Disinformation
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 9/15/20
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.”
— William Casey, CIA director, February 1981
-- Project Truth, by Charles Z. Wick, International Communication Agency
-- Chinese Request to NED, by Walter Raymond, Dated January 2, 1985
-- Examples of institute funding
-- How US Flooded the World with Psyops, by Robert Parry
-- Letter From James R. Huntley to Anne W. Coulter, Dated 25 June 1982
-- Letter from Leo Cherne to William J. Casey [Bill], Dated June 24, 1981
-- Letter from R. Bruce McColm to Walter Raymond, Jr., Dated August 9, 1982
-- Military Psychological Operations and U.S. Strategy, by Col. Alfred H. Paddock, Jr.
-- National Security Council: Information, Dated July 9, 1984
-- President Ronald Reagan, The Westminster Address, Dated June 8, 1982
-- Project Truth Enhancement
-- Reagan Library Topic Guide : Public Diplomacy
-- Skeptics Pelt Schultz With Queries on Reagan's 'Project Democracy', by Bernard Gwertzman
-- The CIA and the Media: How America's Most Powerful News Media Worked Hand in Glove with the Central Intelligence Agency and Why the Church Committee Covered It Up, by Carl Bernstein
-- CIA, State Department, American Committee for Liberation Discussion of Radio Liberty Broadcasting
-- Hadley Cantril [Albert Hadley Cantril, Jr.], by Wikipedia
-- Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs, by Wikipedia
-- Worldwide Propaganda Network Built by the C.I.A., by John M. Crewdson and Joseph B. Treaster
-- National Security Decision Directive No. 130, by Ronald Reagan
-- Establishing of a Psychological Operations Committee, by John M. Poindexter
-- Establishment of a Psychological Operations Committee, by Craig Alderman, Jr., Deputy, Department of Defense
-- First Meeting of the Psychological Operations Committee, by Rodney B. McDaniel, Executive Secretary, National Security Council
-- Interim Executive Summary: Project NIAGARA FALLS, by Craig Alderman, Jr., Deputy, Department of Defense
-- Memorandum for Dr. Stearman, National Security Council, by Alfred H. Paddock, Jr., Colonel
-- Memorandum for the Chairman, Special Planning Group, Public Diplomacy, by Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger
-- PSYOPS Operations Committee, by Walter Raymond, Jr., Vincent M. Cannistraro, William L. Stearman
-- SI Meeting
-- The Psychological Operations Committee Gets Under Way, by Walter Raymond, Jr., Vincent M. Cannistraro, William L. Stearman
-- PropOrNot: Evidence of a CIA Psychological Operation, by Kurt Nimmo
-- Propaganda and Disinformation, from The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence, by Victor Marchetti
-- Psychological Operations in Guerrilla Warfare, by Central Intelligence Agency
-- Our Man in London: The Scandal of the 35-Page ‘Intelligence Dossier’ Directed against Donald Trump, by Prof Michael Keefer
-- Washington Post’s ‘Fake News’ Guilt, by Robert Parry
-- US spy operation that manipulates social media: Military's 'sock puppet' software creates fake online identities to spread pro-American propaganda, by Nick Fielding and Ian Cobain
-- Doctrine Re Rumors, by Office of Strategic Services Planning Group
-- Guideposts from Just War Theory: Managing Covert Political Action, by James A. Barry
-- Morale Operations Branch, by Wikipedia
-- Provoking nuclear war by media, by John Pilger
-- Newly Obtained Documents Prove: Key Claim of Snowden’s Accusers Is a Fraud, by Glenn Greenwald
-- Text: S.2692 — 114th Congress (2015-2016), Introduced in Senate (03/16/2016), To counter foreign disinformation and propaganda, and for other purposes.
-- Trust Is Collapsing in America: When truth itself feels uncertain, how can a democracy be sustained?, by Uri Friedman
-- Why Has Trust in Media Collapsed? Look at Actions of WSJ, Yahoo, Business Insider and Slate, by Glenn Greenwald
-- Washington Post’s ‘Fake News’ Guilt, by Robert Parry
-- A Clinton Fan Manufactured Fake News That MSNBC Personalities Spread to Discredit WikiLeaks Docs, by Glenn Greenwald
-- A New Report Raises Big Questions About Last Year’s DNC Hack: Former NSA experts say it wasn’t a hack at all, but a leak—an inside job by someone with access to the DNC’s system, by Patrick Lawrence
-- Alex Jones Calls Charlottesville Violence a False Flag, Because Alternative Facts Are Still a Thing, by Alexander Nazaryan
-- Deep State is "Going to Kill the President," Alex Jones Claims, by Aidan Quigley
-- Balance of Power 2016: DIA's Trump vs. CIA's PropOrNot, by Tara Carreon
-- BBC Propaganda Watch: Tell-Tale Signs That Slip Through The Cracks, by Editor, Medialengs.org
-- Bill O’Reilly hosted a fake Swedish defense “advisor” to fearmonger about refugees. Swedish Armed Forces Press Secretary: "We do not know who he is," by Nick Fernandez
-- Fake Sweden expert on Fox News – has criminal convictions in US, no connection to Swedish security, by Dagens Nyheter
-- Comments on the Society of the Spectacle (EXCERPT), by Guy Debord
-- Corporate media’s “fake news” war is backfiring by showing the world the power of alt media: This battle has literally nil to do with fake news – or even Russia – and everything to do with the power of dissent, by Claire Bernish
-- Counter-Propaganda Bill: Quietly Creates US Propaganda Factory, by John Laurits
-- Dealing With Assange and the WikiLeaks Secrets (The Times's Dealings With Julian Assange), by Bill Keller
-- Demonstration Elections: U.S.-Staged Elections in the Dominican Republic, Vietnam, and El Salvador, by Edward S. Herman and Frank Brodhead
-- Deserving Trust, by Ken White
-- Did NATO Promise Not to Enlarge? Gorbachev Says “No”, by Steven Pifer
-- Doctrine Re Rumors, by Office of Strategic Services Planning Group
-- Dugin’s Occult Fascism and the Hijacking of Left Anti-Imperialism and Muslim Anti-Salafism, by Wahid Azal
-- Excerpt from 1984, by George Orwell
-- Facebook Censorship and the Atlantic Council, by Jonathan Sigrist
-- Facebook Moves to Stem Fake News, by Jay Stanley
-- Failed Venezuela coup was fake news — designed to fool people in two nations: CNN and the New York Times made major reporting errors in covering the failed coup. Was it laziness or propaganda?, by Dave Lindorff
-- Fake News About 'Fake News' - The Media Performance Pyramid, by Editor, Medialens.org
-- 'Fake News' And How The Washington Post Rewrote Its Story On Russian Hacking Of The Power Grid, by Kalev Leetaru
-- ‘Fake news’ in America: Homegrown, and far from new: The corporate state created this monstrous propaganda machine and bequeathed it to Trump. by Chris Hedges
-- Fixing Fake News, by Jay Stanley
-- Glenn Greenwald: Mainstream U.S. media is culpable for disseminating fake & deceitful news on Russia. "Any story that bolsters the prevailing D.C. orthodoxy on the Russia Threat, no matter how dubious, is spread far and wide," by Amy Goodman
-- Guideposts from Just War Theory: Managing Covert Political Action, by James A. Barry, Central Intelligence Agency
-- H.R.4909 - National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017, 114th Congress (2015-2016) , SEC. 1259C. Global Engagement Center.
-- Investigation Into ‘PropOrNot Blacklist Case’ Finds Shoddy Methods and an Ominous Potential, by Bill Boyarsky
-- Jim Carrey: Hollywood Elites ‘Eat Whole Babies’ For Christmas, by Baxter Dmitry
-- Jim Carrey Did NOT Say Hollywood Elites “Eat Babies For Christmas,” Despite Fake News, by Andrew Shuster
-- Morale Operations Branch, by Wikipedia
-- MSNBC Does Not Merely Permit Fabrications Against Democratic Party Critics. It Encourages and Rewards Them, by Glenn Greenwald
-- Newly Obtained Documents Prove: Key Claim of Snowden’s Accusers Is a Fraud, by Glenn Greenwald
-- Once Again, Mainstream Media Get It Wrong on Venezuela: Foreign outlets, dutifully supporting Trump administration calls for regime change, reported that a widespread uprising was underway, even though Juan Guaidó’s coup attempt had little support, by Michael Fox
-- Probers Reading the Script: The Story of CBS and the Plot to Invade Haiti, by Gus Constantine
-- PropOrNot: Evidence of a CIA Psychological Operation, by Kurt Nimmo
-- PropOrNot: Is It Propaganda or Not?: Your Friendly Neighborhood Propaganda Identification Service, Since 2016! Black Friday Report: On Russian Propaganda Network Mapping, by The PropOrNot Team
-- Provoking nuclear war by media, by John Pilger
-- Removing Additional Inauthentic Activity from Facebook, by Nathaniel Gleicher, Head of Cybersecurity Policy and Oscar Rodriguez, Product Manager
-- Return of the Blacklist: What’s Next — Book Burning?, by John Laurits
-- Russian government hackers do not appear to have targeted Vermont utility, say people close to investigation, by Ellen Nakashima and Juliet Eilperin
-- Russian operation hacked a Vermont utility, showing risk to U.S. electrical grid security, officials say, by Juliet Eilperin and Adam Entous
-- Shumlin: Vermont Better Off Without Nuclear Plant, by Mike Faher
-- So Remember All Those Times Democrats Said Russia Hacked The French Election? About That, by Caitlin Johnstone
-- Text: S.2692 — 114th Congress (2015-2016), Introduced in Senate (03/16/2016), To counter foreign disinformation and propaganda, and for other purposes.
-- The art of the Trumpaclysm. How the U.S. invaded, occupied, and remade itself, by Tom Engelhardt
-- The Bizarre Not-Murder of Arkady Babchenko: The story of a crusading Russian journalist who faked his death to expose his enemies will fuel Moscow’s accusations of Ukrainian deceit, by Natasha Bertrand
-- The CIA’s Absence of Conviction, by Craig Murray
-- The Principles of Newspeak, by George Orwell (Excerpt from 1984)
-- The Story of CBS and the Plot to Invade Haiti, by Gus Constantine
-- Chapter 6: The Times, Excerpt From The Anglo-American Establishment: From Rhodes to Cliveden, by Carroll Quigley
-- The 'Washington Post' 'Blacklist' Story Is Shameful and Disgusting: The capital's paper of record crashes legacy media on an iceberg, by Matt Taibbi
-- This Is How Your Hyperpartisan Political News Gets Made. BuzzFeed News traced a group of liberal and conservative websites back to the same company. “The product they’re pitching is outrage,” said one liberal writer, by Craig Silverman
-- Trust Is Collapsing in America: When truth itself feels uncertain, how can a democracy be sustained?, by Uri Friedman
-- US spy operation that manipulates social media: Military's 'sock puppet' software creates fake online identities to spread pro-American propaganda, by Nick Fielding and Ian Cobain
-- What Santa And The Dying Child Story Teaches Us About Fake News, Data And Verification, by Kalev Leetaru
-- Who’s Behind PropOrNot’s Blacklist of News Websites, by Pam Martens and Russ Martens
-- Why Has Trust in Media Collapsed? Look at Actions of WSJ, Yahoo, Business Insider and Slate, by Glenn Greenwald
-- Yahoo says one billion accounts exposed in newly discovered security breach, by Jim Finkle and Anya George Tharakan
-- Our Man in London: The Scandal of the 35-Page ‘Intelligence Dossier’ Directed against Donald Trump, by Prof Michael Keefer
-- A New Report Raises Big Questions About Last Year’s DNC Hack: Former NSA experts say it wasn’t a hack at all, but a leak—an inside job by someone with access to the DNC’s system, by Patrick Lawrence
-- Background to “Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections”: The Analytic Process and Cyber Incident Attribution, by Office of the Director of National Intelligence
-- Beating or Driving, by Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News
-- How George W. Bush dissed the U.S. intelligence community. The likelihood is that the crimes of Bush, Cheney, Libby and Rove so far revealed are only the tip of the iceberg, by Juan Cole
-- Cambridge Prof with CIA, MI6 Ties Met with Trump Adviser During Campaign, Beyond, by Chuck Ross
-- Clinton Ally Says Smoke, But No Fire: No Russia-Trump Collusion, by Ken Dilanian
-- Clinton Campaign and Democratic Party Helped Pay for Russia Trump Dossier, by Kenneth P. Vogel
-- Clinton campaign, DNC paid for research that led to Russia dossier, by Adam Entous, Devlin Barrett and Rosalind S. Helderman
-- Coming in From the Cold, Going Out to the Bush Campaign, by Bill Peterson
-- Dmitry Medvedev Twitter account hacked: Hoaxers post messages saying Russian PM is resigning to become a photographer, and subverting Crimea hashtag, Alec Luhn
-- FBI once planned to pay former British spy who authored controversial Trump dossier, by Tom Hamburger and Rosalind S. Helderman
-- F.B.I. Used Informant to Investigate Russia Ties to Campaign, Not to Spy, as Trump Claims, by Adam Goldman, Mark Mazzetti and Matthew Rosenberg
-- Former CIA chief: Trump is Russia’s useful fool, by Michael V. Hayden
-- Full Clapper: "No Evidence" of Collusion Between Trump and Russia, Interview with James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, by Chuck Todd, Meet The Press
-- ‘Getting Trump’ with the New McCarthyism, by Robert Parry
-- Here’s How Much The FBI Planned To Pay Trump Dossier Author, by Chuck Ross
-- Hillary Clinton’s Deceptive Blame-Shifting, by Robert Parry
-- Hillary Clinton’s disingenuous dossier outrage, by Callum Borchers
-- How James Clapper will get away with perjury: Yes, the national director of intelligence lied under oath, and his defense is implausible. You think that matters? by Paul Campos
-- I Ran the C.I.A. Now I’m Endorsing Hillary Clinton, by Michael J. Morrell
-- Intelligence experts accuse Cambridge forum of Kremlin links: Sir Richard Dearlove, former head of MI6, resigns from Cambridge Intelligence Seminar, by Sam Jones
-- Iraq war: the greatest intelligence failure in living memory. On the tenth anniversary of the Iraq war, Panorama's Peter Taylor reveals the sources close to Saddam Hussein whose intelligence could have changed the course of history, by Peter Taylor
-- John Podesta, Whose Lawyer Paid For Dossier, Told Senate He Didn’t Know Who Funded It, by Chuck Ross
-- Key Democratic Officials Now Warning Base Not To Expect Evidence of Trump/Russia Collusion, by Glenn Greenwald
-- Mass Media Has Duped Democrats Into Believing Russia Hacked Voting Machines, by Caitlin Johnstone
-- Meet Professor Juan Cole, Consultant to the CIA, by John V. Walsh
-- New Cracks in Russia-gate ‘Assessment’, by Robert Parry
-- On Washington's hacking hysteria – what would Freud say?, by John Wight
-- Partners of firm behind ‘Trump dossier’ plead the Fifth during congressional hearing, by lynx.media
-- President Donald Trump and Vice-President Mike Pence's full remarks at the CIA Headquarters on Saturday, by President Donald Trump and Vice-President Mike Pence
-- Reagan Aides Describe Operation to Gather Inside Data on Carter, by Leslie H. Gelb
-- Robert Mueller Did Not Merely Reject the Trump-Russia Conspiracy Theories. He Obliterated Them, by Glenn Greenwald
-- Spy Agencies Investigating Claims Trump Advisers Worked With Russian Agents: The unverified allegations—including a claim Russia has material that could be used to blackmail Mr. Trump—were deemed sufficiently significant to brief the president-elect, by Shane Harris, Devlin Barrett and Alan Cullison
-- The Deep State Goes to War With President-Elect, Using Unverified Claims, as Democrats Cheer, by Glenn Greenwald
-- The Democratic Party line that could torch civil liberties … and maybe help blow up the world. We should reject the guidance of politicians and commentators who are all too willing to throw basic tenets of civil liberties overboard, by Norman Solomon
-- The Dubious Case on Russian ‘Hacking’, by William Binney and Ray McGovern
-- The FBI Informant Who Monitored the Trump Campaign, Stefan Halper, Oversaw a CIA Spying Operation in the 1980 Presidential Election, by Glenn Greenwald
-- The Hacking Evidence Against Russia Is Extremely Weak, by WashingtonsBlog
-- The king's beaters: Hunts and beaters, by http://en.parcoalpimarittime.it
-- The leaked Trump-Russia dossier rings frighteningly true: There is factual confusion in this document but its depiction of the Kremlin’s tactics is sound, by Andrei Soldatov
-- The Perfect Weapon: How Russian Cyberpower Invaded the U.S., by Eric Lipton, David E. Sanger and Scott Shane
-- The Pleasures of Shooting. After Luncheon the "Beating" is a little Wild. (2) [Michael J. Morell, Michael V. Hayden, James Clapper, Hillary Clinton, John Brennan, Hunters; Donald Trump, Tiger], by Tara Carreon
-- The Royal Hunt of Donald the Terrible, by Charles Carreon
-- The Steele Dossier or the Hitler Diaries Mark II, by Craig Murray
-- Trump slams Democrats as 'disgrace' for helping to fund dossier, by Brian Ross, Matthew Mosk, and Cheyenne Haslett
-- US Intel Agencies Try to Strong-Arm Trump into War With Russia, by Mike Whitney
-- ‘US intel community lost professional discipline’: Ex-NSA tech director on ‘Russia hacking’ report, by Jim Urquhart
-- US Presidential Election: Republican Candidate Donald Trump's Activities in Russia and Compromising Relationship With the Kremlin, by Christopher Steele
-- US Report Still Lacks Proof on Russia ‘Hack’, by Robert Parry
-- Warner: Identifying FBI source to undermine Russia probe could be a crime, by Kyle Cheney
-- When Scandals Collide, by Andrew C. McCarthy
-- Clinton Journalist Has Meltdown After His Russian Conspiracy Theory Is Debunked. Pro-Clinton mainstream media remains convinced there must be nefarious, pro-Kremlin incentives for anyone opposing her, by Michael Sainato
-- A Bernie Sanders Campaign Adviser Was a Russian. Now He’s Speaking Out, by Glenn Greenwald
-- A Veteran Spy Has Given the FBI Information Alleging a Russian Operation to Cultivate Donald Trump: Has the bureau investigated this material?, by David Corn
-- Background to “Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections”: The Analytic Process and Cyber Incident Attribution, by Office of the Director of National Intelligence
-- Branding Democracy: U.S. Regime Change in Post-Soviet Eastern Europe (EXCERPT), by Gerald Sussman
-- Clinton Campaign Chair John Podesta Tied to Russian Mafia, Money Laundering: Emails released by Wikileaks show Podesta shared in the Clintons' corrupt schemes via the Clinton Foundation and oligarch Viktor Vekselberg's Skolovo Foundation, by Roger Stone
-- Clinton's campaign manager: Russia helping Trump, by Eric Bradner, CNN
-- Clinton Ally Says Smoke, But No Fire: No Russia-Trump Collusion, by Ken Dilanian
-- Dear Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, I Am Not Sidney Blumenthal, by Kurt Eichenwald
-- Dem Super-Lobbyist Podesta Got $170 K to End U.S. Sanctions on Russian Bank, by Richard Pollock
-- Democrats' new warning: Leaks could include Russian lies. The move could help inoculate Hillary Clinton against an October cyber surprise, by Cory Bennett
-- Democrats Now Demonize the Same Russia Policies that Obama Long Championed, by Glenn Greenwald
-- Dems Claim Next Wikileaks Release Will Include Fabricated Content. DNC would prefer another Cold War than admit bias for Clinton, by Michael Sainato
-- Did Newsweek's Kurt Eichenwald Use Threats and Bribery to Silence a Young Journalist?, by Walker Bragman and Shane Ryan
-- Ex-British ambassador who is now a WikiLeaks operative claims Russia did NOT provide Clinton emails - they were handed over to him at a D.C. park by an intermediary for 'disgusted' Democratic whistleblowers, by Alana Goodman
-- Full Clapper: "No Evidence" of Collusion Between Trump and Russia, Interview with James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, by Chuck Todd, Meet The Press
-- Hack of Democrats’ Accounts Was Wider Than Believed, Officials Say, by Eric Lichtblau and Eric Schmitt
-- Elevate Trump, by Tara Carreon
-- Hillary Clinton Campaign Was Connected to Russian Government, by Dan Wright
-- Hillary’s Secret Kremlin Connection Is Quickly Unraveling: Exactly how Clinton profited off deals with Skolkovo is something the American public has a right to know before November 8, by John R. Schindler
-- Intelligence figures fear Trump reprisals over assessment of Russia election role, by Spencer Ackerman
Julian Assange, by Afshin Rattansi
-- Key Democratic Officials Now Warning Base Not To Expect Evidence of Trump/Russia Collusion, By Glenn Greenwald
-- Killer, kleptocrat, genius, spy: the many myths of Vladimir Putin. Russia’s role in Trump’s election has led to a boom in Putinology. But do all these theories say more about us than Putin?, by Keith Gessen
-- Kremlin spokesman: Russian ambassador met with advisers to Clinton campaign too, by Olivia Beavers
-- Leading Putin Critic Warns of Xenophobic Conspiracy Theories Drowning U.S. Discourse and Helping Trump, by Glenn Greenwald
-- Members of the Aspen Institute Homeland Security Group Issue Statement on DNC Hack, by The Aspen Institute
-- MSNBC’S Rachel Maddow Sees A "Russia Connection" Lurking Around Every Corner, by Aaron Maté
-- Much Ado About Nothing: The ODNI report on Russian “hacking” is short on proof: It’s respected voices like these that are missing from the current debate about Russia, by Derek Royden
-- Obama Loses His War on Whistleblowers, by Craig Murray
-- Open Letter From Military Leaders Re: Supporting Donald Trump
-- Putin Derangement Syndrome Arrives: Whatever the truth about Trump and Russia, the speculation surrounding it has become a dangerous case of mass hysteria, by Matt Taibbi
-- RT beats internet to break #Podestaemails6 & everybody loses their minds (conspiracy theory warning), by RT.com
-- Russian Intelligence Hacked DNC Emails, Say Top U.S. Officials, by Ken Dilanian and Josh Meyer
-- Sberbank confirms hiring Podesta Group for lobbying its interests, by TASS Russian News Agency
-- So Remember All Those Times Democrats Said Russia Hacked The French Election? About That…, by Caitlin Johnstone
-- The CIA’s Absence of Conviction, by Craig Murray
-- The Increasingly Unhinged Russia Rhetoric Comes From a Long-Standing U.S. Playbook, by Glenn Greenwald
-- The Myths of ‘Democracy Assistance’: U.S. Political Intervention in Post-Soviet Eastern Europe (EXCERPT), by Gerald Sussman
-- The New Yorker’s Big Cover Story Reveals Five Uncomfortable Truths About U.S. and Russia, by Glenn Greenwald
-- The Secret Life of Bill Clinton: The Unreported Stories: Excerpt, by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
-- The United States and NATO Are Preparing for a Major War With Russia. Massive military exercises and a troop buildup on NATO’s eastern flank reflect a dangerous new strategy, by Michael T. Klare
-- There’s No Need for a New Cold War: The Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald is skeptical Russia is really a new, serious threat, by Isaac Chotiner
-- Twitter Comments, by Kurt Eichenwald
-- What’s Worse: Trump’s Campaign Agenda or Empowering Generals and CIA Operatives to Subvert It?, by Glenn Greenwald
-- Who is Sergey Kislyak, the Russian ambassador to the United States?, by Tim Lister
-- Why Vladimir Putin's Russia Is Backing Donald Trump, by Kurt Eichenwald
-- With New D.C. Policy Group, Dems Continue to Rehabilitate and Unify With Bush-Era Neocons, by Glenn Greenwald
-- With Saudi and Russian ties, Clinton machine’s tentacles are far reaching, according to Panama Papers, by Ben Norton
Disinformation is false or misleading information that is spread deliberately to deceive.[1][2][3] This is a subset of misinformation.
The English word disinformation is a loan translation of the Russian dezinformatsiya,[1][2][3] derived from the title of a KGB black propaganda department.[4] Joseph Stalin coined the term, giving it a French-sounding name to claim it had a Western origin.[1] Russian use began with a "special disinformation office" in 1923.[5] Disinformation was defined in Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1952) as "false information with the intention to deceive public opinion".[1][2][6] Operation INFEKTION was a Soviet disinformation campaign to influence opinion that the U.S. invented AIDS.[1][6][7] The U.S. did not actively counter disinformation until 1980, when a fake document reported that the U.S. supported apartheid.[8]
U.S. Disinformation Today
In spite of the long history of U.S. government propaganda, disinformation, and lying, each succeeding Administration insists it is clean, inventing alternative sources on whom to place the blame for the corruption of communications and dialogue. None of them wants the public to find the pea under the shell in this age-old con game. President Reagan has naturally accused the Soviets of introducing the practice. The State Department has fostered the myth that disinformation is a Russian word. Dezinformatsiya, according to one of their busy little defectors, Ladislav Bittman, is the province of "Directorate A" of the KGB. Bittman, a Czech who left his country well over ten years ago, only recently began making these widely-reported pronouncements about disinformation. The au courant darling of the right-wing press, he conveniently confirms their suspicions about Soviet global intentions, while Reagan warns television audiences about Soviet-style runways and Cuban-style army barracks. The danger is that through incessant repetition of the word, disinformation has become synonymous in the minds of the American public with Soviet intelligence operations.
Historical facts, however, point to quite another conclusion as the preceding sections have indicated. Disinformation has clearly been part of the U.S. intelligence, military, and Cold War offensive waged in peacetime since the end of World War II, an integral part of national security which has no clear relationship to truth or the beliefs of its practitioners. And as the activists of U.S. foreign policy, the CIA is its chief author.
Exposing Media Operations
In 1975, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (the Church Committee), in an investigation of CIA wrongdoing, revealed just a tiny portion of the extent of CIA penetration of world media. It was patently obvious to the investigators that only U.S. intelligence agencies could practice the art of disinformation on such a grand scale, given the extraordinary expense of manipulating, influencing, and outright purchasing of news throughout the world. The number of organizations and persons who must be paid off to place fictitious stories across the globe is staggering. Almost ten years ago the Church Committee said it had found evidence of more than 200 wire services, newspapers, magazines, and book publishing complexes owned outright by the CIA. A 1977 New York Times expose uncovered another 50 media outlets run by the CIA, inside and outside the U.S., with more than twelve publishing houses responsible for over 1000 books, some 250 of them in English. Beyond the wholly-owned proprietaries there were countless agents and friendly insiders working in media operations around the world. These exposures are, of course, only the tip of the iceberg. The mind reels at what remained hidden from Congress and the New York Times and continues so to the present.
Estimates of the portion of the U.S. intelligence budget -- kept secret from the American people and Congress -- devoted to propaganda range from a few to many billions of dollars a year. An extremely conservative guess in the December 1981 Defense Electronics put the overall U.S. intelligence budget for that year at $70 billion, of which about $10 billion, they said, went to the CIA. Media specialists have estimated that at least one third of the CIA's budget is devoted each year to the spread of disinformation, conservatively placing CIA covert media manipulation alone for that year at almost three and a half billion dollars. None of this takes into account the myriad of income-generating proprietaries owned by the CIA, firms which make a profit which is then poured back into more covert operations: CIA banks, holding companies, airlines, investment firms, and the like.
Anyone who has even a casual knowledge of the world hard currency situation knows that the Soviet Union does not have the kind of foreign exchange which billion dollar operations entail. Only the secret U.S. intelligence budget -- taken from unwitting American taxpayers -- can pay for inventing news on such a mammoth scale. And invent they do, as we shall see below in an examination of a few of their hysterical scenarios....
It is time the American people took a good dose of their own history to begin to understand what ails this society. One benefit might be a revival of old-fashioned American skepticism toward authoritative pronouncements. History has rebutted the argument of disinformation's origin as a KGB plot, and traced its twentieth century development as a hidden partner of the imperial process and national security apparatus. We have learned that propaganda intruded itself into the democratic process long ago.
The most important lesson of history's warnings, however, would be an understanding of what went wrong with information in the past to help people resist the inroads of further deception. The next time the government floats a story, demand in each instance to know why it is propagating this information, whose interests it is serving, and what is being concealed. Then perhaps this country can abandon the process of government by the misinformed.
-- The CIA and the Media, by CovertAction Information Bulletin
The word disinformation did not appear in English dictionaries until the late-1980s.[1][2] English use increased in 1986, after revelations that the Reagan Administration engaged in disinformation against Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.[9] By 1990, it was pervasive in U.S. politics;[10] and by 2001 referred generally to lying and propaganda.[11][12]