Questions about BBC producer's ties to UK intelligence follow 'Mayday' White Helmets whitewash
Published: April 8, 2021
The BBC’s Chloe Hadjimatheou produced a podcast serial designed to rehabilitate the White Helmets’ late, scandal-stained founder, while blaming critics for his demise. Was she a channel for a wider British intelligence operation?
White Helmets founder James Le Mesurier falling to his death from the top floor of his Istanbul home in uncertain circumstances in November 2019 created a myriad of extremely serious problems for a great many powerful people.
At the time, the White Helmets’ intimate ties to jihadist groups were being probed and publicized ever-more widely, and the group’s – and Le Mesurier’s – seemingly central role in the staging of phony chemical attacks and sabotage of subsequent Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons investigations into the alleged incidents was becoming increasingly apparent. Mere days before his death, Le Mesurier even confessed to the overseas governments funding his company Mayday – and by extension the White Helmets – that widespread allegations of financial impropriety on his part were true.