King of secrets
Millionaire behind infowars unit is credited with behind-scenes role in comedy movie
A state-funded infowars unit director was the inspiration for a spy in the film Kingsman.
The spoof agent played by Colin Firth in the hit comedy shares his name with Harry Hart from the Institute for Statecraft.
The real Hart is the son of the late David Hart, a shadowy adviser to Margaret Thatcher.
David is rumoured to have orchestrated campaigns against the Labour Party and striking miners in the 80s.
In Kingsman, Firth’s character is a crack member of a secret private intelligence service.
The real Harry Hart – nicknamed Bimbo – is listed in the credits for the 2014 film in an unnamed role.
The Swiss-based multi-millionaire, 47, joined the Institute for State craft in September 2017.
This month, the Sunday Mail told how the institute are registered as a Scottish charity who list their address as a disused mill neat Cupar, Fife.
They are run by military intelligence specialists and their Integrity Initiative wing had received more than £ 2million from the Foreign Office.
But we also revealed the organisation–who are supposed to counter Russian fake news – had promoted tweets criticising Jeremy Corbyn, his staff and the Labour Party.
One post from the official account quoted a newspaper article calling the Labour leader a “useful idiot” and stated that his “visceral anti-Westernism helped the Kremlin”.
There have also been claims the organisation mounted a social media campaign against a public figure in Spain deemed sympathetic to Russia.
Pedro Banos was ultimately rejected for a job as his country’s national security director. Institute for Statecraft director Chris Donnelly is an Honorary Colonel in Military Intelligence who once headed the British Army’s Soviet Studies Research Centre at Sandhurst. Fellow board member Dan Lafayeedney was an SAS soldier in 1978, while Stephen Dalziel spent time in the military and working in military intelligence.
Labour want an independent investigation into the institute and the Tories claim they are reviewing their social media policies.
Harry Hart’s involvement is likely to ramp up widespread speculat ion onl ine that the Institute are a “cut out” wing of the British secret service, more concerned with spreading propaganda than educating the public on Russian dirty tricks.
David Hart was said to have links to secret services and funded workers who broke the picket line during the miners strike in 1984 to 1985.
He also financed full- page anti-Labour adverts during the 1987 general election after helping set up the extreme libertarian pressure group Committee for a Free Britain.
The old Etonian was involved in lobby ing for defence contractors around the world and in 2004, an arrest warrant was issued over his alleged involvement in a coup attempt in Equatorial Guinea.
After his death in January 2011, an obituary in the daily Telegraph read: “His enemies likened him to Rasputin and accused him of being an agent of the CIA, the KGB, Mossad.”
After our revelations, Foreign Office minister Alan Duncan promised an investigation into the institute.
Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry tabled an urgent parliamentary question.
The organisation are also being probed by the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator.