NEW: A group of British academics and bloggers sowing disinformation about Syria's use of chemical weapons have coordinated their efforts with four different Russian diplomatic missions around the world, emails show: thedailybeast.com/syria-chemical…
A number of stunning revelations in a three-month correspondence between one of the academics and "Ivan," someone he believed was a Russian spy.
"Ivan" was in reality @CIJAOnline, an NGO collecting evidence of war crimes in Syria, conducting a sting operation.
"Ivan" was in reality @CIJAOnline, an NGO collecting evidence of war crimes in Syria, conducting a sting operation.
Professor Paul McKeigue, an epidemiologist at the University of Edinburgh, mapped out his cohort's entire network of disinformation peddlers and their liaisons: Russian officials in The Hague, New York, London and Geneva.
He also disclosed that Melinda Taylor, one of Julian Assange's lawyers, has been helping McKeigue's colleagues conduct what McKeigue termed "lawfare" against the OPCW over its Douma investigation: her pro bono legal memo is attached in one of the emails.
And he helpfully points out that Brendan Whelan, a self-described "whistleblower" at the OPCW, has been liaising regularly with Alexander Shulgin, Russia's ambassador to the Netherlands and its Permanent Representative at the OPCW.
McKeigue solicited "Ivan" to spy on journalists, NGO workers and activists. These include a Russian state media employee, Stephen Mangan, who had shared quite a lot of sensitive biographical details of Syrian eyewitnesses to the Douma attack.
Mangan raised McKeigue's suspicions by sharing evidence that a chemical attack had indeed taken place, according to one eyewitness. So McKeigue told "Ivan," a purported Russian spy, to spy on Mangan, a Ruptly reporter. You really can't make this up and it's all screen grabbed.
There is actually even more to this story, a longer version of which will be published this morning at @newlinesmag. Stay tuned.
And here's that deep-dive investigation: newlinesmag.com/reportage/how-…
One of the dark ironies of this affair is that McKeigue has gone around accusing any number of people who don't conform to his conspiracism about Syria CIA or MI6 agents. Yet he was all too happy to connive with someone he believed was a Russian intelligence officer.
Not only that, he gave "Ivan" a dozen names of British journalists and academics he wanted Ivan to hack. One of these is the @thetimes leader-writer @OliverKamm.
Kamm has written a letter of complaint to the University of Edinburgh, which we've obtained and quoted.
Kamm has written a letter of complaint to the University of Edinburgh, which we've obtained and quoted.
According to @tobycadman, an advisory board member of @CIJAOnline, the emails between "Ivan" and McKeigue has been passed to British authorities to investigate any possible criminal act in suborning a presumed foreign intelligence officer to spy on British citizens.
You might also find it amusing, in light of the hacking element of this saga, to learn that McKeigue's associate Vanessa Beeley maintains "contact" in Geneva with Russian diplomat Sergei Krutskikh.
He is the son of Andrey Krutskikh, who heads the Russian Foreign Ministry's new-minted Department of International Information Security, which coordinates with European countries on cybersecurity.
I continue to marvel at the fact that a scientist reconstructed in his own head what happened in Douma based on what another (dead) scientist unconsciously imagined happened in Ghouta after eating an anchovy pizza. Specifically, this: newlinesmag.com/reportage/how-… 
It gets even weirder now:
https://twitter.com/michaeldweiss/status/1384645576680251401
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