Jason Rezaian of the Washington Post, imprisoned for 544 days by the Iranian government on dubious charges of spying, was surprised to find himself the target of another government spewing unfounded allegations: the U.S. government.
In today’s Post he writes
I never imagined the U.S. State Department would be funding my attackers.
The Guardian has the details. Rezaian was the target of something called the Iran Disinformation Project
funded by the U.S. State Department’s Global Engagement Center which was created to counter foreign propaganda and disinformation. In recent weeks however, the group’s Twitter account @IranDisinfo targeted BBC journalists, thinktank experts and civil society advocates, denouncing them as being “mouthpieces” and supporters of the Iranian government.
A Human Rights Watch looking into the effect of U.S. sanctions or ordinary Iranians was trashed as an apologist for the Tehran government.
The National Iranian American Council (NIAC) was denounced for its support of the 2015 nuclear deal with the hashtag #NIACLobbies4Mullahs.
What the targets of the Iran Disinformation Project have in common, Rezaian notes, is “that we are all perceived by regime change proponents and supporters of the Trump administration’s so-called maximum pressure policy to be soft on Iran because we are critical of crushing economic sanctions and the threat of the use of military force against it.”
Lea Gabrielle, a former navy intelligence officer and Fox News journalist was hired to run the group in February.
Rezaian notes the obvious: America faces a reckoning about its democracy.
So we’re faced with the irony that an initiative aimed at combating Tehran’s disinformation campaigns is resorting to disinformation campaigns of its own, using taxpayer funds to spread lies about U.S. citizens. We need programs that fight the spread of falsehoods and propaganda, but such efforts shouldn’t combat lies with other lies — and certainly not with public funding.
This is just one more small incident in the long moment of reckoning our democracy is facing. It will pass quickly, but it’s an important stress test.
How can individuals who are not willing to adhere to the norms of American civil society be entrusted with resources to promote civil society in other countries?
Once the story broke, the State Department announced it was suspending the group’s work. All of the offending tweets are gone. Rezaian’s question remains.
Source: The State Department has been funding trolls. I’m one of their targets. – The Washington Post
