Attacks on Academic Freedom, The Times of London, and MI6

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Once again, The Times newspaper is attacking academics who speak truth to power, with a new hit-piece. What the latest article does not tell the reader anything about is the history of attacks on academic freedom and, in particular, the campaign against members of the Working Group on Syria, Media and Propaganda, their investigation of propaganda and the war in Syria, and the international controversy regarding whistleblowers from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) who revealed the corruption of a chemical weapons attack investigation. I shall provide some of that all important context here.

Back in 2017, a number of us had been discussing various aspects of the war in Syria including the allegations of chemical weapons use. Some of us had also appeared at the Media on Trial events alongside

vanessa beeley

and Peter Ford (former British Ambassador to Syria). These conversations led to the formation of the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media in January 2018. I assume it is very likely that, at this point, someone involved with UK government propaganda operations in Syria became alarmed with the fact that a group of credible academics were getting together in order to research and investigate their activities. What ensued during the following weeks was extraordinary.

On April 7th 2018 an alleged chemical weapons attacks was reported in the Damascus suburb of Douma. The event was international news and shocking images of dead women and children in an apartment block, coupled with hospital scenes involving panicked civilians, were broadcast around the world. Almost immediately the US, British and French governments were accusing the Syrian government of being responsible for the alleged attack and calls to carry out military strikes against Syria became ubiquitous. A taste of this war fever can be seen during this Sky News interview during which I debated with Alan Mendoza from the Henry Jackson Society neocon think-tank:

Then, on Friday 14th of April - at the same time as US, UK and French missiles were being launched against targets in Syria - the Times of London published four articles attacking the working group. We were on the front page, our pictures shown on the inside pages, and an editorial strongly implied that we should be removed from our positions as professors at leading (Russell Group) British universities.

We had done little or nothing to deserve such a ferocious and arguably unprecedented attack. Indeed, we had not, at that point, even published our first briefing note on chemical weapons allegations. Clearly, someone, somewhere, wanted to warn us off from researching Syria and, in particular, analysing the alleged chemical weapons attacks.

Our first briefing, in fact, was published months later and addressed the OPCW’s interim Fact Finding Mission report into Douma. We pointed out various aspects of the events in question and concluded that it was likely to have been a staged event, or so-called ‘false flag’.

Then, in early 2019, after the OPCW‘s final report on Douma was published, evidence of dissent from within the OPCW emerged. The working group was leaked an engineering study and, later in the year, an OPCW official gave testimony at a panel in Brussels, whilst Wikileaks published a series of internal OPCW documents. It became clear that the OPCW investigation into Douma had been manipulated in order to reach a "pre-ordained conclusion”, and one that blamed the Syrian government. The controversy continues to this day with two reports now submitted to the European Union Parliament in 2023 and 2024.

If The Times of London was committed to objective and accurate journalism, one might reasonably expect that, once OPCW scientists and officials had emerged and essentially vindicated the academics’ curiosity and questioning, that they would perhaps adjust their position. Perhaps the journalists might even have acknowledged that the academics were justified, and then covered the story of the OPCW scientists. Far from it, the newspaper kept up its attacks whilst ignoring entirely the OPCW scientists, Brendan Whelan and Ian Henderson, who had challenged the corruption of the Douma investigation.

What then is driving the coverage by the The Times on this issue? And why might Leask be carrying on the whole lamentable smear campaign against the academics? One possibility is that The Times of London is not as independent and as objective as it presents itself to be. Since coming into their line of fire, we have learned a number of things about them. They are as follows:

First, in 2013 The Times was involved with an MI6 sample gathering operation in a town called Sheik Maqsood. We know this because Hamish de Bretton-Gordon (former British military) explained in a Wilton Park podcast that he had worked alongside Times journalist Anthony Lloyd in Sheikh Maqsood. The Times reported on the incident and the samples were sent off to Porton Down. The then British Prime Minister David Cameron described this as confirmation of sarin use in Syria:

Excerpts from Berlin Group 21 Review of the Douma Controversy

When a UN-OPCW investigation examined these claims, however, it made clear the evidence was insufficient to conclude that the alleged attack had occurred.

Second, the then Times columnist Oliver Kamm let it be known that James Le Mesurier, a former British military officer (now deceased) who headed up the so-called White Helmets in Syria and who also oversaw the supply of alleged witnesses to OPCW fact finding missions, had asked that his newspaper keep up its attacks on the working group. We know this because Kamm said this himself:

Third, le Mesurier’s wife Emma le Mesurier (née Winberg), and head of 'strategic communications' for the White Helmets operation in Syria, is described as having worked for MI6 in this @POLITICOEurope article, written by a journalist who had been commissioned to document their story. Although Emma le Mesurier had sought legal action to prevent the story from being published, Politico went ahead and included the claim that she had previously worked for MI6.

Excerpts from Van Sant’s Politico article.

Also of note is that Emma Winberg appeared at an event organised by the ‘DFR lab’, part of the NATO-sponsored Atlantic Council think tank, during which she discussed the role of the White Helmets in terms of documenting alleged atrocities and supplying information to the OPCW. This occurred on the 22nd of June 2018 - i.e. right in the middle of the OPCW’s FFM in Douma - and included Eliot Higgins from Bellingcat (another British state-linked operation) and discussed the challenge being posed by an alleged ‘sustained’ and ‘vicious’ ‘disinformation’ campaign against the White Helmets. The event can be viewed here:

Fourth, later in 2018 documents were leaked showing that a covert UK government propaganda operation, called the Integrity Initiative, had been established in order to co-ordinate clusters of journalists and academics and, ostensibly, to counter Russian propaganda. As it transpired, two of the journalists whose names appeared on the byline of the Times attack on the academics, Dominic Kennedy and Deborah Haynes (see front page image above), were also named as cluster members in the Integrity Initiative documents. When contacted by me, Haynes stated that her name had been added to the Times article by mistake. Dominic Kennedy, however, refused to answer whether or not he was involved with the Integrity Initiative, or if it had anything to do with the attack on the academics:

He was asked the question several times, but never gave an answer. I gave up asking.

Drawing all of this together, succinctly, The Times of London has continued a sustained campaign attacking academics who investigated the issue of alleged chemical weapons attacks in Syria, even when people from within the organisation (the OPCW) tasked with investigating the incidents revealed to the world that one of them, into the alleged Douma chemical weapons attack, had been corrupted. But it has never chosen to reveal to its readers the fact that it has itself been involved with UK intelligence-linked actors - Hamish de Bretton-Gordon and James le Mesurier (via his relationship with Emma Winberg) - and a UK government propaganda operation (the Integrity Initiative). And it has never chosen to pay any attention to the two courageous scientists - Brendan Whelan and Ian Henderson - who had challenged the corruption of the Douma investigation. I contend that all of this points clearly to The Times being compromised, effectively serving the interests of the British government.

But there is much more at stake here than the injustice of a respected British newspaper targeting academics who were, and still are, simply doing their job. The Douma incident involved the killing of 43 civilians, many of them women and children. One of the facts to have emerged from the leaked OPCW documents is that the original toxicology report, authored by NATO chemical weapons experts, was systematically suppressed. It had concluded the civilians had not been killed by chlorine gas. And if they were not killed by chlorine gas, how was it their had bodies turned up, gathered in piles, in an apartment block in Douma?

The witnesses, many of whom were White Helmets, who claimed to the OPCW investigators that civilians had perished in a chlorine gas attack, had been organised under the supervision of James le Mesurier himself.

Meanwhile, other witnesses stated categorically that the hospital scenes, aired to the world, had been staged by the White Helmets. These claims were corroborated by the BBC’s Riam Dalati who stated, in winter 2019, that 6 months of research and interviews had confirmed the scenes were indeed staged.

The reasonable conclusion to draw from this is that the Douma alleged chemical weapons attack was staged with the involvement of the White Helmets, that 43 civilians were killed by something other than the alleged chlorine gas attack, and that James le Mesurier played a role in the events. How much he knew about how the 43 civilians had been killed has gone to the grave with him. Whichever way one looks at this, we have a war crime of significant proportions and an accompanying character assassination campaign carried out by Times journalists which has prevented the full truth from being known.

Of course, it is not clear that journalists caught up with smearing the academics fully understand what it is they are helping to cover up. Dominic Kennedy, Deborah Haynes, Georgie Keate, Krystina Shveda, and now David Leask, might simply have been following their editorial instructions to discredit the academics. It is not too late, however, for them to start asking the right questions.