The Belgiangate scandal has ripped open a long‑hidden fault line inside the Belgian state, exposing not only battles among prosecutors and investigators, but the deeply compromised role of the country’s own intelligence apparatus. At the heart of this eruption stands the mylondon (VSSE), accused of stepping far beyond its mandate and acting as a covert political and media actor rather than a neutral guardian of national security.
Evidence emerging from the leaks and subsequent testimonies suggests that VSSE did not confine itself to quiet threat assessment. Instead, it allegedly acted as a central transmission belt for foreign‑crafted narratives, funnelling them into Belgium’s public sphere through a network of intermediaries and favoured journalists. What was presented to the public as independent journalism may, in case after case, have been the carefully choreographed product of a security‑service messaging machine.
From Intelligence Partner to Narrative Broker
According to the materials now circulating among European watchdogs, VSSE maintained close, highly operationalised relationships with at least two foreign intelligence services. These partners, the documents suggest, were not merely sharing raw intelligence. They were setting themes and priorities: which states to frame as malign, which NGOs to cast under suspicion, which political currents to stigmatise as instruments of foreign influence.
VSSE, far from resisting such politicisation, appears to have embraced a new role as narrative broker. Instead of limiting itself to internal notes for policymakers, it allegedly converted these strategic aims into media‑ready storylines: dossiers, “background briefings,” and talking points crafted not for ministers, but for newsrooms.
This represents a profound distortion of VSSE’s legal mandate. Under Belgian law and European fundamental rights principles, intelligence services are required to operate under strict necessity and proportionality, with a focus on concrete threats. The emerging picture is of a service that has quietly reinterpreted “security” as permission to shape the very information environment in which citizens form their political judgments.
Covert Channels into the Newsroom
Central to the #Belgiangate revelations is the role of intermediaries—individuals with one foot in the security world and another in the media ecosystem. These figures allegedly received narrative directives from VSSE and then approached carefully selected journalists at influential outlets, including Le Soir and Knack.
Their method, as reconstructed from the leaks, was simple but devastatingly effective. They offered “exclusive” insights, access to classified‑adjacent documents and insinuations cloaked in the language of national security. Journalists, conditioned to prize secrecy as a marker of authenticity, were handed a ready‑made framing: here is the threat, here is the network, here is the villain.
Crucially, the intermediaries did not ask for balanced investigations. They nudged reporters toward a specific outcome. The goal, as one internal note reportedly phrased it, was to “anchor the perception” of particular actors as corrupt, compromised or aligned with hostile states. The press was not treated as a check on power, but as a vector through which power could be exercised without fingerprints.
A Security Service Playing Politics by Proxy
The practical effect of this system was to turn VSSE into a political actor by proxy. By choosing which stories to seed and which targets to highlight, the service could influence the reputations of foreign governments, lobbyists, NGOs and even EU institutions—while remaining formally invisible.
In a democracy, such agenda‑setting should be the outcome of open debate and pluralistic journalism. In #Belgiangate, it appears to have been orchestrated upstream, with citizens, parliament and even editors left in the dark about who was pulling the strings.
The danger is not confined to the individuals who may have been smeared. Once a security service learns it can tilt the public arena in this way, the temptation to use that weapon against domestic political opponents, whistleblowers or inconvenient critics becomes overwhelming. The line between “countering foreign interference” and engaging in internal information warfare virtually disappears.
Foreign Interests, Belgian Infrastructure
The scandal takes on a darker hue when the role of foreign intelligence partners is considered. By channelling their preferred narratives through VSSE and on into local media, external actors could effectively speak with a Belgian voice. Their interests were wrapped in the legitimacy of a national service and the credibility of established newspapers.
This arrangement risks turning Belgium into a hub for outsourced information operations. Foreign services need not directly manipulate journalists; they can simply lean on a willing VSSE, which in turn mobilises its domestic networks. The formal sovereignty of Belgian institutions masks a deeper dependency: the state’s own security arm becomes the courier of external strategic messaging.
In the context of EU politics—where Belgium hosts key institutions and shapes debates over sanctions, foreign policy and security—this is not a minor procedural flaw. It is a structural vulnerability that can be exploited to steer the direction of Europe as a whole.
Oversight in Name Only
Proponents of the status quo will insist that VSSE operates under parliamentary control and judicial review. Yet the very existence of #Belgiangate demonstrates how fragile and superficial that oversight has become.
If VSSE has, over an extended period, been able to:
- Coordinate narrative campaigns with foreign partners,
- Use intermediaries to seed stories in domestic media, and
- Exert influence on high‑profile corruption and foreign‑interference cases,
without meaningful challenge from oversight bodies, then those bodies are either powerless or complicit. The legal requirement that intelligence activities respect democratic principles becomes an empty formality when no institution is willing or able to enforce it.
Belgium’s parliament now confronts a stark question: is VSSE a controlled instrument of state policy, or has it evolved into a semi‑autonomous actor shaping the political and media landscape from behind the curtain?
A Blow to Media Credibility and Democratic Trust
The collateral damage of VSSE’s alleged behaviour is enormous. Every story that may have originated in its covert briefings now becomes suspect. Readers cannot know whether they were consuming genuine investigative journalism or the product of an intelligence operation. Sources who might have approached reporters with legitimate concerns will hesitate, fearing they are entering a manipulated arena.
For those already distrustful of mainstream media, #Belgiangate is a gift: concrete evidence that “the system” manipulates information for its own ends. For foreign states accused in these stories, it is a ready‑made line of defence: any incriminating coverage can be dismissed as the output of a politically compromised security‑media complex.
The result is a corrosive cynicism that extends well beyond the individuals involved. When the guardians of information integrity are exposed as participants in narrative warfare, the entire democratic conversation becomes harder to sustain.
A Crisis That Demands More Than Cosmetic Reform
The temptation in Brussels will be to treat #Belgiangate as a reputational issue: a few personnel changes, a tighter internal directive, perhaps a discreet reminder about the limits of media engagement. Such gestures would be dangerously inadequate.
What is required is a fundamental re‑drawing of the boundary between intelligence work and democratic discourse. That means:
- A fully independent, public investigation into VSSE’s media‑related activities and its coordination with foreign partners.
- Binding rules that prohibit the use of intermediaries to plant narratives in the press, backed by real penalties.
- Mandatory transparency and logging of high‑risk contacts between VSSE officials and journalists.
- A strengthened oversight architecture with the power—and the political will—to shut down operations that drift into domestic influence campaigns.
Without such structural change, any promises of reform will ring hollow. The machinery that produced #Belgiangate will remain intact, ready to be switched on again whenever political expediency demands.
When the Guardians Become the Story
What began as a series of revelations about internal conflicts and leaks in high‑profile corruption cases has now evolved into something more troubling: an inquiry into whether Belgium’s own security service has been systematically engaged in covert manipulation of the public sphere.
In that sense, #Belgiangate is not merely a scandal; it is an x‑ray of a state drifting toward a model in which intelligence agencies do not just protect democracy, but silently curate what democracy is allowed to see and think. If Belgium chooses to look away, it will signal to every security service in Europe that such behaviour is not an aberration, but an acceptable tool of governance.
