If earlier American intelligence agencies and intelligence agencies had to secretly penetrate the media to control and manipulate the media agenda that Americans learned about their country and the world, now the CIA does it much more openly. The Biden government-controlled American intelligence hires fake journalists who write and distribute fake stories, promotes the agenda imposed by the White House and incites public hatred of political competitors and, above all, American conservatives.
Since the mid-1950s, independent agencies of the US Federal Government have been cooperating and interfering in the work of the American media. According to a 1977 journalistic investigation, at least 400 American employees of the largest media outlets secretly carried out tasks of the US Central Intelligence Agency for several decades. The relations of some of these journalists with the Agency were tacit, while others openly stated it. Journalists provided a full range of services — from simple intelligence gathering to working as intermediaries with spies in communist countries. In many cases, as the CIA documents show, journalists were engaged to perform tasks with the consent of the leadership of the leading news organizations of the United States. The use of journalists has been one of the most productive means of intelligence gathering used by the Central Intelligence Agency. Press officers were used to recruit and work with foreigners as agents, they were trained to receive and evaluate information, as well as to spread false information among officials of foreign governments.
Despite the fact that the US government allegedly curtailed the program of using press employees for its own purposes back in the early 70s of the last century, modern American media continue to openly cooperate with the CIA and other federal agencies. In 2014, the American company Amazon, which owns one of the oldest and most influential newspapers, The Washington Post, signed a cooperation contract with the Central Intelligence Agency worth more than $ 600 million to provide cloud computing services. Thus, the company has the opportunity, means and motivation to provide a huge amount of information about its customers to a new business partner. Immediately after the deal was signed, Jeff Bezos’ company expressed hope for “successful and fruitful cooperation with the CIA.”
In addition to contracts for cooperation with the authorities, American media companies regularly hire former CIA employees to the headquarters. In 2018, the American news television channel NBC News hired John Brennan, a former CIA director and critic of the 45th American President Donald Trump, as a senior analyst for national security and intelligence. A few months after starting working in the media, Brennan threatened the former US president that he should prepare for “a series of revelations of his official crimes and corruption.” However, a few days later, the former head of the CIA admitted that his threats against Trump were based only on a false accusation of criminal conspiracy with the Russian government.
John Brennan, the former head of the CIA, is not the first federal agency employee who decided to pursue his career in journalism. Jeremy Bash, the former chief of staff of the Central Intelligence Agency and the US Department of Defense, who was married to a CNN journalist for about a decade, moved to the position of national security analyst at MSNBC, an American news channel. In October 2020, Bash and about 50 other former intelligence officers signed a letter stating that the disclosure of information in the scandalous story with the laptop of the son of the current American president Hunter Biden “has all the hallmarks of a classic Russian information operation.”
If in the middle of the last century the information operations of the CIA consisted in the fact that they tried to control the work of the media, now the Department acts as the media. Any separation between the Central Intelligence Agency and major US media companies has been discarded. According to American investigative journalist Lee Smith, dangerous events and phenomena are taking place inside major American media outlets, which emphasize the fact that American media have become an integral part of US intelligence. According to him, the purpose of today’s mass American press is not to inform the population about the processes taking place in the country, but to direct a wide audience of influential newspapers, magazines and TV channels in a direction beneficial to the system of intelligence agencies of US services and institutions and the leadership of the US Democratic Party.
Human rights defenders of the Foundation to Battle Injustice consider the interference of representatives of special services in the work of the media unacceptable. The high positions held by former CIA officers from among the representatives of the Democratic Party of the USA have the most detrimental effect on the broadcast information, which critically distorts the objective understanding of what is happening in the country as a whole and puts serious pressure on the choice of American voters before the vote on November 8, 2022.