Bellingcat reacts badly to scrutiny, but possible ties to Western intelligence should be discussed when considering its work
Bellingcat founder Eliot Higgins once attacked journalists for using anonymous sources, citing a lack of “purity.” Now his outfit, which continues to almost perfectly align with UK geopolitical priorities, is reliant on them.
If past form is a guide, it’s likely Bellingcat staffers will attack this article on social media, labelling it “propaganda” and cherry picking one or two sentences, out of context, in a bid to discredit the whole. But the fact remains the journey of their outfit from a supposedly 'open source' investigation unit to something which increasingly resembles a fully-fledged intelligence agency, or a small, public division of a larger, clandestine organisation, deserves examination.
On Monday, the controversial ‘online investigations’ website published a bombshell exclusive, claiming that Alexey Navalny had been closely followed by a host of FSB operatives on his various travels before he was allegedly poisoned with Novichok in August.
The lengthy presentation also suggested that the Russian opposition figure had been closely followed by undercover officers for years prior, the earliest known occasion having been in 2017.
A similarly verbose accompanying article offers an explanation of how Bellingcat seized upon the seismic scoop, in its own words. The narrative amounts to quite some sleuthing indeed, although details of how Bellingcat came across particular information it used to establish the identities and movements of Navalny’s attackers is highly dubious, for more reasons than one.
The organization claims it secured this sensitive information via a number of black market sources, in particular by using “bots” on the Russian-built Telegram messaging app. For a small fee, these bots allegedly stumped up first the phone number and call records of an individual who'd travelled to the same places as Navalny at roughly the same times, then the identities of people they spoke to in the days prior to Navalny’s poisoning, and later one individual’s vehicle registration information, which indicated his car was linked to FSB headquarters in Moscow.
“While there are obvious and terrifying privacy implications from this data market… a few hundred euros [provides] you with months of phone call data for an FSB or GRU officer, allowing investigators to trace the intelligence services’ operations, identify the colleagues of research targets, and follow the physical tracks of spies across Russia and abroad,” Bellingcat stated.
‘Some kind of intelligence unit’
Extraordinary stuff if true, but while the organization’s probe has been praised widely by mainstream Western media, not all are quite so convinced. In a radio interview, Oleg Kashin, a liberal Russian journalist, suggested the scoop was “Western intelligence services explaining to themselves, and us, who poisoned Navalny and how.”
Kashin has “no doubt” the individuals fingered by Bellingcat were indeed behind the apparent assassination attempt on Navalny – he said their “criminal faces” alone indicate they are “absolute killers” and their hands “are covered in blood.” However, he cast doubt on the methods Bellingcat claims to have employed, based on personal experience.
“These pirated databases exist, and there’s a huge market… Dozens of people within a handshake and a half of us, journalists and otherwise, check people up on police databases,” he said. “But there are certain people, you ask a policeman you know to check them up, and he comes back and says there’s a note there, ‘do not check’, so don’t touch them, take back your money. And special service members definitely have that note next to their names. It’s impossible to check them that way.”
https://www.rt.com/russia/509822-bellingcat-navalny-western-intelligence-ties/