CIA Propagandizing Americans

The Intelligence Community

The United States “Intelligence Community” (“IC”) consists of 18 intelligence organizations. Of these, only the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI are supposed to be focused on activities occurring within the United States. The CIA in particular is supposed to have no responsibilities or operations within the United States. However, the very nature of the CIA makes it impossible for Americans to know in real time what the CIA is doing domestically, especially with respect to propagandizing Americans. However eventually, as Shakespeare wrote, the “truth will out,” and it has now been demonstrated that the CIA has not followed this limitation on its activities.

The CIA’s Propaganda Function

Three years after World War II ended, President Truman approved issuance of the “National Security Council Directive on Office of Special Projects.” NSC 10/2 (June 18, 1948). This Directive authorized the CIA to conduct covert operations during peacetime of the sort we think of only being conducted during wartime, including:

propaganda, economic warfare; preventative direct action, including sabotage, anti-sabotage, demolition and evacuation measures; subversion against hostile states, including assistance to underground resistance movements, guerrillas and refuge liberation groups…. [Emphasis added.]

All of these authorized activities were required to be conducted covertly, in order to ensure what is generally known as “plausible deniability”:

all activities … which are conducted or sponsored by this Government against hostile foreign states or groups or in support of friendly foreign states or groups but which are so planned and executed that any US Government responsibility for them is not evident to unauthorized persons and that if uncovered the US Government can plausibly disclaim any responsibility for them. [Id. (emphasis added)]

The TV series Mission Impossible (1966-73) has immortalized this aspect of the NSC Directive with the warning given at the end of each mission assignment, immediately before being told “this tape will self-destruct in five seconds”:

As always, should you or any of your IM Force be caught or killed, the Secretary will disavow all knowledge of your actions.

So here we have been as a nation:

• the CIA is tasked to use propaganda overseas,

• the Smith-Mundt Act (until recently, as discussed below) prohibited propaganda aimed at America,

• the CIA is required to conduct that propaganda covertly, and

• the CIA is required to design its operations so that if discovered, the CIA can (and is required to) lie, denying involvement.

In such a system, the only assurance the American People can have that the law is being followed comes from: (i) the press, which the CIA has made certain is anything but independent; (ii) CIA whistleblowers, who are routinely hounded, threatened, and even prosecuted; or (iii) the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, which few believe have provided effective oversight.

The Beginnings of CIA Propaganda

The U.S. government’s work to propagandize the world began with the wartime creation of the Voice of America (VOA) in 1942 to counter propaganda from Nazi Germany. When the world transitioned to the Cold War, America expanded its propaganda outreach with Radio Free Europe (RFE) in 1950 and Radio Liberty (RL), beginning in 1953. See RFE/RL. Then Radio Martí joined team America in 1983, and TV Marti in 1990, all focused on Cuba. Was the CIA involved? In its denial of continuing CIA involvement, the RFE/RL website actually admits CIA had been involved: “[i]n 1971, all CIA involvement in RFE and RL ended.” One analysis states:

Periodic rumors about CIA involvement in the stations’ operations were quickly dismissed. Then, in 1971, the floodgates opened to reveal a wealth of evidence that the stations had indeed been covertly financed by the CIA…. It became apparent that over the course of twenty years these “private” stations had received about $500,000,000 in U.S. Government funds.

These outlets were intended to serve an important role in spreading pro-freedom messaging behind the iron curtain and elsewhere, but it should never be assumed the content of their propaganda is pro-American. Just today, the RFE/RL website leads with the stories: “Ukraine Needs U.S. Weapons” and “Why Trump’s China Tariffs Bring Both Pain And Opportunity For Xi.”

Communist Infiltration

One can imagine that these American propaganda outlets would be targeted by communists for infiltration, which occurred early in their history.

The VOA chief news writer and editor in 1943 was American novelist Howard Fast, who was later a Communist Party activist and the recipient of the 1953 Stalin International Peace Prize. Censorship in favor of Soviet Russia has also been part of VOA history…. In the 1970s, VOA even censored Russian dissident writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

Although it may seem impossible that a communist sympathizer could infiltrate the top ranks of the VOA, it becomes less incredible when one considers that President Obama appointed a former communist supporter as Director of the CIA — John Brennan. In 1976, Brennan had voted for Gus Hall, the presidential candidate of the Communist Party USA. Despite a heroic 13-hour filibuster by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), debate on Brennan’s confirmation was ended by a vote of 81 to 16 on March 7, 2013. Eventually, Brennan was confirmed by a vote of 63 to 34, with the support of 13 Republican Senators, including John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsay Graham (R-SC).

The CIA Turns the Propaganda Machine Domestic

By law, the propaganda disseminated could only be directed at foreign nations — not at American citizens. As amended in 1972, the Smith-Mundt Act provided that “[a]ny such information … shall not be disseminated within the United States, its territories, or possessions, but, on request, shall be available … for examination only by representatives of United States press associations [and] Members of Congress.” Thus, ordinary Americans had no right to know what messages they were funding with their tax dollars.

In 2012, President Obama signed the euphemistically named Smith-Mundt Modernization Act, “making it legal for government-produced media — such as was broadcast overseas by Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, and other outlets throughout the Cold War — to be directed toward U.S. citizens themselves.” With the help of Congress, Obama empowered the CIA with authority to direct propaganda to shape the views of Americans.

CIA Propaganda Veers Left

In 2017, The Columbia Journalism Review published a story by Dan Robinson, a 35-year veteran of VOA, stating that: “VOA already established an Extremism Watch Desk…. It’s hard to imagine there won’t be interaction between this VOA extremism unit and the Global Engagement Center,” created by Obama executive order to “combat disinformation.” (Emphasis added.)

In 2021, Ted Lipien, who served as VOA’s acting associate director and as president of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, wrote that “[i]n less than 40 years, the taxpayer-funded Voice of America went from exposing the crimes and economic failures of communism to in some cases glorifying communists, including Fidel Castro and Che Guevara.” (Emphasis added.) Lipien warned that “under the watch of recent and current VOA and USAGM executives, employees and contractors produced news reports and graphics that glorified repressive communist leaders. They did not mention the crimes of Marxist dictators and the failures of socialist state economies.”

CIA Reveals Its Domestic Political Agenda

The CIA’s politicization has become undeniable as recounted by a 12-year CIA veteran Dr. John A. Gentry, explaining the beginning of what he called “a new form of the ‘politicization’ of intelligence” in an article for the International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence.

On 5 August 2016, in an op-ed piece in the New York Times, former deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Michael Morrell endorsed Hillary Clinton for president of the United States over Donald J. Trump, citing his career as an intelligence officer as authority for his partisanship: “My training as an intelligence officer taught me to call it as I see it. This is what I did for the C.I.A. This is what I am doing now. Our nation will be much safer with Hillary Clinton as president. [Emphasis added.]

Gentry noted that: “Leaks have increased sharply in an apparent bid to undermine Trump, and Gentry said a long-held prohibition against discussing partisan politics in the office has been set aside. Anti-Trump conversations are common in CIA analytical units, and anti-Trump analysts also express their political views on Facebook.”

Propagandizing America Through USAID

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has long been known as “a contract vehicle for various CIA covert activities.” Americans have now learned that the CIA, through USAID, has been propagandizing America through one of the most prominent Leftist websites, Politico.

Politico is no digital backwater. Politico led the effort to elect Joe Biden by banning the Hunter laptop story and censor those sharing it. Politico published the Supreme Court’s draft Dobbs opinion, leading to illegal leftists protests at the homes of, and attempted assassination of, Supreme Court justices. There are reports that Politico has been the recipient of over $34 million from U.S. taxpayers, including $27.5 million during the Biden administration. Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has terminated the government’s $10,000-per-year Politico Pro “policy intelligence platform” subscriptions.

As President Trump continues to expose and end the USAID and other funding of Leftist publications and organizations, we may see many of them collapse. More and more, it appears that the political Left in America does not emanate from the desires of Americans, but rather is an artificial construct of the CIA. The CIA’s massive funding of Leftist domestic activities can no longer be “plausibly denied.”