Declassified UK was set up in 2019 by
Matt Kennard and
Mark Curtis and was at first hosted on the website of the
Daily Maverick, an independent South African website, before launching a standalone website on 20 September 2021. Kennard is an investigative journalist and author who has previously written for news outlets such as
The Guardian, the
Financial Times,
openDemocracy and
The Intercept, usually focusing on Britain's role on the international stage. Curtis is a historian and journalist who has written extensively about post-
Second World War period
foreign policy of the
British government, publishing numerous works on the subject.
Declassifieds chief reporter is Phil Miller, an investigative journalist, author and filmmaker whose book
Keenie Meenie explores the history of
Keenie Meenie Services, a British
mercenary organization. Board members at
Declassified include South African former MP
Andrew Feinstein and former
Guardian security editor and defence correspondent
Richard Norton-Taylor; its advisors include former
Guardian associate foreign editor
Victoria Brittain, activist and musician
Lowkey, American journalist
Glenn Greenwald and Italian journalist
Stefania Maurizi. Its website says: "The 'mainstream' UK media is not uncovering the reality of Britain's role in the world and the public is being largely kept in the dark. This means that governments are not being held to account for their policies. The problem is not just with the UK's right-wing, billionaire-owned media but also with its more 'liberal' outlets and the
BBC, the most popular source of news for the British public. The British media are less and less mainstream – and are if anything becoming even more embedded in the establishment, regularly amplifying extremist policies that support war, human rights abusers and corporations contributing to catastrophic climate change. The government publishes key information on its policies virtually every day which is often very revealing. But only a tiny proportion of this is ever covered in the establishment media. Those journalists choose not to cover it, or else don't care. We do. However, much remains hidden. Britain's culture of secrecy is deeply embedded in Whitehall. This means that numerous government policies are hidden from the same public who should be able to hold a government to account in a democracy. These hidden policies often need to be exposed, and the secret state challenged." In August 2020,
Declassified journalist Phil Miller, who wrote the piece about Ahmed Al-Batati, asked the MoD for comment. An MoD press officer responded by questioning what angle Miller's article was taking and saying they did not know much about
Declassified; the officer later told Miller, "we no longer deal with your publication". Following this, the
Council of Europe, the continent's leading human rights organisation, issued an alert warning of a serious breach of press freedom. In addition, the
International Press Institute wrote a letter to the MoD and the
Defence Secretary,
Ben Wallace, asking them to clarify the reason for the blacklisting. After the MoD issued an apology,
Declassified editor Mark Curtis told
Press Gazette: "We are looking at taking legal action against the MoD because we think they have certainly acted against the
Civil Service Code, for example, and there may be other codes of conduct or other legal requirements that they might not be consistent with by telling us that." and an independent review was later ordered. Curtis said, "It is clear that Declassified was blacklisted, which is contrary to the way that public officials are required to deal with news organisations. The MoD should admit it and stop trying to let its most senior media official off the hook. The MoD is used to dealing mainly with compliant journalists who are happy to follow the official line. Declassified is different, and seeks instead to perform a public service by revealing what governments do." In February 2021, it reported that members of the
British royal family had had more than 200 meetings with leaders of "tyrannical"
Middle Eastern monarchies since the start of the
Arab Spring in February 2011. The greatest number of meetings was with the Bahraini
House of Khalifa and the
Saudi regime. On 8 September 2021, in the wake of the
final withdrawal of the United States troops from Afghanistan, Phil Miller reported that "a
Cold War-era file on
Margaret Thatcher's support for the
Afghan mujahideen" was being censored by the UK government. This was despite the fact that the documents have become eligible for release to
the National Archives under the 30-year rule. In January 2022,
Richard Norton-Taylor reported in
Declassified that British warships deployed to the South Atlantic during the
Falklands War were armed with 31
nuclear depth charges. The aircraft carrier
HMS Hermes had 18 nuclear weapons on board, the aircraft carrier
HMS Invincible had 12 and the
RFA Regent had one. The Argentine Foreign Ministry said it would contact Britain about the report. Nuclear weapons are banned from the South Atlantic under the
Treaty of Tlatelolco. In February 2026,
Declassified reported that over 50,000
dual-nationals served in the
Israeli armed forces during the
Gaza war and the subsequent
genocide. Of this number, 12,135 soldiers held US citizenship, 6,100 soldiers held French nationality, over 5,000 held Russian citizenship and at least 2,069 were British nationals. The information was obtained via a
Freedom of Information request issued to the
IDF by lawyer Elad Man from the NGO
Hatzlacha. ==References==