The Brexit Conspiracy Files: Top Science Journal Faced Secret Attacks

Additional research: Simone Bateson. IT support: Matthew Fowler. Interactive graphics: Sophie Hill. From Computer Weekly

One of the world’s most prestigious general science journals, Nature, was the target of a two-year-long sustained and virulent secret attack by a conspiratorial group of extreme Brexit lobbyists with high-level political, commercial and intelligence connections, according to documents and correspondence examined by Computer Weekly and Byline Times.

The group attempted to have Nature and its staff put under surveillance and investigated by MI5, MI6, the CIA, Mossad, and Japanese and Australian intelligence agencies. They met Cabinet minister Michael Gove and later asked him to arrange phone taps and electronic surveillance. One member of the group led intrusive investigations into the intimate personal life and background circumstances of senior Nature staff the group suspected of “extreme Sinophile views”.

When their campaign flopped and a Covid vaccine promoted by the group failed to reach any form of clinical testing, the group arranged for unfounded accusations against Nature magazines and staff to be published by the Daily Telegraph and on other right wing news sites. They called themselves the “Covid Hunters”. Their allegations against science reporting helped fuel an explosion in “lab leak” claims on right-wing conspiracy sites.

Pushing their “extraordinary, true story” to a top Hollywood producer in 2020, the group wrote self-adulatory biographies and explained how fate had brought them together (see box: Covid Hunter heroes who became victims). The movie proposal portrayed them as victims of imagined Chinese-led information operations, aided and abetted by an imagined network of communist fellow travellers in the west. The movie idea “has all the ingredients of a major hit”, they blagged.

The producer did not write back. No movie was made. The truth was that their campaign helped flame divisive and damaging rows, potentially hindering international Covid research.

The campaign was led by former chief of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) Sir Richard Dearlove in conjunction with retired history academic Gwythian (Gwyn) Prins, and lobbyist John Constable of the privately funded climate change denial group Global Warming Policy Foundation. The scientific member of the group, oncologist professor Gus Dalgleish, was a prominent member of UKIP who had stood as the party’s parliamentary candidate in a south London constituency then campaigned for “Leave Means Leave”. All were avid supporters of Brexit.

The early months of 2020 were a time of celebration for the gang. “We had a splendid party,” Prins wrote to Dearlove the night after Brexit day, 31 January 2020, signing off: “Brexit Baby ready to rock.”

Two months later, as infection overcame the world, the five Brexiteers and a Norwegian scientist became convinced that the deadly and newly discovered SARS-CoV-2 virus (Covid-19) had been human-made in China. They came up with a scheme to make money from promoting a vaccine idea from Dalgleish and Norwegian colleague Birger Sørensen. Sørensen ran a small Oslo pharma company, Immunor AS. Immunor had previously claimed to have found “functional cures” for HIV, the cause of Aids. Sørensen and Dalgleish – and later Prins – described