Thread by @America1stLegal

/1🚨BREAKING — Explosive new documents expose a massive government-backed censorship operation orchestrated by USAID, the Global Engagement Center, the UK government, and media firms to manipulate public discourse and silence Americans.

/2 The documents reveal the Global Engagement Center (GEC), the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the UK government, and media groups working together to conduct mass censorship under the guise of “misinformation,” “disinformation,” and “malinformation.”

/3 AFL obtained the documents through ongoing litigation against the U.S. Department of State’s GEC.

/4 The GEC, which was forced to shut down in December 2024, was originally created to “combat foreign disinformation abroad.”

/5 However, through litigation, AFL exposed that the GEC promoted state-sponsored propaganda, using private media organizations to suppress American speech.

https://twitter.com/america1stlegal/status/1661361562580287489

/6 AFL’s litigation also revealed that USAID created an internal “Disinformation Primer,” explicitly praising private sector censorship strategies and recommending further censorship tactics.

https://twitter.com/america1stlegal/status/1768332436914548973

/7 Key revelations from the new documents:

➡️ GEC and USAID coordinated to censor “COVID-19 misinformation” and counter “COVID-19 propaganda.”

➡️ GEC worked with UK government officials to combat “disinformation.”

➡️ GEC partnered with private media censorship firms to use AI to identify “misinformation.”

/8 GEC’s “Liaison Planner to USAID” told USAID that GEC wanted to “sustain dialogue and connectivity during these unprecedented times” to help counter “misinformation” surrounding COVID-19.

/9 This effort contradicts USAID’s stated mission “to extend assistance to countries recovering from disaster, trying to escape poverty, and engaging in democratic reforms.”

/10 The records obtained by AFL show extensive coordination between GEC and several branches of USAID, including:

➡️ TF 2020-COVID 19

➡️ Digital Development

➡️ Asia Bureau ES Taskers

➡️ Asia Outreach

➡️ Conflict Prevention and Stabilization (CPS) Policy

➡️ CPS Africa

/11 Two days after the 2020 U.S. presidential election, NewsGuard’s Matt Skibinski reached out to government employees to pitch the media censorship organization’s services, further revealing collaboration between government agencies and media firms to suppress free speech.

Included on this email: 

➡️ Park Advisors’ Director, Christina Nemr, an Obama Administration Department of State alum.

➡️ Government employees from the Department of State, the National Security Agency (NSA), and Department of Defense components, including the National Security Innovation Network (NSIN), U.S. Cyber Command, and the U.S. Army European Command.

/12 The House Small Business Committee found that Park Advisors received a GEC cooperative agreement award of more than $6 million.

/13 Park Advisors then distributed subawards to several companies including NewsGuard, the Atlantic Council, and the Global Disinformation Index, a project funded by George Soros that generated lists of conservative websites it urged advertising companies to boycott.

/14 An email from NewsGuard’s Matt Skibinski shows immediate coordination between Park Advisors, GEC, USAID, NSA, and DOD to use new artificial intelligence and machine learning tools to monitor “misinformation.”

/15 A House Small Business Committee report states that “there was no firewall in place to ensure that Federal resources were not being used to develop and promote technologies that would have domestic impacts.”

/16 Recall: NewsGuard is a key player in censorship enforcement.

@FFO_Freedom has extensively detailed how, despite claims that it is a fair arbiter of truthfulness, NewsGuard censors speech by rating conservative sites with a low score and pressuring advertising companies to not place ads on those sites.

This practice was the subject of a House Oversight Committee investigation last year.

/17 An email from Vonda Wolcott, Senior Program Manager at the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, shows her connecting GEC’s Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) “expert” with Baybars Orsek from Poynter, showing their close collaboration.

GEC’s expert even offered to “walk [Poynter] through GEC’s new M&E workbook.”

@FFO_Freedom /18 AFL has already revealed how Poynter funds a global false-flag operation of international “fact-checkers” that claim to be independent but are, in reality, a tightly woven network funded by Poynter and the GEC.

https://twitter.com/america1stlegal/status/1669063922052128770

@FFO_Freedom /19 An email from January 8, 2021, shows the distribution of alleged “malinformation” from U.S. Department of State emails to UK government officials in the British Foreign, Commonwealth, Development Office.

@FFO_Freedom /20 AFL previously exposed coordination between other pro-censorship organizations and the U.S. and UK governments to censor American citizens’ speech.

https://twitter.com/america1stlegal/status/1852041115114815975

@FFO_Freedom /21 These new documents further expose the now-defunct GEC’s widespread efforts to suppress so-called “misinformation” and silence dissenting voices in coordination with government agencies, foreign governments, NGOs, and the media.

@FFO_Freedom /22 AFL will continue fighting to expose government censorship and relentlessly defend the First Amendment.

@FFO_Freedom /23 Read more here:
aflegal.org/america-first-…