The Spy Who Putin Poisoned | Uncovering The Truth With Bellingcat | 5

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Spy Who Hosted by Charlie Higson and Elliot Higgins Released on November 19, 2024

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Introduction

In this compelling episode of The Spy Who, hosted by Charlie Higson and featuring Elliot Higgins, the founder of Bellingcat, listeners are taken deep into the shadowy world of espionage to explore the intricate investigation surrounding the poisoning of Sergei Skripal. This episode delves into how independent journalism and open-source intelligence played pivotal roles in uncovering truths that traditional media often overlook.

The Skripal Case Overview

Charlie Higson opens the discussion by highlighting the unusual public exposure of espionage activities through the poisoning of Sergei Skripal, a former high-ranking intelligence officer. Skripal's case stands out because it brought the covert operations of spies and assassins into the public eye, largely due to the investigative efforts of Bellingcat.

“In the story we've been looking at in this series, the Poisoning of Sergei Skripal, suddenly this world of spies and assassins bursts into public view.”
— Charlie Higson [00:08]

Bellingcat's Involvement

Elliot Higgins recounts how Bellingcat initially became aware of the Skripal poisoning incident. Initially, there wasn't substantial information to warrant their involvement. However, as more details emerged, particularly the identities of the two suspects released by British police, Bellingcat saw an opportunity to investigate further.

“We heard about the initial poisoning as a kind of team at Bellingcat, but at that point there wasn't really much we could work with.”
— Elliot Higgins [02:06]

The turning point came when a Russian newspaper obtained the flight manifest of the suspects' journey into the UK, revealing passport numbers that were suspiciously similar—a red flag for Bellingcat.

Investigative Techniques

Bellingcat employed a variety of open-source investigative techniques to unravel the mystery behind the Skripal poisoning:

1. Data Acquisition from Black Markets:

   • Bellingcat's access to the "Provid market," a Russian black market for data, allowed them to purchase registration forms for the suspects' domestic passports. The minimal cost (~€50) and the ease of obtaining sensitive information underscored the pervasive corruption within Russia's data systems.

   “It's almost a gag at the time. It was like, there's no way they're going to be so easy to just have all this data available.”
   — Elliot Higgins [02:36]

2. Reverse Image Searches and Facial Recognition:

   • Utilizing tools like reverse image searches helped Bellingcat identify and verify the true identities of the suspects. Collaborating with facial recognition experts, they confirmed the matches between the suspects and their real identities.

   “We created a profile of him. What would a Russian GRU officer operating in Europe actually have done in his career?”
   — Elliot Higgins [14:39]

3. Tracking Digital Footprints:

   • By analyzing phone records and travel logs, Bellingcat traced the movements of the suspects across Europe, linking them to other covert operations, such as the poisoning of a Bulgarian arms dealer in 2015.

   “Thanks to this data, we actually tracked him on other journeys he went on.”
   — Elliot Higgins [10:14]

Challenges and Risks

Investigating Russian intelligence activities is fraught with risks. Elliot shares a personal anecdote illustrating the paranoia and potential threats faced by Bellingcat team members:

“There was one incident in particular where I was staying in a hotel in Amsterdam... I thought these could be poisoned. So I kind of flushed them down the toilet.”
— Elliot Higgins [09:06]

Additionally, the Russian state's attempts to discredit Bellingcat were evident when the Russian ambassador to the UK accused the organization of espionage without providing evidence.

“I don't have any evidence. I just have a feeling in the back of my mind...”
— Elliot Higgins [09:03]

Impact and Implications

Bellingcat's investigation not only exposed the identities of the Skripal suspects but also uncovered a broader network of Russian espionage activities across Europe. The revelations indicated a systematic program by Russia to conduct assassinations and disrupt political stability in other nations.

“We believe Russia suddenly thinks they're at war with us. I think the Cold War in the mind of Putin never really finished.”
— Elliot Higgins [10:14]

Despite these significant findings, Elliot expresses frustration over the lack of tangible consequences for Russian state actors, drawing parallels to other incidents like the downing of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 and the ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

Role of Investigative Journalism

A central theme of the episode is the transformative role of investigative journalism, especially open-source intelligence, in holding powerful entities accountable. Elliot emphasizes the democratization of information and the empowerment of individuals to conduct their own investigations.

“What you're doing as part of a community and a network is actually beneficial to you as well as everyone else around you.”
— Elliot Higgins [26:50]

Bellingcat's efforts in training thousands of journalists and activists, coupled with their extensive toolkit and community platforms, highlight the organization's commitment to fostering a transparent and accountable world.

Public Perception and Trust in Media

The episode explores how Bellingcat's transparency bridges the gap between government-held information and public understanding, thereby reducing the space for conspiracy theories and misinformation.

“Had there been that gap, I think we'd have had a much more confused situation about what really happened.”
— Elliot Higgins [30:47]

Elliot also discusses the rising challenge of disinformation and its impact on society, stressing the importance of accurate, open-source investigations in combating false narratives.

Future Directions

Looking ahead, Elliot shares Bellingcat's plans to expand partnerships with universities to create investigative hubs and continue training the next generation of investigative journalists. This initiative aims to sustain and amplify the impact of open-source intelligence in uncovering hidden truths.

“We're building more partnerships with universities to build investigative hubs from, you know, students from different disciplines.”
— Elliot Higgins [34:48]

Conclusion

The episode concludes with a reflection on the enduring importance of independent journalism in the fight against state-sponsored covert operations and disinformation. Elliot Higgins underscores the ongoing mission to empower individuals with the tools and knowledge necessary to seek truth and effect meaningful change.

“We create spaces for people to come together. So we've got a Discord server with about 30,000 people and they're always digging into interesting things and doing investigations.”
— Elliot Higgins [26:50]

Listeners are encouraged to explore Bellingcat's comprehensive reports and engage with their investigative toolkit to contribute to uncovering the realities hidden in the shadows of global espionage.

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For more detailed insights into the Skripal investigation and other espionage-related stories, visit bellingcat.com and tune into additional episodes of The Spy Who on Wondery.

Transcript

[Unknown Host]

Wondery plus subscribers can binge full seasons of the Spy who early and ad free on Apple podcasts or the Wondery.

[Charlie Higson]

APPLAUSE from Wondery. I'm Charlie Higson and this is the Spy who now Normally, in the world of espionage, everything is secret. We assume stuff is going on, but we don't know very much about it. But in the story we've been looking at in this series, the Poisoning of Sergei Skripal, suddenly this world of spies and assassins bursts into public view. Skripal's extraordinary journey from a high ranking intelligence officer to a target of public intrigue makes him a compelling and cautionary figure. One that became of interest to the journalistic group Bellingcat and sparked their extraordinary investigation. Now, as you've heard us say several times, the realm of the spy is often shrouded in secrecy. And it's often only when old historic files are dusted off and made public that any details are ever revealed. However, Bellingcat and its founder, Elliot Higgins, sought to change that. Elliot and his team used digital tools to uncover truths that often evade traditional media outlets. In this case, they exposed previously unknown details surrounding the suspects involved in Skripal's poisoning. I am very pleased to have Elliot join me in the studio to discuss just how he and his team managed to unveil the truth to the public. Welcome to the Spy who. Elliot, thanks for having me on. Well, thank you so much for being here today to talk about this. Well, I mean, it's quite an extraordinary case, isn't it? I mean, where did your journey begin? When did you first hear about Sergei Skripal?

[Elliot Higgins]

Well, we heard about the initial poisoning as a kind of team at Ballingcat, but at that point there wasn't really much we could work with. So it's kind of interesting, but not something we were getting involved with. It was only months later when it really kind of developed and information was published by the police where we could get involved.

[Charlie Higson]

So you saw it like everyone else when it came on the news?

[Elliot Higgins]

Yeah, absolutely. And we kind of thought, could we investigate this? But at the time there wasn't really much to go on.

[Charlie Higson]

But then things changed. So what did you think became important about it? Where you thought, aha.

[Elliot Higgins]

Well, the identities were published by the British police of the two suspects. And there was a Russian newspaper who managed to get hold of the flight manifest for the flight they flew into the UK from. And that included their passport numbers, which were just a few digits apart. And that. That's kind of the first in we had into the investigation. And because those numbers were just a few digits apart, it was immediately suspicious because that shouldn't be happening for two people who aren't related to each other. And it's that point. One of my colleagues, Christo Grozev, who was a volunteer with Balin Kat at the time, he was very familiar with the Provid market, as they call it in Russia, the black market of data. In Russia, you can buy anything you want, data wise, if you know the right people. It's a country that's a police state and it's also corrupt from top to bottom, which means all that police data can be effectively brought online. So it was almost a gag at the time. It was like, there's no way they're going to be so easy to just have all this data available. So my colleague Christo, using his own money, he thought, I'm going to buy some of this. And it was a small amount. It was like €50 or something. And he got the registration forms for their domestic passports. And we got those forms back a couple of days after, and they were incredibly suspicious.

[Charlie Higson]

At that point. Are you just looking at a curiosity, thinking there's something bigger going on here?

[Elliot Higgins]

Well, it was kind of like almost like we thought, well, we'll give it a go. It probably won't work, but if it does, it'll be interesting. So when it came back on that form, what? The back page, which normally has all their biographical details and previous passport information, was completely blank on both of them. And it had a phone number stamped on it that, when we looked it up on Google, was the phone number of the Russian Ministry of Defense's main switchboard, a marking that's ss, which we came to understand was short for basically Secret Service in Russian. Their previous passport on both cases was supposedly lost at some point. So this immediately was like, okay, we need to look into who these people were. But the question was, how do you start investigating a Russian spy?

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[Charlie Higson]

Now, you could draw similarities, I guess, between spies and journalists. You know, the exposing of secrets, for example, and also the threat that they put themselves under to do so. Were you concerned about getting involved in ongoing covert operations?

[Elliot Higgins]

It's definitely a discussion that we had, but we kind of got the impression from the information that we were seeing that unless the UK security services had started getting this information, they would kind of already know who these people were if they had. Because when we started and picking this whole story, it just was like one thing after another where we followed one lead, opened up another lead, and another one, and another one. And we really thought at that point, if they'd been digging into this over the last several months, surely they could have got to this point already quite easily, because we were able to do it. We also understood the kind of data we were getting access to. In certain states, you can't have the security services actually going out and buying that kind of data, at least not officially. So we were just exploring this market of black market data. It was quite unusual for us because we use what we call open source evidence, which is just publicly available material.

[Charlie Higson]

Apart from the €50 worth of secret.

[Elliot Higgins]

Russian this is the thing. It was so easy to buy though. This happens all the time in Russia. You'll have people who are suspecting their partner is having an affair, getting their phone records off some data broker. Online you have these data brokers and they'll know people in the police, the insurance services, telecoms company who have access to this information and will sell it onto them so they can sell it onto third parties. And this is how the Russian newspaper who got those passport details initially were able to get that flight manifest from their aircraft. So it's usually used for crime and looking into the affairs of your partner and stuff like that. But we had used it for this very different purpose.

[Charlie Higson]

So, I mean, bearing in mind that you're digging into the Russian Secret Service, was there ever a moment where you were worried for your team?

[Elliot Higgins]

Yeah, I mean, security is a really big issue with us. We certainly have the attention of the Russian state in their public statements. So one example is the Russian embassy in the UK gave a press conference a few weeks after our kind of initial parts of our investigation were published. The Russian ambassador to the UK repeatedly said that we were working for the intelligence services and we were publishing false information and we were taking money from the government. But fortunately, one of the journalists in the room asked him what his evidence was of that and he said, I don't have any evidence. I just have a feeling in the back of my mind, you know, over the years, certainly we've been spied on, we've had attempts to access our email accounts, all the stuff that really comes in, working in this area of investigation, I mean.

[Charlie Higson]

And do you have to sweep the offices for traces of Novichok?

[Elliot Higgins]

Well, I mean, there's been certainly times I've got really paranoid about stuff. There's one incident in particular where I was staying in a hotel in Amsterdam I go to quite regularly because our office is out in Amsterdam. There was a knock on the door and I opened it and it was about 8:00 at night, and there was a guy in a suit with a name badge and said, oh, Mr. Higgins, thank you for staying so much. We'd like to give you this gift as a thank you. I thought this. I've never had this happen in my life, ever. So I took it and it was a tin of cookies and some sweets, which, if you know me, would be the perfect way to get poison into me. And I looked at them and I thought, I can't. Could these be poisoned? Because we had just published the most recent article. Could this be it? So I kind of flushed them down the toilet, like really paranoid. And then I just started feeling kind of warm and, like, looking at my pupils. I turned the light on and off so the light wouldn't change the size of my pupils. So I survived the night. And then I kind of booked out of the hotel and went downstairs and they said, oh, Mr. Higgins, thank you for staying. We really hope you enjoyed those cookies. I couldn't tell her. I flushed them down the toilet.

[Charlie Higson]

I said, co. He ate them quick. I mean, do you think that the Skripal poisoning can be seen as an act of war?

[Elliot Higgins]

The thing is, there's other things Russia has done with the same unit 29155 across Europe. Because we started unpicking this whole story. Because it wasn't just the two suspects who were the police identified. There was a third suspect we discovered traveling under an identity called Sergey Fedotov, discovered his real name, and he seemed to be like the operations commander for the two other suspects. We were able to get his phone records and his travel records, again from the same source in Russia. So we could actually track him on the day through London, as he was connected to all the phone masts in London. Thanks to this data, we actually tracked him on other journeys he went on. And there was one where he went to Bulgaria in 2015, on the same date a Bulgarian arms dealer was poisoned. And there's actually CCTV footage of someone who looks very much like. Like this guy walking up to the side of the car. He goes off camera for quite a while and then comes away looking back, checking over his shoulder. Emilian Gebrev, who was the target of that. He came down with poisoning symptoms very, very similar to Novichok exposure. And that really just opened up this whole network of spies operating in Europe. In fact, the two Skripal suspects were later found to have blown up an arms depot in the Czech Republic that was actually owned by Emilian Gebrev. And it was all part of a kind of, you know, born these kind of conspiracies to attack. The way he was transporting arms. We believe it's because he was transporting arms to Ukraine at the time. So there's multiple incidents where Russian spies haven't just spied, they've blown stuff up and, you know, they've killed people. I think Russia suddenly thinks they're at war with us. I think the Cold War in the mind of Putin never really finished. It just had a bit of a pause.

[Charlie Higson]

I mean, it's extraordinary that it's so easy to track these Russian agents who supposedly secret agents. I mean, how easy is it to do the same thing here with our phones?

[Elliot Higgins]

Well, again, it's really about that level of corruption that you have in Russia. It wasn't possible to unpick these networks until we kind of made the realization that we could buy this stuff. And that's when it already started to fall apart. So, for example, in a completely different case, there were Russian spies who were detained in the Hague after trying to Spy on the OPCW's Wi Fi network. And they published one of the ID cards of one of the people arrested. And we searched for him on leaked residential databases that come from Russia. So you can just look at someone's name, see where they live. And we discovered his car registration, and his car was actually registered to the headquarters of the GRU Cyber Warfare Division. So we looked at every single car registered to that, and there's 305 names who had registered their car to it. And we discovered the reason for that is if you're a police officer and you pull someone over and you check their car registration, it comes up with the gru, you let them go. So this was like a perk of the job. But they didn't realize that someone could come along, buy all that data, and then just do a quick data based search to find out their identities.

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[Charlie Higson]

So, Elliot, let's get onto exactly what your investigation entailed, because it's pretty extraordinary. So we talked a little bit about this, but were there any specific tools or techniques that became invaluable while investigating the Skripal incident?

[Elliot Higgins]

So for us, it was trying to figure out how we could discover the real identities of these peoples. And we did things like reverse image search for faces, which in that period in particular, there were quite a few powerful tools that now don't work, but that gave no results, which in itself was suspicious because most people will get results in that image search. A few years earlier, there had been an attempted coup in Montenegro and one of the people involved had been arrested with two identity documents. One was his real identity and one was the fake identity. And they actually shared some details. So they had the same place of birth, the same date of birth, and the same patronomics. So that's your father's name, that's part of your own name. So we thought maybe that pattern's been used more than once. So in the case of one suspect, we discovered it was. We searched lots of databases, St. Petersburg, Moscow, house registration databases, and we discovered there were about 13 people who shared the same first name, patronomic place of birth, date of birth. And by looking at that, we were able to actually narrow that down to one person who seemed to be a complete mystery man. He didn't have any presence online. You know, we had photos of the other people. We found out they were dead. And we ordered again from this provid market the real identities registration documents, which would have his photograph on it as the photograph of the Skriffle suspect. We then worked with Professor Yugal, who's a facial recognition expert, to make sure this was perfect and compare the two of them. He said, yes, this is a very strong match. The other guy was a bit more difficult because he didn't use that same pattern of using the same names and place of birth. He had the same date of birth, but obviously in Russia a lot of people are born on the same day. So we actually created a profile of him. What would a Russian GRU officer operating in Europe actually have done in his career? Where would have he studied? And there's really only one viable school where he would have learned how to be a spy. So we started looking through all the people who attended it. We discovered in the case of the first suspect, he had been awarded the Hero of Russia award, which is a very high ranking award. And for the second suspect, we thought, well, maybe he was given one as well. And there were only so many people in that school who had got it. And again, we went through the list, eliminated all but one of them, and also discovered photographs from the school itself. They have like a museum where there was a photograph of him on the wall under the Hear of Russia section. And it was the same guy from the skripple poisoning. So again, we were able to make those matches there. And then that just kind of opened up the whole network for us.

[Charlie Higson]

So, I mean, it's really interesting there. You're saying that by trying to disguise their identities, by having no information about them, that made them look suspicious and that in some ways kind of making you think, all right, what's really going on here?

[Elliot Higgins]

Yeah, in a sense. And Russia then started to cover their tracks. So when we were looking into the third suspect, we ordered the same passport registration form we'd ordered for the previous two suspects, and his photo was actually removed from that document. But that tells us that someone went in and removed that photograph. So it's just another clue. Then when we published about that and we were looking into another person who was part of this network, we got that same document and the photograph was different. They changed the photograph this time, but for whatever reason, they changed it from his photograph to a photograph of a woman. So it's like really obviously changed. So they were taking all these steps to cover their tracks, but one, it just left a kind of void in the network of data that was available thanks to Russian corruption. And on the other side, you also had just mistakes they were making and just really obvious signs they'd kind of tried to cover things up.

[Charlie Higson]

It's a weird mix of sort of cleverness and incompetence, isn't it?

[Elliot Higgins]

I get the feeling it's because they were doing this for so long and they didn't get caught when it started to go wrong. They just didn't know how to cover their tracks.

[Charlie Higson]

But then, in what appears to be again, another act of supreme incompetence, they put the two guys on tv. So, Elliot, just remind us of the details of that extraordinary interview.

[Elliot Higgins]

So Russia Today got an amazing exclusive somehow to interview the two people who were suspected. They had just been named by the UK authorities and they got this wonderful opportunity to interview them out of nowhere. They looked miserable. They looked like they really didn't want to be there. And they were telling this story of how they were sports nutrition salesmen. They had come to visit Salisbury to see the famous, world famous about the 123 meter spire, which they were very particular about. It's the first line on the Wikipedia page as well. So that's probably why they remember it. And they just gave this kind of very long, unhappy, grumpy explanation of how they were completely innocent sports nutrition salesmen. It was nothing to do with them. And that was broadcast on Russia Today for a pretty big audience, I think. I mean, I remember remember lots of clips of it being shared on social media. Just the absurdity. I think probably more than anything, it convinced people they were spies because of just the ridiculous tale they were talking about and just, you know, their obsession over the spire. So, yeah, I think that was something that, I think really sell it in the mind of the public.

[Charlie Higson]

What was that like for you, watching that?

[Elliot Higgins]

Well, by that point, we had got the first documents through showing that they were definitely not who they said they were. So we were like, this is fantastic, because we were just getting ready to publish about how these people were not who they were. And all of a sudden they were just on the biggest platform possible because everyone was watching this, even if you didn't like Russia Today. And we were getting ready to publish our article with screenshots from the interview next to the fake documents. So for us, it was wonderful.

[Charlie Higson]

I mean, do you think there might have been a slight smokescreen aspect, that it was so ridiculous that people were just making jokes about Salisbury Cathedral and how tall it was and not actually focusing on, hang about, these people tried to kill people in England.

[Elliot Higgins]

I don't think the Russians are that sophisticated for their disinformation, to be honest. In my experience, and I've dealt with a lot of Russian disinformation, is Russia will lie when it's completely unnecessary to do so. It's just they're so used to it. I've done so much work on things like, for example, airstrikes in Syria where Russia bombed a mosque or hospital or, you know, whatever they were doing. Now, if it wasn't for them doing a press conference afterwards, denying it, using fake satellite imagery and just nonsense, basically, people would probably not even be thinking about that because it would be just one of many bombings someone would hear about. But Russia has a real, real problem with honesty and its public communications.

[Charlie Higson]

It's fair to say that must have been a big moment for you. But, I mean, was there any other specific moment where you thought, right, we've cracked this open? A big breakthrough, I think, when we.

[Elliot Higgins]

Started to get the real identities, because we started off first by saying, these guys aren't who they say they are, and here's the documents that prove it. But we didn't have the names, and then we got the names and that made it really, really big. There was one day where I think nearly every single UK newspaper had the photographs we had found on the front page and was referencing our work. So for us, that was, like, amazing.

[Charlie Higson]

So it's as much a story about you.

[Elliot Higgins]

Yeah, I mean, for me, one of the biggest moments is when they made a joke about it on have I Got News For You? And they Kind of mentioned me and it was crazy.

[Charlie Higson]

I think most people are aware of the sort of the headline details of what happened, but I mean, is there a particular piece of evidence from the case that you think is overlooked?

[Elliot Higgins]

I think one thing that's really was underreported is how all of this connected back to the Russian secret chemical weapons program. Because along with the poisoning of Alexei Navalny and Vladimir Karamurza and all these other distance who've been poisoned, there was a clear centre point where all this poison was actually coming from. It was being manufactured not as a chemical weapon for warfare, but specifically for assassinations. We were able to identify from the phone records of the people involved with the poisonings who they were calling. And this included a specific chemical weapon scientist who was working with a team at this institute, like repeatedly. And actually the reason we discovered the FSB team rather than the gruff who poisoned the Skripples, the FSB team who poisoned Navarni, Clark, Amazon and others, it's because they were also phoning the same guy. So when we got his phone records, we got kind of all the spies who were calling him up for poisoning advice, basically.

[Charlie Higson]

Do you get a feeling that they're sort of using this just to test it out, using these people as guinea pigs? To a certain extent.

[Elliot Higgins]

I think really this is part of a systematic program and we've identified probably at least a dozen victims of poisonings that are linked to either the GRU or FSB and linked to this nerve agent production facility.

[Charlie Higson]

It seems so reckless and ultimately did cost the lives of innocent members of the public. I mean, what was your reaction when you found out how just how extensive that all was?

[Elliot Higgins]

I mean, I'm still today really appalled by it. There's the kind of foreign poisonings they've been doing, like the Gebrift poisoning, like Skripals. But there's also a lot domestically that they're doing. They have a systematic program of assassinating political figures and if they can't kill them, they throw them in prison.

[Charlie Higson]

I mean, do you think there's a small part in this that Putin doesn't care if people know that they're behind it? Because they want people to know if you step out of line, this is going to happen to you.

[Elliot Higgins]

Well, ultimately, what consequences has Putin faced for what's happened? I mean, I worked on the shooting down of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17. What happened there? Nothing. And eight years later he invades Ukraine and you know, starts a huge war there. You have multiple poisonings taking place over at least a 10 year period that we know of. And again, nothing's happening there. We've identified other suspects in assassinations, more traditional assassinations. So for example, there was the Berlin bicycle assassin who was recently released in a prisoner swap. But he's involved in multiple killings as far as we can tell from the data we've gathered. And what happens? Nothing. Fusion gets away with it time and time again. So why would he not keep doing it?

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[Charlie Higson]

So Elliot, your groundbreaking investigation not only brought to light the intricacies of the Skripple case, but also highlighted the power of independent journalism in holding state actors accountable. So what role do you think investigative journalism plays in holding these powerful entities accountable, especially in cases like this?

[Elliot Higgins]

I think really, since 2008, I would say there's been a real shift in the way we consume and gather and experience information. Really, it was really thanks thanks to Steve Jobs and the iPhone that we have social media apps, we're constantly online. There's obviously bad aspects to that.

[Charlie Higson]

Is thanks the right word?

[Elliot Higgins]

Yeah. That actually has created a huge amount of opportunity for an individual to be really empowered into being able to do what I could do. My background was not journalism, it was not investigation. I used to do admin. I mean, my job before this was doing orders for a company that made lingerie. I mean, I just taught myself how to do this over time, started blogging and over the years built up Balancat. But by sharing this information, what you're doing as part of a community and a network is actually beneficial to you as well as everyone else around you. Because I really want to know what the truth is behind stuff. I don't want to just be one of these people who just gets angry on the Internet and shouts at other people on the Internet. I want to say, okay, how can you actually change things? And I think sometimes social media offers us a kind of illusion of empowerment because we find people who agree with the same things we do and surround ourselves by them. And we have this kind of bubble of people saying, yeah, you're right about everything you believe and those people on the other side are wrong, but where is the change that's happening there? Usually that's not happening and that just makes things worse because people are like, everyone agrees with me, but nothing's changing, so there must be something wrong with the world. What I want to teach people through the work of BanningKat is how you can actually not only do the investigations and actually have them change things, because I think that's really democratizing for society to have the ability to do this research and explore things. What I'm trying to do with banning CAT is kind of demonstrate all these methodologies that we use and teach as many people to do them as possible. A really big part of our work has been not only providing training workshops, and we've trained probably about 9,000 journalists, activists, and that's why you see so much open source work in the mainstream media now. But we create spaces for people to come together. So we've got a Discord server with about 30,000 people and they're always digging into interesting things and doing investigations. We've just launched a toolkit where anyone can go and find the tools they need to do investigations. And they're freely available tools. It's even got an AI chatbot so it can help you figure out how the tools work and which ones are best for your investigations. It's really about democratizing the use of these techniques so people can feel empowered to actually, actually have an impact on the world around them. Rather than just being kind of passive consumers of news and often victims of what's happening in the world, you can actually make an impact and a change.

[Charlie Higson]

I mean, you must get very frustrated by the number of people out there who would claim to be doing what you're doing and investigating when they're just sort of joining the dots and putting random stuff together and building in lies.

[Elliot Higgins]

Yeah, I think I'm like the king of doing your own research in many ways. But. But there is a negative aspect to that. But I do a lot of work around disinformation and all the things related to that. I'm thinking about how the information disorder, as I call it, is affecting society because we've seen time and time again how disinformation drives people to do insane things. It's people burning down 5G towers because they think that it's going to activate the microchips in their vaccine. It's people turning on the Capitol building at January and wanting to overthrow the government because Q told them to do it. What happened in Southport, There are issues beyond just disinformation in all of those. It's often about the way people feel powerless in a modern society, how they feel democracy doesn't actually serve them anymore. That the kind of social contract they have, that if I do my job and I work hard doesn't happen anymore because they're working two to three jobs just to barely make ends meet. And that drives them to this crisis point. But the Internet is brilliant and dragging them down these rabbit holes.

[Charlie Higson]

Do you feel that if you hadn't dug into this, the skripal poisoning and exposed what was going on and who these people were, that the government here wouldn't have done that. We would never really have known the full details.

[Elliot Higgins]

I think even if they did, there wouldn't be so much made public about this and we'd have less of an understanding. And I think in the mind of the public, increasingly you have this kind of. Of wide gap between what governments are willing to share about things and actually what's publicly accessible about things. And in that gap, that's where conspiracy theories form. Because then you start having people, you know, doing their own research and, you know, putting stuff together that doesn't really work, but for them, because of their own biases, is what becomes the truth. So I think had there been that gap, I think we'd have had a much more confused situation about what really happened.

[Charlie Higson]

Right. And do you think this was in some ways a sort of pivotal moment? It exposes some wider issues, a sort of sense of mistrust of the media and the need to decipher what the government chooses to let us know.

[Elliot Higgins]

Yeah. And this, I think, is really rooted in how we're consuming information differently with social media, with kind of communities and networks we become part of where, you know, an idea can spread through that. That's completely untrue. But if it fits what our beliefs are, then it can become, you know, what the narrative that we believe leave. I think more and more governments need to be more transparent. There was a really good example of that, actually, with the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, when there was all this information online through open sources about Russian troop movements and those kind of details. Yet you had Zelensky saying there wasn't going to be an invasion, the US saying there probably would be, but the US was saying there is data on open sources that shows this happening. And then the open source community online were the ones who then dug that out and shared that with everyone. Because we were like, okay, we've actually already seen it. They were just saying what we'd seen. But we could actually then talk about that as something that the government was actually able to share from the kind of intelligence circles that before they would have never have shared because the open source stuff would have been combined with the COVID intelligence and then that would have been, you know, something the public could never see.

[Charlie Higson]

And that's all happening while the Russians are on tv laughing, saying, of course we're not going to invade Ukraine.

[Elliot Higgins]

Yeah, absolutely. So it allows us to actually have a lot more clarity about what's going on in the world thanks to, you know, people, you know, sharing TikTok videos of Russian troop movements because they want engagement.

[Charlie Higson]

How do you think the public's perception of the Skripal case has evolved since everything you put out there?

[Elliot Higgins]

I think generally speaking, they've got a fairly good sense of what happened if they've been engaged with it. You're always going to have a subset of people on any topic under the sun that will take the more conspiracy side of things, but I think that's a fairly small group. We've got the Dawn Sturgis inquest this year as well, which will hopefully answer more questions about what happened beyond just the work of Ballingcat. If anyone has cared enough to engage with it, they've got a good sense of what really happened versus what could have been. The situation, had it just been the information released by the police, it would still be a lot of questions around what really happened. One question I have is we have the. Obviously, the poisoning taking place, and then it appears, you know, Charlie Rowley found that a second bottle of poison, and that's what killed Dawn Sturges. How many bottles of these poison were there? Where did they come from? How did they get into the country? So there are those kind of questions that I'm hoping the inquest will answer.

[Charlie Higson]

I mean, you mentioned before that there have been very few repercussions for Putin over this. And considering that nobody has been formally sentenced in relation to the poisoning of Sergei Skripal, do you think there ever will be any justice?

[Elliot Higgins]

I think the best we can hope through the Dawn Sturges inquiry is a kind of final version of events that, you know, is widely agreed on by at least sensible people. I hope beyond that, it's gonna be very difficult because, you know, the two suspects who were responsible for the poisoning, they seem to have cozy desk jobs in Russia now. So I don't think they'll be, you know, traveling abroad very much and won't get arrested. Putin himself, I mean, he's dealing with other issues at the moment and he's been dealt with in other ways, but, yeah, I think it's very difficult to see any real form of justice coming out of what's happened.

[Charlie Higson]

You probably won't want to answer this, but what's next for bellingcat? Are there any upcoming investigations that have you particularly excited that you can allude to, at least?

[Elliot Higgins]

I mean, not in so much in terms of. Yeah, investigations we can't really talk about so we don't end up getting scooped. But one thing I'm really looking forward to is we're building more partnerships with universities to build investigative hubs from, you know, students from different disciplines, so. So we can train them with the skills and build the communities around them so they can get involved with more investigation. The one thing that's really great about Battling CAT is you kind of often never know what interesting investigation is around the corner. There's always some new thing, and the fact is that anyone can get involved. They can log onto our Discord server, they can use their toolkit and get involved.

[Charlie Higson]

Well, so if anyone out there has got an amazing case that they've started investigating, you know where to go. So thank you so much, Elliot. It's been a fascinating conversation, and I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to us today.

[Elliot Higgins]

Thanks for having me on.

[Charlie Higson]

If you're interested to know more, you can visit bellingcat.com and read their full and extensive report from their investigation into the Skripal case. Do join us for the next season the Spy who Killed a Prime Minister hosted by Indira Varma.

[Unknown Host]

We open the file on Daphne park as the Belgian Congo gains its independence. Officer park is about to go to new extremes to keep Congo free of Communists. For park to succeed, she needs to win the trust of Congo's first Prime Minister, Patrice Lumumba, or remove him Follow the Spy who Now Wherever you listen to podcasts, Wondery plus subscribers can binge full seasons of the Spy who early and ad free on Apple Podcasts or the Wondery app.

[Charlie Higson]

From Wondery. This is the final episode in our series The Spy who PewDiePie Poisoned. This episode of the Spy who is hosted by me, Charlie Higson. Our show is produced by Vespucci for Wondery with story consultancy by Yellow Ant. The producers of this episode are Natalia Rodriguez, Ashley Clivery and Philippa Gearing. Our senior producer is Rachel Byrne. Music supervisor is Scott Velasquez for Frisson Sync. Executive executive producers for Vespucci are Johnny Galvin and Daniel Turkan. The executive producer for Yellow Ant is Tristan Donovan. Our producer for Wondery is Theodora Luludis and our managing producer is Rachel Sibley. Executive producers for Wondery are Estelle Doyle, Chris Bourne, Morgan Jones and Marshall Louis.