Brian Whitaker

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Person.png Brian Whitaker  Rdf-entity.pngRdf-icon.png
(journalist)
No image available (photo).jpg
Born1947
NationalityUK
Alma materUniversity of Westminster, University of Birmingham
InterestsBellingcat
Guardian journalist with an interest in Bellingcat

Brian Whitaker has been a journalist for the British newspaper The Guardian since 1987 and was its Middle East editor from 2000 to 2007. He is currently an editor (or gatekeeper) on the Guardian's blog "Comment is free".

He studied Arabic studies at the University of Westminster and Latin (BA Hons) at the University of Birmingham. [1] He also writes articles for Guardian Unlimited.

He runs a personal, non-Guardian-related website, Al-Bab.com, about politics in the Arab world.

Bellingcat

An anonymous former operative at Bellingcat has claimed that Whitaker is a "MI6 British intelligence operative" functioning as a "puppet master" for Elliot Higgins and Bellingcat.[2][better source needed], which according to Whitaker is "transforming investigative journalism", where there is now no longer a "need to take the word of anonymous intelligence sources." [3]

In January 2020, Whitaker doxed Dr. Brendan Whelan, a whistleblower from the OPCW. Whitaker said the name had been leaked by someone with “access to sensitive OPCW information.”[4] That same month, Bellingcat published an attack piece that identified Whelan as Inspector B.[5] This may have been a part of a coordinated effort to impugn him.[6]


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