From the crowd-sourced investigative site bellingcat,a story about the poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alex Navalny A joint investigation between Bellingcat and The Insider, in cooperation with Der Spiegel and CNN, has discovered voluminous telecom and travel data that implicates Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) in the poisoning of the prominent Russian opposition politician Alexey...
Tag: Bellingcat
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How (Not) To Report On Russian Disinformation
From Aric Toler at bellingcat, a short course in how read news stories about Russian disinformation. Case in point: a bad New York Times story that hyped a Swedish blogger all out proportion. To be sure, there is such a thing as Russian disinformation, and it warrants coverage from journalists and researchers. However, the way...
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Britain Names New MI5 Chief: The Spy Who Investigated 2018 Novichok Attack
His name is Kenneth McCallum. MI5 is the British domestic security service, the equivalent of America’s FBI. MI5, established in 1909 to counter German espionage ahead of World War One, is tasked with protecting British national security. Its main job is currently countering international terrorism though it is also a counter-intelligence agency. It employs about...
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Bellingcat: The Implausible ‘False Flag’ Theory About a Syrian Chemical Attack
Last year I reviewed the evidence of the chemical attack in Douma, Syria and came away unconvinced by the “false flag” scenario advanced by some critics of U.S. policy. While the U.S. is known to mount “false flag” operations, the evidence from Douma does not support the claim that an attack was staged to blame...
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Why Russian Media Identified the Alleged CIA Agent, While U.S. Outlets Did Not
Mulitple Russian news sites identified the CIA spy exfiltrated from Russia because of concerns about his safety, while U.S. news outlets did not. He is Oleg Smolenkov, an assistant to a top foreign policy adviser to President Vladimir Putin. American outlets reported the asset fed the CIA secrets for years and was able to photograph...
