A Leaker Comes In from the Cold

Dec. 29, 2022 (EIRNS)—Today, for the first time, a BBC interview show was guest hosted by an active-duty intelligence chief, that being GCHQ Chief Jeremy Fleming, interviewing U.S. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines. As reported by the Guardian, presenter Nick Robinson, piously insisted that despite this new circumstance, “the BBC’s independence was not compromised as a result of the collaboration.” Such fustian is part of a growing trend, in which intelligence agency infiltration of the press, which used to be a carefully guarded secret (as in the CIA’s “Project Mockingbird,” revealed by the 1975 Church Committee hearings), is now done openly and brazenly, with spooks such as former CIA Director John Brennan and former DNI James Clapper, who both lied under oath to the U.S. Congress about illegal activity by the CIA and NSA, now hold high-profile positions at MSNBC and CNN.

Fleming spoke, with what seemed to be candor, about the new policy regarding the collection of intelligence; it is no longer being done simply to guide strategic decision-making, but rather it is to be leaked for propaganda purposes. He described it as a form of “pre-bunking,” to counter Russian “narratives.” Fleming did lament that “pre-bunking” has had little effect outside the Anglosphere, and that with regard to the Ukraine war, Russia had even managed to persuade some countries that “the United States is provoking this conflict.” However, people who are accustomed to getting their news from the BBC may be highly susceptible to the “pre-bunking” efforts of the likes of GCHQ.

To sweeten the deal, Fleming emphasized the new, “woke” orientation of the Anglo-American secret police agencies, expressing the hope that his successor would be “female or indeed someone from an ethnic minority background.”

Fleming took over GCHQ in April 2017, after his predecessor’s effectiveness in managing U.K.-U.S. relations was knocked out by U.S. knowledge that he had been a leading player in the squalid “Russiagate” dossier concocted against candidate and then President Donald Trump. In the deceased Queen’s view, apparently, Fleming has been doing a fine job. She knighted him in 2021.

Note that Haines appeared to agree with Fleming on the need for “pre-bunking,” and that, alas, it had not proved very successful in large parts of the world.