The recent revelations are but the latest in a decades long history of media manipulation and perception management.
The global corporate media apparatus is in panic mode. Following President Donald Trump's inauguration day executive order freezing all US foreign aid for 90 days awaiting review, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has since been placed on the chopping block. Citing alleged fraud and waste, Trump and Musk aim to shut down the agency and merge it into the US State Department. The move has sparked the ire of pundits and officials the world over.
But what is USAID and why is the media in such a frenzy about it? Founded in 1961 by President John F Kennedy, the original aim of USAID was focused on coordinating foreign assistance at the height of the Cold War, charged with administering economic aid and development assistance in key regions of US interest throughout the world, involved in fighting poverty and disaster relief as well as civil affairs. The agency has since become one of the worlds largest aid organizations, administering billions in aid across the globe, hence the backlash from those who say the cuts being made will have profoundly negative impacts to vulnerable populations.
However, underneath the veneer of a humanitarian aid organization USAID's role in serving the interests of the US political ruling class goes far deeper, serving as a clandestine means of funding a slew of nefarious activities.
As reported extensively by outlets such as The GrayZone and MintPress News, funding from USAID working as a front for US intelligence agencies has been crucial to facilitating covert regime change operations the world over. From continuing Reagan-era Cold War policies in Latin America funding anti-Sandinista opposition in Nicaragua, and coup attempts in Venezuela, unrest in Bolivia, election medaling in Ecuador, sabotage in Cuba, and beyond. In addition to funding the proxy war in Ukraine, upheaval in the Balkans, and most recently propping up the terrorist takeover in Syria, the agency has been hard at work funneling dark money through NGO's and other cutouts to support every shady subversion operation the CIA can cook up.
To put it mildly, USAID is one of the foremost organizations responsible for pro-western anti-democratic destabilization campaigns in the entire world. More aptly, as James Corbett characterizes it; USAID serves as a Trojan Horse for the NGO complex that is an extension of the US deep state.
As a part of the subterfuge a large portion of this funding went to paying for propaganda assets in target regions around the world, as Wikileaks recently pointed out "USAID was funding over 6,200 journalists across 707 media outlets and 279 "media" NGOs, including nine out of ten media outlets in Ukraine."
These assets worked to spread pro-US messaging to their target audiences, disseminating "official narratives" favorable to and in line with the agendas of the US beltway, including acting as a vehicle for censorship and smear campaigns of independent journalists both domestically and abroad.
Additionally, a report from USAID outlines how the organization worked to suppress narratives that it considered "disinformation", in other words, any narrative or messaging that was critical of the US establishment and their agendas. As MintPress News explains, an internal "disinformation primer" illustrates how the agency worked to censor social media content at the behest of the federal government.
Chief among the methods USAID outlines to suppress independent media is what it calls “advertiser outreach” – in effect, threatening advertisers into cutting ties with marginal or niche websites. “In order to disrupt the funding and financial incentive to disinform, attention has also turned to the advertising industry, particularly with online advertising,” the report explains. “Cutting this financial support found in the ad-tech space” would, it continues,
"[O]bstruct disinformation actors from spreading messaging online. Efforts have been made to inform advertisers of their risks, such as the threat to brand safety by being placed next to objectionable content, through conducting research and assessments of online media content."
”Additionally, USAID states it hopes to “redirect funding to higher-quality news domains, improve regulatory and market environments, and support innovative and sustainable models for increasing revenues and reach.” In other words, it wants to use its power to move consumers away from alternative media and back into legacy news outlets that have seen a massive cratering in public trust precisely because viewers have been exposed to online content that highlights how poorly they cover the news. The report takes as a given that the establishment press are standard-bearers for truth rather than gigantic, multibillion-dollar international empires with long histories of publishing demonstrably false or biased stories.
Another recommended method is to “psychologically inoculate” the population, “prebunking” disinformation before it arises by predicting it and taking steps against it before it occurs. This might include “discrediting the brand, the credibility and reputation of those making false allegations” – a line that might suggest launching attacks against whomever USAID deems bad actors.
Of course, as the story continues to go viral aspects of it are also being seemingly misrepresented. While reports of USAID funding various international media outlets the likes of the BBC is of importance and should receive great scrutiny, much of the attention is being focused on its alleged domestic funding.
While the government's long standing history of influencing the mainstream media is certainly no secret, a series of viral posts seem to be missing the mark on some key talking points in regard to the scandal. Most notably, the allegations of domestic media outlets the likes of Politico and the New York Times supposedly receiving millions of dollars from USAID.
First, the $8 million figure represents total government expenditures to Politico since 2016, not USAID dollars specifically. The amount paid by USAID to Politico totals $44,000.
A government agency directly transferring cash to a journalistic outlet that's supposed to cover it impartially might still constitute a scandal; in general, the feds should not subsidize journalistic projects. But importantly, USAID was not generously donating the money to Politico—the government paid the money in exchange for subscriptions to Politico's premium content. This is a pretty important difference; USAID is paying for the service Politico provides, in much the same way that a government agency has to pay for janitorial services, electricity, or office supplies. If a federal office buys a new printer, it isn't necessarily malicious. It could be malicious, if the printer costs too much money, is defective, or was purchased as part of some kickback scheme—but the reality that government offices need printers isn't really up for argument.
The article continues,
When confronted with these facts, many of the conservative social media accounts asserted that something must be awry, since $44,000 is still way too much for a Politico subscription. They assume that USAID is overpaying in exchange for favorable coverage of progressive causes and unfavorable coverage of Trump.
But that's not what USAID and the other government agencies are paying for. In truth, Politico's premium product isn't political news coverage, progressively slanted or otherwise: It's minute-to-minute updates on regulatory decisions that impact specific industries. This is information that political and government agencies need and that Politico supplies, for a premium price. As independent journalist Lee Fang points out, Politico isn't the only game in town: Bloomberg and LexisNexis run similar services. Politico's price tag is comparable to theirs.
In addition to these distorted claims we also see an abundance of attempts to slant the scandal with partisan rhetoric. Most notably from president Trump himself, reinforcing the fake left versus right paradigm in his assertion that only Democrats are responsible, with numerous other right-wing pundits echoing the claim that it is a left-wing media conspiracy.
This however is easily debunked when looking at the nature of USAID's operations themselves. As mentioned earlier with their funding of subversive intelligence operations in Central America and elsewhere, most of these campaigns are targeted against left wing governments and political movements or otherwise supportive of the bipartisan imperialist status quo of the US ruling class.
Furthermore, the logic in this claim, or rather lack thereof, is entirely inconsistent. As also previously mentioned, the Trump administration is not abolishing USAID or its operations, instead it is folding them into the State Department, which will undoubtedly continue to fund subversive covert operations in the US interest. If it was indeed just a "corrupt Democrat slush fund" as the Trump's assert they wouldn't be embedding it directly into the heart of their administration.
In truth, as astute students of history know, money is hardly necessary when it comes to US government influence over the media.
As The Free Thought Project has previously reported, state influence over the media stretches back to the early days of the Cold War with a CIA program generally referred to as operation mockingbird (although we don't actually know what it was officially called). As TFTP reported at the time —
In 1975, a U.S Senate committee hearing was undertaken to investigate misconduct of the intelligence community. Chaired by Senator Frank Church (D-Id), the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities is more commonly referred to as The Church Committee. Among many other damning revelations it exposed that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had assets working within the United States corporate media apparatus granting the agency a degree of influence.
In 1977, the program was exposed in even more totality by veteran reporter and Pulitzer Prize winner Carl Bernstein, of Watergate fame. His expansive 25,000 word exposé in Rolling Stone magazine thoroughly documented collaboration between the CIA and the media during the Cold War years.
Officially, around that time, the program was supposed to have been shut down. However, on May 25th, 2010, a task force memorandum to the Director of Central Intelligence was authorized for declassification. The document, PAO 09-0586, dated December 20th 1991, acknowledged that the agency still maintained an even greater influence over the realms of media and academia.
Stating on page 6 —
"PAO now has relationships with reporters from every major wire service, newspaper, news weekly, and television network in the nation. This has helped us turn some "intelligence failure" stories into "intelligence success" stories, and it has contributed to the accuracy of countless others. In many instances, we have persuaded reporters to postpone, change, hold, or even scrap stories that could have adversely affected National Security interests, or jeopardized sources and methods."
A full 15 years after Operation Mockingbird was supposed to have ended, their own documents prove it was working stronger than ever. What's more, evidence shows that it continues even to the present day.
Our report went on to detail in full the various methodologies in which the intelligence community and other state actors used infiltration, consolidation, and subversion as a means of planting stories and controlling the media into the present day.
The revelations of USAID's funding and media reach is indeed a major scandal, but in some ways it appears the true depth of it is being deliberately overshadowed or misrepresented. Hardly any coverage is being used to highlight USAID's existence as an extension of the intelligence community funding regime change operations the world over. Operations that certainly won't stop anytime soon at Marco Rubio's State Department.
While their potential influence on media narratives deserves heavy scrutiny, the shift to attempt to paint the scandal as partisan and therefore reinforce political tribalism has strong undertones of a limited hangout operation. While it does still go to show the modern day extent to which the corporate media is controlled and influenced, hardly any attention is being paid to the historical context necessary that underpins the revelations as just another example of the more than centuries old effort to control the media.
Operation Mockingbird is indeed alive and well. Whether this scandal will serve to shed light on that fact, or simply be used as another tool of misdirection within it, only time will tell.