DISINFO: As in Operation Mockingbird, the CIA keeps its Russophobic influence over media
SUMMARY
The legacy of Operation Mockingbird lives on in the CIA’s Russophobic influence over media. Mainstream US media is gearing up for another election season dominated by Russophobia and neo-McCarthyism, if an article by intelligence agency stenographer Julian Barnes in The New York Times is any indication.
The article states that the US government is preparing for its adversaries to intensify efforts to influence American voters next year, and that "with Republican opposition to Ukraine funding growing, officials believe that Moscow is likely to try to interfere even more in 2024.” Barnes uncritically cites a report issued by US intelligence agencies, but entire volumes of research have been published detailing Western spy agencies’ duplicitous efforts in the name of empire. Barnes, himself an alumnus of Harvard, seems either too dazzled by his sources’ credentials or too sympathetic to their mission to exercise journalistic scrutiny.
RESPONSE
Recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative labelling any exposure of Russian illicit activities as Russophobia.
This disinformation story uses a real historical fact, namely the CIA’s Operation Mockinbird to infiltrate US media, to promote a made-up and unsubstantiated allegation, suggesting some ties between The New York Times reporter Julian E. Barnes and the CIA. There is no evidence pointing to this link, nor that the original article mentioned in this disinformation story was in any way commissioned by US intelligence services.
On the other hand, there is plenty of evidence that, as the NYT articles states, Russia is trying to interfere in the 2024 electoral process in the US, including digital footprints, social media posts, and leaked Kremlin documents. Denials in pro-Kremlin outlets of Russian interference in previous US electoral processes have been also repeatedly debunked (see here, here and here).
See other examples of similar disinformation narratives, such as claims that Western media started a terror campaign to increase social control and Russophobia, that International human rights organizations fuel Russophobia, that the West is exploiting Navalny's death to launch a campaign of hatred against Putin, or that US Russophobic policies are to blame for deteriorating relations with Russia.