On February 16, the US Justice Department indicted more than a dozen Russian nationals for allegedly interfering in the 2016 presidential campaign. It singled out a Russian company, the Internet Research Agency (also known as Glavset) based in Saint Petersburg, which is said to be responsible for influence operations on behalf of the Russian government.

The indictment, filed in the US District Court for the District of Columbia, charges the defendants “posted derogatory information about a number of candidates” and engaged in operations to support the presidential campaign of Donald Trump. The DOJ claims the activity had the stated goal of “spread[ing] distrust towards the candidates and the political system in general.”

According to the indictment, the activity amounts to “information warfare against the United States of America” launched on social media, primarily on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. “By 2016, the size of many [Internet Research Agency]-controlled groups” on social media, primarily Facebook, “had grown to hundreds of thousands of online followers.”

Federal prosecutors said the “influence operations” began in 2014. They accused Russian trolls of posing as Americans on social media platforms. “These groups and pages, which addressed divisive U.S. political and social issues, falsely claimed to be controlled by US activists when, in fact, they were controlled by defendants.”

This alleged operation, however, pales in comparison to propaganda efforts initiated by the US government.

Programming produced by the Broadcasting Board of Governors, Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks is viewed and listened to in more than a hundred countries in 61 languages. The propaganda effort covers a wide variety of political issues, including human rights abuses in Iran, human trafficking in Asia, self-immolation in Tibet, to name but a few.

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty was funded by the CIA and received broad policy directives from the CIA and the US State Department. [READ MORE]

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