails as he and his family weather the bombardment...

Human Rights My Grandparents Lived Through the Nakba. Now It’s Happening Again. Economy & Labor COVID Has Catalyzed a Wave of Tenant Organizing That Was Long Overdue Human Rights Israeli Bombs Destroy Gaza Media Center, Take Out AP, Al Jazeera and Others Immigration Trump Officials Used Secret Terrorism Unit to Question Lawyers at Border Politics & Elections Pharma-Backed Dark Money Group Attacks House Democrats’ Lower Drug Pricing Plan Politics & Elections The Death of Democracy Looks Nearer Than Ever Israeli bombs destroyed a high-rise building in Gaza City that housed offices of The Associated Press, Al Jazeera and other media outlets on Saturday, the latest step by Israel to silence reporting from Gaza amid its military bombardment. The Israeli air raid totally demolished the structure. The 11-storey residential building called Al-Jalaa has now collapsed. pic.twitter.com/VUFxxJCuW3 — Arwa Ibrahim (@arwaib) May 15, 2021 Live Al Jazeera video showed the 11-story al-Jalaa building, which also houses a number of residences and other offices, crashing to the ground after being bombed as dust and debris flew into the air. The strike came just hours after another Israeli bombing of a densely populated refugee camp in Gaza City killed at least eight Palestinian children and two women from an extended family, in the deadliest single strike of Israel’s current assault. AP President and CEO Gary Pruitt has released the following statement: We are shocked and horrified that the Israeli military would target and destroy the building housing AP’s bureau and other news organizations in Gaza. They have long known the location of our bureau and knew journalists were there. We received a warning that the building would be hit. We are seeking information from the Israeli government and are engaged with the U.S. State Department to try to learn more. This is an incredibly disturbing development. We narrowly avoided a terrible loss of life. A dozen AP journalists and freelancers were inside the building and thankfully we were able to evacuate them in time. The world will know less about what is happening in Gaza because of what happened today. Al Jazeera’s Safwat al-Kahlout, reporting from Gaza City, said he had worked at the building for 11 years, and often did live reports from its roof. “I have been covering lots of events from this building,” he said. “We have lots of good memories with our colleagues.” It was not immediately made clear why the building was targeted by Israel. “Now, no one can understand the feeling of the people whose homes have been destroyed by such kind of air attacks,” al-Kahlout said. “It’s really difficult to wake up one day and then you realize that your office is not there with all the career experiences, memories that you’ve had.” If journalistic solidarity means anything whatsoever, it should mean, at the bare minimum, unreservedly speaking out about Israel wiping out the building housing media organisations such as Associated Press and Al-Jazeera pic.twitter.com/0rBdIt7dhU — Owen Jones 🌹 (@OwenJones84) May 15, 2021 BREAKING: Israel airstrike flattens building housing Associated Press, Al Jazeera offices. Latest: https://t.co/6uVfDHJhk0 📷 Ashraf Abu Amrah / Reuters 📷 Mohammed Salem / Reuters pic.twitter.com/O0S1GcSP6e — MSNBC (@MSNBC) May 15, 2021 This piece was reprinted by Truthout with permission or license. It may not be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source.

The Conversation, a mainstream academic outlet, green lighted my article on foreign policy issues Western media refuses to discuss. With the piece ready to go live, everything went horribly wrong. This is...

Racial Justice Commission Finds Anti-Black Police Violence Constitutes Crimes Against Humanity Politics & Elections Tucker Carlson Is Emblematic of Today’s Republican Party Prisons & Policing Police Convictions Are Not the Goal. Abolitionists Have Bigger Dreams. Environment & Health Prescription Drugs in US Are Quadruple What They Cost Elsewhere, Report Finds Politics & Elections Biden Unveils American Families Plan, Which Would Establish Paid Leave Program Environment & Health No, Biden’s Not Banning Burgers — But Meat Is a Real Climate Problem I have to talk about Tucker Carlson today, which is a shame. There are eleventy billion more important things popping off right now. India is literally on fire from all the bodies that are burning, thanks to COVID deaths; mass shootings are as common as birdsong this spring; and the giant segment of congressional Republicans who tried to overthrow the government are now pretending it never happened, and might actually get away with it. Even absent all that, I can’t recall a day in my life when Carlson rose to the level of immediately required attention. Alas, the day has arrived. Before we begin, however, I would ask you to take a few minutes and watch then-Daily Show host Jon Stewart obliterate Carlson on Crossfire in 2004. For those who don’t recall or never saw it, Crossfire was Carlson’s old CNN show, along with Paul Begala, that was canceled almost immediately after Stewart’s appearance. Stewart is generally credited for being responsible for the show’s demise, though Carlson claimed he had quit months before, so there. Watch it, and keep 2021 Carlson close in mind when you do. “It’s not so much that it’s bad, as it’s hurting America,” said Stewart of Carlson and Crossfire as the show opened. “So I wanted to come here today and say: Stop. Here’s just what I wanted to tell you guys. Stop, stop, stop, stop hurting America.” It only gets better from there. Peak television, that (rivaled only perhaps by comedian Bill Burr’s 12-minute foul-mouthed defenestration of the entire city of Philadelphia, but I digress). Carlson snagged an MSNBC show after Stewart burned Crossfire to the ground, but that was likewise canceled — along with his signature bow tie — a few short years later. After that, Carlson banged around on Dancing With the Stars for a bit (he was the first contestant canceled in season three, thus keeping the streak alive), before finally landing in 2009 on the always-available right-wing lifeboat for irrelevant conservatives: Fox News. Flash forward 12 years, and my, how things have changed. Back during his CNN and MSNBC days, Carlson always came off as a frat boy two drinks past the minimum who knows just enough karate to get his ass kicked. He put the time in, said all the right terrible things, pushed all the right terrible lies, and was finally given a show of his own. Now, in the gilded cocoon of his own niche on Fox, Carlson has the freedom to say basically anything without having to worry about a co-host or an audience to shut him down. A network that harbors the likes of Sean Hannity and “Judge” Jeanine Pirro isn’t about to censor Tucker’s boyish charm (shudder). Every so often, however, he will blow past the low-water mark of his last garbage commentary — like, say, his oft-repeated championing of white nationalist themes… oh, wait, that was just two weeks ago! — and find a whole new bottom of the barrel. Which brings us to our current estate. Earlier this week, which by the way saw a significant loosening of mask guidelines for vaccinated people by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Carlson took his brain for a long walk off a short pier. “Not even Tony Fauci still pretends that masks are medically necessary,” he lied straight into the camera. “Instead, masks are purely a sign of political obedience, like Kim Il Sung pins in Pyongyang.” Yep, it’s George Orwell meets Scrubs up in here. Why, the loyalty oath is printed right there on the inside of my hate-mask so I can whisper the words to the words as I plot the death of God while fondling avocados in the supermarket. Oh, P.S., a PBS report from 2/12: “Dr. Anthony Fauci says people will need to wear masks ‘for several, several months’ to avoid the coronavirus as vaccinations are rolled out.” Stop, stop, stop, stop hurting America. “It’s our job to brush them back and restore the society we were born in,” Carlson went on to say of the “neurotics” wearing masks in public. “So the next time you see someone in a mask on the sidewalk or on the bike path, do not hesitate. Ask politely but firmly, ‘Would you please take off your mask. Science shows there is no reason for you to be wearing it. Your mask is making me uncomfortable.” Your mask is making me uncomfortable. This, from a mouthpiece of the party that promulgated the slur “snowflakes” to denigrate people with, you know, actual feelings. We know how welcome those are in the Trumpiverse. Whither comes such sensitivity, Tucker? “As for forcing children to wear masks outside, that should be illegal,” he raged. “Your response when you see children wearing masks as they play should be no different from seeing someone beating a kid at Walmart: Call the police immediately; contact child protective services. Keep calling until someone arrives. What you’re looking at is abuse. It’s child abuse, and you’re morally obligated to attempt to prevent it.” When it happens — and it will — the video of some Tucker fan calling the cops about a mother at a playground with a masked child will go viral at warp speed. THAT PERSON’S CHILD IS WEARING A MASK AND IT MAKES ME UNCOMFORTABLE I WANT TO SPEAK TO THE MANAGER. Hey Karen! Your husband Ken/Chad/Terry is on the internet! As with those who have been fully vaccinated, the CDC has also released guidelines for children participating in summer camp or other group activities. Per The Washington Post: “Campers and staff members should be placed in small groups, or cohorts, to minimize exposure to other people, the CDC said. While in the cohorts, kids should stay at least three feet away from their peers and should wear masks at all times, except while eating, swimming and sleeping. When not masked, or with people outside their cohorts, campers should keep a six-foot distance. Whenever possible, camp activities should happen outside. Campers should avoid indoor sports and games that involve close contact. Disinfect. Frequently.” (Emphasis added.) Pro tip to Tuckerworld: Among my favorite activities is bringing my 8-year-old daughter to Robin Hood Park so she can frolic with other kids on the playground after a year of effective isolation. It is medicine for the both of us. She wears a mask around the other kids because I cannot be sure if the parents of those kids are being safe in their own sphere, and as my daughter loves to visit her Nana, this precaution has felt wise and safe. The new CDC guidelines on masks outdoors — again, for vaccinated people — may motivate me to change this habit. I have not yet decided, and it is my decision to make. If some Carlson devotee decides to take a run at me over my daughter’s mask because they are uncomfortable bearing witness to my child abuse, they will be invited to shove themselves up their own arse with such velocity that they quite simply disappear into themselves, like a dying star. Look, Tucker Carlson is a television clown. After his pet president got his butt kicked in November, and after a segment of his viewers sacked the Capitol in January, Carlson made the calculated business decision to be as far out there as he can be, and he has been rewarded with a noteworthy viewership from the Fox News crowd. The network is still trying to decide how to act post-Trump, they aren’t landing any punches against President Biden worth noting (Dr. Seuss? Hamburgers? Jeez…), and so Carlson is painting the walls of his studio with blood in an attempt to invite the rest of the network to follow him into the darkness. The so-called “culture war” Carlson is “fighting” is a giant fundraising scam the GOP has been running on its base to amazingly lucrative effect. Fox has been at the vanguard of that phenomenon for decades, and today’s GOP politicians — absent things like, y’know, policy to run on — are following suit so they have cash on hand for the next campaign. Carlson is angling to become the avatar of this scam, because it pays really well. Carlson’s audience is a mob writ large, bound together online and made braver with company, and he incants the words of bonding on a nightly schedule. “The GOP highlights culture-war issues to shake down rank-and-file donors while cutting taxes to please wealthy donors,” conservative columnist Max Boot noted recently. “Republicans have won the presidential popular vote only once since 1988, but they can’t afford to broaden their appeal by embracing a more populist economic agenda or by toning down the divisive social messages because either move would jeopardize the flow of fundraising. The right-wing money machine has become the tail wagging the Republican elephant.” If that were all there was to this, I would not have bothered giving a day of my life to some yowler on a propaganda network. The problem is, whatever Carlson and the GOP’s financial motives may be, their words have an actual flesh-and-blood effect on the GOP base that believes everything it hears if it comes from the right television station. Pundits talk about a “divided” nation, but that division is being violently exacerbated by people like Carlson, who take the basic medical necessity of masks in a pandemic and turn it into a reason to accost parents in the park… because they are uncomfortable. That’s the thing about a mob: It’s comfortable to be within it, even empowering. Everyone within knows that everyone else around them thinks and feels the same way, and they move as one like a wheeling flock of birds. Elements of the pack show the pack they belong to the pack by incanting the acceptable words and thoughts. Carlson’s audience is a mob writ large, bound together online and made braver with company, and he incants the words of bonding on a nightly schedule. These are frightened people who see their supremacy slipping away. Science as represented by masks, the very idea of sharing cultural influence with “others,” all of this scares them and makes them angry, so they find solace in the rank ignorance of the devoted ranks. Every time Carlson rings a bell like this, they feel stronger, even as their pockets get picked while Fox’s ratings rise. Look, Tucker Carlson is the living embodiment of low-hanging fruit in the media orchard. Jumping up and down on him is the equivalent of a child mastering “Chopsticks” on a toy piano. I feel dirty even writing his name. This is actually important, however. Watching Carlson wind himself up into a frothing rage over the Chauvin verdict compels one to believe he means it. Whether or not he does, he is, like the rest of the conservative universe, pandering to the bleakest elements of our society and counting coppers as quickly as he can while trying to get a handle on what comes next. Overt racism is the wave to catch on the right these days, and Carlson is right there carving the curl as best he can. A great many of the people who watch him do believe what he says, and we saw what they are capable of in January. Until this spigot of raw sewage is properly challenged, the poison will continue to seep into the body politic. There’s a sucker born every minute, it has been said. Tucker Carlson is out to collect them all. Were I offered the chance, I would repeat to Carlson the words of Jon Stewart from 17 long years ago: Stop, stop, stop, stop hurting America. Amazingly enough, it’s still not too late. Copyright © Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.

CIJA, a taxpayer-funded outfit that collaborated with al-Qaeda, lied to entrap a British academic in a sting operation. Its goal was to discredit critics of the dirty war on Syria – and cover up its own corruption. A British academic who belongs to a prominent anti-war research group has been targeted in a deceptive sting operation run by a regime-change organization funded with UK and US taxpayer money. That contractor now stands accused of defrauding the European Union of millions of dollars. The Working Group on Syria, Propaganda, and Media is a UK-based collective of professors who have published scholarly investigations exposing the disinformation and lies that have been at the heart of the decade-long Western dirty war on Damascus. The working group’s success in debunking this propaganda, and in amplifying whistleblowers from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), has made it a target of pro-war elements in Western governments and intelligence agencies, along with their allies in major corporate media outlets. This March, it was revealed that the Commission for International Justice and Accountability (CIJA), a regime-change organization that has been funded by numerous Western governments and is linked to UK intelligence agencies, had run an elaborate sting operation in a bid to discredit an academic member, and the working group as a whole. A representative of CIJA posed as a Russian under a fake name and deceived a British researcher named Paul McKeigue into feeding it information with the goal of ensnaring him, vilifying his research group, and smearing its participants as tools of the Kremlin. In other words, the anti-war British scholar was entrapped by an organization supported by his own government, and that happens to have been accused of large-scale fraud by the EU’s own fraud regulator. The European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) has formally accused CIJA of fraud, “submission of false documents, irregular invoicing, and profiteering,” and recommended that authorities in the UK, the Netherlands, and Belgium prosecute the EU-funded organization. Faced with potential consequences over these serious EU allegations of corruption, CIJA appears desperate to discredit anyone that reports on its unsavory activities. So the regime-change group contrived a months-long confidence trick of questionable legality and morality. And Western media outlets have eagerly spread its narrative in a closely coordinated cover-up operation aimed at burying the well-substantiated charges of fraud. CIJA: Lawfare based on money from Western governments and documents from Al-Qaeda The group behind the sting operation, the Commission for International Justice and Accountability, has a history of unethical behavior. The Grayzone previously published an investigation documenting CIJA’s suspicious tactics, extensive links to Western governments, and direct collaboration with Syria’s al-Qaeda affiliate. CIJA’s executive director and founder, William Wiley, also directs a company called Tsamota, and the two firms share the same legal address. Wiley has used Tsamota to cash in on conflicts that advance Western foreign policy interests, raking in millions in government contracts, while advising Canadian mining companies on how to avoid prosecution for their activities in Africa. Leaked documents show that Wiley’s Tsamota is closely linked to other Western intelligence cut-outs and government contractors such as ARK, which was at the center of an enormous global disinformation campaign aimed at orchestrating regime change in Syria. In fact Tsamota and ARK collaborated in jointly launching the Syrian Commission for Justice and Accountability, which in 2014 changed its name to CIJA. CIJA/Tsamota director Bill Wiley (far-right) at the 2013 MineAfrica conference with lawyers from Fasken, a Canadian law firm that defends mining companies working in Africa Having since 2013 received an estimated €42 million (nearly $50 million USD) in funding from the EU, Britain, United States, Germany, Canada, Netherlands, Denmark, and Norway – states that have waged war on Syria and supported the country’s Islamist opposition – CIJA has become the key instrument of legal warfare, or lawfare, targeting Damascus and the government of Bashar al-Assad. The United States and its European allies spent billions arming and training militants, many from extremist Salafi-jihadist groups, to try to overthrow the Syrian government and Assad, as NATO did in Libya in 2011. But in their ruthless crusade to bring about regime change in Syria, these Western nations supplemented their military efforts with other forms of unconventional and hybrid warfare, including suffocating economic sanctions and lawfare. CIJA was created in 2012, at the beginning of the dirty war, as a weapon of what these Western governments call “transitional justice,” or regime-change-by-court. (The doctrine has also been dubbed the “Responsibility to Prosecute,” based on the “Responsibility to Protect” concept that was employed by liberal interventionists to justify the NATO wars that destroyed the states of Libya and Yugoslavia.) The commission’s investigators have collaborated with al-Qaeda and other Salafi-jihadist armed opposition groups in order to steal documents from Syria and use them in Western lawsuits against Assad and his government. CIJA’s collaboration with al-Qaeda was acknowledged in passing in an otherwise fawning publicity piece in The Guardian before it was quickly flushed down the memory hole, never to be mentioned again by the very same mainstream corporate media outlets that have printed puff piece after puff piece heroizing the organization. A €1.5 million EU grant for CIJA between 2016 and 2020 EU fraud regulator accuses its own grantee CIJA of corruption The European Union awarded the Commission for International Justice and Accountability a massive €1.5 million (approximately $1.77 million USD) grant in 2016 in order to gather “evidential material of potential war crimes and crimes against humanity” and prepare “new criminal case files” against the Syrian government and ISIS. The funding was meant to be used between 2016 and 2020. But Brussels has clearly not been happy with the work that CIJA did, or rather did not do, because the EU’s own fraud regulator announced when the project ended that the organization had been under investigation for fraud. The European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) published a press release in March 2020 stating that it had conducted a “long and complicated investigation” that “revealed that while the partnership claimed to be supporting the rule of law, the partners [CIJA] were actually committing widespread violations themselves, including submission of false documents, irregular invoicing, and profiteering.” OLAF recommended “that the national authorities in the UK, the Netherlands and Belgium consider prosecuting the involved project partners [CIJA] for possible offences of fraud and forgery.” CIJA was not publicly named in the press release, but OLAF’s statement made it clear that the fraud charges concerned its “partners in Rule of Law project in Syria,” specifically an organization that “had entered into a contract with the EU to support possible prosecutions for violations of International Criminal and Humanitarian Law in Syria” — an obvious reference to CIJA. The European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) accused the EU-funded group CIJA of fraud in 2020 The OLAF statement added that CIJA had been given €1,999,830 (roughly $2.36 million USD) as part of its Syria contract, even higher than the amount disclosed in 2016. (The figures and timeline on other EU disclosures also slightly vary, and the BBC later reported that the fraud allegations concerned a €3 million contract that the EU awarded CIJA in 2013.) OLAF suggested that the European Commission should recover €1,896,734 (nearly $2.24 million USD), or 95 percent, of that amount. While the European Anti-Fraud Office did not explicitly name CIJA, a Dutch-language investigation by journalist Arjen van der Ziel, published in the major Dutch newspaper Trouw, later made it clear that CIJA was the organization being accused of fraud. The UAE’s newspaper The National followed up with an article on OLAF’s investigation of CIJA’s corruption, titled “Fraud allegations taint efforts to prosecute war crimes in Syria.” Back in 2014, the US State Department, which had given $1 million to CIJA over two years, announced that it was cancelling its annual funding for the group. Washington did not given a reason for the cut, so it is not clear if fears of corruption had also motivated this decision. Millions in funding leads to just one, highly dubious case Despite the millions of dollars the Commission for International Justice and Accountability received from Western governments, it has very little to show for itself. Over a period of years, al-Qaeda and other Salafi-jihadist militias have helped CIJA steal huge sums of documents from Syria in a massive operation aimed at prosecuting the government of Bashar al-Assad. But that effort has culminated in just a single high-profile case, which is full of gaping legal holes. In 2020, the German government used materials obtained by CIJA to arrest two former Syrian government officials whom it accused of war crimes. Both had voluntarily left Syria years before and were living in Germany. In fact one of the men being charged in Germany, a 58-year-old former prison intelligence officer accused of torture named Anwar Raslan, had worked closely with the Syrian opposition when he defected from the government back in 2013. Raslan later established himself as a prominent member of the Western-backed opposition to Assad. A 2020 profile in Foreign Policy, titled “If a Torturer Switches Sides, Does He Deserve Mercy?,” noted: “Raslan ingratiated himself with several opposition leaders and in 2014 even got a ticket to represent the rebellion in Geneva at U.N.-organized peace talks. The about-face paid off when he flew to Germany in the summer that year and sought asylum.” Members of the Syrian opposition are split over how to prosecute leading Syrian government torturer and defector Anwar Raslan, Anchal Vohra writes. https://t.co/Z5v5BeyeDa — Foreign Policy (@ForeignPolicy) April 22, 2020 That is to say, after being given several years, nearly $50 million of dollars in Western government contracts, and help from extremist Salafi-jihadist insurgents, this is apparently the best CIJA could come up with: a Syrian living in Germany who had supported the anti-Assad opposition. As the commission comes under increasing scrutiny, and with the EU’s fraud regulator breathing down its neck, it enacted a desperate con-job to discredit its critics. How CIJA resorted to lies to entrap a British anti-war scholar and distract from fraud charges The Commission for International Justice and Accountability has enjoyed obsequious praise from across the Western press. One of the only organizations that has criticized the Western government-funded group and its dubious methodology was the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda, and Media. So in 2020, CIJA took its characteristically deceitful tactics to the next level, in a quest to discredit the working group and smear its academic constituents. In February, the working group sent CIJA a list of questions for its executive director, William H. Wiley, notifying him and his organization that their shady business dealings were being investigated. (The working group has since made these questions public, and has also published its lengthy investigation into CIJA.) As the working group dug for information on Wiley, it was surprised to find that the CIJA leader had been listed as the head of nine different companies in four jurisdictions. They even discovered that Wiley and his firm Tsamota – a contractor for the European Union and US and UK governments that has done work in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Congo – had suspiciously been named in the Panama Papers, a database of offshore entities. Moreover, the researchers uncovered that CIJA and Tsamota had the same legal address listed, along with overlap in key personnel. The address that Wiley’s CIJA and Tsamota had registered in Brussels, Belgium was apparently just an apartment in a residential area. (In late 2015, Wiley moved the CIJA/Tsamota address to Lisbon, Portugal.) CIJA Executive Director William Harry Wiley and his firm Tsamota, a Western government contractor, are named in the Panama Papers When CIJA and Wiley saw the questions from the working group, they were apparently frightened to see that their alleged financial improprieties might come to light. (The European Anti-Fraud Office’s press release revealing its corruption investigation into CIJA was not released until March, a month later.) So CIJA embarked on an attempt to entrap the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda, and Media, in a bid to discredit its research. An unidentified CIJA staffer created a false account on the encrypted email platform ProtonMail and, in December 2020, contacted Paul McKeigue, a professor of genetic epidemiology and statistical genetics at the University of Edinburgh, and a member of the working group. McKeigue told The Grayzone that when the fake account first emailed him, it did not identify itself. The user, a CIJA employee in disguise, tried to entice McKeigue by promising useful information on Syria that he could use for his research. McKeigue said he was skeptical at first, but the account ultimately provided him with factual intelligence that only an insider could have had. McKeigue independently verified the information and saw that it was indeed correct. “They are professionals at information warfare,” McKeigue recalled. “They know how to trick you into believing them and gaining their trust.” The Grayzone has reviewed some of the emails sent between McKeigue and the CIJA staffer. The messages show how over several months of communication, CIJA deceived McKeigue into feeding it private information about his colleagues in the working group and about other public figures who have exposed lies and disinformation used to justify the Western dirty war on Syria. McKeigue stressed however that not all of the information he provided in the sting operation was accurate. “Some of this was embellished to give the impression of a coordinated network that in reality does not exist,” McKeigue said in a public statement, noting that the working group “does not exist as an entity other than a loose group of people who occasionally co-author articles or comment on each other’s drafts.” Professor Paul McKeigue, the British anti-war scholar who was entrapped by CIJA’s deceptive sting operation It was not until weeks into their correspondence, McKeigue recounted, that the account began hinting that it was supposedly run by a Russian intelligence officer. McKeigue stressed that the user had at first remained anonymous for weeks, and did not falsely claim a Russian identity until well into their private communications. Eventually, the account turned to a fake name: Ivan. The CIJA staffer behind it blatantly lied to McKeigue, creating an entirely new, fictitious persona. “Ivan” tricked McKeigue into believing that he had a source on the inside, maybe even a whistleblower, who wanted to expose CIJA for apparent connections to Western intelligence agencies. “When I first started looking at CIJA, I thought it was all an intelligence front and was doing its work to lay the basis for a US occupation and sanctions on Syria,” McKeigue told The Grayzone. “But as I dug further, I realized that, for all of the millions in funding that Western governments had provided it, CIJA had actually delivered very little.” “Ivan” tried to convince McKeigue not to focus on investigating the corruption angle, but rather to focus on links to Western intelligence. The account even told McKeigue that the executive director of CIJA, William Wiley, was a CIA agent who had a long history working with the US government. This led McKeigue to investigate Wiley’s extensive links to Washington and other Western governments, and his role in the trial against Iraq’s former leader Saddam Hussein and international tribunal for former Yugoslavia. McKeigue, who said that he now believes that Wiley was the one running the false “Ivan” account, found a book by journalist John Nixon, “Debriefing the President: The Interrogation of Saddam Hussein,” which referred to a CIA analyst in Iraq named Bill, whom McKeigue suspected was William Wiley. CIJA executive director William Wiley But “Ivan” had distracted McKeigue from the main scandal: The EU regulator’s serious charges that Wiley had presided over a massive case of fraud. “I realized that the case was mostly about corruption,” McKeigue told The Grayzone. “I was stupid, but I was extremely busy at the time,” he added. “If I hadn’t been so busy, I would have been more careful.” This scandal came to light on March 26, with a series of articles in the British media. The BBC’s avowedly pro-war reporter Chloe Hadjimatheou – who was exposed for her own unethical, propagandistic work on Syria by The Grayzone’s Aaron Maté – promoted CIJA’s sting operation in an article titled “The UK professor and the fake Russian agent.” Hadjimatheou uncritically echoed CIJA’s talking points, demonizing Paul McKeigue as a Kremlin shill and even defending the organization against the EU fraud regulator’s corruption charges. Leaked documents reviewed by The Grayzone exposed how the BBC has infiltrated Russian language media to advance NATO interests in a covert program funded and overseen by the UK Foreign Office. The Times, a British outlet known for amplifying the narratives of the UK’s intelligence services, ran a carefully coordinated piece attacking McKeigue. Just a few hours later, the same newspaper printed another smear accusing McKeigue and his colleagues at the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda, and Media of “peddling Syria war ‘conspiracies.'”  The article uncritically regurgitated the claims of Charles Lister, a DC regime-change lobbyist employed by militaristic think tanks funded by the Gulf monarchies waging war on Damascus. These media attacks were followed by a nearly identical smear piece in the right-wing tabloid the Daily Mail, which conveniently failed to mention OLAF’s fraud investigation into CIJA. Amid the coordinated media assault, CIJA released a statement maligning the working group and defending its own dishonest tactics, insisting that its sting operation was “undertaken by lawful means.” For his part, Paul McKeigue published a personal statement on the working group website. “As a citizen investigator, I cultivate contacts with all sorts of people who have relevant information, including anonymous sources and some identified sources whose activities I do not endorse,” he wrote. “I kept an open mind about who I was talking to.” The working group has since released its investigation into CIJA and Wiley’s suspicious business dealings. McKeigue emphasized that he is deeply troubled by “the subversion of British parliamentary government by what I now recognize to be a ‘deep state’ operating partly through private cutouts.” Indeed, a UK government contractor with close proximity to intelligence services engaging in a spy-like sting operation against a British anti-war academic in an attempt to discredit his research, stain the reputation of his colleagues, and cover up well-substantiated charges of corruption should be a major scandal. The desperation of the tactics shows CIJA and William Wiley have a lot to hide. A truly independent media would shine light on this controversy. But so far, the mainstream press has functioned as the public relations arm for the corruption-stained CIJA, papering over the ethical rot and corruption of a taxpayer-funded organization in a bid to further the dirty war on Syria.