The State Division reportedly notified Congress final month that it plans to shuffle staffers and cash from the controversial and now-shuttered International Engagement Middle to a brand new workplace geared toward countering “foreign information manipulation and interference.”
The International Engagement Middle (GEC), which has come beneath hearth from a number of Home Republicans who declare it pushed for the censorship of People, ostensibly ceased operations on Dec. 23 after congressional lawmakers refused to reauthorize the GEC in latest spending laws.
Senior Republican staffers who’ve reviewed the Biden administration’s plans in response to the closure of the GEC instructed the Washington Examiner on Thursday that it seems the company is merely “rebranding,” and concern the brand new workplace will proceed the identical form of censorship work that the GEC had beforehand been accused of conducting.
“Should the authority for the GEC not be extended, the [State Department] plans to realign 51 employees and associated funding from the GEC to a proposed Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (R/FIMI) Hub reporting to the Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy (R),” learn a notification letter despatched to congressional lawmakers on Dec. 6, in line with the Washington Examiner.
The GEC, established in 2016, had a price range of about $61 million and 120 folks on workers.
The planning doc indicated that $29.4 million in GEC funding could be shifted to the brand new workplace.
The letter famous that the remaining GEC staff and funding could be despatched over to the Bureaus of African Affairs, East Asian and Pacific Affairs, European and Eurasian Affairs, and different workplaces.
The plan to determine a brand new “information manipulation” hub on the State Division is anticipated to set off congressional investigations, the outlet reported.
“[President-elect] Donald Trump and [Secretary of State-designate] Marco Rubio are going to have to track every single office, down to every single staffer, if they want to end the weaponization of the federal government against conservatives,” a senior GOP aide stated of the GEC shift.
“The State Department is filled with Resistance Democrats who think they got through the first Trump administration and will get through the second the same way,” the aide added.
The GEC turned embroiled in controversy after journalist Matt Taibbi uncovered proof that it pressured US social media platforms early within the COVID-19 pandemic to censor People on-line, purportedly to counter “disinformation,” equivalent to theories that the virus leaked out of a laboratory in China.
“We learned Twitter, Facebook, Google, and other companies developed a formal system for taking in moderation ‘requests’ from every corner of government: the FBI, DHS, HHS, DOD, the Global Engagement Center at State, even the CIA,” Taibbi testified to Congress in March 2023, shortly after his “Twitter Files” expose on the GEC.
The Washington Examiner later uncovered a $100,000 grant GEC made to the London-based International Disinformation Index (GDI) in 2021 and 2022 — a media monitoring nonprofit that may go on to deem 10 shops, together with The Publish, as purveyors of “disinformation.”
A number of Republican lawmakers have argued that the GEC went properly past its said mission of “proactively addressing foreign adversaries’ attempts to undermine US interests using disinformation and propaganda” by making an attempt to censor People.
Elon Musk, who bought Twitter in 2022 over free speech considerations, has described the GEC because the “worst offender in US government censorship & media manipulation.”
The State Division didn’t instantly reply to The Publish’s request for touch upon how the brand new overseas disinformation workplace will likely be completely different from the GEC.
