Bellingcat's real purpose.

About Bellingcat, at this point I'm pretty convinced they act mostly as "news launderers". That is: one of their tasks is to clean selected intelligence services informations in order to make them appear as the result of open source investigations.

Their work on the Skripals case is what in my opinion strongly points at the fact that they are receiving informations and leaks from state parties. They didn't just use open sources in order to identify the two alleged russian GRU agents that were in Salisbury. And I have a really hard time believing that a squad of barely competent amateurs with no professional training in investigations might have been able to unmask a couple of GRU agents in a matter of weeks.

Comment by Leonardo Facchin on "Mainstream Media on OPCW Leaks – The Good, Bad and Downright Ugly." By Sheila Coombes, 21st Century Wire, 12/20/19.