The Glen Jenvey Saga

[Cain]

Sometimes, I think I live in a relatively normal country.  Then, I realize shit like this never even makes it onto the evening news, and so we're fucked beyond all belief.

OK, here is the story.  In January this year, as the Israeli assault on Gaza was dying down, The Sun (a Rupert Murdoch paper) published a front page story claiming that British Muslims were planning to target British Jews, such as Sir Alan Sugar, in revenge for the attacks on Gaza.  These attacks had apparently been planned on Ummah.com, one of the UK's biggest and well known Muslim sites.

The problem with the story was that it was not true.  Ummah.com had considered a letter writing campaign, to see if they could get famous British Jews to publically condemn the attacks on Gaza, but nothing more.  Except one poster, who had dropped not very subtle hints about violence.  This poster had a very low post-count, and so was suspicious.

An online investigation by bloggers, with the cooperation of the understably pissed Ummah.com administration, discovered that the account belonged to one Glen Jenvey....the same man who The Sun asked to comment on the story, as a "counter-terrorism expert".

But wait, it gets even better!  Jenvey has claimed to be a former Sri Lankan intelligence officer, who now worked as a freelance investigator for online "counter-jihadist" organisations, including a shadowy group that appeared in 2006 and was called VIGIL, which had apparent links to the mainstream UK right.  He also worked for Patrick Mercer, a Tory MP who heads the Parliamentary Subcommittee on Terrorism.  He is also associated with other groups and individuals, including a very anti-Islamic reverend in the USA and Dominic Whiteman, of the "Westminster Journal", a mostly defunct site which attempted to create some sort of counter-jihadist front in the UK, to fight "the war of ideas" and other associated Neocon memes.

One of the bloggers who discovered this was subject to online attack not just by Jenvey, but also by various allies.  Jenvey eventually repented, admitted his guilt in faking the story and selling it to The Sun, and converted to Islam.  However, other key players have not been so straightfoward.

Patrick Mercer has claimed that Jenvey wasn't working for his office at the time of the incident with the Sun story, or alternatively that Jenvey never worked for his office (both claims are proven to be false).  The main blogger behind the investigation, meanwhile, has been getting numerous death threats via Twitter and email, from a group calling itself "The Cheerleaders".  This group has also gained his home address, and has posted it on other sites where this blogger has made enemies in the past.

Dominic Wightman, of VIGIL (a different person to Dominic Whiteman) has also been attacking this blogger online, and may have connections to these cheerleaders.

We have all the makings of a classic scandal here, yet the only reason I know about it is because I am a counterrorism nerd.

[Cain]

More info here:

http://www.spinwatch.org/-articles-by-category-mainmenu-8/74-terror-spin/5315-the-british-amateur-terror-trackers-a-case-study-in-dubious-politics

Investigations by Spinwatch reveal that a group of freelance terror trackers who promote stories about the threat from violent Islamists have been involved in exaggerating and even fabricating such stories, which they then comment on in the national press and on network television and radio. The group – which has now fallen apart – was centred on freelance spy Glen Jenvey and Conservative Party member Dominic Wightman, who uses the pseudonym 'Whiteman'.

The barrage of stories from official sources and from terror 'experts' suggesting that Britain is under serious and extensive threat from Islamists and that Islam as a religion is particularly prone to extremism has been boosted by some stories that have little basis in fact. These have included:

    * An alleged attempt to plant a story about terrorist grannies planning to blow themselves up in British supermarkets
    * An attempt to suggest – quite falsely - that campaigners against the Israeli attack on Gaza were actually planning to target British Jews
    * The creation of a fake allegedly Islamist website in a bid to entrap suspects.
    * Spying on Tamil activists in the UK.
    * A fraudulent fundraising effort in the 1980s which was claimed to be to aid the African National Congress

The group behind these stories – Vigil – is a convenient label for a number of people who are linked on the one hand to elements of the British far right and on the other to networks of neoconservative ideologues in the US and UK seeking to exploit the genuine threat faced by UK citizens - Muslim and non Muslim alike. In this case behind the anodyne label of 'terror expert' there is a story including alleged spying, deception, fraud, assault, and a falling out over money.

The case also highlights:

    * The controversial newsgathering techniques of The Sun newspaper, currently facing legal questions over its reporting of the alleged terror experts' testimony
    * the ease with which alleged terror experts can gains access to the most prestigious British broadcasting outlets such as Radio Four and BBC Newsnight
    * The use of the internet for employing the traditional arts of the agent provocateur including surveillance and virtual stings
    * The role of the blogosphere in investigating and revealing the use of fake identities - 'sockpuppets' in internet jargon

More at the link

[Jenne]

Wow.  I don't know what the law says about posting peoples' PI without permission over in the UK, but I'd sue sue sue were I that blogger.  This fucking stinks.

And Rupert Murdoch and his Jebus-loving, Moose-lim-hating assholes that work for him need to be tarred and feathered.

[Triple Zero]

Wow, good stuff, Cain!

however this bit really puzzles me:

Jenvey eventually repented, admitted his guilt in faking the story and selling it to The Sun, and converted to Islam.  However, other key players have not been so straightfoward.

How's that work? This was the guy trying to give the muslims a bad name by posting terrorist threats with a fake muslim troll account. Admitting his guilt I can understand (esp if the evidence is clear), but converting to Islam, while you were only just working to increase the hate against that very religion? Why??

[Cain]

Jenvey's daughter was apparently a convert to Islam, IIRC, and he Did Not Approve, according to her.  Maybe the unmasking of his activities and subsequent admittance of them led to a rapprochment with her, and acceptance of Islam as a religion.

That said, politically, he actually didn't care too much, if you read the full Spinwatch article.  It seems he was more involved for the sake of excitement than any strong ideological commitments.

Also, keep in mind the sort of people who are often attracted to, and used in such campaigns.  Former National Security Council member, Gary Sick:

Such characters are a researcher's nemesis; they are meant to be. When the CIA or other intelligence agencies need to hire a "contractor," who may be required to carry out taks that are potentially dangerous and of questionable legality, they look for three things: a specific and useful skill (a knowledge of money-laundering, perhaps); a romantic streak that glorifies both the secrecy and the risk; and a propensity for exageration and trouble. One former CIA officer, David MacMichael, has said that the agency looks for these freelancers at small community airports and gun ranges - places where men go to excape the boredom of everyday life. Looking for adventure, these men are fascinated by the imagined glamour and excitement of the world of espionage. MacMichael said that often, after one or two assignments, the agency will put a contractor on a case in which he runs afoul of the law. The contractor finds himself in a compromising position - nothing so major as to put him permanently out of commission, but significant enough that if he ever starts telling tales out of school about covert operations, his record will discredit his testimony.

In other words, people who are a bit mentally unstable and a bit prone to exaggeration, secrecy and adventure are often the best sort of people to use in undercover or deniable operations, because they lie and distort their role and inject their own fantasies and instabilities into their understanding of events.  They thrive in the role, and, later, when investigators come to try and understand it, they spread earnest and sincere disinformation, as well as acting in ways that make their entire testimony look suspicious.

Jenvey, who went to extraordinary lengths to smear those who exposed this story (including posing as a Daily Mail journalist and claiming one of the bloggers was a convicted pedophile), only to make a dramatic U-turn once something in his personal life changed (according to the blogger who was smeared by him, he didn't go into details), might see such a conversion as a form of atonement for his past wrongs.  It would fit the kind of character he comes across as.