Questions about BBC producers ties to UK intelligence follow Mayday White
Helmets whitewash
KIT KLARENBERG·APRIL 7, 2021
The BBCs Chloe Hadjimatheou produced a podcast serial designed to
rehabilitate the White Helmets late, scandal-stained founder, while blaming
critics for his demise. Was she a channel for a wider British intelligence
operation?
White Helmets founder James Le Mesurier falling to his death from the top
floor of his Istanbul home in uncertain circumstances in November 2019
created a myriad of extremely serious problems for a great many powerful
people.
At the time, the White Helmets intimate ties to jihadist groups were being
probed and publicized ever-more widely, and the groups and Le Mesuriers
seemingly central role in the staging of phony chemical attacks and
sabotage of subsequent Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons
investigations into the alleged incidents was becoming increasingly
apparent. Mere days before his death, Le Mesurier even confessed to the
overseas governments funding his company Mayday and by extension the White
Helmets that widespread allegations of financial impropriety on his part
were true.
To clean up the mess that Le Mesuriers plunge left, a rehabilitative,
exculpatory narrative was rubber-stamped by the BBC. It arrived by way of a
15-part podcast series, Mayday, that elevated the White Helmets British
founder to the status of a secular saint, thoroughly drenched his critics in
slime, whitewashed the OPCWs cover-up scandal while denigrating its
whistleblowers, and lifted its presenter and producer Chloe Hadjimatheou to
mainstream media prominence.
However, the dubiously sourced, factually flawed, and often slander-filled
series raised far more questions than it answered chief among them the
nature of Hadjimatheous relationship with British intelligence, via the
omnipresent ARK, a shadowy contractor which has reaped untold millions from
waging covert information warfare operations across the globe on Whitehalls
behalf.
Many of these efforts have been centered on the Syrian conflict. And in far
too many cases, ARKs assorted infowar projects have had fatal consequences
for the locals it has employed, exploited, and targeted.
The BBCs Chloe Hadjimatheou
The man called Uncle
On 27 December 2015, journalist Naji al-Jerf was shot dead in broad daylight
in Gaziantep, Turkey by ISIS operatives, as he, his wife, and two daughters
were preparing to flee the country and seek asylum in France.
Jerf, locally nicknamed Uncle due to his extensive mentoring of Syrian
opposition activists, was widely obituarized in the Western media, including
the BBC, and presented as a righteous symbol of the moderate wing of the
Syrian revolution.
What no outlet mentioned however, was that at the time of his death, he had
for many years been in the employ of ARK, founded in 2009 by probable MI6
operative Alistair Harris.
In this capacity, Jerf helped run Basma, a Syrian media production and
distribution platform created by ARK that was capable of directly
messaging inside Syria to promote the moderate opposition, said to have
delivered impactful media content through TV, FM radio, social media and
print material [including] posters, magazines and comics.
He also trained and coordinated a vast network of stringers in Syria, who
produced multimedia propaganda related to the ongoing conflict for domestic
and international broadcast.
Jerf moreover edited Hentah, an ARK-funded magazine distributed in both
opposition- and government-held areas, as well as Hentawi, a slick
counter-recruitment comic aimed at 9-to-15-year-old Syrians that featured
animated strips slyly extolling equality, democracy, and other values, along
with quizzes, games, and inspiring stories of athletes, celebrities, and the
like.
ARK was well-aware such activities put Jerf and those with whom he
collaborated in the Islamic States crosshairs. In a leaked file submitted
to the UK Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office (FCDO), the company
actively boasted that Hentah had so provoked the ire of ISIS that it burnt
copies in Aleppo in 2013.
It was seemingly Jerfs involvement in Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently
(known as Raqqa SL for short) that was his final undoing. He co-founded the
group, an ostensible citizen journalist collective reporting on abuses by
ISIS in the Syrian city it claimed as its de facto capital, and thereafter
served as the organizations key spokesperson and filmmaker. Another leaked
ARK file framed the endeavor as part of its Countering Violent Extremism
operations in Syria, boasting that locals had co-opted ARKs messages as
their own to further shared objectives.
Raqqa SLs coverage didnt solely focus on ISIS, though for instance, its
reports alleging Russian airstrikes in and around Raqqa mainly targeted
civilians, not Islamic State, were perhaps predictably amplified by the
Western media. Conversely, no mention was ever made of US airstrikes on the
area ostensibly intended to liberate it from ISIS rule devastating the
civilian population.
Getting people killed
The UKs Independent newspaper, among a great many others, hailed the quite
extraordinary bravery of individuals involved in this endeavor, alleging
that Raqqa SLs work [prevents] people inclined toward [extremist] ideology
actually going to Syria a key aim of covert Whitehall psyops projects
conducted domestically at the time. In 2015 the organization won the
Committee to Protect Journalists International Press Freedom Award.
Furthermore, in April the next year, BBC World Service produced an elaborate
five-part online series about the group, Islamic States Most Wanted, which
combined on-screen interviews with some of its key founders by then exiled
in Europe video footage, and animation.
In 2017, the documentary received One World Medias Digital Media Award,
with an accompanying blurb hailing its big impact with audiences.
Chillingly, one such impact was potentially putting the lives of Raqqa SL
activists and their collaborators at even greater risk.
The programs lead presenter and producer, BBC journalist Chloe
Hadjimatheou, acknowledged this to be an almost inevitable upshot of her
reporting. In a contemporaneous blog detailing her experiences of working on
the project, she expressed fear that the series may have raised their
profiles and made them more of a target.
Jerf was far from the only individual who may have died as a result of the
British states clandestine meddling in Syria. An associate of his was
likewise slain in November 2015 in the Turkish province of Urfa, and two
months earlier ISIS killed two opposition activists in Idlib. All three
victims were involved with Raqqa SL.
The dangerously counter-productive and utterly ineffectual nature of the
organization was starkly exposed by journalist James Harkin in November
2016. He recorded how the exiled leaders of the organization relied on
scouring Facebook for content, and tapping friends and relatives in the
city for information, which made anyone known or even suspected of being
connected in any way with Raqqa SL mortal enemies of ISIS.
In turn, the extremist group began kidnapping and murdering dozens of people
not merely in Raqqa, but across the area it controlled. Many activists in
the region reserved outright contempt for Raqqa SL, with one quoted by
Harkin as saying the organization was generally considered a Facebook
event, whose chief consequence is that it gets people killed, and that
while the group may be media heroes, they had a very small impact at the
community level.
Another accused Raqqa SL of publishing publicity-seeking propaganda with no
reporting depth, blaming Western media outlets and NGOs for encouraging
daredevil agitprop with money and garlands, while yet another was unable
to contain his anger over the groups machinations.
This is bad work, what they do, and not journalism
Anyone can connect with
young guys and teenagers in a bad situation in Syria and pay them a few
hundred dollars a month. Raqqa SL are responsible for all these deaths. And
after a year and a half what is the impact? IS killed their people, the
nameless activist fulminated.
It is uncertain whether Islamic States Most Wanted produced further
bloodshed within and without Raqqa, just as Hadjimatheou feared both she
and her employer have refused to answer questions on this point. Whatever
the truth of the matter, it may be significant that the program was
commissioned and financed by BBC World Services Digital Storytelling Fund,
launched in 2015 to encourage the production of cutting edge, in-depth
digital content for a global audience.
That same year, the British state broadcaster received an unprecedented £289
million cash injection from the central government following publication of
Whitehalls National Security Strategy, Strategic Defence, and Security
Review. This document described the World Service as an integral part of
Londons soft-power projection overseas, calling for the global reach of
its digital, TV, and radio services to be greatly expanded.
The BBC currently reaches 308 million people worldwide, and its goal is to
reach 500 million by 2022. World Service reaches into some of the most
remote places in the world, providing a link to the UK for individuals and
societies who would otherwise not have this opportunity, the Review
bragged.
It seems certain the Digital Storytelling Fund arose from this national
security-directed bankrolling bonanza. Strikingly, in her aforementioned
blog post, Hadjimatheou indicated spending on Islamic States Most Wanted
was lavish, stating its not often that BBC budgets can accommodate such an
expense.
A not insignificant portion of this wellspring reportedly went on numerous
unrecorded, informal meetings between Hadjimatheou and the exiled Raqqa SL
representatives in their adopted home countries to cultivate trust, spread
over many months a vast investment of time and money in the project
apparently before its production had begun, let alone was even confirmed.
Clearly, this was a tale she, and BBC World Service, was determined to tell
no matter the cost, or risk to her interviewees.
Hadjimatheou attempted to explain her dogged resolve in her blog, asserting
that, like many journalists with an interest in the war in Syria, she had
heard of Raqqa SL and followed the groups posts online to learn about life
under jihadist rule, in the process becoming fascinated by how they
operate as a group.
Yet, little to no trace of any interest in the Syrian crisis can be
detected from Hadjimatheous journalistic output prior to Islamic States
Most Wanted. Indeed, the bulk of her work focused on esoteric lifestyle
topics and profiles of political figures. Nonetheless, she was said to be
the driving engine of The New Jihadism: A Global Snapshot, published by
the War Department of Kings College London, which analyzed all reported
deaths caused by jihadist groups and networks during November 2014.
Hes good, isnt he?
Despite her documentarys plaudits, Hadjimatheou remained largely unheard of
until November 2020, when the BBC broadcast a 10-part podcast series,
Mayday, of which she was again sole presenter and producer.
The serial explored the ever-mysterious life and death of British military
intelligence veteran-turned committed humanitarian James Le Mesurier, and
the numerous allegations which had dogged the White Helmets founder for many
years prior to his apparent suicide, and only became further amplified
thereafter.
Entirely credible suggestions that Le Mesurier was a UK intelligence
operative, that the White Helmets were a bogus humanitarian organization
linked to murderous jihadists serving as a front for regime change in Syria,
and that Mayday Rescue was engaged in widespread financial impropriety
which Le Mesurier in fact confessed to international donors three days
before his death among other extremely serious charges, were all portrayed
in the podcast series as malign disinformation.
In the process, any and all critics of Le Mesurier, and the group he
founded, were smeared by Mayday as deranged and/or malicious agents of the
Russian and Syrian governments whether witting or unwitting who bear
significant responsibility for his demise.
Hadjimatheous attack on Grayzone editor Max Blumenthal, in which she
insinuated that he had been recruited to launch this outlet by the Russian
government absolutely false slander for which there is no evidentiary
basis was preceded by a menacing email sent by Hadjimatheou to The
Grayzones public email account on October 12, 2020. The email consisted
largely of invective addressed to Blumenthal, such as the following
statement: you are one of the most prominent pro-Assad, anti-White Helmets
bloggers on the internet.
The podcasts protagonist, Le Mesurier, was presented in the most fawning
terms imaginable, as a buccaneering, roguish force of nature with a heart of
gold and predilection for practical jokes. Many individuals who knew him,
including his third wife, Emma Winberg a veteran UK Foreign Office
political officer, and founder of Foreign Office psyops contractor Incostrat
effusively praised Le Mesurier throughout the series. Their plaudits were
neither questioned by Hadjimatheou nor balanced by dissenting voices.
In this capacity, the aforementioned Alistair Harris also made an
appearance, describing his deceased friend as Lawrence of Arabia-esque in
the podcasts second episode, The Pizza in the Suitcase. The ARK chiefs
overly-chummy rapport with Hadjimatheou was as palpable as it was peculiar.
How are you planning to describe me, out of interest? Harris asked.
I want you to decide how you want to be described! she responded, her
interviewee chuckling.
Harris opted to designate himself as former UK diplomat, a vague
characterization that doesnt withstand scrutiny. For instance, his
biography on ARKs website doesnt describe him as a diplomat, instead
stating he spent 20 years working in conflict zones from Northern Ireland
and the Balkans to Afghanistan, the West Bank and Lebanon.
An actual UK diplomat by definition would not be deployed to Northern
Ireland, given the province is part of the country itself, and therefore
does not have a British embassy on its soil. This glaring inconsistency
tends to suggest Harris was and potentially still is affiliated with
MI6.
In any event, Hadjimatheou then cut to the chase and asked Harris outright
whether the Mayday chief was a spy. Predictably, he stated that he knew for
a fact Le Mesurier was never in the security and intelligence services. A
July 2018 Guardian article begs to differ, noting he held a military
intelligence post while on peacekeeping operations in the Balkans.
In return, the presenter inquired if Harris himself had ever been part of
any such agency, which he evasively denied in a highly incongruous exchange.
Would you tell me if you were?
No, I wouldnt tell you.
Youre not allowed to, are you?
Youd have to ask someone who was, Harris equivocated, a riposte
eliciting giggles from Hadjimatheou, before she asserted rhetorically via
voiceover, hes good, isnt he?
Harris made no mention of ARK, and at no point during the 10-part podcast
was the company referenced, an extraordinary oversight given Le Mesurier
worked at the company from 2011 to 2014, and Mayday Rescue was spun out of
the firm. Prior to his departure, ARK reaped vast sums promoting the White
Helmets at the FCDOs behest, developing an internationally focused
communications campaign to raise global awareness of the group in order to
keep Syria in the news.
Under this campaigns auspices, ARK produced a documentary on the White
Helmets and ran their various social media accounts, including the Facebook
page for Idlib City Council, at one time proposed as a potential interim
government to replace Bashar al-Assad. When local Al Qaeda affiliate Jabhat
al-Nusra overwhelmed the city, the White Helmets were filmed celebrating the
victory in its main square.
Le Mesuriers second wife, Sarah, worked at ARK from 2013 to 2020, while
Emma Winbergs Incostrat, similarly unmentioned in the Mayday series, shared
staff with ARK. The firm ran numerous information ops in Syria, which may
have included producing slick propaganda for notoriously brutal jihadist
group, Jaysh al-Islam (the Army of Islam).
This militia ran the assorted areas it occupied under draconian
interpretations of Sharia law, kidnapping, imprisoning, torturing, and
executing innocent men, women, and children for even the mildest
infringements of strict Islamist code. Atrocities perpetrated by the group
include parading caged Alawite families in the streets, using hostages as
human shields, and attacking Kurdish civilians with chemical weapons.
Intriguingly, Abdul Kader Habak, an ARK employee from 2013 to 2019, was
credited as having provided Arabic translation and additional research to
every Mayday podcast episode. In a statement issued to The Grayzone, the
British state broadcaster denied that this fact represented a conflict of
interest, and seemingly attempted to distance itself somewhat from Habak in
an email exchange with me, stating he merely contributed research to Mayday
at an early stage in its production.
The reason for this sleight of hand could well be Habaks potential links to
violent extremist groups, upon which the BBC is yet to comment publicly.
Witness testimony places Habak in very close quarters with al-Nusra and
Ahrar Al-Sham when the groups carried out a hideous April 2017 sectarian car
bomb massacre in the town of Rashideen, in which children who had spent
years under siege were lured to their deaths by a man dangling potato chips.
That same month, Habak was also serendipitously present at a Khan Shaykhun
hospital at the precise moment it was allegedly subjected to a chemical
weapon attack. Footage of the incident showed him seemingly unfazed by the
purported strike.
The previous year, Londons Channel 4 News broadcast a series of
documentary-style shorts called Inside Aleppo. Habak was specifically named
by presenter Cathy Newman as lead cameraman presumably in the context of
his ARK employment for one report, Up Close with the Rebels.
Within 24 hours of publication, the video was removed from Channel 4s
website and YouTube channel, and little trace of it can be found online
today. No reason was offered for the abrupt and total expurgation, although
it appears obvious that the documented activities of the CIA-backed Nour
al-Din al-Zinki insurgents featured in the presentation may have been a
significant factor in the removal.
Among its many sordid acts, al-Zinki leaders publicly beheaded a teenage
Palestinian refugee fighter in July that year and those who helped kidnap
the young man featured prominent in Habaks film.
Previously unknown BBC journalist
Mayday caused something of a sensation upon broadcast, receiving
overwhelmingly positive reviews from many news outlets and extensive
promotion on Twitter from prominent figures. Its producer in turn suddenly
became a mainstream media go-to expert on the White Helmets and their
founder.
That the podcast was such a smash hit among British media elites is at least
partially attributable to its release having been heavily trailed in advance
on social media, thanks to the publication 27th October 2020 a fortnight
before Maydays initial episode aired of a 6,000 word hagiography of James
Le Mesurier by The Guardian.
The article, courtesy of its veteran Middle East reporter Martin Chulov,
whose coverage of Syria was highly supportive of the Wests regime change
project, covered many of the same areas as Mayday, painting an idolatrous
portrait of Le Mesurier, and similarly acquitting him of all charges.
Many who shared Chulovs homage to Le Mesurier including Eliot Higgins,
founder-and-chief of US government-funded, UK Foreign Office-partnered open
source investigations website Bellingcat, a pivotal purveyor of atrocity
propaganda related to the Syrian conflict referenced the impending podcast
series in their puffery of the Guardian piece.
The surge of publicity surrounding the series before and after its
transmission bore all the hallmarks of a concerted campaign to rehabilitate
Le Mesurier, and it may be no coincidence that on 18 November just one
week following the White Helmets founders death Alistair Harris
established a new company, Hotch Potch Entertainment, in the UK.
The firms registration documents state the nature of its business to be
motion picture production and television programme production. Another
founder of the company was Simon Wilson, who appears on a list of MI6
officers published in 1999. An official biography implies he would have been
posted to Iraq at precisely the same time Le Mesurier served as adviser to
the countrys minister of interior, in 2005.
Hotch Potch was dissolved February 2021, right when it was due to file
accounts for the first time. Its entirely unclear what if any funds it
received or distributed during its lifespan, although it would be entirely
unsurprising if its purpose was to sponsor and/or produce programming about
Le Mesurier.
When I asked Hadjimatheou 30th March via WhatsApp whether she had any
relationship with the company among many other queries related to her
journalistic output she swiftly directed me to the BBC press office,
before blocking my number outright. Similar stonewalling was experienced by
Paul McKeigue of the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media to the
same question.
A BBC spokesperson asked me to please make clear that there was no
connection between Hotch Potch and Mayday, and any insinuation that Chloe
was directed or funded by Hotch Potch is wrong.
In addition to praise however, Mayday also triggered acrimonious online
reactions, thanks in part to the publication of Hadjimatheous pre-broadcast
correspondence with prominent critics of the White Helmets including Eva
Bartlett, Vanessa Beeley, and Paul McKeigue. The communications amply
exposed that discrediting independent journalists and researchers who had
raised questions about Le Mesurier was a core objective of Mayday from the
very beginning.
In response to a volley of resultant criticism, Hadjimatheou locked her
Twitter account, but sardonically updated her accompanying bio to read
previously unknown BBC journalist. Barring occasional quotes in news
articles related to the podcast, Hadjimatheou was largely off-radar again
until 27 February 2021 four days after Hotch Potch was struck off the UK
companies register when an article she wrote was published on the BBC News
website.
Running at 5,000 words considerably lengthier than typical BBC long read
pieces it rehashed her slanted story of the courageous and unimpeachable
Le Mesurier, painting him a battle-hardened military veteran who somehow
buckled under an onslaught of baseless online disinformation and
consequently took his own life.
Hadjimatheous next article for the British state broadcasters website, on
26 March, was even longer a staggering and unparalleled 7,000 words. It
told the story of how Paul McKeigue, in the process of investigating the
Commission for International Justice and Accountability (CIJA) a highly
dubious organization involved in various prosecutions of Syrian officials in
Western courts for alleged war crimes committed during the decade-long
crisis was caught up in an elaborate sting operation.
Since 2013, CIJA which self-styles as a non-profit, non-governmental
organisation dedicated to furthering criminal justice efforts has
received approximately $50 million USD in funding from the European Union
and the governments of Canada, Denmark, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, UK,
and US. As The Grayzones Ben Norton has extensively documented, McKeigue
smelled a rat, believing CIJA to be an intelligence front
[laying] the
basis for a US occupation and sanctions on Syria.
The academics suspicions were understandable. After all, CIJA founder
William Wiley posted to Baghdad from 2005 to 2008, where he worked for the
US Embassys Regime Crimes Liaison Unit and his firm Tsamota, which has
the same address as CIJA, and shares key staffers with the NGO, was named
in the Panama Papers leaks.
Moreover, CIJA has deployed field [teams] and trained investigators across
Syria to collect documents held in former government headquarters in
opposition-occupied areas of the country, abandoned over the course of the
conflict, for use in prosecutions against authorities. As documented by The
Grayzone in 2019, these operations necessitated CIJA securing protection and
assistance from numerous Islamist militias active in these areas, including
the al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra.
Once Wiley learned that McKeigue was delving into his organization, an
unidentified CIJA staffer created a false account on the encrypted email
platform ProtonMail, and contacted the professor in December 2020, enticing
him with useful leads on Syria-related intrigues. After reeling McKeigue in
with independently verifiable insight, the staffer began deceiving him into
divulging private information about his colleagues in the Working Group.
Following several weeks of back-and-forth contact, the staffer introduced
themself for the first time as Ivan, implying without ever stating
outright that they were a Russian intelligence officer. McKeigues continued
contact with the staffer allowed Hadjimatheou to frame the academic as
having collaborated with an avowed Moscow-based spy to discredit an
organisation that helps bring Syrian war criminals to justice.
Repeat offender?
A researcher soliciting information from every feasible source is hardly a
scandal indeed, many mainstream journalists rely on a variety of
oft-shadowy insider sources for information. Its surely far more notable
that an intelligence-connected organization employed cloak-and-dagger
tactics eerily similar to those widely engaged in by security services in
order to entrap a private citizen.
Indictment for such activities was lacking from previously unknown BBC
journalist Chloe Hadjimatheous article, although she acknowledged that the
European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) has formally accused CIJA of fraud and
submission of false documents, irregular invoicing, and profiteering in
relation to a project delivered by the organization under the EUs Rule of
Law project in Syria, and recommended that authorities in the UK,
Netherlands, and Belgium prosecute the group.
However, Hadjimatheou neglected to mention that CIJA arose from a
collaboration between ARK and Wileys Tsamota. A UK FCDO document leaked by
self-described hacktivist collective Anonymous reveals that, in 2011, the
pair supported the establishment of the Syrian Commission for Justice and
Accountability (SCJA), to extract contemporaneous documentation from the
conflict zone.
The file boasted of how SCJA which changed its name to CIJA in 2014 had
been supported in its efforts by the UK Conflict Pool, the US-supported
Syrian Justice and Accountability Centre (SJAC) and EU Instrument for
Stability, becoming a major component of Syrias transitional justice
architecture along the way.
To date the project has collected over 1,500 [kilograms] of contemporaneous
documentation from inside Syria, scanned or is in the process of scanning
over 310,000 pages of evidential material as well as reviewing and indexing
over 12,000 videos, all of which had to be hand carried from Syria, the
document continued, noting many of the governments which have covertly and
overtly supported regime change in efforts also provided financing.
ARK and Tsamota were said to have utilised international investigators and
lawyers with broad experience of international judicial instruments the
ICC, ICTY, ICTR, UNIIIC/STL, thus [ensuring] that when the conflict ends,
the raw material of a post-conflict war crimes process is ready for trial,
in turn providing a key contribution to truth telling, reconciliation and
the future of Syria. While the conflict in Syria is far from over, CIJA
seems to be already eagerly fulfilling that aspiration.
A publicly available guide to documentation groups in Syria, published by
Public Law and International Policy Group in March 2013, offers further
detail on ARKs guiding role in CIJAs activities, stating the company has
been [providing] pro bono training and support for investigators selected
by SCJA since May 2011.
The guide stated: The first component of ARKs and Tsamotas program
involved training Syrian investigators in basic international criminal and
humanitarian law. Specifically, trainings focused on the links between
international humanitarian law and human rights law, as well as
possibilities for a domestic justice process in a future transitional Syria.
Simultaneously, ARK and Tsamota provided training on international criminal
investigative methodology.
This collaboration between ARK and Tsamota and ARK in 2013 was seemingly
funded by the very EU project investigated and found to be fraudulent by
OLAF.
On 6 April, Hadjimatheous BBC Mayday podcast series published yet another
episode, this time defending CIJA. Yet again, Hadjimatheou appears to be
promoting and amplifying a black PR operation run by ARK a UK
intelligence contractor.
The question of whether she is just an unconscious cog in a wider
connivance, manipulated and directed by unseen forces, or a conscious
collaborator in a committed conspiracy, is an open one. Still, her evasions,
and blatant editorial agenda, suggests the latter interpretation is a strong
possibility.
