Questions about BBC producer’s ties to UK intelligence follow ‘Mayday’ White Helmets whitewash

The following investigative report, by Kit Klarenberg, is republished from The Grayzone: 

The BBC’s Chloe Hadjimatheou produced a podcast serial designed to rehabilitate the White Helmets’ late, scandal-stained founder, while blaming critics for his demise. Was she a channel for a wider British intelligence operation?

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White Helmets founder James Le Mesurier falling to his death from the top floor of his Istanbul home in uncertain circumstances in November 2019 created a myriad of extremely serious problems for a great many powerful people.

At the time, the White Helmets’ intimate ties to jihadist groups were being probed and publicized ever-more widely, and the group’s – and Le Mesurier’s – seemingly central role in the staging of phony chemical attacks and sabotage of subsequent Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons investigations into the alleged incidents was becoming increasingly apparent. Mere days before his death, Le Mesurier even confessed to the overseas governments funding his company Mayday – and by extension the White Helmets – that widespread allegations of financial impropriety on his part were true.

To clean up the mess that Le Mesurier’s plunge left, a rehabilitative, exculpatory narrative was rubber-stamped by the BBC. It arrived by way of a 15-part podcast series, Mayday, that elevated the White Helmets’ British founder to the status of a secular saint, thoroughly drenched his critics in slime, whitewashed the OPCW’s cover-up scandal while denigrating its whistleblowers, and lifted its presenter and producer Chloe Hadjimatheou to mainstream media prominence.

However, the dubiously sourced, factually flawed, and often slander-filled series raised far more questions than it answered – chief among them the nature of Hadjimatheou’s relationship with British intelligence, via the omnipresent ARK, a shadowy contractor which has reaped untold millions from waging covert information warfare operations across the globe on Whitehall’s behalf.

Many of these efforts have been centered on the Syrian conflict. And in far too many cases, ARK’s assorted infowar projects have had fatal consequences for the locals it has employed, exploited, and targeted.

The man called ‘Uncle’

On 27 December 2015, journalist Naji al-Jerf was shot dead in broad daylight in Gaziantep, Turkey by ISIS operatives, as he, his wife, and two daughters were preparing to flee the country and seek asylum in France.

Jerf, locally nicknamed “Uncle” due to his extensive mentoring of Syrian opposition activists, was widely obituarized in the Western media, including the BBC, and presented as a righteous symbol of the “moderate” wing of the Syrian “revolution.”

What no outlet mentioned however, was that at the time of his death, he had for many years been in the employ of ARK, founded in 2009 by probable MI6 operative Alistair Harris.

In this capacity, Jerf helped run Basma, “a Syrian media production and distribution platform” created by ARK that was “capable of directly messaging inside Syria to promote the moderate opposition,” said to have delivered “impactful media content through TV, FM radio, social media and print material [including] posters, magazines and comics.”

He also trained and coordinated a vast network of “stringers” in Syria, who produced multimedia propaganda related to the ongoing conflict for domestic and international broadcast.

Jerf moreover edited Hentah, an ARK-funded magazine distributed in both opposition- and government-held areas, as well as Hentawi, a slick “counter-recruitment” comic aimed at 9-to-15-year-old Syrians that featured animated strips slyly extolling equality, democracy, and other values, along with quizzes, games, and inspiring stories of athletes, celebrities, and the like.

ARK was well-aware such activities put Jerf and those with whom he collaborated in the Islamic State’s crosshairs. In a leaked file submitted to the UK Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office (FCDO), the company actively boasted that Hentah had “so provoked the ire of ISIS that it burnt copies in Aleppo in 2013.”

It was seemingly Jerf’s involvement in Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently (known as Raqqa SL for short) that was his final undoing. He co-founded the group, an ostensible citizen journalist collective reporting on abuses by ISIS in the Syrian city it claimed as its de facto capital, and thereafter served as the organization’s key spokesperson and filmmaker. Another leaked ARK file framed the endeavor as part of its “Countering Violent Extremism” operations in Syria, boasting that locals had “co-opted ARK’s messages as their own to further shared objectives.”

Raqqa SL’s coverage didn’t solely focus on ISIS, though – for instance, its reports alleging Russian airstrikes in and around Raqqa mainly targeted civilians, not Islamic State, were perhaps predictably amplified by the Western media. Conversely, no mention was ever made of US airstrikes on the area – ostensibly intended to liberate it from ISIS rule – devastating the civilian population.

‘Getting people killed’

The UK’s Independent newspaper, among a great many others, hailed the “quite extraordinary” bravery of individuals involved in this endeavor, alleging that Raqqa SL’s work “[prevents] people inclined toward [extremist] ideology actually going to Syria” – a key aim of covert Whitehall psyops projects conducted domestically at the time. In 2015 the organization won the Committee to Protect Journalists’ International Press Freedom Award.

Furthermore, in April the next year, BBC World Service produced an elaborate five-part online series about the group, Islamic State’s Most Wanted, which combined on-screen interviews with some of its key founders – by then exiled in Europe – video footage, and animation.

In 2017, the documentary received One World Media’s Digital Media Award, with an accompanying blurb hailing its “big impact with audiences.” Chillingly, one such “impact” was potentially putting the lives of Raqqa SL activists and their collaborators at even greater risk.

The program’s lead presenter and producer, BBC journalist Chloe Hadjimatheou, acknowledged this to be an almost inevitable upshot of her reporting. In a contemporaneous blog detailing her experiences of working on the project, she expressed “fear” that the series “may have raised their profiles and made them more of a target.”

Jerf was far from the only individual who may have died as a result of the British state’s clandestine meddling in Syria. An associate of his was likewise slain in November 2015 in the Turkish province of Urfa, and two months earlier ISIS killed two opposition activists in Idlib. All three victims were involved with Raqqa SL.

The dangerously counter-productive and utterly ineffectual nature of the organization was starkly exposed by journalist James Harkin in November 2016. He recorded how the exiled leaders of the organization relied on “scouring Facebook” for content, and tapping friends and relatives in the city for information, which made anyone known or even suspected of being connected in any way with Raqqa SL mortal enemies of ISIS.

In turn, the extremist group began kidnapping and murdering dozens of people not merely in Raqqa, but across the area it controlled. Many activists in the region reserved outright contempt for Raqqa SL, with one quoted by Harkin as saying the organization was “generally considered a ‘Facebook event’, whose chief consequence is that it gets people killed,” and that while the group may be “media heroes”, they had “a very small impact at the community level.”

Another accused Raqqa SL of “publishing publicity-seeking propaganda with no reporting depth,” blaming Western media outlets and NGOs for “encouraging daredevil agitprop with money and garlands,” while yet another “was unable to contain his anger” over the group’s machinations.

“This is bad work, what they do, and not journalism… Anyone can connect with young guys and teenagers in a bad situation in Syria and pay them a few hundred dollars a month. Raqqa SL are responsible for all these deaths. And after a year and a half what is the impact? IS killed their people,” the nameless activist fulminated.

It is uncertain whether Islamic State’s Most Wanted produced further bloodshed within and without Raqqa, just as Hadjimatheou feared – both she and her employer have refused to answer questions on this point. Whatever the truth of the matter, it may be significant that the program was commissioned and financed by BBC World Service’s Digital Storytelling Fund, launched in 2015 to “encourage the production of cutting edge, in-depth digital content for a global audience.”

That same year, the British state broadcaster received an unprecedented £289 million cash injection from the central government following publication of Whitehall’s National Security Strategy, Strategic Defence, and Security Review. This document described the World Service as an integral part of London’s soft-power projection overseas, calling for the “global reach” of its “digital, TV, and radio services” to be greatly expanded.

“The BBC currently reaches 308 million people worldwide, and its goal is to reach 500 million by 2022. World Service reaches into some of the most remote places in the world, providing a link to the UK for individuals and societies who would otherwise not have this opportunity,” the Review bragged.

It seems certain the Digital Storytelling Fund arose from this national security-directed bankrolling bonanza. Strikingly, in her aforementioned blog post, Hadjimatheou indicated spending on Islamic State’s Most Wanted was lavish, stating “it’s not often that BBC budgets can accommodate such an expense.”

A not insignificant portion of this wellspring reportedly went on numerous unrecorded, informal meetings between Hadjimatheou and the exiled Raqqa SL representatives in their adopted home countries to cultivate trust, spread over many months – a vast investment of time and money in the project apparently before its production had begun, let alone was even confirmed. Clearly, this was a tale she, and BBC World Service, was determined to tell no matter the cost, or risk to her interviewees.

Hadjimatheou attempted to explain her dogged resolve in her blog, asserting that, “like many journalists with an interest in the war in Syria”, she had heard of Raqqa SL and followed the group’s posts online to “learn about life under jihadist rule”, in the process becoming “fascinated by how they operate as a group.”

Yet, little to no trace of any “interest” in the Syrian crisis can be detected from Hadjimatheou’s journalistic output prior to Islamic State’s Most Wanted. Indeed, the bulk of her work focused on esoteric “lifestyle” topics and profiles of political figures. Nonetheless, she was said to be the “driving engine” of The New Jihadism: A Global Snapshot, published by the War Department of King’s College London, which analyzed “all reported deaths caused by jihadist groups and networks during November 2014.”

‘He’s good, isn’t he?’

Despite her documentary’s plaudits, Hadjimatheou remained largely unheard of until November 2020, when the BBC broadcast a 10-part podcast series, Mayday, of which she was again sole presenter and producer.

The serial explored the ever-mysterious life and death of British military intelligence veteran-turned committed “humanitarian” James Le Mesurier, and the numerous allegations which had dogged the White Helmets founder for many years prior to his apparent suicide, and only became further amplified thereafter.

Entirely credible suggestions that Le Mesurier was a UK intelligence operative, that the White Helmets were a bogus humanitarian organization linked to murderous jihadists serving as a front for regime change in Syria, and that Mayday Rescue was engaged in widespread financial impropriety – which Le Mesurier in fact confessed to international donors three days before his death – among other extremely serious charges, were all portrayed in the podcast series as malign “disinformation”.

In the process, any and all critics of Le Mesurier, and the group he founded, were smeared by Mayday as deranged and/or malicious agents of the Russian and Syrian governments – whether witting or unwitting – who bear significant responsibility for his demise.

Hadjimatheou’s attack on Grayzone editor Max Blumenthal, in which she insinuated that he had been recruited to launch this outlet by the Russian government – absolutely false slander for which there is no evidentiary basis – was preceded by a menacing email sent by Hadjimatheou to The Grayzone’s public email account on October 12, 2020. The email consisted largely of invective addressed to Blumenthal, such as the following statement: “you are one of the most prominent pro-Assad, anti-White Helmets bloggers on the internet.”

The podcast’s protagonist, Le Mesurier, was presented in the most fawning terms imaginable, as a buccaneering, roguish force of nature with a heart of gold and predilection for practical jokes. Many individuals who knew him, including his third wife, Emma Winberg – a veteran UK Foreign Office political officer, and founder of Foreign Office psyops contractor Incostrat – effusively praised Le Mesurier throughout the series. Their plaudits were neither questioned by Hadjimatheou nor balanced by dissenting voices.

In this capacity, the aforementioned Alistair Harris also made an appearance, describing his deceased friend as “Lawrence of Arabia-esque” in the podcast’s second episode, “The Pizza in the Suitcase”. The ARK chief’s overly-chummy rapport with Hadjimatheou was as palpable as it was peculiar.

“How are you planning to describe me, out of interest?” Harris asked.

“I want you to decide how you want to be described!” she responded, her interviewee chuckling.

Harris opted to designate himself as “former UK diplomat”, a vague characterization that doesn’t withstand scrutiny. For instance, his biography on ARK’s website doesn’t describe him as a diplomat, instead stating he “spent 20 years working in conflict zones from Northern Ireland and the Balkans to Afghanistan, the West Bank and Lebanon”.

An actual UK diplomat by definition would not be deployed to Northern Ireland, given the province is part of the country itself, and therefore does not have a British embassy on its soil. This glaring inconsistency tends to suggest Harris was – and potentially still is – affiliated with MI6.

In any event, Hadjimatheou then “cut to the chase” and asked Harris outright whether the Mayday chief was a spy. Predictably, he stated that he “knew for a fact” Le Mesurier “was never in the security and intelligence services.” A July 2018 Guardian article begs to differ, noting he “held a military intelligence post while on peacekeeping operations in the Balkans.”

In return, the presenter inquired if Harris himself had ever been part of any such agency, which he evasively denied in a highly incongruous exchange.

“Would you tell me if you were?”

“No, I wouldn’t tell you.”

“You’re not allowed to, are you?

“…You’d have to ask someone who was,” Harris equivocated, a riposte eliciting giggles from Hadjimatheou, before she asserted rhetorically via voiceover, “he’s good, isn’t he?”

Harris made no mention of ARK, and at no point during the 10-part podcast was the company referenced, an extraordinary oversight given Le Mesurier worked at the company from 2011 to 2014, and Mayday Rescue was spun out of the firm. Prior to his departure, ARK reaped vast sums promoting the White Helmets at the FCDO’s behest, developing “an internationally focused communications campaign to raise global awareness” of the group in order to “keep Syria in the news.”

Under this campaign’s auspices, ARK produced a documentary on the White Helmets and ran their various social media accounts, including the Facebook page for Idlib City Council, at one time proposed as a potential interim government to replace Bashar al-Assad. When local Al Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra overwhelmed the city, the White Helmets were filmed celebrating the “victory” in its main square.

Le Mesurier’s second wife, Sarah, worked at ARK from 2013 to 2020, while Emma Winberg’s Incostrat, similarly unmentioned in the Mayday series, shared staff with ARK. The firm ran numerous information ops in Syria, which may have included producing slick propaganda for notoriously brutal jihadist group, Jaysh al-Islam (the Army of Islam).

This militia ran the assorted areas it occupied under draconian interpretations of Sharia law, kidnapping, imprisoning, torturing, and executing innocent men, women, and children for even the mildest infringements of strict Islamist code. Atrocities perpetrated by the group include parading caged Alawite families in the streets, using hostages as human shields, and attacking Kurdish civilians with chemical weapons.

Intriguingly, Abdul Kader Habak, an ARK employee from 2013 to 2019, was credited as having provided “Arabic translation and additional research” to every Mayday podcast episode. In a statement issued to The Grayzone, the British state broadcaster denied that this fact represented a conflict of interest, and seemingly attempted to distance itself somewhat from Habak in an email exchange with me, stating he merely contributed research to Mayday “at an early stage in its production.”

The reason for this sleight of hand could well be Habak’s potential links to violent extremist groups, upon which the BBC is yet to comment publicly.

Witness testimony places Habak in very close quarters with al-Nusra and Ahrar Al-Sham when the groups carried out a hideous April 2017 sectarian car bomb massacre in the town of Rashideen, in which children who had spent years under siege were lured to their deaths by a man dangling potato chips.

That same month, Habak was also serendipitously present at a Khan Shaykhun hospital at the precise moment it was allegedly subjected to a chemical weapon attack. Footage of the incident showed him seemingly unfazed by the purported strike.

The previous year, London’s Channel 4 News broadcast a series of documentary-style shorts called Inside Aleppo. Habak was specifically named by presenter Cathy Newman as lead cameraman – presumably in the context of his ARK employment – for one report, “Up Close with the Rebels“.

Within 24 hours of publication, the video was removed from Channel 4’s website and YouTube channel, and little trace of it can be found online today. No reason was offered for the abrupt and total expurgation, although it appears obvious that the documented activities of the CIA-backed Nour al-Din al-Zinki insurgents featured in the presentation may have been a significant factor in the removal.

Among its many sordid acts, al-Zinki leaders publicly beheaded a teenage Palestinian refugee fighter in July that year – and those who helped kidnap the young man featured prominent in Habak’s film.

‘Previously unknown BBC journalist’

Mayday caused something of a sensation upon broadcast, receiving overwhelmingly positive reviews from many news outlets and extensive promotion on Twitter from prominent figures. Its producer in turn suddenly became a mainstream media go-to “expert” on the White Helmets and their founder.

That the podcast was such a smash hit among British media elites is at least partially attributable to its release having been heavily trailed in advance on social media, thanks to the publication 27th October 2020 – a fortnight before Mayday’s initial episode aired – of a 6,000 word hagiography of James Le Mesurier by The Guardian.

The article, courtesy of its veteran Middle East reporter Martin Chulov, whose coverage of Syria was highly supportive of the West’s regime change project, covered many of the same areas as Mayday, painting an idolatrous portrait of Le Mesurier, and similarly acquitting him of all charges.

Many who shared Chulov’s homage to Le Mesurier – including Eliot Higgins, founder-and-chief of US government-funded, UK Foreign Office-partnered “open source investigations” website Bellingcat, a pivotal purveyor of atrocity propaganda related to the Syrian conflict – referenced the impending podcast series in their puffery of the Guardian piece.

The surge of publicity surrounding the series before and after its transmission bore all the hallmarks of a concerted campaign to rehabilitate Le Mesurier, and it may be no coincidence that on 18 November – just one week following the White Helmets founder’s death – Alistair Harris established a new company, Hotch Potch Entertainment, in the UK.

The firm’s registration documents state the nature of its business to be “motion picture production” and “television programme production”. Another founder of the company was Simon Wilson, who appears on a list of MI6 officers published in 1999. An official biography implies he would have been posted to Iraq at precisely the same time Le Mesurier served as adviser to the country’s minister of interior, in 2005.

Hotch Potch was dissolved February 2021, right when it was due to file accounts for the first time. It’s entirely unclear what if any funds it received or distributed during its lifespan, although it would be entirely unsurprising if its purpose was to sponsor and/or produce programming about Le Mesurier.

When I asked Hadjimatheou 30th March via WhatsApp whether she had any relationship with the company – among many other queries related to her journalistic output – she swiftly directed me to the BBC press office, before blocking my number outright. Similar stonewalling was experienced by Paul McKeigue of the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media to the same question.

A BBC spokesperson asked me to “please make clear” that there was no connection between Hotch Potch and Mayday, and “any insinuation that Chloe was directed or funded by Hotch Potch is wrong.”

In addition to praise however, Mayday also triggered acrimonious online reactions, thanks in part to the publication of Hadjimatheou’s pre-broadcast correspondence with prominent critics of the White Helmets – including Eva Bartlett, Vanessa Beeley, and Paul McKeigue. The communications amply exposed that discrediting independent journalists and researchers who had raised questions about Le Mesurier was a core objective of Mayday from the very beginning.

In response to a volley of resultant criticism, Hadjimatheou locked her Twitter account, but sardonically updated her accompanying bio to read “previously unknown BBC journalist.” Barring occasional quotes in news articles related to the podcast, Hadjimatheou was largely off-radar again until 27 February 2021 – four days after Hotch Potch was struck off the UK companies register – when an article she wrote was published on the BBC News website.

Running at 5,000 words – considerably lengthier than typical BBC “long read” pieces – it rehashed her slanted story of the courageous and unimpeachable Le Mesurier, painting him a battle-hardened military veteran who somehow buckled under an onslaught of baseless online “disinformation” and consequently took his own life.

Hadjimatheou’s next article for the British state broadcaster’s website, on 26 March, was even longer – a staggering and unparalleled 7,000 words. It told the story of how Paul McKeigue, in the process of investigating the Commission for International Justice and Accountability (CIJA) – a highly dubious organization involved in various prosecutions of Syrian officials in Western courts for alleged war crimes committed during the decade-long crisis – was caught up in an elaborate sting operation.

Since 2013, CIJA – which self-styles as a “non-profit, non-governmental organisation dedicated to furthering criminal justice efforts” – has received approximately $50 million USD in funding from the European Union and the governments of Canada, Denmark, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, UK, and US. As The Grayzone’s Ben Norton has extensively documented, McKeigue smelled a rat, believing CIJA to be an “intelligence front… [laying] the basis for a US occupation and sanctions on Syria.”

The academic’s suspicions were understandable. After all, CIJA founder William Wiley – posted to Baghdad from 2005 to 2008, where he worked for the US Embassy’s Regime Crimes Liaison Unit – and his firm Tsamota, which has the same address as CIJA, and shares key staffers with the “NGO,” was named in the Panama Papers leaks.

Moreover, CIJA has deployed “field [teams] and trained investigators” across Syria to collect documents held in former government headquarters in opposition-occupied areas of the country, abandoned over the course of the conflict, for use in prosecutions against authorities. As documented by The Grayzone in 2019, these operations necessitated CIJA securing protection and assistance from numerous Islamist militias active in these areas, including the al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra.

Once Wiley learned that McKeigue was delving into his organization, an unidentified CIJA staffer created a false account on the encrypted email platform ProtonMail, and contacted the professor in December 2020, enticing him with useful leads on Syria-related intrigues. After reeling McKeigue in with independently verifiable insight, the staffer began deceiving him into divulging private information about his colleagues in the Working Group.

Following several weeks of back-and-forth contact, the staffer introduced themself for the first time as “Ivan”, implying without ever stating outright that they were a Russian intelligence officer. McKeigue’s continued contact with the staffer allowed Hadjimatheou to frame the academic as having collaborated with an avowed Moscow-based spy to “discredit an organisation that helps bring Syrian war criminals to justice.”

Repeat offender?

A researcher soliciting information from every feasible source is hardly a scandal – indeed, many mainstream journalists rely on a variety of oft-shadowy insider sources for information. It’s surely far more notable that an intelligence-connected organization employed cloak-and-dagger tactics eerily similar to those widely engaged in by security services in order to entrap a private citizen.

Indictment for such activities was lacking from “previously unknown” BBC journalist Chloe Hadjimatheou’s article, although she acknowledged that the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) has formally accused CIJA of fraud and “submission of false documents, irregular invoicing, and profiteering” in relation to a project delivered by the organization under the EU’s “Rule of Law” project in Syria, and recommended that authorities in the UK, Netherlands, and Belgium prosecute the group.

However, Hadjimatheou neglected to mention that CIJA arose from a collaboration between ARK and Wiley’s Tsamota. A UK FCDO document leaked by self-described hacktivist collective Anonymous reveals that, in 2011, the pair “supported the establishment of the Syrian Commission for Justice and Accountability (SCJA),” to “extract contemporaneous documentation from the conflict zone.”

The file boasted of how SCJA – which changed its name to CIJA in 2014 – had been supported in its efforts by the UK Conflict Pool, “the US-supported” Syrian Justice and Accountability Centre (SJAC) and EU Instrument for Stability, becoming “a major component of Syria’s transitional justice architecture” along the way.

“To date the project has collected over 1,500 [kilograms] of contemporaneous documentation from inside Syria, scanned or is in the process of scanning over 310,000 pages of evidential material as well as reviewing and indexing over 12,000 videos, all of which had to be hand carried from Syria,” the document continued, noting many of the governments which have covertly and overtly supported regime change in efforts also provided financing.

ARK and Tsamota were said to have “utilised international investigators and lawyers with broad experience of international judicial instruments – the ICC, ICTY, ICTR, UNIIIC/STL”, thus “[ensuring] that when the conflict ends, the raw material of a post-conflict war crimes process is ready for trial, in turn providing a key contribution to truth telling, reconciliation and the future of Syria.” While the conflict in Syria is far from over, CIJA seems to be already eagerly fulfilling that aspiration.

A publicly available guide to “documentation groups” in Syria, published by Public Law and International Policy Group in March 2013, offers further detail on ARK’s guiding role in CIJA’s activities, stating the company has been “[providing] pro bono training and support for investigators” selected by SCJA “since May 2011”.

The guide stated: “The first component of ARK’s and Tsamota’s program involved training Syrian investigators in basic international criminal and humanitarian law. Specifically, trainings focused on the links between international humanitarian law and human rights law, as well as possibilities for a domestic justice process in a future transitional Syria. Simultaneously, ARK and Tsamota provided training on international criminal investigative methodology.”

This collaboration between ARK and Tsamota and ARK in 2013 was seemingly funded by the very EU project investigated and found to be fraudulent by OLAF.

On 6 April, Hadjimatheou’s BBC Mayday podcast series published yet another episode, this time defending CIJA. Yet again, Hadjimatheou appears to be promoting and amplifying a “black PR” operation run by ARK – a UK intelligence contractor.

The question of whether she is just an unconscious cog in a wider connivance, manipulated and directed by unseen forces, or a conscious collaborator in a committed conspiracy, is an open one. Still, her evasions, and blatant editorial agenda, suggests the latter interpretation is a strong possibility.