Eli Lake and David Rose: The UK Censorship Machine Eats Itself

Summary

Breaking History: Eli Lake and David Rose — The UK Censorship Machine Eats Itself

Podcast Host: The Free Press
Guest: David Rose (Director of Policy and Research, UK Free Speech Union; veteran journalist)
Date: May 1, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode delves into the recent scandal surrounding the UK's ruling Labour Party, its connections to powerful think tanks, US lobbyists, and an aggressive online censorship agenda. Through in-depth reporting and lively discussion, host Eli Lake and guest David Rose expose how the mechanisms purportedly created to fight online “disinformation” have morphed into tools for partisan targeting, internal backstabbing, and ultimately, the erosion of public trust. The conversation draws historical parallels with earlier disinformation campaigns and poses serious questions about the true impact of foreign interference versus domestic censorship, with warnings for both the UK and US democratic systems.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Labour Together and the “Misinformation Mafia” Report

• Scandal Origins (01:21)

  • The think tank Labour Together, pivotal in creating Keir Starmer’s leadership, commissioned a secret report investigating journalists critical of the party.
  • Journalists were falsely accused of being Russian intelligence assets—unsupported, “simply a fantasy” (David Rose, 01:53).
  • These baseless allegations were handed to the UK’s National Cybersecurity Centre, part of GCHQ.

• Irony and Hypocrisy (02:40 – 04:19)

  • Many of the same actors demanded tighter controls on speech and extensive online censorship, even as they circulated disinformation themselves.
  • Quote: “The levels of irony are extraordinary. The anti-disinformation network itself is pumping out disinformation.” (David Rose, 04:13)

2. Russian Disinformation: Real Threat or Exaggerated Scapegoat?

• The Russian Narrative and Brexit (04:19 – 07:22)
  • Host and guest discuss the widespread but weakly supported narrative that Russian disinformation swung Brexit or major Western elections.
  • Quote: “When you actually dig into this, the evidence for this is extraordinarily flimsy.” (David Rose, 04:38)
  • Cold War parallels: Information warfare isn’t new, but never before was it used to justify society-wide censorship.

3. The Role of APCO Worldwide and Cozy Connections

• Commissioning the Report (08:48 – 13:00)

  • Labour Together enlisted US lobbying giant APCO Worldwide to identify “problem” journalists after critical Sunday Times reporting.
  • Deep personal and professional ties facilitated this, including spouses and former colleagues.
  • The preliminary investigation targeted eight journalists, including Matt Taibbi and Andrew Feinstein.

• Suppression and Selective Targeting

  • The final report was sent to GCHQ but redacted to remove allegations against Josh Simon’s friend, Gabriel Pogrand.
  • Despite the report’s knowledge among top Labour aides, it was never published—details only surfaced two years later through exposés.

4. Handling of the Scandal: Governmental Evasion

• Whitewashing and Resignation (14:36 – 20:02)
  • Keir Starmer’s office ordered a brief inquiry that cleared Josh Simons (by then a Cabinet minister) of breaching ministerial standards, without reviewing all evidence.
  • When new evidence and complaints surfaced, the ethics adviser claimed he “never read them.”
    • Quote: “[He] writes to him, says, ‘I’m really sorry, I did get your email, but I never read them.’” (David Rose, 19:02)
  • Josh Simons resigned, allegedly to avoid distracting government work, although he’d been “cleared.”

5. GCHQ’s Dismissal vs. American Parallels

• GCHQ’s Response (20:15 – 22:22)
  • GCHQ quickly concluded there was no hack, no Russian plot, and dismissed the report outright.
  • Contrast: The FBI in the US treated similarly dubious, partisan material (the Steele dossier) as credible, feeding years of political turmoil.
  • Quote: “To the credit of the GCHQ…they said there’s nothing to this and they left it there.” (Host, 21:34)

6. Transatlantic Censorship Network & Christopher Steele’s Continued Role

• Interwoven US/UK Networks (22:22 – 26:26)

  • Key actors like Imran Ahmed (Center for Countering Digital Hate) and APCO Worldwide connect US and UK censorship efforts, with ties to previous Russiagate actors (Jonathan Winer, Ariana Nansrai).
  • Christopher Steele remains active, pushing new unfounded dossiers and influencing parliamentary debate.

• Dangers of Unchecked Authority and Erosion of Trust

  • The misuse of “disinformation” accusations for political gain erodes the credibility of legitimate security concerns and public faith in democracy.
  • Quote: “If nobody trusts anything that is said that relates to Russia...that’s a fantastic win for Russia because it erodes faith in democracy.” (David Rose, 32:23)

7. The Broader Consequences: Censorship, Media Failure, and Public Distrust

• How Censorship Backfires (31:14+)

  • False accusations of “foreign agents” dilute the impact when actual espionage is exposed.
  • Attempts to “counter disinformation” with more censorship only deepen paranoia and undermine trust in institutions.

• Legacy Media’s Complicity (34:55 – 38:34)

  • The Gaza war and the Al-Ahli hospital misreporting provide a case study in mainstream media’s failure:
    • Quote: “A journalist as important...simply saying I don’t care. I mean, you’re getting somewhere like, okay, it doesn’t really matter on the detail here. It speaks to my broader truth, this kind of nonsense.” (David Rose on BBC’s Jeremy Bowen, 37:08)
  • Journalism, not government, should counter misinformation—yet the line between press and state is blurring.

8. Mission Creep: Expanding Definitions of “Hate” and Censorship

• From Disinformation to “Digital Hate” (39:55 – 44:50)
  • Groups like the Center for Countering Digital Hate are broadening targets beyond racism or bigotry to include criticism of government climate policy (“climate denialism”), using “hate” as a catch-all rationale for censorship.
  • Calls to restrict social media for minors even as some parties seek to lower the voting age exposes policy incoherence.

9. Medical Misinformation: Pandemic Lessons

• Covid, Free Speech, and Dangerous Precedents (44:50 – 48:37)
  • Pandemic-era censorship targeted dissenters, some of whom were later partially vindicated.
  • Once the state starts policing speech for “misinformation,” adjustment to new facts becomes hard—“midwits enforcing an old dogma.”
  • Quote: “We do not want the government to tell us to protect us from falsehood. We want the government to protect us, obviously, in fact, physical harm and things like that. But at the same time, the press has an obligation... to call them out on it.” (Host, 47:09)

10. The True Role of Free Speech Defenders

• Defending Principles Over Content (48:37 – end)
  • The Free Speech Union defends people across the political spectrum, including those arrested for expressing support for radical or unpopular causes (e.g., Palestine Action), so long as there’s no incitement to violence.
  • Quote: “You may disagree passionately with somebody, but you should defend to the death the right to express their opinion unless it is directly threatening in terms of incitement.” (David Rose, 51:56)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the False Russian Agent Allegations

  “What this secret report essentially did was accuse them of being Russian spies... absolutely no suggestion that any of the individuals who were accused had any kind of sympathy with Russia. It’s simply a fantasy.” (David Rose, 01:39)

• On Censorship Advocates as Disinformation Spreaders

  “The anti-disinformation network itself is pumping out disinformation.” (David Rose, 04:13)

• On Security Services’ Dismissal

  “Within a matter of days...the cyber people at GCHQ say, well, there’s no evidence of a hack here. There’s nothing to see.” (David Rose, 20:24)

• On Press Responsibility

  “We do not want the government to tell us...to protect us from falsehood. ... the press has an obligation, that when you have a demagogue...to call them out on it. That’s kind of what our job is.” (Host, 47:09)

• On Free Speech Principles

  “You may disagree passionately with somebody, but you should defend to the death the right to express their opinion unless it is directly threatening in terms of incitement to violence.” (David Rose, 51:56)

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Key Timestamps for Major Segments

• [01:21–03:59] — Labour Together’s secret report and the Russian spy accusations
• [04:19–07:42] — Irony: disinformation networks spread disinformation; the Russian threat re-examined
• [08:48–13:00] — How APCO Worldwide was enlisted; journalists investigated
• [14:57–17:51] — How original documents came to light, and official evasion
• [20:15–22:22] — GCHQ dismisses the plot; comparison to US FBI handling Russiagate
• [24:25–26:26] — Christopher Steele: Dossier creator, parliamentary influence, and new censorship advocacy
• [34:55–38:34] — Gaza war, media misreporting, and journalism’s failures
• [39:55–44:50] — Expanding censorship: From hate speech to climate denialism and more
• [44:50–48:37] — Covid misinformation, censorship, and government overreach
• [48:37–51:56] — The Free Speech Union’s defense of principle, regardless of politics

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Summary Takeaways

• Internal party networks and government-aligned NGOs are leveraging “disinformation” narratives to justify censorship, often targeting critics rather than genuine bad actors.
• US and UK networks are increasingly intertwined, with some of the same key players and logic used to curb dissent on both sides of the Atlantic.
• Recurring false accusations of foreign interference threaten to trivialize true threats, while actual public trust in democracy and institutions is being eroded.
• The solution is not greater censorship, but a return to rigorous, accountable journalism and a recommitment to robust free speech—without which democracies cannot properly function.

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Final Thought (David Rose, 51:56):

“You may disagree passionately with somebody, but you should defend to the death the right to express their opinion unless it is directly threatening in terms of incitement.”

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This episode is a trenchant warning against the transformative dangers of weaponized “disinformation” narratives—and a passionate defense of free speech in the face of illiberal trends cloaked in the language of security and safety.

Transcript

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[Podcast Host]

All right, well, welcome back. Breaking History listeners. We have another one of our interviews with an old friend of mine, David Rose, a veteran journalist who I got to know when he was, you know, just writing outstanding scoops for Vanity Fair. But he has written for almost everybody. And he is now the director of policy and research for the UK's Free Speech Union, which does incredibly important work, by the way. Listen to our episode from last year on the decline of free speech and how the UK was turning into a censors paradise, where we interview the founder and president of that organization. So, anyway, David, thank you so much and welcome to the podcast.

[David Rose]

Thanks for having me.

[Podcast Host]

So tell me, you have a new report which is provocatively titled labor, that's the ruling party in the uk, Their Misinformation Mafia. What's it about? What did you find?

[David Rose]

Well, it all started with this extraordinary scandal that broke in this country in early February. Now, it basically emerged that the think tank which essentially created Keir Starmer as leader of the Labour Party, which shoehorned him into power and engineered his selection, and then also had a huge impact both on his campaign to become prime minister and on the policy agenda, it emerged that it had commissioned a secret report to investigate journalists who had written stuff that was hostile to this think tank, Labor Together. Now, this was extraordinary because what this secret report essentially did was accuse them of being Russian spies. It suggested that there were grounds for thinking that they were actually Russian intelligence assets. Now, I should say before we go any further, that this was completely baseless. There is absolutely no suggestion that any of the individuals who were accused had any kind of sympathy with Russia. It's simply a fantasy. But what makes this story so extraordinary is that this think tank and the people close to it, on the one hand, they are happy to commission secret reports of a highly dubious nature, making false allegations, and I should say, not just making false allegations, but passing those allegations to the UK's National Cybersecurity center, which is part of the top secret gchq, essentially the British equivalent of the nsa. Not only were they content to make these false allegations against people with whose politics they didn't agree with but those same individuals and people very close to them have for years been demanding much tighter controls on freedom of speech. And their big push now is for far more extensive online censorship of platforms such as X and all the others that we're familiar with. And the thing is, there is also a highly significant transatlantic dimension to this. One of the key figures in this kind of network is Imran Ahmed, who is the head of the center for Countering Digital Hate. Now, currently the Trump administration is trying to deport him from the US but he's been living there since 2020. He had incredible leverage with the Biden administration. And I think if the Democrats should regain power in the United States, there is every chance that he and his friend's agenda for far tougher censorship regulation in America will in fact come to pass.

[Podcast Host]

Well, you know, before we get into our friend Imran, I want to just kind of set a couple ground truths here. One of the categories you should say of material that should be censored online is Russian misinformation or misinformation, correct? Well, yeah, this is what I want to get into, the irony of it all.

[David Rose]

Yeah, I mean, it's an extraordinary thing. The people who want censorship have for years now been suggesting that there is this incredibly successful campaign by Russia to manipulate public opinion in the West. A lot of people take seriously the notion that that Russia was largely responsible for Brexit, the referendum result which has led to the UK leaving the European Union. When you actually dig into this, the evidence for this is extraordinarily flimsy. And what is also extraordinary is that there is a particular name that keeps cropping up again and again in multiple contexts. And that person is Christopher Steele, a former MI6 officer of no great distinction who for years now has run a private intelligence company, Orbis Business Intelligence. Now, he is the author of the infamous Trump Russiagate dossier, which overshadowed the 2016 presidential campaign. But he is also closely involved with some of these people in this kind of anti disinformation network, which itself is pumping out disinformation. So the levels of irony are extraordinary. And I think we really do need a very serious clinical look which actually says, well, actually, is there a real foundation for this idea that Russia has, through digital bots, had a significant impact on Western public opinion? My hunch is that if you dug deep into that, you might find it was an awful lot less significant than some of its proponents claim.

[Podcast Host]

But let's just establish Russia has oligarchs who have funded and through their intelligence service, they have attempted to spread digital propaganda. Before that they attempted, the KGB certainly attempted in the Cold War to spread disinformation. It's a long standing tactic. I think the United States has done that. The UK has certainly done that. Information has been part of warfare for some time. But you know, we, and, and, and, and some of this has been documented in the 2016 election. There was, there were fake social media accounts that were controlled by Russians. There was an entire, what institute for, I forget the name of it. The, the, of Internet research. The, there was, you know, there, there, there was the Internet Research Agency which was out of St. Petersburg and it was a, you know, it was an effort to try to put out phony stuff in Western Internet and American Internet. It's a leap to then say that this kind of activity, which is really kind of a norm from Russia, at least in America, you know, for the last hundred years in some ways, or this, when it was the Soviet Union, is responsible for the election of a particular candidate and, or responsible for the success of the Brexit referendum.

[David Rose]

Well, absolutely. I mean, the thing is, I think, you know, the evidence that Russian disinformation had any material impact on the Brexit referendum is negligible. I mean, I was reporting on all of that at the time and you know, no one was saying to me, oh, what I saw on Facebook last night, it's really made me think I'm going to vote to leave the European Union.

[Podcast Host]

Right.

[David Rose]

But the thing is this, I mean, as you rightly say, these kinds of campaigns, disinformation campaigns, information warfare, it was common throughout the Cold War. The Stasi had a special phrase for it, a special word. They called it Funkspiele. And it was basically trying to fool your enemy by putting up bogus information. But the thing is this. Nobody in the Cold War was saying this is such a terrible threat that we can't just present people with accurate information. And the truth, what we have to do is have massive censorship so that we control what they are seeing. And the thing is, once you start trying to, in the name of, you know, say national security, control one class of information, you're going to have to have some kind of surveillance tools, which means you're looking at every kind of information. It means you're basically going to have.

[Podcast Host]

We're already there.

[David Rose]

Well, yeah, but I mean, it's going to get worse. I mean these, these people, the people in this network close to Keir Starmer, close to the current Labour Party leadership, I mean, they want far greater intrusion than anything that exists at this time.

[Podcast Host]

Okay, so let's get to the report. There is an American lobbying firm, research firm called apco, very big company that operates in Washington and does a lot of this kind of corporate PR work. What was their role? They helped prepare this report, is that right?

[David Rose]

Well, what happened was this. In November 2023, a story appeared in the Sunday Times, the London Sunday Times, showing in detail that Labour Together, this very powerful think tank which as I say, had created Keir Starmer first as Labour leader and then had a massive impact on his preparing for his role as Prime Minister. By the way, it was set up by Morgan McSweeney who became his chief of staff in Downing street and of course was forced to resign just a couple of months ago because of the Peter Mandelson affair. But in any case, so this report revealed that this very political organization had broken the law. Under UK law, if you make political donations to a political campaigning organization, you have to declare them to the Electoral Commission or at least the donor doesn't have to, the recipient does. Labor Together, led by Morgan McSweeney, had failed to declare over £700,000 of political donations, basically from rich business people who clearly wanted to influence Starmer's agenda. So they were fined £14,500, a fairly trivial sum. But anyhow, the Sunday Times did a big story when instead of just taking this, what Labour Together then did by this time it wasn't run by Morgan McSweeney but by a guy called Josh Simons who later became an MP and indeed a minister in Starmer's government. What Josh Simons did is commission an investigation into the sources of this critical Sunday Times report and also into other stories and books that were in preparation from journalists who were hostile to Keir Starmer. And the reason they went to APCO Worldwide is that somebody who was on the APCO Worldwide Advisory board, a woman called Kate Forrester, was also a senior executive at APCO and her husband was Keir Starmer's director of communication. So they're really plugged into that inner Starmer circle. They said, we can do this report, we'll look at the sourcing. And they asked a guy called Tom Harper, who himself had been a senior reporter at the Sunday Times until a year or two before they got him to investigate his former colleagues. But he didn't just investigate the former colleagues, he investigated in the end. Well, his preliminary memo, his preliminary findings recommended investigating eight so called significant persons of interest, all of whom were journalists and they included a well known American, Matt Taibbi. Who?

[Podcast Host]

Of course, Matt Taibbi.

[David Rose]

Oh yeah, of course, Matt Tybee had, yes, he had published material that was critical of Starmer and also of Labour together, but also Andrew Feinstein, who happened to be not only a former MP and government minister in South Africa, but also an extremely well known journalist in London who actually ran against Starmer in 2024 in his own constituency. They investigated him, they investigated a guy called Paul Holden who eventually wrote a very critical book about how Starmer gained power. And the final report came out. Well, they didn't come out. They had it by the middle of January 2024 and it made these outrageous allegations against these individuals who had published

[Podcast Host]

it or did they gave it to journalists, right?

[David Rose]

No, they didn't give it to journalists. They did give it to senior officials in Downing Street. It's very clear that people very close to Starmer read this report. I mean, you know, Morgan McSweeney, his chief of staff, or by that time in 2024, he was actually his campaign's chief, technically. I mean, he had set up Labour together. He was very close to the people involved in all of this. And of course the communications director was married to the woman who had suggested that APCO do this. So I mean there's an indelible connection there. But they didn't, they didn't publish it. What they did was this. So Josh Simons received this report and I think the initial version was 54 pages long. And he sent it to the National CyberSecurity center at GCHQ, the UK equivalent at the NSA, suggesting that there had been an illegal Russian hack of the Electoral Commission, that the information that the Sunday Times have published about the unlawful donations that come from this hack. And he passed on all the details of all these journalists except for one. So there was one journalist who had been accused of being a Russian spy, a man called Gabriel Pogrand, a senior reporter at the Sunday Times, its Whitehall editor. The problem for Josh Simons there was that unfortunately he and Gabriel Pogrand were quite good friends. So he thought, well, this can't possibly be true of my friend, my friend, my friend Gabriel, he's my buddy. So he took out the 10 pages about, about Gable pogrom, right? But he passed it all on, all the rest of it went to GCHQ and of course, you know, to Starmer's office. So it's extraordinary. Anyway, you know, two years go by and then suddenly in February 2026, the truth emerges. There was a leap. The, the very first publication and the first mention of APCO came on a South African website called Democracy for Sale. And then the Sunday Times itself, which of course, his reporter had been slandered in this report. They picked up the story and that's when, you know there was quite a big political explosion in the uk.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah. Now, the Free Speech Union has seen a copy of the actual contract from apco, is that correct? Absolutely. And you've seen the report. Can you talk about how you got some of these original source documents, which is what, really, why this is such a valuable. Well, I consider it a piece of journalism. Even though it's a think tank report?

[David Rose]

No, it's totally a piece of journalism. And of course, most of my life I've been a journalist. So, yeah, I mean, I'm not going to say who I got them from, but I got all the key original documents. I've got the contract, I've got the preliminary report that named eight journalists as significant persons of interest. And I've also got documents that show that Kate Forrester, herself, member of the apco, APCO Executive, is also an advisory board member of Labour. Together she had that preliminary report. She was sent it, so she knew that's what they were doing. And then I had the final report, and then I had the redacted final report, which is the final report, minus the section on Josh Simon's buddy, Gabriel Pogret, who, by the way, is an outstanding journalist and an excellent man. So you can see the whole picture here. But what makes it so shocking also is that so Starmer realized this was very embarrassing. So he asked the Commission, the commissioner, sorry, the advisor on Ministerial standards, he's a man called Laurie Magnus, Sir Laurie Magnus, to do a short inquiry. And he kind of looked into this and said, well, basically, there's no evidence that Josh Simons, now a Cabinet minister or Cabinet Office minister, has broken the ministerial code. And he took about two weeks to reach that determination. Now, what he hadn't done was considered tons of evidence that various witnesses had been sending him. Now, Josh Simons, when the story broke, he said, I never intended journalists to be investigated. I was shocked by what they were saying about Gabriel Pogren, although of course, that hadn't been quoted. My report is the first extensive quoting of what the report actually says. But he said ATCO went beyond their contract. And anyway, because I knew that Gabriel was not a Russian spy, I never told GCHQ that he was. The trouble is, first of all, he did say that these other journalists were Russian spies. Well, the report said that and he did send that to gchq. But it's also clear that because you can see all this paper trail, his colleague Kate Forrester from Labour Together had obviously received the information as well. Now, Laurie Magnus was sent a lot of information from a guy who had some, though not all of the documents, who was also accused of being a Russian asset, a man called Paul Holden. Paul Holden wrote a book which came out last year called the Fraud, and it's about Starmer's rights to power. And as the title suggests, he's not terribly keen on Keir Starmer. But the thing is this. So Paul Holden sent all this information to Sir Laurie Magnus and none of it appeared to have been considered when Laurie Magnus gave Josh Simons a clean bill of health and said he hasn't broken the ministerial code. Well, what is also kind of weird,

[Podcast Host]

tangled web we weave.

[David Rose]

But what is so weird is that. So Josh Simons has apparently been cleared. He's apparently been exonerated, but then he resigned, saying, oh, well, I don't want my continued presence in the government to be a distraction from its important work. Now we get to the new nitty gritty stuff that's happening this week. So Paul Holden.

[Podcast Host]

I'm spending more time to do opposition research on my family. Anyway,

[David Rose]

Paul Holden writes to Siluria Magnus after seeing the exoneration and he says, I've sent you 23 pages of emails quoting extensively from documentary evidence that suggests that Josh Simons is mistaken, perhaps not telling the whole truth, when he says he never intended journalists to be investigated. And he actually said at one point,

[Podcast Host]

I never saw journalists were investigating.

[David Rose]

Right, exactly right.

[Podcast Host]

What is this? It's ridiculous. Okay. Yeah.

[David Rose]

So the thing is this, a couple of weeks ago, Laurie Magnus writes to him, says, I'm really sorry, I did get your email, but I never read them.

[Podcast Host]

Oh, really? Okay. Yeah.

[David Rose]

So now what has just happened is that John McDonnell, now, John McDonnell was leader of the Labour Party when Jeremy Corbyn, the very left wing leader, was leader. He himself is far more left wing than Starmer, but he has written to Laurie Magnus, supported by about 16 Labour MPs and peers, saying, this is just not good enough. You've not done your job. You have not considered the evidence that actually there was a case to answer by Josh Simons. And Magnus's position is this. He says, well, I can't do anything about it now because he's resigned because he's no longer a minister. I can't consider his conduct because I have no remit to investigate someone who's no longer a member of the government. So MacDonald actually mentioned this in the House of Commons last week. He raised a point of order, but I think he's going to go further. You know, it does look like Solari Magnus didn't do his job properly.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah. All right, well, I want to get back, though, to now the sort of nub of it. I mean, this information is then given to the cyber security organization.

[David Rose]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host]

And what then do they do with it? I mean, what, what, what, what, what does the government do with this information? And then I want to kind of get to the substance of these claims.

[David Rose]

Well, what happens is that within a matter of days, the, the cyber people at GCHQ say, well, there's no evidence of a hack here. There's nothing to see. Ah, there's no investigation. We don't need to investigate.

[Podcast Host]

There's no evidence that these people are Russian agents of some kind.

[David Rose]

No, no, exactly. I mean, they basically dismissed it. They just said, you know, this is preposterous and I'm going to get onto

[Podcast Host]

that because this, to me is the key part of it, right, which is, you know, just to make a comparison to the United States, is that in the end the gchq, which is the equivalent of the nsa, just to remind our listeners in the National Security Agency, looked at partisan research effectively, or research contracted for partisan reasons, let's just say that. And they said there's nothing to this and they left it there. That is really a contrast to Christopher Steele's earlier role in Rush Tricking, where he does the dossier and that the line agents for the FBI look at it and say, this looks like crap. And then they interview his, you know, the main subsource who collected the information, and he couldn't back up the stories, and yet the director of the FBI instead turns around and basically keeps the information open. And, you know, this is now ancient history, it seems, but the first two and a half years of the first Trump administration, Americans, Washington was obsessed, journalists were obsessed with a fraudulent story, and in part because the FBI, which is in this, you know, playing the kind of role of gchq, took seriously a bunch of partisan garbage that was paid for, for partisan reasons. So that in some ways is to the credit of the dchq, is it not? I mean, this is like sort of.

[David Rose]

Well, it is. I would agree with you that, and I think it is, it is encouraging that nobody has taken the crap that was in this report seriously. But there is, but there are, there is a big US Dimension here, and that Is. So who was the conduit between the Biden. I'm sorry, between the Obama administration and Christopher Steele? It was a man called Jonathan Weiner and I think his name.

[Podcast Host]

He used one of the contacts. Right, Exactly.

[David Rose]

His name appeared like 200 times.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah, but there were other FBI people who worked with. I mean there were specific. We should say Steele had a bunch of. He had contacts with the FBI. He had contact. And Weiner's a State Department guy, so it's a. Yes, but you're right, Weiner is one of his contacts.

[David Rose]

But the thing is this. Before Weiner worked at the State Department, I think he was special envoy for Libya. He worked at APCO Worldwide and as soon as the Obama administration ended he went back to APCO Worldwide and he still works at APCO Worldwide as its senior counselor in Washington. A woman called Ariana Nansrai worked at APCO Worldwide in Washington during that period. It is clear from documents released out of the Freedom of Information act in the United States that she met with Steele on several occasions to discuss so called Russia matters. And she's now Executive director of the APCO Worldwide London office. So there are connections between APCO Worldwide and Christopher Steele. Now, APCO Worldwide have told me that these two individuals, Nansrai and Wyner, did not play any part in the investigation into the journalists commissioned by Labour together. We have to accept that denial. But nevertheless, it's this kind of ecosystem which is so pernicious. Now it gets worse because Steele himself, having written what you rightly describe as a bunch of crap in 2016, goes on.

[Podcast Host]

Steele stands by it, by the way. Wrote a whole book about saying how he was, you know.

[David Rose]

But he's spent a period since compiling equally bogus dossiers about individuals, mainly in the uk, many of them in politics, falsely accusing them of being Russian spies. It's his kind of. It's his go to, it's his, it's his playbook. Now I actually wrote an investigation for the website Unherd last October and I showed how he had used MPs to repeat false allegations in his dossiers about key British individuals in Parliament where they were protected by parliamentary privilege and couldn't be sued. And Steele himself on one occasion was paid 30,000 pounds for drafting a completely false set of allegations against a blameless businessman who took a huge hit as a result of the lies that Steele fed to the mp. Who was the mp? The MP was a guy called Liam Byrne, who is a very influential guy. He was a cabinet minister under Tony Blair. And Gordon Brown, he's the chair of the House of Commons Select Committee on Business and Trade. Now, he's just written a book, and it's called why Populists Are Winning and How to Beat Them. And guess what? It says that the crucial thing is much tougher digital censorship. We have to stop lies being spread by hostile foreign powers like Russia. We have to protect people against disinformation. And the only way to do that is from by far more intrusive levels of digital censorship. And yet this person, not just against the guy I was speaking about just now, Fraser Perry, but on at least two other occasions, has repeated lies fed to him by Christopher Steele on the floor of the House of Commons and got away with it. So it's a pretty polluted situation.

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[Podcast Host]

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[David Rose]

See, I. I don't think he was really in charge of it. What I've been told is that, yeah, sure, he was in MI6. He had a career in MI6.

[Podcast Host]

He was in charge of the Russia desk at the time. I mean, he was.

[David Rose]

Was he? Well, he certainly wasn't in charge of the Moscow Station, and.

[Podcast Host]

Fair. No, no, fair enough. That's a good point.

[David Rose]

Okay, yes, yeah, yes, he did play a part in the Litvinenko investigation.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah, but. Okay, fair enough. You know, it wasn't his responsibility entirely. You could argue with a lot of other people to go along, but that was. I would say that that is an intelligence failure against the Russians for sure. And that was.

[David Rose]

But the thing about Steve is, you know, he's monetized those connections. I mean, sure, he was involved in this very serious assassination on British soil. I mean, not the assassination, but the investigation of it. But, you know, I mean, these bogus dossiers that he's been writing ever since. I mean, we know, of course, about Trump, but, I mean, I've got two of his dossiers against UK individuals. One's called Project Fish, the other one is called Project Delta, and it's just full of fantasy. I mean, according to these dossiers, Steel apparently has access to SBR and FSB databases. He has incredible sources inside the Russian security state.

[Podcast Host]

Well, no, he doesn't.

[David Rose]

He's not been to Russia since 2009. He relies, like most of the private intelligence world, on subcontractors. I mean, you've alluded to Danchenko, the guy who was the main source for the Trump stuff, who, of course, was himself indicted, though found not guilty in the end. This is a very unreliable actor. I mean, at one stage, one of his dossiers he wrote that Boris Johnson had been targeted by the KGB from the time he was an undergraduate in Oxford and that they were using his wife Carrie to influence him. I mean, this is fantasy.

[Podcast Host]

It's deranged. Yeah. I want to get to one of the unintended problems when you have this very irresponsible kind of practice of political parties accusing their critics of being foreign agents or Russian agents. And that is that occasionally there are Russian agents and our midst. Sure, there are foreign agents in our midst. And it makes them kind of. It makes any kind of accusation like that seem discredited in some ways because you're like, oh, I've heard this before. And that's in some ways why I actually think that the moral panic generated by the Steele dossier and russiagate was actually, in a weird way in Russia's interest. Because by making us kind of paranoid and then having institutions like the FBI discredited, it kind of helps with the broader agenda of Moscow, that is to kind of erode and eat away at the public trust of these institutions and ultimately social cohesion. Would you agree with that?

[David Rose]

I think I absolutely agree. I think it's a brilliant. Well, if you ask that question, cui bono? Yeah, it does benefit Russia, no question. If nobody trusts anything that is said that relates to Russia or even if it doesn't relate to Russia, then that's a fantastic win for Russia because, yes, it erodes faith in democracy. It suggests that we don't have a system that functions properly.

[Podcast Host]

And I would argue that in America at least, I don't know if it's the case in the uk. I'm not accusing influencers or podcasters of being under the spell of or in the pay of foreign governments. But what I would say is that certainly disinformation generated by state actors or terrorist groups or things like that has taken off and has really shaped a lot of opinions. I mean, there are plenty, I think, of valid criticism of Israel, of the Gaza war, but there was so much stuff that was kind of fed into TikTok that weren't even of the Gaza war that may have been from Syria or were AI generated or turned out to be something that we didn't realize it was. I mean, you can look at all kinds of things that are just sort of bad information about that war. The stupid stat about more than 200 journalists have been killed. A lot of those so called journalists have been members of Hamas. This is an example of things like that. And so what, in a weird way, in trying to combat Disinformation. The nanny staters in the UK and in America have ended up being hoisted on their own petards and we are all suffering as a result. Because I think we would both agree there is such a thing as disinformation. And gatekeepers in the press, not the government. I would say, of course, it should be done by responsible journalism are the ones that should sort of fend off against that in a functioning republic or a functioning democracy. What we have today is there's been so much distrust in America of mainstream and elite journalists and these other institutions that it is we're kind of in anything goes moment where conspiracy theories have gained ground very quickly. I'm not saying that's because of Russia. I'm saying it's because in this, in this process, we've lost some of that social cohesion and public trust. Do you have any thoughts on that?

[David Rose]

I do. I mean, I think that the Gaza war is a very interesting case, but equally, it does seem to me that the manipulation of Western opinion that has taken place during that war is not really down to any state actors. It's certainly not down to Russia. I mean, it's.

[Podcast Host]

No, no, I wasn't accusing Russia. I was saying. Right.

[David Rose]

I mean, and it's also because of a kind of receptiveness. Yeah, people want to, want to believe this because, you know, to be blunt, they don't like Jews. And this has enabled extreme propaganda to be treated as truth. And another part of this is that news organizations, which should have been far more rigorous, which should have treated outrageous claims made during that war, did not do their job. Now, I'm afraid I would hear single out, especially the BBC, we saw a particular example only a few weeks into the war. I think it was on October 29, 2023, when it was reported erroneously that the Al Ahli Hospital in Gaza had been destroyed. And the BBC had that as their lead story on the evening news and on their website. And they had very senior correspondents, including their international editor, Jeremy Bowen, stating this. Now, it turned out not to be true. It was almost certainly a misfired rocket from Palestinian Islamic Jihad, as I'm sure you know, that hit the car park, the parking lot of the hospital. The hospital itself was not destroyed and nothing like 500 people died. So, you know, the whole story was essentially bogus. But what shocked me, what really shocked me was the postscript. And that was about two, three weeks later, Jeremy Bowen was speaking on some panel and he was challenged on the BBC's misreporting of those Bogus claims, which of course had come from Hamas. And he basically said, I'm not losing any sleep over that. It's really not a problem. Well, when a journalist as important and senior a physician is simply insouciant, is simply saying I don't care. I mean you're getting somewhere like, okay, it doesn't really matter on the detail here. It speaks to my broader truth, this kind of nonsense. So we look at one side of this equation, okay, there are some state actors who no doubt would like propaganda to be picked up and I think Iran has probably been extremely assiduous at doing that in the last few weeks. But we only look at one side of this point. The other side is, well, what about journalists? I mean, what all these events show is that the need for proper, rigorous, old fashioned journalism, of which I'm so pleased to see the free press is doing so brilliantly at, which is why I'm a huge fan of the free press. Those skills are more needed than ever and unfortunately are not always being deployed. And so that vulnerability that we have to bullshit on TikTok or whatever it is is partly its impact has been magnified by the failure of proper, straightforward legacy mainstream media to do its job.

[Podcast Host]

Well, that'sy's a two way street in some ways, but it's not helped by labor together, it is not helped by, I hope that this is now a memory. But if Democrats come back into power and they revive their plans to try to set up government role in protecting Americans from so called disinformation, you know, this problem will get worse. Because I think what we're really saying here is there are a number of galling elements of this great research and report that you've done, David. But the big takeaway as I see it, is that we want to have a bright line between the journalists and the government. And what we don't want is political parties which are vying or competing for power in the government, in our democracies to become, you know, the kind of guardians against the public for things that are false. That is the job of journalists. And so if the journalists themselves are not losing sleep when they get major stories about a war wrong, that is one half of the sort of broader problem. It's not just the appetite of politicians to censor what we can read and say.

[David Rose]

And I think the other thing that makes this so important and you know, is a very chilling thing, so we've mentioned already, the center for Countering Digital Hate starts as a UK organization founded by Morgan McSweeney later, Starmer's chief of staff and Imran Ahmed, who now lives in Washington D.C. now it has redefined the idea of disinformation. They've tried to repackage it. So that was once called disinformation is now often called hate. Go on the center for Countering Digital Hate website and what will you find? You'll find a whole section on what it calls the new climate denialism. This is apparently a species of hate. Look at what they're actually trying to condemn here. And it's criticism of Britain's crazy net zero energy policy which is destroying what's left of our heavy industry, has given us the highest industrial electricity bills in the world or certainly in the developed world. And to argue against that is apparently now digital hate that must be clamped down upon and that platforms must be made accountable. And you look at the demands they make. I mean they have a fairly short list. They, they want to, they say, force social media platforms to A be transparent about and B, change their algorithms so that as they see it, you know, stories full of hate or disinformation are no longer promoted or pushed at people because you know, platforms supposedly in their, in their account make money from more clicks. So they want more, more controversy, even if it's, if it's, you know, based on lies. They want surveillance, they want age gating, they want people to be unable to access this stuff. I mean, here's a paradox. There is talk in the uk, the demand often made by these people that, you know, nobody under the age of 18 should be allowed to use social media. At the same time, the left of the Labour Party wants 16 year olds to have a vote. So apparently you can.

[Podcast Host]

I want to get back to your point. I mean what you're showing is that this is the problem. It's that it starts with something that largely people would agree with, like there shouldn't be blatant racism or anti Semitism online. And you have to think a bit on this because at first that sounds wonderful, right? I mean it's like, yeah, I think it's wrong to spread that. It's unfair to people and minority groups. And like, you know, once you start down that road, I mean this is this, you know, the, they always go back to the example of Germany in the 1930s and so forth, but then you think about it a little bit more and what really we have to be wary of as citizens in free countries is that we do not want the government fashion a rod for our backs. So once you say one thing that almost Everybody can agree with should be censored and monitored, then you are opening the door to basically having a government agency that would try to put their thumb on the scale of the climate debate and sensible energy policies. And that's the problem. The problem is that it always starts with something that we all agree with. I mean, an example here and one that I think. I certainly agree that child pornography is absolutely horrible, but that has become the nose under the tent for the FBI to monitor all kinds of web traffic that have nothing to do with child pornography. So we can even agree child pornography is a scourge and pederasty and all of that is illegal, and we want the government to try to stamp it out. Of course. However, once you start giving the government the power to do that, they always. And that's what happened we saw in the period after Trump, which is that it started with Russian disinformation. And by the end of Trump's first term, it was medical misinformation, it was online hate, it was any number of things. And you just had this huge list of stuff that the government had an interest in telling social media companies or pressuring social media companies to, you know, not publish. And that right there is for me, the fundamental problem. And unfortunately, it seems like the people who call themselves, ironically, liberals are the ones who are pushing it. So it's extraordinary. And that's why the Free Speech Union is so important in the UK and we used to have something called the ACLU in America, the American Civil Liberties Union, which has lost its way. But we could use a Free Speech Union here too, I think.

[David Rose]

Well, you know, you talked about medical misinformation. It's a very interesting example. So one of the big things that this little ecosystem has been pushing, or, you know, was pushing heavily during the COVID 19 pandemic was so called misinformation on that. Now, what was this misinformation or disinformation? What was this species of digital hate?

[Podcast Host]

It was suggestions emanated from a laboratory in.

[David Rose]

Exactly, exactly. Which not many serious people any longer dispute. But back in 2020, it was disinformation. And hate to say that it's also now becoming sadly apparent that for some classes of younger patient, mRNA, Covid vaccines have caused heart damage. And, you know, a group of people who are not at serious risk of having, you know, life threatening symptoms from COVID may have suffered serious health impacts from MRNA vaccines. Now, one of the people who was saying that back in the day was Robert F. Kennedy. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The current yes, Health section. He was a target of the center for Countering Digital Hate in its heyday, in its days when it was attending meetings at the White House. And yeah, but I was.

[Podcast Host]

We should make clear, RFK Jr was occasionally right, shouldn't have been targeted. He was a legitimate political voice, or at least target. He should have been censored, I would argue. But on the other hand, RFK Jr also says that all vaccines are bad and has gone much further than just the MRNA or a sort of modest claim that I think is defensible for some patients. The MRNA vaccine has caused heart damage and you should be aware of it. I mean, the larger issue, of course, was that all the data we had is that young, healthy people were not really affected by Covid in the way that other subsets were. So the idea that everybody had to have a vaccine was arguably an honest mistake. The problem is that once you've set up a censorship regime that it's very difficult to get the right feedback and nimbly adjust. Instead you have a bunch of sort of midwits enforcing an old dogma that is no longer even true, sort of making fools of everybody. But there is, I think this gets back to what we were saying about the press, which is that we do not want the government to tell us to protect us from falsehood. We do not want the government to protect us in terms of the speech realm in that way. We want the government to protect us, obviously, in fact, physical harm and things like that. But at the same time, the press has an obligation that when you have a demagogue and when you have somebody out there saying, you know, rubbish to call them out on it, that's kind of what our job is, you know what I'm saying? So if you're, if you're worried about the spread of disinformation, I don't think it's entirely. I don't think we, I think we should be worried about it, I should say, I mean, so that. But it's again, it's the responsibility of the press. And what we've seen is that the scourge of disinformation or the scourge of rabbit hole and conspiracism and so forth, that is not just for the so called uneducated. It's something that affects the highly educated and it's something that all of us are. And that's why it's important. That's why free, that's why the principle of free speech is important, is because it is a necessary condition to getting to the truth. And that's kind of what you guys are all about.

[David Rose]

That is right. I mean, I have very little time for anti vaxx campaigns. I think yes, there are perhaps some question marks over RNA Covid vaccines in young people, but in general I'm a passionate supporter of vaccination. But I think what we are facing here is, is, is a stark choice. On the one hand, the, the answer that as you say, ironically, liberals are, are coming up with is silent dissent. Stop the flow of information by, by control and censorship. On the other hand, the alternative is win the argument, present accurate information. Yes, win the argument, have the debate. And you know, there are people who are, because we're at the Free Speech Union, we have, we have a dual role. We campaign, we engage with policymakers, legislators and so forth. We also represent people. We have a big legal division. We support people who are facing legal sanctions of one kind or another through speaking their mind. I mean, one example you may well be familiar is the arrest of the comic TV writer Graham Linehan.

[Podcast Host]

We interviewed him for our episode on the perils to free speech in the

[David Rose]

uk which is well, you know, he pounced on by five armed police officers at Heathrow Airport for stating biological truth. I mean, you know, it's extraordinary. So we represent people and you know, many other cases, some of the people we represent, I really have little time for their views.

[Podcast Host]

Sure.

[David Rose]

I mean, we are representing certain people who have been arrested because they support an organization called Palestine Action. Now, Palestine Action is not my cup of tea. It's a pretty radical organization. It's committed some serious acts of vandalism. For example, a factory used by the Israeli firm Elbit Systems in Brazil.

[Podcast Host]

And more than vandalism, they actually injured pretty serious.

[David Rose]

Yeah, and they did indeed. So, you know, I'm the last person to support Palestine Action. On the other hand, what the government has done is that it has prescribed Palestine Action as a terrorist organization, which means that it is a criminal offense to express support for Palestine Action. What has been the result? There have been big protests with basically well meaning liberal people, old ladies, priests, goodness knows what basically saying not, you know, we want to destroy the state of Israel and. But we have a right to say we support Palestine Action and not to be criminalized for it. There was a demonstration about two weeks ago in central London on a weekend. Over 500 people were arrested. They've now been, they're facing potential conviction under a terrorism act, which means that they'll be denied the ability to travel. They'll be on no fly list. This is a totally disproportionate response. And so you come back to Voltaire. You may disagree passionately with somebody, but you should defend to the death the right to express their opinion unless it is directly threatening in terms of incitement to violence, the fire in the crowded theater argument and so on.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah, I mean, this is. Anyway, we could go on for a while, but we are kind of at our time limit right now. I wanna thank you, David Rose. This is great. Mazel tov on the report. I'm so glad we did this. What a great interview.

[David Rose]

Thank you.

[Podcast Host]

Filled with lots of good information.

[David Rose]

Oh, I really enjoyed it.

[UnitedHealth Group Announcer]

Now finding a doctor is a little less challenging. UnitedHealth Group is investing in tools that make it easier for patients to navigate healthcare and pay less. These transparency tools help patients find providers. And this is the big thing. Compare costs up front. The big picture, more transparent pricing benefits everyone. These tools from UnitedHealth Group can help patients save hundreds of dollars annually. Learn [e-mail] commitment.