The report was prepared by the department’s Global Engagement Center, whose mandate is only to examine propaganda efforts outside the United States.
The report states that the Strategic Culture Foundation is directed by Russia’s foreign intelligence service, the S.V.R., and stands as “a prime example of longstanding Russian tactics to conceal direct state involvement in disinformation and propaganda outlets.” The organization publishes a wide variety of fringe voices and conspiracy theories in English, while trying to obscure its Russian government sponsorship.
“The Kremlin bears direct responsibility for cultivating these tactics and platforms as part of its approach of using information and disinformation as a weapon,” said Lea Gabrielle, the coordinator of the State Department’s Global Engagement Center.
Absent from the report is any mention of how one of the writers for the Strategic Culture Foundation weighed in this spring on a Democratic primary race in New York. The writer, Michael Averko, published articles on the foundation’s website and in a local publication in Westchester County, N.Y., attacking Evelyn N. Farkas, a former Obama administration official who was running for Congress.
In weeks, the F.B.I. asked Mr. Averko about the Strategic Culture Foundation and its ties to Russia.
While those attacks did not have a decisive effect on the election, they showed Moscow’s continuing efforts to influence votes in the United States, Dr. Farkas said Wednesday in an interview.
She criticized the State Department for failing to explain how the Strategic Culture Foundation had tried to intervene in the current election, arguing the report missed an opportunity to “wake people up.”
“The State Department should not be releasing information that is so sanitized that it fails to convey the enormity of the situation,” Dr. Farkas said. “The whole point of writing a report like this is to put the American people on alert.”
Intelligence officials in recent days have briefed members of Congress about election threats from Russia and other countries. Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, and other lawmakers have called on the administration to declassify and release to the public information about those threats.
“The fact that they are publishing this report on what the Russians are doing in the world but not in the United States shows even more how data on our own security deserves to be declassified,” Blumenthal said in an interview Wednesday. “The classified briefings have surely been frightening and frankly frightening because of the magnitude of the external risk we face for our electoral security. It’s a breakup.”
The State Department report attempts to assess the scope of pro-Russian propaganda sites. Global studies are by far the most popular. According to the report, it has accumulated 12.4 million page views, attracting an average of 351,247 other people according to the article. Other sites, such as News Front and SouthFront, have nine million and 4.3 million readers. The Strategic Culture Foundation has much less Internet traffic, and attracts only about 990,000 visitors.
Global Research, according to the report, is a “local Canadian website” that, however, has been incorporated into Moscow’s propaganda ecosystem. The report explains how the site’s founder, Michel Chossudovsky, a former contributor to RT, the foreign television channel sponsored by the state of Moscow, and is on the advice of other pro-Russian conspiracy sites.
In the past, Global Research denied being part of a network of pro-Russian websites, but did not respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.
The State Department report also highlights how the websites have spread disinformation and conspiracy theories surrounding the pandemic, most notably the false story that the novel coronavirus was created in an American military lab.
A false global research story that the non-genuine coronavirus pandemic then spread across 70 other sites and publications, Gabrielle said.
“Senior Russian officials and pro-Russian media sought to capitalize on the fear and confusion surrounding the Covid-19 pandemic by actively promulgating conspiracy theories,” the report said.
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