Secretive infowars unit that attacked Labour Party shuts down its website
A Government- funded infowars unit exposed by the Sunday Mail has closed down its website.
The Integrity Initiative had come under increasing scrutiny since we revealed it used its official Twitter page to criticise Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party.
Last week, its Twitter feed was blocked from public view for several days and its website has been deleted.
A message on the homepage read: “All content has been temporarily removed from this site, pending an investigation into the theft of data from the Institute for Statecraft and its programme, the Integrity Initiative.”
We told how the organisation was run by military intelligence specialists and had received £2million in funding from the Foreign Office.
It is part of Scottish-registered “charity” the Institute for Statecraft and has formed clusters of journalists, politicians and key public figures around Europe in what is supposed to be a bid to counter Russian disinformation.
But one of many anti- Labour Twitter posts from the organisation suggested Corbyn was a “useful idiot” of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
There has also been troubling evidence revealed in hacked documents that a social media campaign was waged against a Spanish public figure who was being proposed for a top defence job because he was deemed too friendly towards Russia.
David Miller, professor of political sociology at the University of Bristol, said: “It was difficult to see the Integrity Initiative continuing for much longer after the Sunday Mail’s initial exposé. The story of this organisation has become murkier and murk ier the more that information has been investigated.
“Just because the website has been taken down doesn’t mean it has gone away and questions still need to be asked about what the huge sums of public money given to the Integrity Initiative are being used for.”
The Scottish Government has refusedfdtto revealliinformationfti about b t secret briefings given to ministers on the issue.
Documents released under Freedom of Information laws detail 45 pages of internal emails in the wake of the Sunday Mail’s expose.
But the Government have refused to disclose all information given by officials to ministers on the grounds they need a “private space within which to seek advice and views”.
We told earlier this month how the Integrity Initiative has connections to US military PR guru John Rendon. His Rendon Group were hired by the CIA in the 90s to run a PR campaign against Saddam HusseinHus and is said to have beenbee behind stories of IraqiIraq weapons of mass destruction.des
InstituteIn for Statecraft directordire Chris Donnelly is ana honorary colonel in militarymil intelligence.
AnotherA member of he board,boa Dan Lafayeedney, waswa an SAS soldier in 1978 and director Stephen Dalziel also workedworkedinmilinmilitary intelligence. And director Harry Hart appears to have been the inspiration for a secret agent in the Kingsman movies.
The organisation are registered as a charity at the run- down Gateside Mill in Fife.
But none of the other businesses there had heard of the institute before stories appeared in the media in recent months.
The Labour Party have called for an independent investigation. Foreign Office minister Alan Duncan promised a full investigation in the wake of our story. But since then he has tried to dismiss the scandal as “Russian disinformation”.