Thread by @emeriticus

The Western intelligence apparatus won the information war in Ukraine before a shot was fired. Even new publications like the Kyiv Independent have received support from NGOs that do in public what the CIA used to do in private. My story in @HumanEvents +🧵humanevents.com/2022/03/15/the…

The Independent is a good example. It's got growing subscriber base now, but according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, it was created with an "emergency grant from the European Endowment for Democracy," a spinoff of the National Endowment for Democracy. What is the NED?

On the surface, it's an NGO that promotes civil society worldwide by, among other things, sponsoring and providing training for journalists and activists directly or indirectly. The reality, however, is different. web.archive.org/web/2022030510…

Here's ProPublica's characterization: "The National Endowment for Democracy was established by Congress, in effect, to take over the CIA's covert propaganda efforts. But, unlike the CIA, the NED promotes U.S. policy and interests openly." propublica.org/article/the-na…

The NED's co-founder, Allen Weinstein, admitted as much. "A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA," he said in an interview with the Washington Post entitled, "Innocence Abroad: The New World of Spyless Coups." washingtonpost.com/archive/opinio…

"The biggest difference is that when such activities are done overtly, the flap potential [i.e., embarrass or embroil the CIA in controversy] is close to zero," Weinstein said. Recall that in 1967, Ramparts magazine humiliated the agency by exposing . . . fas.org/blogs/secrecy/…

. . . that it had turned the National Student Association's international activities into "an arm of United States foreign policy" through undercover financing and secret collaboration. Now, "Openness is its own protection," as Weinstein put it. nytimes.com/1967/02/16/arc…

In fall 2021, a profile of the Independent's chief editor, Olga Rudenko, appeared in ProMarket, a publication of the Stigler Center at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Rudenko was visiting the school for a journalism development program. web.archive.org/web/2021092307…

According to ProMarket, she is also a board member at the Media Development Foundation, an NGO that has received at least $225,140 from the NED. You won't find that without a digital archive because the NED's records of funding projects in Ukraine was recently moved or deleted.

The archived page shows that from 2014 to the present, the NED has granted $22,394,281 through 334 awards to Ukraine. However, since the change, the NED only allows users to search back to 2017.

Others have noticed this too. mronline.org/2022/03/08/nat…

The MDF's Facebook page features several posts referencing partnerships, exchange programs, and training affiliated with the NED that often conclude with an appreciative variation of: "to our partners National Endowment for Democracy, without them there would be nothing."

There's a lot more here. It is impossible to understand the ongoing information war without going back to the coup supported by the U.S. State Department in Ukraine in 2014.

humanevents.com/2022/03/15/the…

During the "Maidan Uprising," several people were killed by snipers. Westerners were led to believe by the media that it was the soon to be deposed President Viktor Yanukovych who was the blame.

But there was evidence someone else had orchestrated the violence.

"Analysis of the snipers massacre shows that the Maidan protesters initiated almost all—at least six out of a possible eight—of the pivotal escalatory moments of violence and/or coercion," American scholar Gordon M. Hahn found.

In other words, it not Yanukovych.

Instead, a lot of people suspected that DC was involved with the help of its European allies.

"Snipers were also trained in Poland" as "a favor to Washington," said Polish politician Janusz Korwin-Mikke in an interview with Wirtualna Polska. opinie.wp.pl/korwin-mikke-s…

The sniper killings were central to the Maidan because it gave Westerners the impression that Yanukovych was a brutal tyrant. Their deaths were used to further justify regime change by the media.

The current information war out of Ukraine is a continuation of what started then.

Western backed journalists and activists in Ukraine helped create a perception about the 2014 coup that wasn't true. That perception was used to justify what Washington wanted.

This is important, because Ukraine media ops are happening again.

Expanding this thread:

The Kyiv Independent is just one of many organizations in the axis pushing propaganda to get us into WWIII.

You've probably also seen warmongering CEPA "disinformation experts" like Olga Tokariuk. The director of CEPA's disinfo program is a NED fellow.