On Thursday, for the first time, a BBC interview show was hosted by an active-duty intelligence chief, that being the head of GCHQ, Jeremy Fleming, interviewing one of his US counterparts, Avril Haines, the Director of National Intelligence. The show’s presenter, Nick Robinson, piously insisted that despite this new circumstance, “the BBC’s independence was not compromised as a result of the collaboration.” This is part of a growing trend where intelligence agency infiltration of the press, which used to be a carefully guarded secret (as in the CIA’s “Project Mockingbird,” which was revealed by the 1975 Church Committee hearings), is now done openly and brazenly, with spooks such as former CIA Director John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who both lied under oath to the US Congress about illegal activity by the CIA and NSA, holding high-profile positions at MSNBC and CNN, respectively.
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 this as a form of “pre-bunking,” to counter Russian “narratives.” Fleming did lament that this “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 GCHQ and other intelligence agencies.
