Eurasia Press & News
UK contractors sought to create a covert newsroom to strategically flood Jordan’s mainstream and social media with a stream of self-serving propaganda.
Leaked submissions to the British Foreign Office reviewed by The Cradle expose how the UK infiltrates Jordan’s communications structures at the highest levels, in turn exerting vast, insidious influence over the country’s media and, therefore, public perceptions within the country – and West Asia more widely.
These papers show that under the aegis of countering ISIS propaganda, London sought to install operatives within Jordan’s Strategic Communications Unit (JSU) – a Jordanian entity “composed of representatives from a variety of different GoJ departments and institutions, which of course includes the RHC (royal court), but also the Ministry of Information, Jordanian Armed Forces, Ministry of Interior and the Public Security Directorate.”
These operatives would create a dedicated “covert newsroom” to publish a relentless flow of “unattributable” multimedia content extolling “patriotic national narratives” and anti-extremist messaging. This output would then be amplified, whether wittingly or unwittingly, by local and regional news outlets.
British intelligence cutout Albany Associates submitted a detailed pitch for the half a million pound project, which London was keen to complete by the end of the 2016/17 financial year.
“With our support, the JSU will become empowered to win and dominate the contest for the information space,” Albany pledged.
The company went on to outline a detailed plan. Along the way, it promised to match the visual impact of ISIS’ propaganda with “powerful pictures” of its own, in the form of images and videos.
“We recommend the JSU content be a mixture of short-form videos, audio, images, infographics, blogs, opinion pieces, facilitated real-time Q&A with CSOs, key influencers, etc. We will advise on curating and sharing relevant and interesting third-party content that supports the [government’s] aims,” the pitch continued. “We will identify the most popular Jordanian influencers on Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, Google+, bloggers, and other social media channels and evolve strategies to engage with them, helping the amplification and advocacy of our messages.”
This would, in part, be achieved by “discretely [leveraging] local and regional networks, and citizen user, activist, and NGO generated content and challenge and surpass that of the opposition.” The newsroom’s “strategic focus” would be “local voices turning local conversations.”
“All content must be on-message with the core narrative and key messages of the JSU strategic aims to provide continuity and authenticity,” Albany explained.
Noting the government of Jordan had hitherto “predominantly used traditional and old media to issue statements and information,” Albany proposed tutoring Amman’s security and intelligence agencies on how to use an array of social media platforms, editing software, and accompanying tools. This included surveillance resources, both to identify key target audiences for the newsroom’s covert state propaganda, but also “listen to and monitor Jordanian influencers and stakeholders who share ideas and content that support the mission of the JSU.”
Covering tracks
Concealing Britain’s involvement in the covert newsroom was of absolutely paramount importance. Being “associated with a regional or western government” was judged a “major” risk, which Albany would mitigate by ensuring the effort’s foreign funding and management “will not be evident in the branding … of content or chosen messages.”
Should the covert newsroom elicit “unwanted media attention” and resultant press inquiries, “procedures and pre-agreed lines to take” would be in place. Only “in the event of operational security breach” was Britain’s involvement to be admitted “based on a predetermined narrative.”
“The JSU is operating in a tense and deeply suspicious media environment. The most obvious question people ask themselves is, ‘who created this content, and why?’” Albany noted. “Past modus operandi in such circumstances is to launch overt counter-propaganda in the expectation that the media will transmit it faithfully, and target audiences will believe it … Our job with the JSU is to go about things differently, using the balance and content to create credibility and persuasion to achieve objectives.”
This caution extended to only using media channels already popular with target audiences that would not “raise suspicion among grassroots and activist consumers of media.” The covert newsroom’s output was to at all times “reflect the ways in which target audiences consume their information.” There was also concern about which local and international “celebrities” would be used to lend an imprimatur of popular independence to the JSU’s content.
‘Using Jordan’s influencers’
“Rock star’ amplification is a very useful tactic to increase reach and impact. However, it can backfire … If they are associated with a particular political position, then so will the content be,” Albany warned. “They still can be of beneficial use, if the proper research is done first to establish their political stances, the potential reach is weighed up against the risks involved, and the JSU understands clearly the limits within which the rock star will be used.”
Should a “rock star” relationship “turn out negatively,” the “unbranded” nature of newsroom communications would mean “no associations will be made in the popular perception of content that features the rock star and content that does not … other areas of operations will continue unaffected.”
Proposed “celebrities” for the project included “female religious preachers,” former ISIS fighters, “victims, families of victims, and families of fighters,” activists such as Deema Alam Farraj, who is described as “a strong female role model,” satirical websites such as local online entertainment network Kharabeesh, and youth-focused comedy platform Fooq Alsada.
Such secrecy is supremely striking, given one of the covert newsroom’s core stated objectives was reducing the perception of the government of Jordan as “agents of the West, and particularly the US, in the region.”
Information warfare, not journalism
In a perverse irony, an internal “mentor” for the project, to be embedded within the JSU and train Jordanian underlings in the art of information warfare, was a British Army reservist who had been deployed to Afghanistan, Iraq, and Kosovo. Boasting “five years of operational strategic communications experience” for London and Washington and high-level security clearance, he was said to have “created and led press teams in some of the most hostile environments.”
This included spending 2011 at the head of the Pentagon’s Strategic Programs Operations Center in Baghdad. There, he ran programs surreptitiously exploiting “credible and authentic” civil society voices to “create the most powerful impact” in campaigns promoting “political reconciliation” and “national identity.” He also personally developed a computer game “to target Iraqi youth audiences.”
This background should amply underline the dark reality that, whatever good Albany’s intervention may possibly have achieved in deterring Jordanian citizens from the destructive clutches of ISIS and other extremist groups in West Asia, the newsroom’s true purpose was to aggressively assert self-serving narratives – and therefore British and American control over Amman, and neighboring countries.
The assortment of “national narratives” and “key messages” Albany crafted avowedly sought to perpetuate sought to “facilitate and further” the Royal Hashemite Court’s “priorities.” This dynasty was, of course, installed on thrones across West Asia by the British following World War I.
Moreover, “opposition” within Jordan is far from restricted to violent fundamentalist fraternities. Over the past decade, Amman has passed a number of sweeping anti-terror laws, criminalizing even the mildest forms of dissent as threats to the state. Today, both domestic and visiting foreign journalists and activists are frequently subject to harassment, arrest, and prosecution for their reporting and social media activity.
Albany’s cloak-and-dagger creation of an internal, spy-run newsroom to deluge media outlets with slick propaganda posing as independent, grassroots citizen journalism provided another means by which to suppress inconvenient truths and critical viewpoints Jordan’s current ruler, King Abdullah II – himself a British Army veteran – and his western backers do not want in the public domain.
