Integrity Initiative/Leak/1
The first tranche of the Integrity Initiative Leak was posted on 5th November 2018. This revealed that the group had covertly organised groups of academics, journalists, government officers and others with extreme anti-Russian ideas, and that they strategised about how to alert to people to a purported Russian "threat". Their preoccupation with this threat, and their insistence upon secrecy was clear from the first leak.
Contents
Exposures
The first leak included a timeline of the Moncloa campaign, initiated on 07 06 2018. This was a covert smear campaign to prevent the appointment of Pedro Baños as Director of the Spanish Department of Homeland Security.
“We engage only very discreetly with governments, based entirely on trusted personal contacts, specifically to ensure that they do not come to see our work as a problem, and to try toinfluence them gently, as befits an independent NGO operation like ours”
unknown (2018) [1]
Response
On 26 November 2018, the Integrity Initiative admitted that some documents had been hacked, but declined to state whether any particular documents were authentic, leaving the way clear for possible future claims that some were forged.[citation needed]
UK Foreign Office
A UK spokesperson stated that:
“The Institute for Statecraft [Integrity Initiative’s parent organisation], an independent charity, was hacked several weeks ago and numerous documents were published and amplified by Kremlin news channels. The Russian state media campaign’s objective is clear. This is yet another example of Russian disinformation intended to confuse audiences and discredit an organisation which is working independently to tackle the threat of disinformation.”
(12 November) [2]
Reporting
The leak aroused great interest from alternative media, including RT.[3]
It was not widely reported in UK commercially-controlled media.
Next Leak
- Full article: Integrity Initiative/Leak/2
- Full article: Integrity Initiative/Leak/2
The second Integrity Initiative leak was posted 24 days later, on 29 November 2018.
Examples
| Page name | Description |
|---|---|
| Document:Integrity Initiative Budget for the 12 months ending 31 March 2019 | Budget outlining how Integrity Initiative is going to control the information space, and influence policy-makers, specialists and media. |
| Document:Progress report on establishing national clusters | A report on building of a network of cells to monitor and influence public opinion |
| Document:Project Proposal Integrity Initiative 2017-18 | Budget proposal for a secret influence network that will protect "the Western system of democratic values"..."against attack by those powers who would seek to overturn our system and all it stands for," no less. |
| Document:Project Title INTEGRITY INITIATIVE Phase II | Project application for phase II of Integrity Initiative |
| Document:The Integrity Initiative Guide to Countering Russian Disinformation | A guide to Russian disinformation, an ideological prep guide for dedicated II operatives |
| Document:The Network of Networks | A handbook for Integrity Initiative activities, including starting clusters |
| Document:Top 3 deliverables/achievements of phase 1 | An interesting document describing US parts of the network; NATO General Secretary Stoltenberg and other high level contacts;silencing pro-kremlin voices on Serbian TV; Spanish operation to fire Pedro Baños |
