Bellingcat, presented to the public as an independent open-source investigation outlet, receives significant funding from the US National Endowment for Democracy (NED) — which its own founder admitted does what the CIA used to do covertly. Bellingcat's 2020 accounts show it received funding from NED and from Zinc Network, a shadowy intelligence cutout that conducts information warfare for UK government ministries and the US State Department. Founder Eliot Higgins was a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council (2016-2019), NATO's quasi-official think tank. Critics describe it as a pipeline for laundering intelligence talking points into mainstream media.