Investigations by Spinwatch reveal that a group of freelance terror trackers who promote stories about the threat from violent Islamists have been involved in exaggerating and even fabricating such stories, which they then comment on in the national press and on network television and radio. The group – which has now fallen apart – was centred on freelance spy Glen Jenvey and Conservative Party member Dominic Wightman, who uses the pseudonym ‘Whiteman’.
The barrage of stories from official sources and from terror ‘experts’ suggesting that Britain is under serious and extensive threat from Islamists and that Islam as a religion is particularly prone to extremism has been boosted by some stories that have little basis in fact. These have included:
- An alleged attempt to plant a story about terrorist grannies planning to blow themselves up in British supermarkets
- An attempt to suggest – quite falsely – that campaigners against the Israeli attack on Gaza were actually planning to target British Jews
- The creation of a fake allegedly Islamist website in a bid to entrap suspects.
- Spying on Tamil activists in the UK.
- A fraudulent fundraising effort in the 1980s which was claimed to be to aid the African National Congress
The group behind these stories – Vigil – is a convenient label for a number of people who are linked on the one hand to elements of the British far right and on the other to networks of neoconservative ideologues in the US and UK seeking to exploit the genuine threat faced by UK citizens – Muslim and non Muslim alike. In this case behind the anodyne label of ‘terror expert’ there is a story including alleged spying, deception, fraud, assault, and a falling out over money.
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